Sabbath Joy

Psalm 148

Hymn- All things bright and beautiful.

I didn’t know that last Sunday when I preached on the Sabbath that we would enter into our very own snow Sabbath week. As we are online only this morning, ice is still on our roads and in our parking lot. I want to welcome and hope you are warm and safe inside your homes.

Whether we intended it or not, this week had a way of slowing us down perhaps. Many of us didn’t step outside. And for those of us who did, it was cautiously. Snow has always created both panic and joy in MS. Everyone runs to buy milk and bread and toilet paper for a month.

Although it might not create the same kind of panic level as if you were in the Dakotas or Minnesota, it does still seem to enchant us. There is a whole category of poetry about snow. Snow indeed seems to be a muse. a moment in time that we know for us, is precious to behold.

Abraham Joshua Heschel described the Sabbath as a cathedral in time, or a palace in time. What on earth did he mean by that?

Sabbath, as I mentioned last week, is that intentional day we set aside for rest, the kind of rest that delights in all that God has made and called good. As such, it is believed that Sabbath is supposed to be a foretaste of heaven. When we stop. When we slow down and enter into this time of joyful rest, we are glimpsing heaven, like a palace in time. A beautiful piece of time that stands apart from the rest of our week. “Marva Dawn says that the Sabbath is about four things: ceasing, resting, embracing, and feasting. We play. We feast. We echo with God “it is good.” Wayne Mueller tells how “the Jews believe that on the Sabbath we are given an extra soul- called a Sabbath soul- which enables us to more fully appreciate and enjoy the blessings of life and the fruit of our labor. The belief is that this Sabbath soul or spirit enables us to pause and to see that it is good.”

This week as I looked at many of your photos, I witnessed such joy on your faces. I realize this was not everyone’s experience this week. I realize that some had to still make it to work, or were in the hospital, or had pipes that burst. Even so, I saw beautiful pictures of Delta State. There were some lovely photos taken from inside your homes looking out your windows and porches. There were families outside exploring, making snow angels, eating snow cream, and getting very creative with makeshift sleds. When the snow really started coming down in larger flakes, my own kids squealed. Pictures of snow days flooded in from all over the state. I even saw someone in Memphis skiing down Beale Street. One of our neighbors had his face to the sky with his mouth wide open trying to catch it like nature’s candy. I invite you to send us some of your snow week photos so that we can be sure to share them in our February newsletter.

Perhaps some of us have even lost track of our days, but Sabbath happens when we stop counting. Muller asks “How do we count friendship or laughter? How do we count the value of honesty, or bread from the oven? How can we count the sunrise, the trusting clasp of a child’s hand, a melody, a tear, a lover’s touch? So many truly precious things only grow in the soil of time; and we can only begin to know their value when we stop counting.”

When we observe Sabbath, we enter into this ongoing chorus of praise. And within this chorus is joy, laughter, and holy play. Sabbath gives us room to play together. Sabbath brings out childlike delight in us. In Zechariah 8:4-5, Zechariah looks to a future when children once again play in the streets. Swoboda says “Can you imagine New York City without Central Park? Whenever God dreams of a city, like a dream for our lives, he dreams of places where we are not so busy or so crowded that we have no room or time to play in the streets.”

I remember when I was in college the Wesley Foundation had what they called a Be A Kid Again Day. We rented huge bouncies and played field games like we were kids. Jim will tell you about one of our dates when I wanted to go swinging at the park late at night in the cold. A couple of weeks ago when we toured the new ropes course at Camp Wesley Pines, I half-jokingly said “so when are the dates for adult summer camp.” The young man looked at me and laughed. But Sabbath joy is all about play.

The hills behind the Grammy museum were such a beautiful image of people together in play, slipping and sliding and giggling, the very soundtrack of Sabbath. Wayne Muller says “when we engage in purposeless enjoyment of one another, we harvest some of the sweetest fruits of life.” Maybe for some of you Sabbath joy has stayed contained in your home, watching from the window at the beauty that surrounds you, all things bright and beautiful.

In seeing all of this, it made me think of Psalm 148 and the way in which all of creation praises the Lord. The sun and the moon, the seas, the mountains, the snow and frost, and all of creation. Even Psalm 147:16 says “He gives snow like wool; he scatters frost like ashes.”

In Every Moment Holy, vol. 1, Douglas McElvey wrote a beautiful liturgy for the falling of the first snow. Listen to these words.

“O Christ, King of Snow, we bless you for bidding this blanket of white to cover us in holy hush, that our hearts might be quieted at the sight, that we might sense the emptiness of canvas over which your Spirit broods, and upon which you would create

and recreate

our hearts in the image of the one whose word first spoke snow into existence.”

Ask yourselves friends: How did you celebrate this week? How did you rest this? How did you embrace God’s creation? How did you feast? How did you laugh? How did you play? How did you join God in looking around and saying “it is good?”

When we enter into Sabbath joy, our ceasing, resting, embracing and feasting becomes like a song of praise to God like the final refrain of that beautiful hymn:

“He gave us eyes to see them, and lips that we might tell how great is God Almighty, who has made all things well.

All things bright and beautiful All creatures great and small All things wise and wonderful 'The Lord God that made them all”