Sacred Time and Space
Preached at Hanover Street Presbyterian Church
On March 26, 2006
Texts:
Exodus 20: 8-11
Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work?you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.
Psalm 84: 1-4
How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God. Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise. (Selah)
Sermon Text
For my birthday Alice gave me a clock with two faces, one to mark the hour of the day, and the other to mark whether the tide is rising or falling. Out our back door is the tidal area of the Brandywine River. The depth of the water there depends not only on the volume of fresh water flowing downstream, but also on the mixture of salt and fresh water penetrating upstream. I've been checking lately to see whether the tide clock on my home office wall is in sync with the water level under the Market Street Bridge. So far the two have been in fairly close agreement. I find that there's something very satisfying about minding nature's rhythms. Used to be, folk did that by necessity. You got up when the sun did, because you could only get your chores done during daylight. When the sun went down, you rested. Nature's rhythm was your rhythm. Electricity changed that. With electric lights, people could work all night long if they wanted to. And some did. It was the same with watermen and the tides and the winds. Used to be, you shoved off when the tides and the winds were favorable. But the dredging of harbors and the advent of steam and diesel locomotion changed that too. Used to be, there was a certain rhythm to our diets. For instance, you could get strawberries only when local vines were bearing. But nowadays, thanks to refrigerated ships, you can eat strawberries most of the year, provided you're willing to pay through the nose and lower your standards a good bit. I don't know whether you've ever thought about this, but the regular rhythm that our society used to observe just a couple of generations ago?I'm speaking about the rhythm of Sabbath rest?that rhythm was based upon nature, too. Our first text this morning says: " in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath (or seventh) day and consecrated it." But alas, now the natural rhythm of Sabbath is disappearing too. "To everything there is a season," says scripture. That may be so, but it gets harder and harder to stay aware of the rhythm, when everything and everyone is on, on, on, 24-7, in frantic pursuit of the almighty dollar. We need the rhythm of rest and work. Even if our work is very satisfying, if there is no rest to punctuate it, then our hustle and bustle will eventually overwhelm us. God rested after God worked for six days, says the creation story in the Bible. Therefore, the admonition for human beings to should be heard as a gracious invitation, not a stern restriction: God rested. Won't you rest too? Jesus understood that Sabbath rest is God's kind invitation to us, not an onerous restriction: The Sabbath was made for humankind, he said, not humankind for the Sabbath. We ought to accept this kind invitation to rest, for our own good.
Let's see how much our Sabbath practices have changed. Raise your hand and share for a moment how your family used to spend their holy day, their day of rest. Were you allowed to go to the movies? Were you allowed to go swimming, or play cards, or shopping? Were there soccer or football or basketball events on Sundays when you were growing up?
Do you see how much the rhythm of a restful day, a very different day every seventh day, has changed! If you are a parent with a teenager, and the teenager's coach says that he or she has to come out for the game next Sunday morning, and that he or she had better be there, otherwise playing first string might be in jeopardy, what are you to do? A college scholarship might lie in the balance. And if you protest the coach retorts: "Well, what am I to do? There are so many more people from so many more traditions, and there are holy days all over the calendar now. I can't please everybody. Something's got to give! " Yes, well, what shall that be? Whose values will prove most important? A sound spiritual life cannot be built on leftovers, any more than a fit body can be built on occasional workouts. It takes time to be holy, the old hymn reminds us.
I was talking to a rabbi friend about this problem the other day. He said to me: Uh huh, well now you pastors are experiencing what we rabbis have experienced for centuries. We just had to decide what was most important, that's all. If a coach told a Jewish boy he had to suit up on Saturday or else he was off the team, well, then that boy had to decide what was more important?following his spiritual conscience or his football coach. Such decisions have never been easy. Welcome to the club. If you don't like the bind you're in, then you ought to protest, as we have done over the years. Stand up for what you think is right. Say that spiritual commitments count too. Of course, you may lose your protest and not get what you want. But at least you'll have your values straight, and won't feel that you've had to settle for something that you didn't ultimately choose.
The Sunday school lesson this morning was about sacred time and space, and I've been talking so far about sacred time. What about sacred space? Is that also in danger of disappearing? The lesson this morning says that it helps to set aside a special place in your home to pray. That doesn't take much space. Just a nightstand with a candle on it placed in a corner of a room, and a quiet place to sit nearby will do. What's required are surroundings that calm you and help you to focus your attention on the presence of God. But of course, many people think of sacred space as God's house, a house of worship. Psalm 84 says: "How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the Lord." That's sanctuary space he's talking about, space like this we're in. Such sacred space is lovely indeed. It does help many people to focus their attention on God. This particular sacred space we're now in also holds a lot of memories: of baptisms, weddings, memorial services, choral and organ concerts, ordinations, Christmas pageants, Palm Sunday parades, and lots and lots of praying. People who have dwelt a good while in this place count it sacred not only because like other houses of worship it's regarded as God's house, but also because their memories have made this space a spiritual home for them. But alas, this more grand kind of sacred space is in danger of disappearing. I'm speaking not just of this space only, but also of thousands of houses of worship across our land. Smaller congregations, aging buildings, and skyrocketing fuel bills will force our congregation and thousands like us to make hard decisions about what is ultimately important, what we must strive to hold onto, and what we must part with. There are two opinions about temple space in our sacred scriptures. On the one hand, we hear lyric passages like Psalm 84, and reverent descriptions of the temple Solomon built. On the other we hear the prophet Isaiah telling his people that God doesn't want a temple. What God wants is that justice should roll down in their society like an ever flowing stream; and in the Christian scriptures we hear that wherever two or three are gathered together in the name of Jesus, there his spirit abides. We will have to wrestle with these differing voices in our sacred writings and decide how much we should spend on sacred space. How important to carrying out the mission of Jesus are stained glass windows and pipe organs and vaulted ceilings? That is the theological question we must keep before us as we seek to discern what God requires of this grand old church, almost two and a half centuries old.
Sacred time and sacred space are two endangered species. We need to ponder their importance in our lives, and pray for the Spirit's guidance about what to hold onto, and what to let go.
