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This week we will be talking about the Sabbath.  In preparation, please read the two chapters from the book Be Excellent At Anything. The author, Tony Schwartz, was a keynote speaker at this year’s 2011 SXSWInteractive conference [click to listen to his presentation].  With decades of biometric and physiological studies Schwartz and his team consult the world’s top companies like Apple, Google, Ford, Ernst&Young, and the FBI on how to create and manage the highest-achieving and most creative workforces in the world.

The rhythm and requirement for rest is not just a spiritual issue.  We have been created, programmed or evolved into creatures that require regular periods of rest in order to live. I have included scanned PDF’s of chapter 5 and 6 from this book. Download and read – it will improve your life.

DOWNLOAD PDF: Chapter 5 |  Chapter 6

Here is a brief excerpt from chapter 6 about a rhythm of rest:

Two Harvard Business School professors recently undertook a project among consultants at Boston Consulting Group. Consultants were asked to take off one evening a week-not one day, but one evening from all work. It’s a measure of how out of control work has become in some professions that such a project was even possible. Amazingly, the experiment actually met with considerable resistance from the consultants themselves. The notion of not checking their BlackBerries, and not making themselves available to clients even one night a week provoked concern and anxiety. But six months later, the consultants who managed to take the evening off reported higher job satisfaction, more open communication, better work/life balance, and a greater likelihood that they’d stay at the firm than the consultants who continued to work as they always had.

Whether it’s evenings and weekends truly off, longer and more regular vacations, briefbreaks during the day at ninety-minute intervals, short afternoon naps, or a minimum of seven to eight hours of sleep per night, the overwhelming evidence is that our health and productivity are enhanced by a rhythmic movement between work and rest. The best model for how we ought to operate as adults may be the way we did as young children: alternating time spent actively learning with naps, playtime and gym periods, recesses and snacks-as well as with long periods of sleep at night. A recent study of 11,000 children ages eight and nine, published in the journal Pediatrics) found that children who were given at least fifteen minutes of recess a day behaved significantly better in class than those who had little or no recess time. “We should understand that kids need that break because the brain needs that break,” said Dr. Romina M. Barros, a pediatrician and assistant clinical professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Now we get down to the fun stuff: Holidays.  If there is one thing that “Americanized” religion, in any form, gets wrong – it’s the spiritual and symbolic importance of holy days.  These holidays we meant to be observed with great reverence and passion, typically requiring lengthy pilgrimages to Jerusalem.  These were not just days you “got off work” – these were [are] days that are worked toward with great purpose. Leviticus 23 lays out the major feasts of the Lord that happen annually (except for the Sabbath, which is honored every Saturday.  More on this subject later).

Here is a basic rundown of the Jewish Feasts listed in chapter 23:

THE SABBATH: CREATION, SALVATION, CONSUMMATION (Saturdays)

• the most important holiday of them all.
• word “sabbath” means “rest.”
• Every seventh day, beginning Friday night at sunset through Saturday night at sunset

PASSOVER: THE FIRST OF THE SEVEN ANNUAL HOLIDAYS (April 18-26, 2011)

• The first of the seven annual holidays is Passover
• begins God’s yearly calendar.
• occurs in the month of Nisan, which usually falls in March or April.
• Passover takes place during the spring, when the earth is full of new life,
• God’s calendar would start in the Spring – certainly more sense than beginning the new year in the dead of winter, as we do in the Western world.

FEAST OF MATZAH (April 8-16, 2011)

• The Feast of Matzah (Unleavened Bread) begins with Passover and continues for seven days.
• Nothing with yeast is to be eaten during that period.
• remind ourselves of our hasty departure from Egypt.
• Prior to Passover, Jewish families will spend days and even weeks systematically ridding their homes of leaven.

THE FEAST OF FIRST FRUITS (April 21, 2011)

• The Feast of First Fruits is the third yearly holiday,
• takes place during the week of Passover.
• on the sixteenth day of Nisan, which is the third day of Passover.
• High Priest took the first sheaves of the barley harvest, waved the first fruits of barley

SHAVUOT (June 7-9, 2011)

• Shavuot which means “weeks.”
• seven weeks and one day after the Feast of First Fruits.
• “Pentecost,” the Greek name for this holiday,
• means “fiftieth” because this holiday takes place on the fiftieth day after First Fruits.
• required to make a second pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
• offer to God the first fruits of the wheat harvest.

THE FEAST OF TRUMPETS “Rosh HaShana” (Sept 28-30, 2011)

• First of the final three Fall holidays.
• all take place in the seventh month – the month of completion.
• Feast of Trumpets
• the first day of the seventh month, which is the month of Tishri.
• commonly referred to as “Rosh HaShana” – the Jewish “New Year.”

YOM KIPPUR – THE DAY OF ATONEMENT (October 7-8, 2011)

• Ten days later, after Rosh HaShana
• High Priest was allowed to enter into the Most Holy Place in the Temple
• sprinkle blood on the ark of the covenant
• atone for the sins of Israel
• send out the scapegoat

SUKKOT – The Feast of the Tabernacles (Oct 12-19, 2011)

• seventh holiday and it falls in the seventh month.
• on the fifteenth day of Tishri and lasts for eight days.
• the Jewish people went up to Jerusalem to celebrate this final harvest festival.
• built booths, decorated them with branches and the fruits of the harvest,
• lived in them for the duration of the holiday.
• go up and come down one week later,

This week will continue to discuss some of the principles established in Leviticus 19 such as living together in a God-centered community.  Once again, we return to the teachings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his lesser-known (but perhaps his most powerful book) Life Together. This work was compiled while Bonhoeffer witnessed the German Christian church sit idly by while the Nazi’s commenced the genocide of the their Jewish brethren. During this era the author recognized that the Church is not just a meeting place for people with agreeable psychologies and compatible philosophies but the very manifestation of Christ on earth.

Recommendations for preparation:

1. Re-read Leviticus 19 and note the over-all categories of community laws presented.
2. Listen to the podcast “Created for Community” (posted below and on the Facebook Page)
3. Consider this excerpt from Bonhoeffer’s Life Together:
   

…One is brother to another person only through Jesus Christ.  I am a brother to another person through what Jesus Christ did for me and to me; the other person has become a brother to me through what Jesus Christ did for him.  This fact that we are brethren only through Jesus Christ is of immeasurable significance.  Not only the other person who is earnest and devout, who comes to me seeking brotherhood, must I deal in fellowship.  My brother is rather that other person who has been redeemed by Christ, delivered from his sin, and called to faith and eternal life.  Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, constitutes the basis of our community.  What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ.  Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us…

That dismisses once and for all every clamorous desire for something more.  One who wants more than what Christ has established does not want Christian brotherhood…Just at this point of Christian brotherhood is threatened most often at the very start by the greatest danger of all, the danger of being poisoned at the root, the danger of confusing Christian brotherhood with some wishful idea of religious fellowship, of confounding the natural desire of the devout heart for community with the spiritual reality of Christian brotherhood.  In Christian brotherhood everything depends upon its being clear right from the beginning, first, that Christian brotherhood is not an ideal, but a divine reality.  Second, that Christian brotherhood is a spiritual and not a psychic reality.

Here is a nice synopsis of Life Together (via Stephanie Bennett, Kiononia.org.il)

Bonhoeffer’s heart was taken up with the importance of the church really “being” the church, and through his careful and daily study of the scriptures came to understand the needs of the church as being predicated on three foundational necessities, each of which I will touch upon in this short essay.  First, the church must meet on the ground of Christ.  Next, followers of Christ must understand that the church is a divine reality.  Finally, his interpretation of the church could best be expressed as community of love.

The centrality of Christ

To approach Bonhoeffer one must understand that the overarching premise of his ecclesiastical epistemology is the centrality of Jesus Christ.  Many have spoken about the centrality of Christ, but by it Bonhoeffer meant that the only ground for meeting as the church is Christ, himself.   So, “meeting on the ground of Christ” prompts us to examine the question:  how does the church meet, and why is that important? For Bonhoeffer, the church “meets” on the ground of Christ.  Another way of saying this is that the locus of the Body of Christ is found in Christ. In other words, personalities, gifts, enjoying a certain type of worship or agreeing on the setup of chairs, pews, or order of service does not constitute enough reason to meet or enough reason to divide. Meeting with “Christ as our ground of fellowship”  may better be described by discussing what it does not entail.    The church is not a business venture, a money-making or fund-raising club, an activity for Sunday morning, a program for social welfare, or a ministry;  the Church is the Body of Christ, a gathering of believers amongst whom Jesus Christ is central and the reason for meeting.  To be clearer, Bonhoeffer believed that it matters not if those who gather all agree on preference for expression, liturgy, song, or place.  Uniformity is not unity; Christ is the “reason” or ground upon which the believers meet.  Jesus Christ is the locus of church unity. This view is clearly depicted throughout all of Life Together, but perhaps most succinctly said in the following statement: “. . . our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us. This is true not merely at the beginning as though in the course of time something else were added to our community.  It remains for all the future and to all eternity”1

The church is a divine reality

Next, the church is a “Divine Reality.”  He so believed in this empirical Body of Christ that he wrote:  “Whereas psychological community is based on utopian desire and unmediated fellowship, spiritual community is based on recognition of reality and relationships mediated by Christ.”2 Bonhoeffer underscored the imperfect nature of the church, stressing that it is not made up of stellar, sparkling individuals, but people who are sinners, “on the way, ” — people in the process of being transformed by the love of God, moving forward in connection with Christ and each other.  This is why the practice of “confessing our sins one to another” is essential.  The church as “divine reality” also means that for a community of love to flourish it must be an empirical church, i.e. an observable church, that is, really there; not a: romanticized or virtual community, not just in name or a grand idea.  As “divine reality” Bonhoeffer differentiates the Christian community from the psychological community, and explains:  “The church community, not some philosophical or theological system of thought, is God’s final revelation of the divine self as Christ existing in community.”3 In other words, “don’t wait for a new revelation:”  Christ in you (the church) is it!4

The church as community of love

As community of love, the relationship to each other takes on prime importance in the Church of Jesus Christ. Among other things, that means that the church is not a gathering of people who just happen to meet in the park, one day, perchance. Nor is it made up of perfect people living a utopian ideal.   As a community of love, there is a mutuality that is inherent in the lives of those gathering together to fellowship, and intentionality to meeting.  There is a certain “one-anothering” that takes place.  When the people of God come together to share their lives openly, freely, accepting each other with the kind of unconditional positive regard, there is a sort of social-spiritual “chemistry” that emerges, and those that come together experience a delightful cohesion and sense of belonging.   “As” the church, the people of God are interrelated, but we’ve got to know who we are to each other.  What the Bible says is that we are family – brothers and sisters —who dwell together in Christ.  Love is very practical in Bonhoeffer’s schema.  It is not esoteric or mushy.  Love in the community of believers is a divine reality that takes discipline and effort; a dailyness and intentionality that do not give up.

Leviticus 19 presents some of the most beautiful, most important and most perplexing of God’s laws.  They span the gamut from honoring the sabbath to not wearing clothing of mixed fiber.  Here are a few of the highlights we will focus on this week:

Always remember the poor:

9″When you reap the harvest of your land,
you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field,
nor shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest.
10And you shall not glean your vineyard,
nor shall you gather every grape of your vineyard;
you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger:
I am the LORD your God.

[Source of] The Greatest commandment

17″You shall not hate your brother in your heart.
You shall surely rebuke your neighbor, and not bear sin because of him.
18You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people,
but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

Hospitality to all

33″And if a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him. 3
4The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you,
and you shall love him as yourself;
for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.

Up to this point the book of Leviticus has covered specific topics regarding sacrifice, ritual, administration, eating and access into the Divine presence.  Now in chapter 18 we transition from “How to live with God” to “How to live with each other”.  First topic: immoral sexual relations.  Because of the superbly high priority we (as well as God) place on our sexual relationship, this is typically the FIRST thing we replace God with.  As a result, the actual act of sex and sexuality represent something much greater: our desire to have things/people that are not ours.  We turn sex and sexuality into a false idol, worshiping it in place of the one true God – violating the first commandment: “Thou shalt not have any gods before me”.

It stands to reason that sexual relationship is one of the most special and valuable  gifts of God to His people. In the positive column, the relationship between Christ and His church is described not just in the context of marriage but the physical consummation of that bond:

Ephesians 5:28-33
28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

In the negative column, in the basic human experience the topic of sexuality dominates the narrative.  Most of our humanistic (and spiritual) lives are shrouded in the discovery, pursuit, acquisition, maintenance and, often, loss of sexual relationships.  Much more than just the ability to reproduce, our sexuality impacts with our core need to be accepted, wanted and valuable to others.

All too often, the discussion of sexuality immediately becomes a highly-subjective moral-battleground between right and wrong, good and evil, acceptable versus taboo. “Let us determine where the line is (for us)” and, first, do everything we can to not cross it then, second, condemn all who those who do and dare.  In Jesus’ time Pharisees thought this way.  It has not gone out of style.

Instead of talking about what is or is not disgusting (read: an abomination) to us humans, we should first consider what is an abomination to God. God hates immoral consumption - wanting and taking things that are not yours and/or harmful to you to consume.  In the New Testament it is referred to as “lust”. Leviticus 18 outlines the people that you can not physically consume, like your family, your family’s family, your neighbors and your very self. Just as in the discussion of the Kosher laws, God is once again commanding that His people be greatly aware that what they consume, they become.

God values His children to the highest degree, all of them.  He came to earth, took the Sin of the world on his shoulders and was crushed for our sakes so that we would be united with him in His resurrection.   While God was on earth, He spent most of his time with the people whom society had labeled as “abominations” or impure – typically due to race, sexual behavior or medial condition. We consume these “others” when we sin against them with judgment, lust, condemnation, rejection, and self-focus.

Leviticus 16 discusses the High Holiday of all holidays: The Day of Atonement, aka Yom Kippur.  On this day the high priest approaches the ark of the covenant in a very, very, very specific fashion since God would strike him dead for any disobedience or inequity. So significant is this approach, this specific level of access into the Tabernacle occurs only one day per calendar year.

Here are some Yom Kippur resources:

• The Day of Atonement [via wikipedia]
• Judaism 101: Yom Kippur
• Yom Kippur 5772 (aka 2011 AD): Saturday Sept 8th

This chapter also introduces the Scape Goat, one of the two goats chosen for sacrifice. This unfortunate animal becomes the symbol of Israel’s sin, taken out to the desert and left to wander until death.

Ultimately, this ceremony serves as a spiritual and national acknowledgment of a people’s sinful state with a symbolic request for God’s mercy:

29″This shall be a statute forever for you: In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict your souls, and do no work at all, whether a native of your own country or a stranger who dwells among you. ³⁰For on that day the priest shall make atonement for you, to cleanse you, that you may be clean from all your sins before the LORD. ³¹It is a sabbath of solemn rest for you, and you shall afflict your souls. It is a statute forever. ³²And the priest, who is anointed and consecrated to minister as priest in his father’s place, shall make atonement, and put on the linen clothes, the holy garments; ³³then he shall make atonement for the Holy Sanctuary, ^F41 and he shall make atonement for the tabernacle of meeting and for the altar, and he shall make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly. ³⁴This shall be an everlasting statute for you, to make atonement for the children of Israel, for all their sins, once a year.” And he did as the LORD commanded Moses.

Chapter 13 of Leviticus discusses the handling of “Leprosy-like” diseases.  We can clearly see that the duty of the priests extended well beyond the ritualistic sacrifices and religious tasks.  The Jewish priests served as bankers, veterinarians, law enforcement, dispute mediators and the community physicians. This chapter lays out an extensive explanation of what to look for when a member of the community presents signs and symptoms of an infectious skin disease.

The biblical term “leprosy” refers to may different types of skin-borne illnesses, often referring to the actual disease, known in modern times as Hansen’s disease:

Leprosy(from the US National Library of Medicine)

Alternative names: Hansen’s disease

Definition: Leprosy is an infectious disease that has been known since biblical times. It is characterized by disfiguring skin sores, nerve damage, and progressive debilitation.

Causes, incidence, and risk factors: Leprosy is caused by the organism Mycobacterium leprae. It is not very contagious (difficult to transmit) and has a long incubation period (time before symptoms appear), which makes it difficult to determine where or when the disease was contracted. Children are more susceptible than adults to contracting the disease.

Leprosy has two common forms, tuberculoid and lepromatous, and these have been further subdivided. Both forms produce sores on the skin, but the lepromatous form is most severe, producing large, disfiguring nodules (lumps and bumps).

All forms of the disease eventually cause peripheral neurological damage (nerve damage in the arms and legs) which causes sensory loss in the skin and muscle weakness. People with long-term leprosy may lose the use of their hands or feet due to repeated injury resulting from lack of sensation.

Leprosy is common in many countries worldwide, and in temperate, tropical, and subtropical climates. Approximately 100 cases per year are diagnosed in the United States. Most cases are limited to the South, California, Hawaii, and U.S. island possessions.

In biblical times the tragedy of this disease is the slow deterioration of the nerve endings in the skin and extremities. The sufferer literally wasted away without feeling anything. Lepers were social outcasts, thought to be highly contagious and suffering the consequence of grave sin committed by either themselves or their parents. This makes Jesus’ interaction with lepers (along with women, Samaritans, prostitutes, tax collectors, etc) all the more shocking to the religious people of the time.

While modern-day cases of Leprosy are easily treatable with antibiotics, the social stigma of the disease still exists today (probably due to the biblical accounts).

These things take time

This week we leave behind the edible (the Kosher foods) and move onto to a much more graphic and queezy subject: Leviticus 12 The Purification of Women – Child (after)birth. Here are the basics:

• New mothers are considered unclean for certain periods after the birth of a child.  They may not enter the temple nor touch any holy thing.
• If the child is a male the mother is unclean for the first 7 days, on the eighth day she will bring him to be circumcised, then will be unclean for 33 more days.
• If the child is female the mother is unclean for a total of 66 days (four score nights )
• At the end of this period of uncleanliness, the mother is to bring a lamb, without blemish, to the temple for sacrifice by the high priest.  If one could not afford a lamb, then two turtle doves were acceptable. (Mary, mother of a newborn Jesus, brought two turtle doves to the temple.

The text in Leviticus 12 does not expand on the reasons for these post-childbirth regulations.  We will talk about what scholars, both Christian and Jew, have said about this matter.

In light of the themes that we have been talking about in Leviticus, primarily the cost of communing with an incarnate God, I thought I would share some excerpts from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s monumental book The Cost of Discipleship. Leviticus makes one point crystal clear: The cost of God’s grace is very high, which is is not a one-way transaction – payment is due from both parties.

Excerpts from Chapter 1 of  The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.

Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God.

Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! The essence of grace, we suppose, is that the account has been paid in advance; and, because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing. Since the cost was infinite, the possibilities of using it and spending it are infinite.

Cheap grace means . . . forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian “conception” of God. An intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself sufficient to secure remission of sins. . . . the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin. Cheap grace therefore amounts to a denial of the living Word of God, in fact, a denial of the Incarnation of the Word of God.

Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything, they say, and so everything can remain as it was before.

That is what we mean by cheap grace, the grace which amounts to the justification of sin without the justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son to dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

Luther had said that grace alone can save; his followers took up his doctrine and repeated it word for word. But they left out its invariable corollary, the obligation of discipleship. . . . The justification of the sinner in the world degenerated into the justification of sin and the world. Costly grace was turned into cheap grace without discipleship.

Happy are they who know that discipleship simply means the life which springs from grace, and that grace simply means discipleship.

Additional Bonhoeffer information:

American Holocaust Museum

Jewish Virtual Library

Bonhoeffer Movie Biography