August 26, 2007

Proper 16/Pentecost 13

TURNING THE DAY AROUND ...

A high school retreat featured an afternoon session on sex. The teenagers wrote their questions on pieces of paper, folded and put them in a hat. That way no one knew who asked what. They passed the hat around, someone would take out a question, read it aloud, and they'd talk about it in the group.

After a few rounds, a boy pulled out this one: "How can I find true love?" No one said anything at first, but of course they all wanted an answer (or wanted THE answer). Finally one student said, "I guess to find true love you have to find a true person."

Which prompted another student to chime in. "Don't you have to be a true person yourself? I mean, how am I going to be truthful with someone else if I'm not straight with myself?"

Not bad, eh? You thought I was going for a joke, but I got you to listen to some young wisdom. Those students knew what a lot of adults don't seem to figure out until later, if at all. There's no true love without true people. [1]

The pastor of the local church that Jesus visited one weekend - in today's story - that pastor had a distorted sense of true religion. Of course, he couldn't recognize it when it happened right in front of him, because he wasn't true himself. He apparently didn't know the difference between authentic love for someone and playing it safe. So Jesus called him a religious hypocrite. He was willing to untie his farm animals for a drink (because Sabbath rules allowed that) but he was UNwilling to let an ailing woman from his own town find help for her back injury (because the rules didn't mention that possibility). Well, religion can't really be true for someone if it doesn't change the person, doesn't result in what's straight and true.

You've heard of WWJD - "what would Jesus do"? You wanna know "what would Jesus do"? Read a story like this one this morning. Jesus knew when to break the rules in order to keep the Two Great Rules (Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself). That's really being straight with yourself, straight with God, and being good for something, besides - and THAT is truly an authentic faith more than simply a "religion."

It's like that statement from the Book of James in the New Testament: "True religion," it says, "religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father - care for orphans and widows in their distress and keep yourself straight and unstained." [2] True religion... true love... true person - can't have one without the other two.

Now, when and where this exchange took place between Jesus and the pastor... the when and where move us along about one more mile today. The Sabbath day (their day of worship) and the synagogue (their place of worship) are like our Sundays... our day of worship at our place of worship. Today we discover, Sabbath isn't always limited to time and place.

Last Monday my three-year-old granddaughter Abigail, my son her Uncle Titus, and I went to Como Zoo. It was kinda misty and overcast but the weather was good enough for us to go everywhere and I think we saw everything, although we were too late to do the kiddie rides... which was OK, because Abigail fell fast asleep on the ride back home.

So did Titus when he and I got home. We got in the door, I got the mail, and Ti disappeared for a good long nap; at least, I didn't hear a thing from downstairs for quite a while. I didn't want to sleep that late in the afternoon, so I went off for a good long walk... and along the way I realized why I don't take as many naps these days, and why young moms and dads DO sleep, every chance you get, compared to parents of teens and empty-nesters. It's because raising a family, caring for a toddler, balancing an armful of baby or two, keeping up with youngsters is exhausting. Early to bed, 'cause early to rise, right?

Generally, our need for sleep is one result of our activity. We work or play and we get tired. When we're done with our activity, we rest. Now, I'd like you to look at this another way. Sleep is also the preparation we need in order to get ready to do our most important work ...as parents, for example - or as people with responsibilities, as boys and girls in school - sleep starts us off renewed and ready for the day ahead.

Turn the day around, in other words, and sleep becomes a kind of daily Sabbath, a mini-Sunday, God's way to reset our lives, reboot the circuits in our souls, unload the delete folder, and start again defragged and free. In my better language earlier, Sabbath is the pathway to find true love, true faith, and a true and healthy heart... not limited to certain days or a certain place - but every night wherever we lay our heads.

It was a Lutheran pastor who gave me this idea when he wrote about the refrain in that famous creation story in the Book of Genesis. It reoccurs six or seven times. "And there was evening and there was morning, the first / second/ third day..." Evening and morning made the day, Ted Schroeder says, and that's not a misprint in the Bible.

In the beginning, he says, a day was not morning... and then a busy 12 or 18 hours and then at night fall into bed exhausted. As God instead designed it, a day was evening and a night of rest... and then morning and all the doing. Turn it around, you see. Our day begins when the sun goes down and we wind down. God planned for us to start the day after we've rested with a night's sleep, after we're renewed, after what's done is done and we get the preparation we need to do our work. "It may seem like a small thing," Ted says, "but it's important." It turns the day around, which has the potential to turn our lives around. [3]

Research tells us that it takes most people between 7 and 10 minutes to fall asleep. You know and I know we often use that time to gather our regrets. Those ten minutes start to feel like an eternity - and maybe they stretch out much longer than a mere ten minutes. We replay our mistakes and the conflicts in our lives. Fears always grow worse at night, and we "fret our way to sleep," Ted says, "mind buzzing over all the unfinished business, those loose ends, our worst worries, and tomorrow's list of things to do."

OR, we could use those ten minutes in bed like a Sabbath, a little Sunday, a time of rest for our souls... Let go of the mistakes, the troubles, and yeah, the sins that we have done. Let God turn it around for us, for that is what a Sabbath does and why we honor Sunday - God turns us toward the One who, first, lived straight and true for us, and then, on the cross turned around the whole wide world. In fact, his "sleep" in death at the end of that Good Friday became the start of a permanently new day for all of us. "There was evening... and there was morning," and we call that day... Easter.

That pastor in the synagogue with Jesus and the crippled woman... if he had recognized this Sabbath turn-around in his own life, he'd have understood the true sense of his Bible, could have been more generous to his own constituents, would have appreciated that special visitor from Galilee in church that day, would have been a more pleasant person to live with - and no doubt would have slept better himself at night.

That's what I mean by asking you to recognize your nights as little Easters, Sabbath opportunities to start your day each day within the evening-time grace and hospitality of God. When we close our eyes, we come into the presence not of darkness, gloom and storm, and a God who tells us what we cannot stand to hear, but (in the Bible's words today) "We have come where angels are glad to gather and we have come to the congregation of the children enrolled in heaven, and to Jesus." [4]

If you're still not sure about my point and what I've said, I apologize. As I prepared this sermon I resisted the temptation to lay down for a nap, but at this point you may feel ready for one yourself... so I offer you a story with a punch line that might be useful, if nothing else I say today makes sense. This is what I mean...

When writer Anne Lamott was about seven, her best friend one day got lost. The little girl ran up and down the streets of the city where they lived, but she couldn't find a single landmark. She was very frightened.

But a police officer stopped to help. He put her in the passenger seat of his squad car and they drove around and around... until suddenly she saw her church. She pointed to it and told the officer, "You can let me out now. This is my church, and I can always find my way home from here."

"That's why I have stayed so close to my own church," says Anne Lamott... "because no matter how bad I am feeling, how lost or lonely or frightened, when I see the faces of the people at my church and hear their tawny voices, I can always find my way back home." [5]

This place and the rest that God provides is a Sabbath you can enjoy tonight and every night, and it can turn your day - it can turn your life - around. And this sad world and all us cripples will be better off for it.

Nate Castens
Chanhassen, Minnesota

[1] This story from Martha Stortz, "Growing into Faithfulness," in The Lutheran, August 2006

[2] James 1:27

[3] Pr Schroeder gave me the title for this sermon, too, in his article, "Turning the Day Around," published in The Good Shepherd but I don't have any more info on this journal, its date, or otherwise. The following information is from Schroeder, too.

[4] Hebrews 12:22-23

[5] Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith¸ p. 55