For today’s readings go to http://bible.oremus.org
Often the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Take the Ten Commandments. We cannot dispense with any one of them, yet if we step back and consider their entire structure, as such, we get a broader view of the mind of God. That is what I propose to do this morning, with two questions in view – two of humanity’s deepest questions. Who am I? What am I here for?
Note how the first three commandments deal with our relationship with God. First, put no other loyalty or interest – no other god, so to speak – ahead of the one, true God. Second, do not worship the work of your own hands or mind; they are idols. Third, do not use God’s sacred name for secular purposes. God does not give these three commandments for God’s own sake, as if God could take umbrage; God gives them for our sake. Obey them and we rise to our full stature as human beings; flaut them and we sink into a kind of spiritual slime.
The last six commandments deal with human relationships. Taken together they create the foundation for a wholesome society. Call them a road map to the place where we all long to live. The fifth commandment, then, tells us that we have an obligation to our parents, period. It says nothing about judging them; we simply need to care for them with honor and respect. Six, do not murder. Seven, do not commit adultery. Eight, do not steal. Nine, do not lie. Ten, do not covet. As you know, people have quarreled for centuries about how to interpret some of these commandments, but that is not our purpose today.
What about the one remaining commandment – the one that stands between the first three – oriented toward God – and the last six – oriented toward human kind? It says, remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Toward what is that commandment oriented? What does it do? Let me suggest an answer to those questions with an abstract image. Consider the mystery of zero. The subject goes far beyond my comprehension, and yet some of zero’s properties are readily evident. For example, zero means nothing; and yet a zero is more than nothing. That round, empty circle can serve as a place-holder. With a zero 33 can become 303 or 3003. Set a zero beside another number and it becomes a multiplier, such that 3 becomes ten times as large. Think of zero as a round window. On one side is the countable realm, the realm of a zillion things. Take any number you like and start counting backwards. Eventually you come to zero. On the other side of zero? We might say negative numbers, but we might equally say nothing, say the realm where counting stops, the realm of eternity. Zero stands at the point where time meets eternity and space meets infinity. Let the zero stand for the Sabbath. The Sabbath is oriented both toward the eternal mystery that is God and toward all the things and people and busyness of this world.
The Sabbath stands apart from all of the other commandments. It is a gift, God’s greatest gift to us. The commandment simply tells us to accept it, enter it, enjoy it. Accept, enter, enjoy, and be the mystery of zero – be… nothing. Shocking? Not at all. To enter the Sabbath is to enter an awareness about myself. All my work-a-day identity – age, gender, race, occupation, and so on – makes up only one side of who I am, the side that will pass away. I have a larger life, an eternal life, a life in communion with God. If it were not for the Sabbath, however, I might never sense it. I would remain yoked to my work-a-day identity. The Sabbath invites me to enter into the zero, where I can empty myself out and realize the freedom and joy of my larger life. If it is fair to call the commandments obligations, then the fourth commandment is not an obligation toward God, nor toward humanity, but toward myself.
To return to those two fundamental questions, then; first we ask: Who am I? Looking at the ten commandments as a whole, we answer: I am the meeting point between the finite and the infinite, between time and eternity, between God and the world. And to the question, What am I here for? we answer: I exist to translate eternity into time; I exist to make the unseen seen; I exist to make God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
We have been playing with the idea that in the Sabbath we become, as it were, a zero – that mysterious nothing that, though not a number itself, has transforming power in the world of numbers. Positioned in the Sabbath, if we turn one way we gaze into the world of traffic and gridlock and road rage; if we turn the other way we gaze into the mystery of light and space, where the well-spring of life bubbles up everlastingly. God put us in that position as little round windows, portals for the Holy Spirit.
A zero, as we saw, can transform a 3 into 30, or a 300, or a 3,000. We, too, have that power. Christian theology has long seen God as a trinity – not so much an entity as a dance of love around three poles. The Hebrew Bible also hints at a Trinitarian nature of God. You remember in the Book of Genesis when God visits Abraham by the oaks of Mamre and manifests as three visitors. God, we might say, is love in motion, a beloved community of three. Our unique calling as people of the Sabbath is to manifest and multiply that community of love. What we see in the divine realm we translate into the human realm, such that a community of three becomes 30, and that, 300 and so on.
This is our calling. God gave the Ten Commandments the way a nutritionist gives a diet plan. Better health is not an end in itself, and neither are the Commandments. Both are meant to fit us for service; and service, for us Christians, means forming a beloved community, a church. We cannot do the work of God as individuals. Of course, we cannot form a church on our own. It takes the power of the Holy Spirit working in us and through us. On the other hand, the Holy Spirit cannot form a church single-handedly either. The Spirit requires people of the Sabbath, meaning, in our case, followers of Jesus Christ. As a church, as the Trinity made large in the world of numbers, as a beloved community, we meet the needs of the world for bread; but people do not live by bread alone. We also meet their needs for love, acceptance, respect, belonging, beauty, inspiration, celebration, purpose and participation, freedom, hope, questioning and discovery, spiritual nourishment, meaning…. None of this would be possible without the Sabbath, the sine qua non of church formation, of the beloved community.
Jesus told the parable in today’s Gospel of the stone that the builders rejected, which became the corner stone of the building. He was speaking of himself, of course, but also of the Sabbath. How often do we reject the idea of spending quiet time with God? We have deadlines to meet. Quiet time? Empty time? Time doing nothing? The idea has “zero” appeal. Friends, the Sabbath need not mean only one day a week; it can also mean one minute an hour; it can mean one breath, taken consciously. If we are builders, and we are, the corner stone forms the basis for every other brick. We must have the corner stone for our beloved community to last and grow and do the work it was given to do.
Let me leave you with one other image of the zero. The Sufi master Hafiz described himself this way, “I am a hole in a flute that the Christ’s breath moves through. Listen to this music.”
