St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church, Owings Mills MD
June 2, 2024
Year B, Proper 4: The Second Sunday after Pentecost
1 Samuel 3:1-20
Psalm 139: 1-5, 12-17
2 Corinthians 4:5-12
Mark 2:23-3:6
Sabbath Quiet
So, as I mentioned last week, I’ve long been an avid reader.
But if the world of literature is split between prose and poetry, I’ve always been firmly in the prose camp.
Works of history, biographies, and novels have been my books of choice.
But over the last couple of years, I’ve finally gotten interested in poetry.
I’m not totally sure why this has happened, but I can pinpoint the exact moment – the exact poem, actually – that sparked my rather late-in-the-game interest.
Almost four years ago, I was reading the obituaries in The New York Times as I always do (now I read the obits in The Sun, too!), I was reading in the Times and came across the obituary of Diane di Prima, a poet, someone I had never heard of before.
Diane di Prima lived a long, adventurous, and countercultural life in the arts, a journey that took her from Greenwich Village in the ‘50s to San Francisco in the ‘60s and beyond.
She’s usually labeled a Beat poet, one of the very few women in that group.
All very interesting, but what caught my eye was an excerpt from one of her poems that closed the obituary.
Here it is:
I’d like my daily bread however
you arrange it, and I’d also like
to be bread, or sustenance for
some others even after I’ve left.
A song they can walk a trail with.
Although I later learned that she was addressing her poetic muse, her words that clearly echo the Lord’s Prayer, sounded to me like a most beautiful prayer.
God, make us bread for others.
Make us a song they can walk a trail with.
And that’s how my interest in poetry started!
Over these last few years, I’ve been reading more poetry and just a few weeks ago I began taking an online poetry writing class.
I signed up thinking it might add some new colors to my preaching but mostly it’s a just little gift to myself, an opportunity to try something new, to stretch a bit.
And it’s been a challenging and enriching experience, getting me to dig deeper, to consider every word, to reflect on every image.
The main requirement of the class has been to write a weekly poem, a different type of poem each time.
When I first sat down to write my first poem, I put on some music in the background, thinking that it would help set the mood, maybe prompt some inspiration.
But I quickly discovered that the music got in the way, distracted me.
I realized that I needed quiet, or at last as much quiet as is possible in our noisy day and age.
I needed quiet to hear, to listen deeply.
I was reminded of this need for silence when I began to reflect on today’s reading from First Samuel, when the boy Samuel hears the voice of God calling to him.
We’re told that “the word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.”
And we’re told that it’s night in the Temple where the boy Samuel has been serving with the old priest Eli.
So, it’s during the nighttime hush - when the clamor of the world’s busyness has finally quieted – it’s during the nighttime hush that the boy Samuel hears the voice of the Lord.
Samuel hears the Lord but, well, “the word of the Lord rare in those days,” so Samuel assumes it’s Eli calling for him. He makes the same mistake a couple of times before Eli figures out what’s going on.
It’s interesting that it’s a boy, a child who hadn’t gotten jaded and cynical yet, hadn’t closed his heart and his ears – it’s a boy who hears the Lord.
But it’s the old man, his vision failing and maybe a little hard of hearing now but full of years and wisdom, it’s the old man who can discern what’s happening, who’s speaking.
The need for quiet – to hear, to listen deeply.
I’d say it’s pretty easy to make the case that we are living in another time when it seems that the word of the Lord is rare, and visions are not widespread.
In just the last week, I’ve had several conversations with people who’ve expressed alarm at how stressed out and even crazed so many of our neighbors seem to be – acting irrationally, speaking irrationally, driving erratically…
There are lots of reasons for this, of course, but I think near the root of the problem is that there is just so much noise – so much racket in our lives and in the media and online – this never-ending din that is driving us bananas.
Fortunately, God has offered us – actually, commanded us – a different way:
Sabbath: a time of rest, prayer, healing, and love.
In today’s gospel lesson, there’s a lot of talk about the sabbath but it sure doesn’t seem very quiet and restful, does it?
No, instead, we hear the heightened disputes between Jesus and the religious leaders who are watching him closely, looking for “gotcha” moments like, say, plucking grain on the sabbath or healing a man’s withered hand on the sabbath.
Now, I want to proceed with caution here because one of the longstanding Christian slanders of Judaism is that it’s all about obeying rules, that it’s a religion empty of grace and love.
That’s not true today and it wasn’t true back in the first century, either.
But what is true today and was true back then is that, religious leaders of any tradition can get so caught up in the rules and regulations, can get so protective of their own authority, that they lose the plot, they miss the point.
(I’m talking about other religious leaders, not me. Obviously.)
So, yes, sure, Jesus and the Pharisees could have had an interesting debate about whether it was lawful to pluck grain on the sabbath, but the point is that it’s always God’s desire that the hungry get fed.
And, yes, the man with the withered hand could’ve hung in there a little while longer, until sunset when the sabbath was over, sure. But Jesus was right then and there and the point is that it’s always God’s desire that we experience wholeness.
And, my goodness, the man with the withered hand has been healed!
But, to their credit, the religious leaders do recognize the importance of the sabbath, the importance of obeying God’s command to rest, to be quiet.
And I think, in our time of so much noise and distraction, in this time when so many of our neighbors seem crazed, in this time when kids’ lives are programmed nearly to the minute and rates of anxiety and depression are through the roof, we need to obey God’s command and rediscover sabbath quiet.
Find even just a little time to turn off the cable news, put away the phone, log off from the computer, take a walk or just look out the window, say a quick prayer, asking for help and saying thank you, waiting for the word of the Lord.
And if we do that, we just might hear the Lord’s quiet, poetic, voice, calling us –
Calling us to be bread for others.
Calling us to be a song.
A song they can walk a trail with.
Amen.
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