Rev.
Ann C. Fox
(508) 992-7081
UFairhaven@aol.com
Unitarian Universalist
Society of Fairhaven
Pre-Sabbatical Reflections
a sermon by Rev. Ann C. Fox
December 9, 2007
Note: Two short readings are attached, which you might like to read first
I have always been fascinated with the eastern-world concept of “maya” but it was a difficult one to get my mind around because it holds that this world is really an illusion. For true reality, according to the concept of maya, we have to see through the veil of illusion. I used to say, “Try telling that to someone who suffers with chronic arthritis!” Maya also doesn’t care much for the concept of time, which is an illusion also. And yet, clearly, our bodies age. While how we live our lives in the human drama is important, maya points to the perspective beyond as more important.
Ancient Judaism, that gave us the Bible, took time and the human drama very seriously indeed and documented the history of a nation as part and parcel of its teachings. But it did something more, it “hallowed” time, or made it holy by setting aside one day, the Sabbath, the special seventh day, to remind us that we were made for more than work.
One day, it struck me that the Hindu/Buddhist maya and the Jewish Sabbath were saying essentially the same thing. The fourth commandment— Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy (see also the reading at the end of this sermon)—was instructing us not only to put aside for ourselves a day when we should do no work but that we should also ensure that everyone dependent upon us should also do no work. How honoring of the laborer (and the housewife, or house-husband) and how very practical! But it is the “holy” part of the Sabbath that is like maya. There is a mystical quality to both Sabbath and maya that point beyond time and history as we know them. In the pondering of either of these we will find peace, rest, and the holy.
Nowadays, for many of us, time is our problem. A Sabbath day is now a Sabbath hour or two for many if not most of us. But at least if we have those few hours in which we can ground ourselves in the sacred perspective. it gives our lives depth and meaning and very likely makes us mentally and physically healthier as well. (Remember that statistics show that church-goers are healthier than non-churchgoers!) My own Sabbath begins when I sit down to write my sermon for by that time the intellectual activity that brought me to this place has ended and the purely creative part has begun, inspired by being in a timeless place.
The extension of ancient Israel’s Sabbath to the seventh year sabbatical for the earth is a remarkable leap. (See the reading from Leviticus at the end of this sermon.) It was clearly known that the fields must lie fallow to restore the soil to fertility and it would also give a break to all who work on the earth. It also encouraged planning to lay aside the fruits of the harvest for special times. We see this in the stories in Genesis when all the nations go to Pharaoh’s Egypt in times of famine for the Egyptians had raised grain storage to almost scientific heights. This is in the epic story of Joseph and the Coat of Many Colors.
We know that the sabbatical year was an ideal and we’re not sure whether landowners ever followed the sabbatical practice beyond letting the fields lie fallow. As time has gone on it has become the custom for those who teach in the universities and those who serve religious communities to have sabbaticals to rest, renew, and enrich their lives so they can serve their communities better. If you search on line for sabbatical information, you will come across sermons by rabbis thanking their congregations for supporting their sabbatical time.
My sabbatical time has come! Yippee! You might know that Unitarian Universalist ministers earn one month of sabbatical leave for every year served. Though we can usually take a sabbatical after five years, I liked the idea of taking the seventh year and for only four months. My sabbatical will be January 1 through April 30, 2008. “But what would I do with it?” I asked myself. It seemed like an overwhelming responsibility to do something with the time. “But wait a minute,” I thought, “it isn’t about doing, it’s about being as well!”
It occurred to me that whether I’m being or doing, that having a theme to ponder might shape my being-and-doing. I asked myself, “What concerns me the most?” I struggled with this for many weeks. Suddenly it came to me one night when I wasn’t sure whether I was awake or asleep. In neon lights before my eyes was the single blinking word PEACE! “Of course,” I said almost out loud. “I will be a Peace Pilgrim, whatever that means to me.” By this time I was fully awake and excited with the idea. “I’ll study peace, think peace, speak peace, be peace.” I wondered whether there had ever been a Peace Pilgrim. I got up and got onto the Internet and put into the Google search engine, “Peace Pilgrim.” Up came the story of the remarkable woman who had even given up her name and identity and called herself Peace Pilgrim. (On her driver’s license was her name: Peace Pilgrim. People called her “Peace.”) I told you about her in a sermon recently. However, I am not giving up my identity but I am going to spend four months keeping thoughts of peace in my heart as much as possible. In truth, peace had been much on my mind for a long time, as it might also have been on yours with the war dragging on and on in Iraq. It is easy to forget that there’s a war going on in Afghanistan as well!
For some part of my sabbatical, I decided to go to a place I’ve wanted to visit for some years: New Zealand. My interest was piqued in recent years by my husband Leo’s description and stories of it. He had gone there as a young man to work on sheep farms. He loved riding the range and doing all the varied tasks on the farm. However, most of his family members, including his mother, had emigrated to the U.S. So, after five years, he gave up the country he loved to come here to be with family.
Leo and I will go to New Zealand together for six weeks of the sabbatical time. We hope to travel the length and breadth of this beautiful and mountainous country consisting of two islands that are close together, called North Island and South Island.
There are four Unitarian churches in New Zealand, spread far apart—two in North Island and two in South Island. I wrote to them all offering to preach in exchange for a few days of shelter. They responded immediately and were delighted to accept my offer. A retired minister wrote: “Kia ora Ann” which means “Good health Ann” in the Maori language and functions like “Hello.” He ended with “Ka kite.” I don’t know yet what this means but it has whetted my appetite to learn about the Maori, their language and customs. However, I know I will encounter something of the awful violent history and devastation of their culture that our own Native Americans suffered. (Maoris are about 15% of the population of New Zealand.) The Unitarian congregation leaders and I have exchanged numerous email messages and we now have accommodation for three of the six weeks we will be in New Zealand.
Recently, I sent my sermon topics, readings, etc. and a short biography as an introduction in which I mentioned I had begun my Unitarian Universalist journey at a small UU Fellowship in Laguna Beach, California. Lo and behold, one of our hosts also discovered UUism at that same Fellowship. It’s a small world.
Our churches in New Zealand and Australia proclaimed at their annual meeting in October that they wished to create closer ties with UU churches around the world. Perhaps Leo and I will help to begin some of those connections. Perhaps some of our children will form pen-pal relationships. (Perhaps some of our adults will, too.)
A young artist, Susan Kyle’s son, Peter, has silk screened some tee-shirts for me and a few for Leo. They will have the words “A Peace Pilgrim” on them and I hope they will help to spark conversations with others wherever we go. They will help me to keep peace in my mind and on my lips. And, as Leo and I will be together 24/7 so to speak, my biggest test will be peace with my travel mate!
What will I do with the rest of my sabbatical? Some of it will be spent in quiet retreat and some will be devoted to peace studies. I will send you a message from time to time. I am not worried about the church for we have a competent staff, a devoted and skilled Board of Governors, talented Worship Associates, caring Pastoral Associates, and committed members and friends doing all kinds of tasks and committee work to keep the wheels of the congregational life turning.
When I return, I will surely be changed and marked in some significant way by my experiences. I hope to return to you well rested and my ministry enriched so that I have more to offer you. What I wish for you is that you will come together as a congregation to own your church by participating fully and helping to keep things moving. Even helping to participate as an usher and welcoming newcomers is significant. Our membership committee will run an Orientation to Unitarian Universalism series beginning in February for those of you who want to begin the path to membership and so can then vote and fully participate in congregational life.
When you belong to and participate in church life, you are growing your spirit hardly without your noticing it. You grow and change by your interaction with others as well as taking your Sabbath hours in a religious community. It may not be as spectacular a spiritual experience as having an entire sabbatical time, but the accumulated Sabbath experiences will add up. My hope for you all is that once in your life, you will have a true sabbatical in which to fully experience life and yourself!
The theme of my sabbatical—that of PEACE—is a theme that our Unitarian Universalist denomination has chosen as our study/action issue for the next three years. Our theme is actually “peacemaking.” While I am being and doing my peace pilgrim studies abroad and at home, you will begin taking a more leisurely peace pilgrim journey (even if it is only attending the book discussions, the topics of which have been peace for a year now). The election year that awaits us all is certainly an opportunity to look for a candidate who is the most likely to have the qualities of a peacemaker for such a person will surely change the course of our current world drama.
The final test of an evolved society is whether it can be a peace-loving society. The journey to peace depends upon each one of us hearing the call and acting upon it. Would you also like to be a peace pilgrim of sorts? You can be, without ever leaving Massachusetts. If we think peace and do things that promote it, it will have a ripple effect over the world for what affects one, affects all. May we collectively help to incline our world towards peace.
References
The following inspired and informed this sermon:
Heschel, Abraham J. The Sabbath, New York: Farhar, Straus and Giroux, 1951.
Muller, Wayne. Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives, New York: Bantam Books, 1999.
Reading 1: from Exodus 20:8-11
(The Fourth Commandment)
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant, or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
Reading 2: from Leviticus 25:1-7, 20-22
The Lord said to Moses on Mount Sinai, “Say to the people of Israel, When you come into the land which I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in its fruits; but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord; you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. What grows of itself in your harvest you shall not reap, and the grapes of your undressed vine you shall not gather; it shall be a year of solemn rest for the land. The Sabbath of the land shall provide food for you, for yourself and for your male and female slaves and for your hired servant and the sojourner who lives with you; for your cattle also and for the beasts that are in your land all its yield shall be for food.”
“And if you say, ‘What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?’ I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, so that it will bring forth fruit for three years. When you sow in the eighth year, you will be eating old produce; until the ninth year, when its produce comes in, you shall eat the old.
© The Rev. Ann C. Fox