Sabbath seeing

Today is the fourth Sunday of Lent, sometimes called Refreshment Sunday. On this Sunday in mid-Lent, the church’s tradition is to take a break from the darkness of the season, a breather before moving into the intensity of marking Christ’s Passion. Historically Sunday was a day of rest for most people, but Refreshment Sunday in England was also a day off for servants and apprentices, given leave to go home and spend the day with their mothers – so this Sunday is still called Mothering Sunday in England, even though we in the U.S. celebrate Mothers’ Day in May. It was also traditional to go to church that day, back home with the family, to give thanks for Mother Church. In some churches, it’s the day to bring out the rose colored vestments, a lift from the penitential purple of the season. So this is a day of a little more light than what we experience in the rest of Lent – and it’s a good chance to talk about Sabbath rest, our practice of the week. Sabbath is a practice of rest and refreshment – and, I think, a practice that helps us see God in a new way.

The scriptures today all talk about seeing, and light, and of darkness and blindness too. The prophet Samuel is urged to see as the Lord sees, who looks on the heart, and anoints God’s chosen king David from amongst all the sons of Jesse. The letter to the Ephesians talks of being children of light, and of everything we do being exposed by the light of God. And the gospel of John especially plays with the themes of spiritual and physical sight and blindness. 

It’s another one of our long gospel stories, this one about the man born blind, something the culture understood as a sign of sin. The disciples ask Jesus whether the man is blind because of his own sin or that of his parents, but Jesus dismisses this idea and says the man is blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him. And reaching out to heal the man of his blindness, Jesus makes the man himself a revelation of God’s light to the world. For his part, the man responds immediately to his healing, speaking with confidence and clarity about what has happened to him – which shows that he is a man of insight and understanding, a man of sight, even though he was physically blind. But the neighbors and those who had seen the man before as a beggar can’t agree whether this is the same man (which makes you wonder if they had ever really seen this man before, or had just walked by him without seeing). They bring him to the religious authorities – who show their blindness by refusing to understand what has happened, focusing instead on the Law broken by Jesus healing on the Sabbath. They call the man’s parents, who, blind to the miracle that has taken place in their son’s life and fearful of the consequences to themselves, back away, abandoning him to his fate. All those around him question the man to see how this happened and who did it, and he responds over and over again with the truth. But the religious authorities, blinded by their position and their strict adherence to one way of seeing the world, cast him out of the community. Jesus then comes to find him, and reveals himself to him as the Messiah, saying, ‘You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he’ – and the man does see, and worships him.

This story asks provocative questions about how people see and what keeps them from seeing. Jesus reveals the truth to us – but all kinds of things keep us from seeing, from noticing what is in front of us: our preconceived notions, the ‘way we always did them,’ our assumptions about other people. The Pharisees were not bad or malicious people – they were faithful Jews striving to live the ways of God. But they were rigid in their understanding of how God works; unable to hear the answer that was being given, because it was not the answer they were looking for. They’re made out to be the bad guys in this story, but if we’re honest, we could all so easily end up doing just as they did. Because it’s easy to let our sight be muddied by all that preoccupies us – and so to keep ourselves from seeing God at work in our lives.

The practice of Sabbath is our focus for this week. It’s not a practice Christians tend to talk about much. We might think of it as a Jewish custom, or a rigid archaic rule from the time of Jesus, or as something dull and boring our grandmothers did. We don’t usually talk about it as something positive. But maybe because of the pace of modern life, there have been a lot of Christian writers exploring the idea of Sabbath in the last few decades. Everyone is tired, everyone is overly busy, everyone feels like something is out of balance in our lives. And right here in our tradition is a way to rebalance. Of course, observing Sabbath is one of the 10 commandments, and it comes before the one about murdering people – but somehow it’s one we set aside as if God didn’t really mean it. But the commandment is repeated over and over again in the Hebrew scriptures, and Jesus never contradicts it – he refocuses people on the purpose of Sabbath, but he never tells them to stop observing it. The commandment is to keep Sabbath as a day of rest for two reasons: it’s built right into the rhythm of creation from the very beginning; and it reminds us that God brought his people out of slavery, that we are not to be captive to work and the Pharaohs of our time. Keeping Sabbath is a declaration of who we were created to be: God’s children, living in trust and harmony with God’s creation. Not the ones in control of everything – which might just be why we resist it so much.

I spent a sabbatical reading and thinking about sabbath, and later led a Jewish-Christian group as we re-engaged with Sabbath practice; there are innumerable books about Sabbath; we can’t cover all of that in one sermon. But I want to say a few words about it. There’s plenty in secular wellness culture telling us to take a break, be more mindful, find me-time. But Sabbath goes a bit further than that. It is meant to be time spent delighting in God’s presence. The Jewish word menuha – tranquility, peace, spiritual rest – is what is offered on Sabbath, the ‘rest for our souls’ like what Jesus promises when he says, ‘come to me, and you will find rest for your soul.’ This is rest that goes deeper than a good nap, in other words (although a good nap is often a wonderful thing on the Sabbath). It is resting in God’s presence, enjoying the good things of creation, reminding ourselves that God’s time is the time we really have. We put away the to-do list, we turn off the email, we spend time instead with loved ones, with good food, with the beauty of nature, worshiping with our community – the things that reground us in God. It is a reorientation of our very selves, led by our calendars.

Our family adopted this practice for a time when our kids were still home, but I confess Jim and I haven’t been as good at it since our move. Our neighborhood in San Diego is close to an Orthodox synagogue, and every Saturday I see families heading back and forth on foot, coming and going from services. I know that on Friday nights they are starting their Shabbat with candles and good food and blessings on their children, and that Saturdays are full of play and rest and prayer. Seeing them reminds me every week of this practice and what it means. It’s something I want to reclaim for ourselves too. Maybe you do too. The tradition is a once-weekly Sabbath, so it’s a bit different from the other practices I’ve taught the last few weeks – you can’t just go off and do Sabbath a few times this week. But you might try planning for it, to spend time later this week in Sabbath, or even to do so today with the rest of your Sunday. Or perhaps just to take ‘Sabbath moments’ during the week, when you turn off your phone and sit in the unseasonable sunshine and give thanks. It helps you see things differently.

Because otherwise we tend to fall into blindness. We get clouded with the wrong things and see with the lenses of this world: bound up by the rules with which we live our daily lives, or by what the voices of culture and marketing tell us is possible or acceptable. The good news is that the healing of our sight is always offered to us, has indeed already been offered to us. The Light of the World offers us enlightenment – literally – and opens our eyes to see what we could not see before. And in seeing God at work in the world, and in living out that vision, we ourselves become a sign of God to others. Our seeing, and our walking with that sight, becomes a means of God revealing God’s glory to the world. So on this Refreshment Sunday, may we find the refreshment offered to us by the Light of the world:  the healing of real sight.