Second Sunday of Advent: Embracing Sabbath and the "Way" of Jesus

Over the last three or four weeks I have been working on or giving presentations for a Women In Faith group in my parish. It dealt with our foundational vocation to become authentically human and the ability to be free and rest that our embrace of such a vocation results in.  I have the concluding half of all of this to do on Tuesday and so, it has been on my mind. Specifically, I will do a presentation on Sabbath as the "great equalizer", the day (period) when, in  God, we embrace the identity God gives and calls us to and allow ourselves to truly rest from all those "'essential' roles and burdens" the world defines us in terms of. On Sabbath we let go of competitiveness, workaholism, consumerism, and so many other ways in which we are set against our true selves and one another and we simply rest in who we are in God. The title for the second part of the presentations will be "Be still and know that I am God" from psalm 46:10. The title for the first half of the presentations reverses this to, "Know that I am God and be still". The two are inextricable from one another and together they present a symbol of the freedom of authentic humanity.

Additionally, last Sunday as part of the first Sunday of Advent I prayed with the ecclesial community of a couple of friends of mine who celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary during the week and who renewed their vows last Sunday. As part of the celebration they asked me if I wanted to renew my own vows and I did. As part of  doing that I had to compose a renewal formula which led me to thinking once again about  the term "stricter separation from the world" and how I would say that for a community who would be likely to misunderstand the canonical phrase in terms of a rejection of God's good creation. I borrowed the  overall structure of the formula from that of the Sisters of the Holy Family, and for the c 603 elements of my commitment, including "stricter separation from the world," I promised to: "devote myself to the service of God and all God holds precious in stricter separation from anything resistant or antithetical to God's love, in the silence of solitude, and in assiduous prayer and penance."

In both of these activities what canon 603 calls "stricter separation from the world" played an important role. Sabbath itself is a way of  standing aside from "the world" which often holds us bound by its values and perspectives, its way of viewing God, ourselves, and others, while making commodities of them (cf., Walter Brueggemann, Sabbath as Resistance); it is a way of resting in God and both being and becoming the ones we are called to be in God. It is a symbol of freedom and is given to us as gift and responsibility in the Decalogue, the charter of freedom and covenant in the OT. but this freedom plays off against the bondage of something canon 603 calls "the world" --- again, that which is resistant or antithetical to God's love.

Pharaoh's Egypt was, for Israel, the very epitome of "the world" canon 603 calls me to separate myself from more strictly. The Jewish people were made to toil endlessly without even time to pray or worship. When they sought the time and space to worship their God, they were punished and the toil they were made subject to became even more demanding, even less fulfillable, and even more dehumanizing. Hours were long, food and time for rest short. Relationships deteriorated as did the Jews' own sense of their own dignity. Their behavior likewise deteriorated then and they fell into the kinds of things we expect among the dehumanized and starving: unhealthy competitiveness, theft, covetousness, dishonesty, murder, the failure to honor one's inheritance as one born with infinite dignity or to honor others in the same way, etc. In short, this bondage and dehumanization marked by endless toil and insufficiency was incapable of putting God first, resting in God's love, and loving oneself and others in God as a natural consequence. Israel became bond to an ethic of idolatry (for this was the Pharaoh's system and Pharaoh was a divine figure) and dehumanization --- an ethic resistant and even antithetical to God's love. (These two elements, idolatry and dehumanization, always go together.)

What I recognized is that quite often today we buy into the same bondage and the same forms of dehumanization. We buy into "the world" and in fact, we build that same "world"  and our own self-definition upon it. We do this in the form of a system that makes commodities of us all--- objects which can be bought and sold, used and disposed of as easily as one would do to a shirt or pair of pants. We become workaholics whose value is tied up with what we do rather than who we are, or shopaholics who fail to be in touch with the really new (kainetes) God is doing in our lives every day and substitute the merely new in time (neos) --- something which has to be replaced almost as soon as we have purchased it, or we become those who treat others in the same way through competitiveness, elitism, classism, an unhealthy capitalism, etc etc. What we are called to instead is the way of Jesus, the way of the Kingdom of God, the way which honors and delights in God's good creation but is also the world of Sabbath and the Ten Commandments, the world of the Great Commandment -- that is, the world of the love of God and all that God holds precious.

When I renewed my vows to live as a diocesan hermit under canon 603 last weekend, it was the all-too-common  but destructive meaning of "the world" I rejected and the "way of Jesus" I embraced again more intensely. As we enter more fully into Advent what I want to suggest is that this is the same commitment the Church and God are asking of each us --- not as hermits perhaps, but as those who recognize the Kingdom of God in our midst at the same time. I would encourage you to look carefully just as I am doing, at the way the canon 603 sense of "the world" plays a defining role in your own life, and that you build in real Sabbath rest where you allow yourself to rest in God and be just who he had made and calls you to be.  

Separate yourself more strictly from that false and idolatrous world. Let go of the consumerism, competition, division, striving to achieve (including religious striving(!),  and all of the other "-isms" that so represent the idols of our day, and try to do this in a focused or dedicated way for at least one entire day each week. After all, this is what the fourth commandment requires of us. Reject Pharaoh's ethic of ceaseless toil and embrace Jesus' ethic of God's gratuitous (and ultimately unearnable) love. Embrace "the great equalizer" of Sabbath which allows everyone and everything to rest and be the ones God calls them to be, the world of  genuine respect for all of creation, and of loving collaboration and unity in the Love of God.  I believe it will change the season for you and help it be what it is meant to be, but also, over time, it can change family life, life in our faith communities, and even the larger world in which we live.