Snow Sabbath

“For where two or three are gath­ered in my name, I am there among them.” – Matthew 18:20

On this day we set aside for Sab­bath rest, and nor­mal­ly gath­er as beloved com­mu­ni­ty to give thanks to God and of­fer sup­port to one an­oth­er in our spir­i­tu­al jour­ney, let us be mind­ful that “gath­er­ing” can be in a place of the heart. If we can come to­geth­er as com­mu­ni­ties via so­cial me­dia (and go­ing back to the days of par­ty-line phones and print­ed news­pa­pers!), we can sure­ly gath­er on a snow-packed Sun­day – in Christ’s name and deeply com­mit­ted to the life and min­istry God calls us into.

Three thoughts have been on my mind in the midst of this snow storm: One comes from my re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ty back in Ok­la­homa, one from the con­cepts of sab­bath and re­treat, and the oth­er from our scrip­ture read­ings ap­point­ed for this day.

One of the found­ing and still-fre­quent con­ver­sa­tions in the Oak­er­hater Com­mu­ni­ty – named for St. David Pendle­ton Oak­er­hater, who car­ried the Epis­co­pal Church to what was then In­di­an Ter­ri­to­ry – is about be­ing the church across space and time. We rec­og­nize that “church” is a move­ment and a great gath­er­ing of re­la­tion­ships in Christ, rather than a spe­cif­ic place. Most of Oakerhater’s fifty-plus years in min­istry could be de­fined as car­ry­ing the church, car­ry­ing Christ, in his very be­ing, while walk­ing around the Plains of west­ern Oklahoma.

It is now more than four years since I left the close, day-by-day, phys­i­cal pres­ence with mem­bers of my re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ty, and I am still learn­ing what it means to be in com­mu­ni­ty with them while half a coun­try apart. Yet they are a spir­i­tu­al life­line for me, speak­ing the truth with great love, and help­ing me up when I fall. De­spite the miles be­tween us, our re­la­tion­ships grow as we pray and serve God in the places to which we have been called, and they con­tin­ue to teach me to walk in Christ’s Way. Ab­sence from them in phys­i­cal form has opened my eyes to new un­der­stand­ing, new ways of be­ing. Each per­son, in their own ways and with their unique gifts, re­mind me of God’s faith­ful­ness, of full ac­cep­tance and for­give­ness, of gen­eros­i­ty, com­pas­sion, and great love. They re­mind me of Christ, whose mind and heart I seek to know and fol­low, more and more each day.

So, for the com­mu­ni­ty that nor­mal­ly gath­ers as Grace Epis­co­pal Church, at Fifth and Lin­den in down­town Al­len­town, re­mem­ber with me that be­ing mem­bers of the Body of Christ is not de­fined by our phys­i­cal pres­ence, and “church” reach­es far be­yond our phys­i­cal meet­ing spaces. We are nour­ished by be­ing to­geth­er in ways we can see and touch, and we con­tin­ue to be fed as we up­hold our com­mit­ments to prayer and as we tend to our re­la­tion­ships with God and one an­oth­er in the times between.

The sec­ond stir­ring of my heart is about the con­cepts of sab­bath and re­treat. Oh, how hard it can be to keep sab­bath! And oh, how I of­ten long for re­treat! I will con­fess here and now to my strug­gles with both. While I hold fast to my Mon­day sab­bath day (since Sun­days are, well, full and sel­dom rest­ful), the laun­dry piles up in my apart­ment, gro­ceries need to be pro­cured, and some Mon­days the best I can seem to do is to keep a morn­ing ap­point­ment with God, my jour­nal, and a cup of cof­fee. I’ve been in silent re­treat, which I know can­not si­lence the voic­es clam­or­ing for at­ten­tion in my mind.

In this snow, we have been giv­en en­cour­age­ment for sab­bath, for re­treat, for re­new­al in God’s ten­der care. Yes, there are dri­ve­ways to clear and home fires to stoke. And many peo­ple are at work on roads and side­walks, and re­spond­ing to emer­gency calls, staffing cof­fee shops and gro­cery stores, and … Most of us have been hand­ed a spe­cial snow sab­bath. Meet­ings have been can­celed. No one ex­pects us to get out, to show up. Po­lice are im­plor­ing us to stay off the roads. How of­ten have you longed for such time?

As I walked over to the church this morn­ing, to look in on neigh­bors and check on the build­ing, I ex­pe­ri­enced the phys­i­cal force slow­ing us down. I don’t do well with stay­ing still. Heavy coat, boots, trekking pole, and off I go … And so, when the cleared side­walks around my apart­ment and the PPL Cen­ter took me to deep­er and deep­er snow, I kept trudg­ing on – forced to slow, but re­fus­ing to stop. Un­til I hit a drift that could have swal­lowed me up.

There are metaphors here in the snow and wis­dom for our pondering.

We all know that some­times we need to as­sess where we are and con­sid­er a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion. And some­times we need to sim­ply stop. I have been med­i­tat­ing on my ten­den­cy to plow on through, and con­sid­er­ing the wis­dom of God that comes when I at least slow down and give time for God to en­ter in.

That leads to the fi­nal med­i­ta­tion on my heart this morn­ing. In our scrip­ture read­ings to­day from Ne­hemi­ah and Luke, God’s wis­dom is re­vealed – not with new words, in this case, but words the peo­ple had al­ready heard. They are fi­nal­ly able to hear them anew, and un­der­stand­ing comes to them. What was dif­fer­ent this time? What are the pos­si­bil­i­ties for us?

I en­cour­age us to take breaks in our shov­el­ing out of this storm, to see the sab­bath time we have been giv­en, and to hear God’s Word that con­tin­ues to come to us, as fresh and deep as the snow. Lis­ten to the words of scrip­ture. Lis­ten for the wis­dom of God. Just be­cause we have been trav­el­ing on this spir­i­tu­al jour­ney awhile, pray­ing the prayers and read­ing the lessons, doesn’t mean the way will al­ways be clear. We will hit an im­passe now and then. And there are new routes God is call­ing us to trav­el. Let’s take some time to­geth­er to lis­ten for new un­der­stand­ing be­fore we at­tempt to forge our own way ahead.

Which brings me back to com­mu­ni­ty. Whether we are with one an­oth­er in phys­i­cal pres­ence or miles apart, we are one in the Body of Christ, one in Beloved Com­mu­ni­ty. There is time to plow out of our present con­di­tion. There will be time ahead for us to push forth on this mis­sion to which God calls us. But for this morn­ing, may we stop and re­mem­ber that it is through our re­la­tion­ships, with God and one an­oth­er, that we grow in un­der­stand­ing and wis­dom and great love.

Grace & Peace, T+

The Rev. Twila Smith