Show Notes
Every since I was a young girl, I have often had dreams that predict something in the future. It’s never a significant something. Sometime’s it’s an old friend that I haven’t connected to in a while, who calls me the next day out of the blue. Other times it’s an odd piece of clothing that I recognize from a dream I had the night before. Once I dreamed of a friend in tears, who I found out the next day her grandmother had just passed away. At this point, I think it’s a pretty universal experience to have one of those moments where a person calls or texts you and you say to yourself, “I was just thinking about that person!” I don’t believe my dreams are prophetic in the way that we see prophecy working in the Bible. But I do think there is something mysterious about the fabric that connects us all. Like the gravitational mesh that holds the earth in the middle of space, a mesh that is affected by the presence of earth and changes shape because of it, there seems to be a mesh of spiritual gravity that connects all of us. Maybe it’s the thing we call “intuition” or a “sixth sense.” So many of us, due to the busyness of life, become numb to our bodies, and the inner voice of truth that speaks in the silence of stillness. It is the still small voice that tells us uncomfortable truths.
Recently I had a dream, which is sometimes my body’s way of telling me things that I do not want to hear. In this dream, I was in a rainy marsh in the middle of no distinct place. There were various animals around in the greenery, many taking shelter because of the rain. A family of finches sheltered in a bush; a mom and several babies puffing their bodies and fluffing their feathers to keep the rain from soaking into their coats. Suddenly, I see a lost little duckling, soaking wet and dragging its little feet on the muddy ground. It was all alone. Tired, hungry, and lost. The little duckling was trying to drink from the muddy waters beneath his feet, and began to get sicker the more he drank from the contaminated streams. My compassion went out to this little duckling and I gathered his little body into my arms and brought him to a nearby pool. The water was cleaner. Immediately he took a drink and life began to be restored to his weary little body. He began swimming after the tiny crawfish that darted beneath him. Suddenly he got stuck in the sand below and soon would drown without my help. I quickly dug him out of the sand and brought him back to the surface. But now I was worried. How would this little duckling be able to survive on his own? I turned my back for just a moment and death was close at his heels. I gathered him into my arms once again, and this time as I did so, something strange happened, as in dreams they often do. I could see him trying to contort his little body into the shape of a finch. Like the family of finches we had seen earlier--he was trying to be like one of the little ones. He not only wanted, but needed to be accepted into this family of finches in order to survive. Afterall he was all alone. But in order to survive, he had to make changes that were painful to him and deceitful to himself. He had to become something he was not, in order for others to love him. My heart grew deeply sad as I watched this duckling change his shape. Something about him deeply resonated with myself and how I operated in the world.
We are not a species that can survive in isolation. We must have community. As someone who was born of an afro-latina immigrant mother, I come from a long history of women, people groups, who often have to contort themselves in ways that are painful and destructive in order to find acceptance in the struggle for survival. I began to ask myself, “What ways have you molded yourself and contorted your identity for the sake of survival? What Bible characters can you think of that needed to do the same?”
For starters, I’d venture to say, most of all the women. Living in a patriarchal society, women lived and still do live at a disadvantage. This disadvantage forces them to accept norms, and double standards, that they would not have to accept, if they were truly equal.
I was recently scrolling through my Twitter feed, and read this quote from @_bryana_joy, another woman who is tired of the gendered discrimination that women often face at the hands of religious leaders. She wrote, “I want
@garyLthomas (&
@Zondervan!) to know that for an untold number of women, his words in Married Sex are triggering trauma responses & great anguish this week. We. are. tired. We are so, SO tired of being told that men desperately need sex & we don't. We are SO tired of being told that our bodies have an almost-mystical power over men & that we need to use our sexuality strategically to retain our husbands' affection. We are so tired of being treated like a separate species primarily defined by our sex appeal. I want
@garyLthomas to know what it's like to be a woman suffering with vaginismus/dyspareunia & forcing herself through agonizing pain & hours of dilator therapy every week in sheer terror that the man she loves will leave her if she can't fulfill his sexual expectations...
I want
@garyLthomas to recognize that scaring women into performing sexually by threatening them with the collapse of their marriages leads to serious trauma, insecurity, & an inability to trust their husbands—even when their husbands *aren't* raging sex machines.”
Women. Are. Tired. Tired of the contortions that are unnatural to themselves, that are forced upon them by institutions claiming to know God. As a woman, I can concur, we are tired. All throughout the Bible we have seen the effects of inequality, but have normalized as some idealized form of “the way the world should work.” In the story of Abraham and Sarah, if inequality were not at works, she would not have to accept being taken to the house of Pharaoh. Hagar would not have to accept being treated like cattle serving no greater function than to bear a child. Leah would not be forced to remain in a marriage where she was unloved and unwanted. Jochebed would not have to settle for being merely a wet nurse to her own child. Ruth would not have to beg for the hand of an older man, nor Esther contend for the affection of the king among his many wives.
These stories that make up our sacred history, do not reflect the ideals of God, but rather the effects of sin. The ideals of God can be found however, in day He had created to set aside as a tool to cut through the systems of men, and create an ideal of equality. This day was a foretaste of the New Earth, a moment where the chains of gender inequality, racial inequality, and the nationalism that fueled bigotry against the immigrants would be broken. A day where the covenant of marriage and the equity of one’s wealth was not shared merely between spousal parties. It is a day where all humanity is tied together in a common marriage, the Sabbath.
The Sabbath, which has often been the marker of what makes an Adventist an Adventist, was the first piece of scripture that I had ever memorized. Little did I realize how much wisdom was packed into this little passage of sacred text. Coming from an agostic home, but joining a community of Adventists when I was twelve the first verse I ever learned to memorize was Exodus 20:8-11 in the KJV. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days thou shalt labor and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. In it thou shalt not do any work. Thou nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is and rested the seventh day wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”
Week after week, I recited this verse sitting side by side with my fellow worshipper. We all breathed a sigh of relief knowing that we had stepped into the obedience God had commanded. It had been instilled into my head and into my heart that entering into the boundaries of the Sabbath day, was like entering into Noah’s Ark. It was the vessel that would keep me safe from the storm of destruction, and the end of the world. As I continued to grow in my education and experience, interacting with people from all sorts of faith traditions, living life in an unjust world, the Sabbath became not merely an inactive force, a passive institution we stepped into, but an active force capable of making positive change in the world.
For the economically vulnerable among us, the Sabbath is given as an explicit command to those in power. It was instructions given to landowners, on how to treat the male and female servants, the cattle, and the stranger within their gates. The Sabbath is a social protection for the economically and societally vulnerable. It is spoken to those in power and demands equality across gender and socio-economic status. The Sabbath is more than just a command to rest, it is an affirmation of human dignity, and the command of Sabbath given to landowners is an act of social justice. To the poor, it is an assurance that you have a right to the rest God created, a rest that is as an affirmation of your humanity and a restoration to your soul. The Sabbath command is a reminder that whatever modicum of power we might hold, we are accountable to God for those who come under our care. It is a protection against greedy business owners and middle managers who fail to provide a living wage to the undocumented worker. The Sabbath has eyes. It watches the landowner in their his or her actions towards those who have to power to complain against the hand of abuse. It observes those who have been silenced through political and social disadvantages and takes up their cause. Sabbath reaches its hands into the bank account of the wealthy claiming back the land, the employees, the servants, and even the animals as first belonging to God.
The meat industry that callously cages up the chicken, the cow, the pig, intelligent creatures made wise by their Creator, and keeps them cruelly pinned in a stall where they are unable to move, defecating upon themselves and living in their own filth, 7 days a week, they are accountable to God. To these abused victims, born for slaughter for the sake of man’s own appetite, the Sabbath is taking account and watching. To the farmer, who hires immigrant labor, and does not allow him to take a sick day for fear of replacement, compelling the undocumented to work beyond that which he is physically able, the Sabbath is watching. To those victims of human trafficking and forced slave labor, the Sabbath is watching. It is not only the cries of uneducated Hebrew slaves that rang in the ears of heaven. The lamentations of tortured souls that called forth a Moses into their generation are still ascending into heaven like the incense of the sanctuary, waiting for God to avenge them. The Sabbath is an active tool of God’s justice.
The Sabbath is not only a protection against exploitation, it is a positive statement of social equality. While researching academic articles on Sabbath I ran across Mathilde Frey’s article “Women’s Ordination, Gender Equality, and the Sabbath.” In it, she states, “Scripture shows that, unlike any other concept and day, the Sabbath implicates all human beings by core gender categories of male and female and regards them as equals before God.” In other words man and woman, male slave and female slave are acknowledged in the Sabbath command explicitly by their gender. The language of Exodus 20 does not simply say, all “human beings” or all “slaves.” It acknowledges each person according to gender, as a recognition of inequality between genders. Thus God was ensuring social equality between majority and minority groups the Sabbath day. Frey goes on to make another statement saying, “The Sabbath tells the Israelite man and woman that each is set free from the bonds of any kind of slavery...more importantly, each individual, male and female receives with the words of the sabbath command his and her new ID… ‘There is neither...male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’ (Galatians
3:28).” The Sabbath is the precursor to the great equalizing statement of Paul in Galatians
3:28. It is a day where the social delineations that might separate Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female, are erased. Those who have nothing and those who have everything are one, a foretaste of heaven's social order.
Understanding the Sabbath is a social equalizer, as well as the heavenly ideal, has many implications. We could discuss the theological implication for the acceptance of women’s ordination. Frey in her article makes this compelling point, “The Sabbath speaks directly to human beings, male and female, and defines the essence and function of both as equals before God. The Sabbath responds to gender questions of woman’s ordination with its inclusive nonhierarchical message. Instituted in creation, the Sabbath comes into our world with its coercive systems, into our churches with their male-dominated hierarchical power structures, and transplants men and women into God’s world.” We could discuss the myriad and many forms that inequality erupts its ugly head within our society, within our churches, and within our personal relationships. The Sabbath is the touchstone of justice, the measurement by God will judge the earth and answer the question, “if you have done it unto the least of these my brethern, you have done it unto me.”
As we conclude the story of Sabbath, I want to end with a whimsical tale that may better illustrate the issue. As all good stories go, we begin with “once upon a time.” In a far-off place, at an unknown time, there was a little supling who happened upon a forest. Now suplings aren’t very strong or powerful, but they are very smart and their favorite questions are “why”. Suplings aren’t from around here so much of what happens in the forest world is quite new. Not knowing much about a forest, but curious nonetheless the little supling sauntered one morning along a cool trickling stream deep, deep in the woods. While on this wild adventure, she met many enchanted creatures along the way. The first creature she met looked like something she had never seen before. “Why do you have such big teeth and long legs?” the supling asked the fox, not knowing that it was a fox, but curious nonetheless. The fox replied, “I have no hands to make a garden and grow my food. So I rely on my sharp teeth so that I can eat. But there are other animals much bigger than me that would make me food so I must also be fast.” “Oh, well that makes good sense.” The supling, replied as she rubbed her chin quite content with the answer. Next, while smelling the flowers and placing a few in her pocket, the supling ran into a bee, not knowing that it was a bee, but curious nonetheless, and said, “Oh my! You there! Why do you have a needle for a tail? Is it because you have no hands to get food or is it because other creatures in the forest want to eat you and you must run fast to get away like the fox?” The bee replied, “Oh no, I don’t need hands to make food since I drink the nectar of these flowers. Also, not many creatures in the forest want to eat me and if they did I have these very fast wings to get away.” The bee replied. The supling look stumped and said, “So why do you have a needle for a tail?” “Well,” Mr. Bee replied, “I make honey for a living, sweet calorie-rich honey, and I must protect it from thieves.” “But you have wings,” the supling said, “If no one wants to eat you, why not flee away with great speed when the thief comes?” The bee perched himself upon a flower for a moment. He paused and replied, “My sting is not to protect myself or my wealth, but the people I love. I am one of the tiniest creatures in the forest, and I make the most valuable food. Many others big and strong can come and take what cost me my whole life to make. So my sting is my only weapon, but I pay with my life if I decide to use it. In my vengeance toward thief, even the thief is avenged.” “Ah,” the supling replied, “You are very small, and you make a great treasure, so you have been given the stinger to compensate for your size.” Next, the supling came across a terrible beast, with large teeth and hands the size of a fox’s head. So the supling asked the bear, not knowing that it was a bear, but curious nonetheless, “Oh my! Why are you so large and scary, with teeth that can crush a fox and hands that tear down the bee’s honeycomb?” “I am a terrible beast,” the bear replied, “I am a predator to the fox, and I often steal the honeycomb of the bee. There is no one here in the forest that is larger than I or can stop me.” “Well that’s just not fair!” the supling replied. “How can you just be allowed you to ravage all these good woodland creatures all year round with no one to stop you?” “Ah” the bear replied, “Not all year round… I sleep 6 months out of the year, and so the forest is able to rest for a time from my terrifying presence.” And so the supling learned, that in all the creatures of the forest, from the very terrible, to the very tiny, they were all created different, but with equality.
Jesus, through His miracles of mercy often performed on the Sabbath, lived out the ideal of the Sabbath as an institution of equality. “Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.” (John
9:14). The blind beggar, who did not have the means to provide for his own well-being due to his disability was restored to wholeness. The blind, and disabled, placed at an economic disadvantage because of their physical defects due to a society that stigmatized disabilities were restored. “But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, ‘There are six days in which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day.’” (Luke
13:14). The rulers did not understand that the Sabbath was a day for the disenfranchised to participate in the equality that had been denied them 6 days of the week. Jesus healed the disparities caused by health. He enabled the disabled giving them the dignity they lacked in an ableist society. The healing that removed inequality was the most appropriate work Jesus could do on the Sabbath.
The Sabbath is a refuge to the marginalized and oppressed, and it is not a passive agent in God’s salvation. The Sabbath has eyes, it is watching and taking the acts of injustice into account. It is an equalizer in the kingdom of God stating that both men and women, the female slave and the male slave, are one. The religious systems, the societal systems that perpetuate oppression are removed and each man and woman sit as equals before each other and before God.
What shall we do then as we understand these 6 categories of the marginalized among us? The young men and young women, the male and female slave, the animals, and the immigrant. And yet even these categories do not include the elderly, or the disabled, those systematically oppressed in their churches or in their country because of race, gender, and sexuality. The Sabbath is a call to radical equality, we must make the application in our own lives as to what that means for us personally. We are all given some modicum of power. Whether that is power within our family structures, parents relating to children, older siblings to younger siblings, boss and employee, educated and uneducated, the elder and the younger, the able and the disabled, the man and the woman, those belonging to the majority and the minority. We all fit within overlapping circles. A person can belong to both a dominant group like their race or gender, and in other ways they can belong to a minority group in regards to their sexuality or disability. We all have spheres of privilege that we enjoy, some much smaller than others. One might have only a mite to spare, while others have great wealth. It is for us to comb through the details of our lives and recognize the areas of our privilege, and ask God, who have you placed under my care? What responsibilities and obligations have you given me towards this person? How can I equalize the injustice that I am a party to? How are you calling me to use my voice? What part do I have to play in your work of salvation?
After you have a moment to reflect, I want us to take a moment where you will decide and take on action today as you begin this journey of living in the Spirit of Sabbath. Maybe you will decide to research ways to get more involved in your community. Maybe there is an injustice that you are already aware that you want to speak out against. Maybe there is a way you want to begin to use your voice to stand up for the marginalized among you. Maybe you are going to take this week to actively pray to God for wisdom on how to be a part of the healing work of justice. With your eyes closed and your heads bowed, we will take a moment how to reflect, decide and act.
Closing Prayer:
Dear Heavenly God, we ask you for the wisdom to know how I can be an instrument of justice in this world. As we enter into the spirit of Sabbath, give us a heart to relieve the suffering of the world and rectify the injustices that are within our power to rectify. Let every hard moment, every uncomfortable truth, be an invitation to find refuge in You. And may my time with you transform me and give me the wisdom I need to impart your grace, healing and equality into the world. Amen.