Sabbath

This week's topic was Sabbath. Donna Schaper writes: "Sabbath comes from the word "to separate," as in one of its roots, "sabbatical," where scholars still separate "teaching time" from "study time." Sabbath is the separation of time into different parts. Sabbath is neither rest nor labor but the separation of the two. Sabbath is the pause between them." Additionally, Schaper suggests that sabbath is not a day of the week but a state of mind.

"Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy" is included in both offerings of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:8 and Deuteronomy 5:12).

Exodus continues: "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 daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your town. For 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 day and consecrated it."

Deuteronomy 5:12-15 begins similarly, "Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy," with the reminder, "as the Lord your God commanded you." The details are offered in much the same way, but the reason given for the practice varies from Exodus: "Remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day."

In Leviticus 25:3-7, a sabbath for the land is prescribed; the seventh year will be a sabbatical year, a year of complete rest for land which has been farmed the other six years.

When we shared our own concepts of sabbath, our descriptions included:

--Sabbath is a gift from God

--"creation's day of rest"

--Taking time, making space to be with God

--Reminder of our beginning and our completion; remembrance that God is saving us

--Rest day

--great equalizer

--a time of liberation

--break in the tyranny of production and usefulness; locus in different identity

--different than "any other day"

--the seventh day; the first day; even "the eighth day" ( a "little Easter")

--connection between God's wholeness and the promise of wholeness realized for us

(shades of Matthew 5:48)

--God honors God's image in us---no exceptions!

Jesus says: "People weren't made for the sabbath; the sabbath was made for people." Essential to our well-being.

--

The Bible

"The Bible is a record of God's search for humanity." --Robert McAfee Brown

"We have so much to say about the Bible that we are not prepared to hear what the Bible has to say about us." --Abraham Heschel

"The Bible is not just man's word about God but also God's word about man." --Karl Barth

"Instead of reading the Bible as orthodoxy, or morality, or history, we take the Bible as a range of imagination that provides the community around the text with narrative and stories and songs and poetry and images that have the potential to move beyond themselves . . . the Bible is not user-friendly to those who like the way the world is organized. It is inherently subversive."

--Walter Brueggemann

"The Bible is a redescribing of reality."

"Our Bible study offers new understanding and experience of God, the world, and ourselves through the lens of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection."

"We need to read the Bible in principle and practice beginning with the gospel narrative of Jesus and the radically new thing he brings to the human situation. Jesus does not fit any of the current schemes of biblical interpretation, biblical literalist, literary critical, dispensationalist, which make the text more important than Jesus himself and thus neutralize the revolution of his teaching. Rather we should see that Jesus has brought a transforming possibility of nonviolence and forgiveness to our way of being human, and all biblical interpretation, including the pathways of revelation from the Old Testament, flow from that." --Anthony Bartlett

We engaged in a lively discussion of Matthew 15:21-28, a fascinating, revealing, and even confounding text. We not only read the story, but in our discussion, the story and its power began to "read" us!

Resurrection

"is the world ultimately a cold, hard, dead place?

does death have the last word?

is it truly, honestly, actually dark

so that whatever light we do see

whatever good we do stumble upon

are those just blips on the radar?

momentary interruptions in an otherwise meaningless existence?

because if that's the case then despair

is the only reasonable response.

it's easy to be cynical.

but Jesus says destroy this temple and I'll rebuild it

he insists that his execution would not be the end.

he's talking about something new and unexpected

happening after his death.

he's talking about resurrection.

resurrection announces that God is not giving up on the world

because the world matters

this world we call home

dirt and blood and sweat and skin and light and water

this world that God is redeeming and restoring and renewing.

greed and violence and abuse they are not right

and they cannot last.

they belong to death and death does not belong.

resurrection says that what we do in our lives matters

in this body

the one that we inhabit right now

every act of compassion matters

every work of art that celebrates the good and the true matters

every fair and honest act of business and trade

every kind word

they all belong and they will all go on in God's good world

nothing will be forgotten

nothing will be wasted

it all has its place."

---Rob Bell, Resurrection