Sermon on Leviticus 25:1-24

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

We continue our sermon series this week, reading parts of the Bible we don’t normally spend a lot of time on—parts that talk about Sabbath, Jubilee, and rest.

This week we read from Leviticus, which records the code of Law given by God to God’s people after they had been freed from enslavement in Egypt. It’s not the most exciting of books. One can only read about different types of offerings and what people should do if they have a skin disease for so long before one’s eyes begin to cross. There are a lot of laws that don’t have a whole lot to do with our lives today.

But then, there are beautiful passages like this where, yes, it’s still a list of laws and details, but it sets out a beautiful picture of the life God intends for God’s people. There are intentional practices of rest, not only for the people, but for the animals and the land.

In addition to the weekly practice of Sabbath named in the Ten Commandments, this passage describes sabbatical years and Jubilee.

Every seven years, the people were to give their land a rest. They were not to plant or harvest anything in their fields for the whole year. It was a “year of complete rest for the land.” If any of you grew up on farms or have spent any time in agricultural work, I’m sure you can teach me a lot about how to care for land. But I do know that if you grow the same crops in the same fields year after year without changing things up, the fields will produce less. It’s not good for anyone involved.

God taught the people how to take care of the land, which involved taking a year of rest. It benefited not just the people, but God’s creation which they tended.

Then, after 7 sabbatical years, there was a year of Jubilee. That fiftieth year was hallowed, just as God hallowed the seventh day of creation. Again, people were not to plant or harvest their fields. The land went back to the original owners as it was divided up upon arrival in the Promised Land. This is troubling, considering there were people who lived on that land before the Israelites conquered it, but that’s a very important conversation we’ll have to save for another time.

Suffice it to say, though, that there was a reset of ownership every fifty years. Land went back to its owners, those enslaved became free (it has more details about that in the rest of the chapter, which we didn’t read), and there was rest for the land and the people.

God decreed these patterns of rest: a Sabbath every week, a sabbatical year every seven years, and a year of Jubilee every fifty years. They were communal, not individual, practices. Today, self-care is so often marketed as an individual practice. You have totake time to rest. You have to make time for a bubble bath or a yoga class. None of these are bad things, but they fall short by themselves.

Sabbath and sabbatical years and Jubilee are not individual self-care practices. The ways we take care of ourselves as individuals are crucial, but they alone will not lead to the authentic justice and peace of the Beloved Community.

For example, mental healthcare is so important, and I have personally benefited from therapy immensely. But, if someone is anxious or depressed because they’re not sure they’ll be able to afford the rising cost of housing in their gentrifying neighborhood or because their disability benefits are not sufficient to cover their needs or because their farm isn’t able to compete with larger agricultural companies, that is a societal problem, not an individual one. Individual solutions are not sufficient.

In the Law, God establishes patterns that support the well-being of the whole society, not just the individual. God gives instructions to foster practices of freedom and justice. And one of the ways God does that is through practices of rest:

·       In Sabbath, the people are to rest in God’s love and care for them.

·       In the sabbatical years, people are to give the land, and therefore also themselves, a rest to renew.

·       And in Jubilee, people’s relationships with each other and their possessions and their land are refreshed and restored.

Through Sabbath and sabbatical years, and Jubilee, God institutes rest as a form of freedom and justice that heals the relationships between God, people, and creation.

So what does this mean for us?

We don’t live as a unified people group who worship the same God with a rule of law that dictates spiritual practice.

We, in fact, live in a pluralistic and individualistic society. We have many different faith traditions and forms of spirituality which we are encouraged to practice privately. There are pros and cons to that as with anything else. But it does have some challenges.

In our pursuit of Sabbath this year, it’s hard to imagine what that looks like on a communal and not just on an individual level.There are certainly individual restful practices, and I definitely encourage trying them out.

In fact, that’s exactly what I encourage you to do for your Lenten discipline, if you’re so inclined. Lent will be here in just 3 ½ more weeks, so it’s a great time to start thinking about it. This year, try on different rest practices.What would be restful for you? Maybe it is setting aside a full day of not working. Maybe it’s stretching five minutes before bed.

What type of tired are you? Are you physically tired? Mentally tired? Emotionally tired? That can help you figure out what would be most restorative for you this season. Or try something new each week.

Individual practices can bring you rest and connection with God. That is so important.

And also, we see in our reading today a set of communal practices of rest. What can that look like for us in the society we live in today?

I don’t have a prescription for that. I’m learning to practice Sabbath alongside you. This is something for us to learn and figure out together.

But I do notice some things about our reading that could give us a place to start:

1.    The laws in our reading care for the land. What does caring for the land we live on look like? How can we be good stewards of the land on which our church building sits? Most of us don’t grow our own food, so what do just agricultural practices look like today? How can we support that?

2.    The laws in our reading today also remind the Israelites that they are “aliens and tenants” of the land which is God’s. What practices can we do that help us hold our possessions loosely? Our stewardship team is always finding ways to help our congregation to live in a spirit of generosity and gratitude. What can we as a congregation do to remind each other that we are entrusted with what is God’s?

3.    One final thing I notice is that our reading enacts practices that allow for others’ rest. People are not just told to guard their own rest, but for instance, the sabbatical year laws require everyone to rest. If the land is not being worked, the laborers rest, the animals that work the land rest, and the land itself rests. The patterns of rest foster rest for everyone. There is trust for God’s provision, because God says there will be enough to eat until there is food to harvest again. It is a bigger pattern of what we read in last week’s reading about God providing enough manna the day before the Sabbath that the people wouldn’t have to gather it on the Sabbath itself. God is setting up patterns of freedom and rest for God’s people.

Now, we get the opportunity to not only try on Sabbath for ourselves, but to craft Sabbath practices for this faith community that foster rest for everyone.

As you try individual Sabbath practices, listen for what the Holy Spirit is saying about how to build a culture of rest that encompasses our communities and creation.

Our God of freedom proclaims rest for everyone. Rest well, beloved.

It Would Have Been Enough

Pr. Jaz Waring

Epiphany 2 January 14, 2024

I walked into the discount grocery store with $20 in my pocket to buy groceries to last at least a week. Getting laid off work and living on my own required me to get creative with my budget. I ate a lot of bean burritos when I was broke. Buying a large can of Rosarita Traditional refried beans was about a dollar at the time, and I’d get a stack of flour tortillas. This was enough to feed me lunch and/or dinner, mixing it up with instant ramen or scrambled eggs. This was may manna for my wilderness season of unemployment. It sustained me and warmed my bones until I was able to get constant income. Sometime I look back at that challenging time with a sense of nostalgia, but I don’t want to live through that ever again. We’re continuing our series on sabbath and rest. The last time I was here, I talked about how we rest in the face of injustice. This week, we’ll get into how we can rest in the face of scarcity. Israel gets a bad wrap for complaining in the wilderness. In context, I think they had a right to complain. They were refugees escaping slavery, and were stuck in an arid wilderness. They could not cultivate the land to produce food. So when the food they grabbed on the way out of Egypt ran out, they rightfully complained to management. They began to look back on their past experience of oppression with rose-colored lenses. Sometimes the oppression you know feels better than the liberation you can not see. God responds to the cries of Israel, a common theme in Exodus and the Hebrew Bible. God provides quail and manna to sustain them while in the wilderness. This mysterious carb from heaven was a gift that revealed God’s presence with them. The manna was not your ordinary bread from heaven, it had very quick expiration date. If you tried to save some leftovers for the next day, it would rot. I’ve had similar experiences with avocados. This was an intentional exercise in trust, teaching Israel how to navigate the age old question: how do you know when you’ve had enough? As the story continues, God told Israel that on the day before the sabbath, to collect twice as much food so that it would last the next day. This is tip number one for rest in the face of scarcity: If you don’t plan on resting, then rest might not ever come. We need to be intentional with how we use our time and resources so that we can enter into our rest. However, Israel would rather work than trust God to provide for them. God created the world with abundance for everyone. However our sinful and imperfect systems do not distribute resources equitably. There is enough food in our world for every mouth to be fed. There is enough housing in the world for everyone to have a permanent home. There is enough money in the world for everyone to have affordable healthcare and more than a barely-living wage. Instead, we as a society create scarcity and hoard our resources. Theologian Walter Brueggemann writes about the “myth of scarcity” in his book, The Covenanted Self: Exploration in Law and Covenant. He writes about an over 1,000 year old Passover song called “Dayenu” which means, “It would have been enough” or as he puts it, “There is enough in God’s goodness.” The song goes through the Exodus story, God’s miracles, and the gift of the Torah, with the refrain “It would have been enough.” For example, here are a few lines from the song: If God had brought us out from Egypt, and not carried out judgements against them Dayenu, It would have been enough. or If he had given us their wealth, and had not split the sea for us Dayenu, It would have been enough or If he had supplied our needs in the desert for forty years, and had not fed us the manna Dayenu, it would have been enough. If he had fed us the manna, and had not given us the Shabbat, Dayenu, it would have been enough. This song displays the abundance of God because if God had not given or done more, it would have been enough. They would have found satisfaction, but God didn’t stop there! God kept going, kept giving, kept protecting God’s people. There is enough in God’s goodness for us. We can be completely satisfied in God’s goodness, not because of our work, but because of who God is. God is abundant and does not want to withhold any good thing from us, and we also live in a world that has created scarcity. These two things can be true at the same time. So how do we rest in the face of scarcity? We have a Dayenu kind of faith. A Dayenu kind of faith trusts that there is enough in God’s goodness for everyone. A Dayenu kind of faith resists the urge to hoard, or overwork ourselves. A Dayenu kind of faith influences these corrupt systems in order to serve the public good. When you don’t have enough, you can trust in the goodness of God, who provides the Bread of Life, the Body of Christ, fleshed out in community. Christ is the Bread of Life, sent from the heavens to sustain us, and to be a sign of God’s presence with us. We consume the Body of Christ in Holy Communion every week to nourish our spirits and re-member ourselves as an interconnected beloved community across time and space. God may not send money and food from the heavens to provide for us, but does provide for us through community. God’s presence within each of us has the grace and the ability to be God’s hands and feet, and make the world a more equitable place. When everyone does their part, and takes only what they need, there is room for all of us to rest in the goodness of God. So if God has given you the strength to get out of bed, but not brush your teeth. Dayenu, it is enough. If you had the strength to brush your teeth, but not to cook for yourself Dayenu, it is enough. If you had the strength to cook for yourself, but not get out of the house, Dayenu, it is enough. If you had the strength to get out of the house, but not to work or run errands, Dayenu, it is enough. If you had the strength to work or run errands, but not to pay your bills Dayenu, it is enough. If you had the strength to pay your bills, but not do something you love, Dayenu, it is enough. There is enough in God’s goodness for today, and for you. Amen.

Sermon on Genesis 1-2:3

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

As we begin our yearlong theme of Sabbath for 2024, I wanted to start with a sermon series on what the Bible says about Sabbath. From now until Lent, we’ll be exploring some parts of the Bible that we don’t always spend a lot of time on—passages about Sabbath, Jubilee, and rest.

And where better to start than The Beginning?

This is one of the better-known passages we’ll be looking at. But we often look at it for what it says about what God created and our place in the world and our relationship with creation. We gravitate toward the beautiful imagery of God calling things into existence and the drama of “Let there be light!” We read with delight about God creating humanity in God’s image. But we rarely focus on God resting and what that means for our practice of Sabbath.

But the conclusion of the creation story is when God rested and enjoyed what God had made.

This is an amazing story. When we look at creation stories from other cultures in that area at that time, we see gods creating the world and humanity by accident or for the purpose of having servants. In Genesis, we see God calling forth heavenly bodies and arranging the sea and the sky—intentionally, with purpose and beauty.

And God calls all of it good.

And then, God creates humanity in God’s own image and entrusts these human creations with the care and keeping of the good world God had made. And God saw that it was very good.

And certainly the creation of humanity seems to be the climax of the story—the completion of creation at which time God called it “very good.”

But that’s not where our story ends. It doesn’t end with the sixth day and the completion of what God created. The story doesn’t end until God rests. And God doesn’t just collapse on the sofa and hide from the world, exhausted. God rests intentionally, setting aside that time for rest and enjoyment. God blesses and hallows the seventh day because God rested on that day. The day of rest has God’s special blessing on it.

There’s an organization called The Bible Project, and they release educational videos about the Bible. They have a really great one on Sabbath that I’m hoping to show you soon. In it, they observe that on each of the first six days of creation, it reads, “and there was evening and there was morning, the [first, second, or whatever] day.”

But that doesn’t happen on the seventh day. It’s like the seventh day never ends. The Bible Project folks argue that it’s because that state of rest and enjoyment is how creation is supposed to be always. The initial work of creation was complete, and the world was ready to enjoy for the rest of time.

And we don’t earn that. Humanity had barely existed before God called all creation to rest and commune with God.

Similarly, Jesus had just come on the scene in our reading from the Gospel of Mark today. He hadn’t risen from the dead, healed anyone, cast out any demons, collected any followers, or even taught anyone anything. And yet, when he came up out of the water after being baptized, the voice of God came from the torn-apart heavens and said, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

God was “well-pleased” with Jesus? He hadn’t done anything yet!

If that sounds a little cold, like Jesus’ existence wasn’t enough and he had to prove his worth, remember that next time your inner critic starts whispering that you’re not good enough or that you have to prove yourself to the world.

It’s only after Jesus is fortified by his identity affirmed in baptism that he goes out into the wilderness and withstands all kinds of temptations.

Jesus didn’t please God because of what he did or how much he sacrificed. Jesus pleased God because of his very identity as a beloved child of God.

This is why we’re beginning our Sabbath journey here: beginning at The Beginning.

Sabbath can easily become an obligation, another “to-do” on our list, or another reason to feel guilty when we don’t follow it like we want.

But that’s not what Sabbath is about. We don’t have to earn rest, just as we don’t have to (and indeed, can’t) earn God’s love.

Yes, Sabbath is a practice, but it’s a practice rooted in our identity as children of God who live secure in God’s love and enjoyment of us and the world we live in.

We practice it, because we so easily forget who we are and whose we are. I’ve heard of yoga and meditation teachers who remind their students that it’s called a yoga practice or a meditation practice, not a “yoga perfect” or a “meditation perfect.”

Let’s cultivate our Sabbath practice this year, not to make us more perfect people or to please God more or to check off another item on our spiritual to-do list. Let’s practiceSabbath: let’s experiment with different ways to rest, let’s play more, laugh more, breathe more, nap more, feel the sun on our faces more and the grass under our feet more. Not out of obligation or even because it’s good for us (though it is), but because we are God’s, and this is God’s creation—made to delight in.

I invite you,if it’s comfortable to do so, to plant your feet on the floor. Imagine the ground under your feet supporting you, grounding you. Now, I invite you to take your finger and draw the sign of the cross on your forehead. Now repeat after me:

“I am God’s beloved child.

God is well-pleased with me.”

Beloved children of God, God had you in mind even at the creation of the world. It is not possible for God to love you any more than God already does. Nothing you have ever done or ever will do can change that.

God delights in you and in creation and invites you to do the same. Our Sabbath practice is grounded in our identity as children of God.

Rest well, beloved.