Give it a Rest!

It was late in the day.  Folks were tired and getting cranky.  It was the second day of our church convention in Juneau.  Many of us could barely keep our eyelids propped open.  This is when Fr. Bob decided to bring up — and go on and on about — an obscure clause in the Nicene Creed.  Whether the Spirit is descendent through God, the Father only, or through both Father and Son – what is known as the filioque clause implying that the Son is co-equal with the Father.

It was this language that was at the root of the separation between Western and Eastern Christianity.

Now, I ask you; isn’t this your most pressing concern?  With a world in tatters and with rents and grocery prices soaring towards the stratosphere – and this is what we’re going to use our time on?  Really???

After ten minutes of Fr. Bob’s monologue, our convention secretary, Holly, had had enough.  Right then and there, she interrupted his speechifying and blurted out in a loud enough voice for all to hear, “Bob, put a sock in it!”  Whereupon the room broke out in scattered applause.  Apparently, she wasn’t the only one sick and tired of the whole thing.  Fr. Bob’s motion was summarily dismissed by a motion to table.  Yes, Bob – give it a rest.

Rest is what many of us need and yearn for in this go-go, 24/7, hyperactive society.  It is said that even God needed a rest after completing the six days of creation.

In our gospel lesson we encounter Jesus in a contentious argument with the religious authorities over the sabbath commandment to rest.  We quibble over obscure fine points of religious dogma and miss the entire meaning of it all.

Back when I ran our Emmaus Center church camp over in Kupreanof Island, right after lunch we would have “Crash Time.”  Everyone in their bunks.  No electronic games.  You could read or nap.  No talking.

As I herded folks to their beds, one of our young campers turned to me and remarked, “Crash time’s really for you, isn’t it?  Not us.”  I said he was exactly right, “Now, into your bunk.”  It always amazed me how many of our campers were sound asleep when the alarm sounded ending Crash Time.

The same with sabbath rest, it’s really for us.  A time to replenish.   Another benefit of running the Emmaus Center was a change-up in the pace of things.  We were dependent on the tides as to when we could come and go.  You might just as well as throw away your watch.

The Bible talks about two kinds of time – Chronos, as told by a clock; and Kairos, sometimes translated as the ‘fitting or due season.”  A qualitative sense of time, when time is ripe with possibility.

To truly enter sabbath rest is to enter Kairos time.  It’s that liminal space where the Holy Spirit has half-a-chance of getting ahold of us.  Of inspiring, of encouraging, of focusing us.

What is the purpose of it all, then?  It’s found in Micah 6.  “…and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and love kindness and to walk humbly with your God?”

All obscure theological disputations and liturgical controversies pale in comparison.  They are but a clanging, noisy cymbal – of little consequence.  “Sound and fury signifying nothing.”   Got that, Fr. Bob?

All our theologizing should be about the good life God intends for all.  The sabbath is made for us.  For doing good.  Not about abstruse matters no one cares much about at 3:00 in the afternoon when we’re nodding off and everybody wants to go home.  It’s with this understanding that Jesus tells the palsied man, “Stretch out your hand.”

As John Wesley said, “If your heart is as my heart in, take my hand.”

This week, in the June issue of “Christian Century,” I came across an ad for a conference, “Hearing Christ: The Gospel for an Exhausted World.”  Many clergy I know are feeling some sense of exhaustion: trying to make budgets work with unmet overhead expenses, diminishing Sunday attendance, more deaths than baptisms.

Unfortunately, most of us clergy, when things are not going well, feel that the only solution is to work harder.  More ideas, more meetings.  More exhaustion and more burn-out.

It’s the same with our natural world – it’s coming close to exhaustion.   It may well be time to give Mother Nature a rest.  We’ve imposed far too great a burden on her.

There on the front page of the Los Angeles Times a while ago was a deep-sea picture of a fifty-five-gallon drum oozing some of the nastiest stuff around.  DDT – toxins we thought we had gotten rid of years ago.  Now, these zombie chemicals were coming after us.[1]

Decades ago, hundreds of tons of DDT were disposed of by dumping them into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California.  Out of sight, out of mind – right?  Well, like the Terminator, they’re back again.

Are you up for a refresher course in oceanography?  You may remember, our former Presiding Bishop, the Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, has her PhD in oceanography.

This will be a “deep dive” – pun intended, so fasten your seat belt.

When scientists began collecting, dissecting and analyzing, one particular fish, the myctophids, also known as lanternfish, caused much concern because they migrate from the depths to the surface and travel great distances.  Moreover, these little critters make up “roughly sixty-five percent of all deep-sea biomass on Earth.”[2] 

They’re among the most abundant creatures on the planet.  Yeah, I’ve never heard of them either.

“The findings have been sobering: Wherever they looked, they found DDT. Even the ‘control’ samples they tried to collect — as a way to compare what a normal fish sample farther away from the known dumping area might look like — ended up riddled with DDT.”[3]

To boot, this toxin has traveled right up the food chain.  It’s now showing up in “dolphins, and coastal-feeding condors (and a recent study by another team even connected an aggressive cancer in sea lions to DDT).”[4]

Oh, did I mention all the other nasty stuff the scientists found – hundreds of tons of discarded munitions left over from WW II?  And don’t forget the ubiquitous “forever chemicals” and tons of microplastics.

Indeed, Give It a Rest!  And clean up this mess. 

What can one do?  Plenty!

Become informed.  Every day follow your browser to a science web site.  I highly recommend “Science Daily.”  It’s free and has a multitude of peer-reviewed articles on health and the environment.   Only takes a few minutes of our time.

Read the “Science News” section of the NY Times.  A digital subscription costs little.

Bring up the topic with friends and family.  The ignorant say “what you don’t know can’t hurt you.”  No!  What we collectively don’t know is killing the planet.

Engage in what my friend, Sister Simone Campbell – head Nun on the Bus – calls “check-out line evangelism.”  Ask those waiting with you at the grocery store what they think about the legacy we are leaving to their children and grandchildren.  Encourage even small, baby steps – for they often lead to more significant action.

March!  In my day an entire generation of young people put an end to a ruinous war in Vietnam.  It’s time to strap on your shoes for a healthy planet.  As Rabbi Beerman was fond of saying, “My marching feet are my prayers.”

And while you’re getting your sneakers on, think about marching for a ceasefire in Gaza.  That war is devastating our environment every bit as much as the worst pollutant.  Time to cut off the money.  Time to cut off the weapons.  As we proclaimed in the sixties, “War is not healthy for children and other living things.” 

Most importantly, vote for candidates who share your concern for the planet.  Unfortunately, too many politicians of both major parties are owned “lock, stock and barrel” by our vulture capitalist system of greed.  Do your research, see where their major funding is coming from.  That, too, only takes a bit of your time.

Thomas Jefferson warned us that only an informed citizenry can save democracy — and also the planet.

Use your sabbath time to do good – to remember that “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof – from the heavens above to the waters below.”  We’re standing on Holy Ground.   Let’s take off our shoes and Give it a Rest.  Amen.

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[1] Rosanna Xia, “’Nothing is Untouched’: DDT found in deep-sea fish raises troubling concerns for food web,” Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2024.

[2] Op. cit.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

June 2, 2024
2^nd Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 4

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Acts 1:1-11; Psalm 47;
Ephesians 1:15-23; Luke 24:44-53 “Give it a Rest