Aj Schwanz

So, I last left you with the question of what it would be like for a faith community to sabbath for a year:

• What would that look like?
• What could be revealed during that time?
• Where could God take a group who was willing to lay it all out on the table, let God gets His mits all over everything, and wait to receive?
• Do we really believe that all we do as a church is God’s and for God? Or is it for us and of our own power?

During December I read the book of Isaiah. While everyone else seems to be immersed in Luke, I felt called to look at the “primary resources” behind our Advent readings and meditations. Each day I would read a chapter, trying to figure out what life in Israel and the world at that time really looked like, hoping that would give me insight into how Isaiah’s words might have impacted the Israelites in their day-to-day living. Over my bowl of Bob’s Red Mills high fiber hot cereal with almonds, flaxseed, cinnamon, and blueberries, I’d read and ponder and move on with my day.

Until one day: the day I hit Isaiah 58. The title of the section was “True Worship”. I thought, ‘How applicable to my situation where I’m on a task force discerning the next steps for worship in our community!’ And I ate my gruel and moved on with my day.

Until the next day. When I sat down, gruel in front of my, along with my happy light, and I opened up to Isaiah 59. Except that my eyes went back to Isaiah 58. I tried to move them back down the page: they did not want to budge. It was like that moment in Friends when Chandler proposes to Monica the first time, simply because they had had a fight and he didn’t know how to apologize or make up: everyone was in the room and groaned and turned away except for Rachel who sat at the kitchen table with her hands pressed against the side of her face staring and muttering, “Oh, oh, I can’t not look at it!”

I couldn’t not look at it.

Same thing happened the next day. And the next. And then one of those days happened to be a Sunday, and so I read it during most of church, wondering if I was meant to share it in service.

But no: I was meant to share it during that afternoon’s Next Steps meeting, when I sat silently stewing most of the meeting until finally someone asked if I had something to say (sigh: seriously - don’t they know better?) and the floodgates opened. I can’t remember all I babbled about - it was a bit of a roundabout (shocking, I know). But I do know that at some point I read Isaiah 58 to the group. Actually, I sobbed it out, having to pause because I couldn’t read through the tears (I remember shaking my head to try and get the tears out so I could move on because, dang it, Holy Spirit, couldn’t you move me in some other way so that I’m still functional and understandable? And not quite so soggy? :)).

Isaiah 58

Fasting that Pleases God

1 “Cry aloud, spare not;
Lift up your voice like a trumpet;
Tell My people their transgression,
And the house of Jacob their sins.
2 Yet they seek Me daily,
And delight to know My ways,
As a nation that did righteousness,
And did not forsake the ordinance of their God.
They ask of Me the ordinances of justice;
They take delight in approaching God.
3 ‘ Why have we fasted,’ they say, ‘and You have not seen?
Why have we afflicted our souls, and You take no notice?’

“ In fact, in the day of your fast you find pleasure,
And exploit all your laborers.
4 Indeed you fast for strife and debate,
And to strike with the fist of wickedness.
You will not fast as you do this day,
To make your voice heard on high.
5 Is it a fast that I have chosen,
A day for a man to afflict his soul?
Is it to bow down his head like a bulrush,
And to spread out sackcloth and ashes?
Would you call this a fast,
And an acceptable day to the LORD?
6 “ Is this not the fast that I have chosen:
To loose the bonds of wickedness,
To undo the heavy burdens,
To let the oppressed go free,
And that you break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
And that you bring to your house the poor who are cast out;
When you see the naked, that you cover him,
And not hide yourself from your own flesh?
8 Then your light shall break forth like the morning,
Your healing shall spring forth speedily,
And your righteousness shall go before you;
The glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard.
9 Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer;
You shall cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’

“ If you take away the yoke from your midst,
The pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,
10 If you extend your soul to the hungry
And satisfy the afflicted soul,
Then your light shall dawn in the darkness,
And your darkness shall be as the noonday.
11 The LORD will guide you continually,
And satisfy your soul in drought,
And strengthen your bones;
You shall be like a watered garden,
And like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.
12 Those from among you
Shall build the old waste places;
You shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
And you shall be called the Repairer of the Breach,
The Restorer of Streets to Dwell In.
13 “ If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath,
From doing your pleasure on My holy day,
And call the Sabbath a delight,
The holy day of the LORD honorable,
And shall honor Him, not doing your own ways,
Nor finding your own pleasure,
Nor speaking your own words,
14 Then you shall delight yourself in the LORD;
And I will cause you to ride on the high hills of the earth,
And feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father.
The mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

What I didn’t know until after I shared is that another church in our area has been praying this scripture over NFC for almost two years, specifically verse 12 (which stood out to me on my initial reading as well as another person in our group).

A member of the task force suggested we sit with this scripture as a group. We did. As we prepare for our upcoming fast, I wonder if others would be willing to think on Isaiah 58 as well, holding up Newberg Friends as well as your own faith gathering if it’s different. What stands out to you? What strikes you? What convinces you? What does true fasting mean to you?

It’s relieved me to hear from at least one that my postings have not been “airing dirty laundry“.  Initially I feared that sharing this journey could seem critical or judgmental of people who have questioned the process.  A number of murmurings of “we just don’t know what’s going on/we need a bigger picture/why haven’t we heard a whole lot from up front?” has been uttered.  Some of the tone has been said somewhat disrespectfully, as though the leadership has handled this incorrectly.  I, too, wondered why we didn’t gather the Next Steps group to share in front of the congregation on a Sunday morning.  But then I realized if I criticized, I, too, would be disrespectful.  So instead I’ve decided to share/question/teach/inform on my own turf, which happens to be this little electronic notepad, with the hopes of edification and not tearing down.

In Permission Granted the authors note that vision for a church only lasts for so long, about five to seven years.  Before that time is up, a new vision needs to be being discerned so as to not leave the church aimless.  And as that vision is acted upon, the church will undergo significant transition and will need to be instructed on how to abide in that transition (like childbirth:  the pain doesn’t go away, but at least education helps cope, abide in the pain, and hope for the coming ending).

The authors also focus on Christ’s illustrations of the church - that of a building and that of a field.  A building is a structure:  rigid, inflexible, unchanging.  These are the values we hold as the body of Christ.  A field is an environment:  fluid, flexible, changing.  These are the manifestations of our values as we respond to our current context.

Thinking about fields and hearing that vision only lasts for so long, I had an ‘ah ha!’ moment:  these things have something in common - sabbath!  In the Old Testament God commanded that the fields not be planted every seven years.  Now environmentally we know this is so that the field doesn’t become totally tapped of nutrients, so that it has time to rest, replenish, and produce well:  farmers employ this method in crop rotation.

But God also commanded the Sabbath for another reason:  as a check to see if the Israelites were abiding in Him rather than their own power.  It’s easy to harvest crops and thank God when you are plucking the bounty; it’s another thing to wait for God to provide.  The Israelites were to trust God that He would provide enough crops during the sixth year not only to provide for the sixth year, but also the seventh . . . and the eighth (because during that year, the crops would be growing).  It was a way of laying everything down and relying on God.  But I imagine it was also a time to regroup, to dream, to change old habits, to plan for new things that couldn’t be thought of during the repetition of the previous year.

I called my dad to ask him what the Israelites did during their Sabbath year.  “I imagine they rested!” he said.  Actually, they never took a Sabbath year, he informed me:  this is why they were exiled to Babylon for seventh years - they owed God seventy Sabbaths.  So instead of getting to rest every seven years, they instead were enslaved for seventy years:  makes one really think about resting when God commands it, eh?

So . . . if the church is like a field . . . and fields need to rest every seven years . . . and vision only lasts for five to seven years . . . doesn’t it seem like the church should take some sort of Sabbath every seven years? . . .

I put forth this question to the Next Steps group one Sunday.  I tried to hold it back because it just didn’t seem the direction we were moving.  I sat silently and antsy for an hour and a half during one meeting, a meeting that our clerk and our pastor happened to both be absent for (so it was a bit of a shock for them when they got the minutes :D).  But then someone asked, “Aj, what are you thinking?”  I asked them if they really wanted to know.  They should’ve known better than to say “yes”. 

The floodgates poured forth.  I’m part of a program that connects with young moms, but we can’t find folks to fill the steering team for next year and attendance has been down:  could we lay it down?  Typical church fashion would say, “No!  This is a good thing!  Force people into the holes!  Fill the need!”  But maybe the need has been met, and God’s calling these resources to a new thing.  When do we have time to discern that?   Perhaps during a Sabbath?

What would it look like for a church to Sabbath for a year? Would that mean that the pastor stops delivering a message on Sunday mornings and that other forms of worship are used?  Would that mean that Sunday schools would be laid down and community would meet in other ways?  What would happen if programs were laid down for a year - programs that help teens and old people and folks in the church and folks out of the church?

What would we do for the year?  Would we hole up and be antisocial?  Or would we find new and creative ways to meet - perhaps outside the walls of the church?

What would happen to the folks who rely on the programs and services NFC provides?  Would their needs go unmet? . . . Or are we relying on programs and not God to meet peoples’ needs?

Note:  I am a verbal processor.  I was not saying that these things should happen:  I was simply posing the question to think about “what would it be like *if* we did these things?”  And so we left the meeting with more questions than answers, most unsettledness than direction.  Because that’s so like God.