“Replenishment”
Rev. Robert M. Hardies
28 January 2007
Before I share this morning’s reading, I want to beg your pardon. A preacher facing six and a half months of pulpit silence might have a lot on his mind to say, and you’ll excuse me if I go just a little bit longer than I usually do. Not too much though.
Our reading this morning is from the Torah, the Book of Exodus, Chapter 25, Verses 1 through 5 and 20 through 21:
God said to Moses on Mt. Sinai, “When you enter the land I am going to give you, the land
itself must observe a Sabbath. For six years, sow your fields, and for six years, prune your
vineyards and gather their crops. But in the seventh year, the land is to have a Sabbath of
rest, a Sabbath to God. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. Do not reap what
grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land is to have a year of
rest. The people may ask ‘What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or harvest
our crops.’ Do not fear, for I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will
yield enough for three years.”
Here ends the reading.
In ancient Israel, it was the practice of Jews to let their fields lie fallow every seventh year, to give them rest, to allow the soil to replenish itself, to recover some of the minerals and nutrients that it had shared and spent during six successive harvests. The Israelites lived close to the land and learned from it, and somewhere along the line they realized that what is good for the earth is sometimes good for its creatures, too. That just as the soil needs time for replenishment, so too does the soul, that if we worked the soul year after year, if we harvest its offerings and rely on its sustenance, it eventually becomes depleted. It loses its “soulfulness,” and so they set aside the seventh day and called it Sabbath, a day of rest. And the seventh year they called the Sabbatical year, a year to replenish. That’s how it became common practice, over the years, for clergy, after about six years of service, to receive a sabbatical.
In agricultural communities, the fallow year is seen as an investment in the future of the land and the community, an investment in the land’s ability to continue to share its abundance down the road. In religious communities, the sabbatical is an investment too, an investment in the people’s shared spiritual life, an investment in their leader and teacher, in the hopes that a replenished soul might have a little wisdom and inspiration to share for another six years worth of sermons and counseling. [Applause]
Many of you have asked what I’ll be doing on my sabbatical. Part of what I’ll be doing is resting, together with Chris who, as an English professor, has managed to wrangle a sabbatical of his own this semester. Many of you know that we spend much time apart and this will be a time for us to be together. We will be resting in a very beautiful part of the world. I thought I’d try to keep this a secret for awhile, but that’s not going to work. Tomorrow afternoon, our plane leaves for Barcelona and we’ll spend most of the sabbatical there.
Rest implies more than vacation, though. It also requires the focused attention to the spirit. During the sabbatical I’ve set aside chunks of time for prayer and meditation, first at a monastery in France called Taize. The meditative chanting of the Taize brothers has long drawn pilgrims from across the world and it has been my dream for over 15 years to visit and chant in Taize. I will fulfill that dream this sabbatical. Later I’ll spend time at a Buddhist retreat center, the same Buddhist retreat center that I went to six years ago when I had to ponder and meditate whether or not to accept the call of a 180-year-old church in Washington, D.C. It had good results the first time I went; I hope it will again.
A significant part of the time will be spent studying and writing. Many of you know I’m pursuing a doctorate, and the subject of my project is the spiritual practices and disciplines of 19th century Unitarians, and how they might be used to enrich our own spiritual lives. Many of you have taken my class called “Unitarian Universalist Spiritual Practice,” and this research deepens and extends that effort. My goal is to introduce Unitarians to our own rich spiritual heritage, a heritage we are largely unaware of. I’m also working with an editor to shape some of my thoughts and sermons into a small book on the subject of spiritual resilience. Why do some souls bounce back and others not? You’ve heard me touch on this before and you’ll hear it again when I return.
So that’s just a little bit about me. But this morning, I really want to talk about you. You see, in the Torah, when God tells Moses about the sabbatical year, he anticipates the people’s anxieties. And so in Verse 20 of Exodus God says to Moses essentially, “Now, when you tell the people about the sabbatical, they’re going to freak out.” [Laughter] They will say, well that’s all very well and good for the land, slash pastor, to lie fallow for the year, but what will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or harvest our crops, slash pastor [Laughter], and maybe that’s been a question on your minds as well. “What about us?” “What are the spiritual opportunities of the sabbatical for the congregation?”
I can think of many, but let me mention three. First, the absence of the senior leader of an organization provides an opportunity for the leadership of others, staff and laity, to flourish and grow. Last week we saw an early example of this when Janet Randolph, our congregational president stepped up to this pulpit and asked us to dig deeper to balance our budget, but only after she and our board had done so themselves. That was a leadership moment. The sabbatical provides all of us, at all levels of the church, an opportunity to take on a little extra leadership while I’m away, to find our vocation in the church.
There is no one for whom this is more true than the Reverend Shana Lynngood. And let me just say how good it feels for me to leave the leadership of this church in the hands of such a good and talented colleague. Thank you so much. [Applause] Shana will be Acting Senior Minister and chief of staff while I’m away and will continue to preach once a month and be in the pulpit nearly every Sunday to provide a continuity of spiritual leadership for all of us while I’m away. Shana will lead a talented professional staff that you are only beginning to get to know. I hope that while I’m away you will take time to discover and recognize the gifts that every member of our staff brings.
The sabbatical is an opportunity for everyone to step up, and that means you, too. Frankly, while I’m away, your church needs you to lend a hand. Even while I’m here, a couple of ministers aren’t enough to care and tend to the needs of almost 800 members of this church. We rely on one another to be the shoulder to lean on, to bring the casserole when we’re sick, to plant the church gardens and make them grow, to teach our children. The sabbatical is an opportunity to find your way to serve the church, so please, show up and lend a hand.
The second spiritual opportunity for a congregation during the sabbatical is this: It provides the congregation with a chance to rediscover its identity apart from its minister. I know I don’t need to remind you all that this church is 185 years old, and that for most of those 185 years it has been a vibrant and strong congregation, bringing a strong voice of progressive religion to our nation’s capital. Immediately before I arrived at the church, it had gone through a difficult time and had dwindled in numbers and, as a result, I fear that some of us have lost the powerful sense of continuity of the strength of this church, and have failed to remind ourselves that that strength is apart from any particular minister and comes from all of us in the pews and all of us who’ve come before us in the pews. The sabbatical is a time for us to remember the many sources of strength of this congregation.
A minister, when they go on sabbatical, faces the difficult challenge of finding their own humanness, apart from their role and vocation as minister. That often presents a crisis for a minister on sabbatical. You have that same opportunity here at the church, to find the identity of this congregation, apart from your minister.
The third opportunity that the sabbatical affords, and this is one that you should be very excited about, is the chance to receive an abundance of fresh spiritual insight. You know, I wish I were going to be around for the next six and a half months to hear all the outstanding preachers that we’ve lined up to preach from this pulpit while I’m away. We’ve lined up some of the best preachers from within our movement and beyond, for instance, did you notice, on the front page of the Post on Wednesday, one of our guest preachers showed up. It was Melissa Harris-Lacewell. Dr. Harris-Lacewell is a lifelong Unitarian and Professor of African-American Studies at Princeton. A frequent commentator on racial politics, Harris-Lacewell appeared on the front page of Wednesday’s Post in that article on Barack Obama and his relationship with the African-American community that I’m sure many of you read. So there it was, a guest preacher at All Souls on the front page of the Post.
Or take, for example, Bill Schulz. Reverend Schulz is the former Executive Director of Amnesty International and former president of our denomination. Twelve years at the helm of Amnesty has led Bill to fundamentally reexamine his theology in light of the torture and human rights abuses that he saw over those years. He will share some of those thoughts with us when he comes to preach in April. Forrest Church comes in May, the son of the late Senator Frank Church and one of the foremost public theologians in our movement. Tara Brach, one of the leading Buddhist teachers on the East Coast; Rabbi Daniel Swartz, a committed environmentalist and Jewish theologian will preach on Earth Day. This is a wonderful list of people who will grace this pulpit and share it will Reverend Lynngood and the other pastors of this church. I hope you will show up and listen to them. You can think of these guest preachers as opening fresh windows on your soul and giving you new insight, letting new light in, so that you can hear perspectives that you wouldn’t hear from me or from Shana.
Now I want to say a word about our future. You know, we’ve been making such a big deal about this sabbatical, I sometimes forget I’m only going away for six and a half months. I’ll be back in August and when I come back, replenished and rested, I’m going to be raring to go. And there will be much exciting and important work for us to do together. And by way of segueing into our future, let me share with you a little story. Before church one Sunday morning, Pastor Smith noticed little Alex standing in the foyer of the church, staring up at a large plaque. The plaque was covered with names and small American flags. The seven-year-old had been staring at the plaque intently for some time now, so the pastor walked up to him and said quietly, “Good morning, Alex.” “Good morning, Pastor,” said Alex. And pointing to the plaque, he asked “Pastor Smith, what’s this?” And the pastor said, “Well, son, it’s a memorial to all the young men and women who died in the service.” Alex continued to look soberly at the plaque and, finally, in a quiet and trembling voice, asked his pastor, “Which service? The 9:15 or 11:15?” [Laughter] Which is just a way of reminding you that when we go to two services in the fall, it’s not going to kill us.
On September 9, the Sunday after Labor Day, we will move to a format of two identical Sunday morning services. If you look around you this morning and see how crowded we are, you’ll recognize the need for it. They’ll be at 9:15 and 11:15 a.m. It’s been getting crowded here at the church and all of us want to make room for every person who seeks the ministry of this congregation. I for one am convinced that the ministry of this congregation and of Unitarian Universalism has only begun to touch the people that we need to touch. [Applause] And in the fall, we’ll make room for them.
Now two services won’t kill us, but there is a war raging right now that is doing just that. I was so proud to join so many of you yesterday down on the Mall to call for an end to that unnecessary and unjust war. Clap your hands if you were at the march yesterday. [Applause] You know, I was reminded of something yesterday, because there was a big interfaith service and rally at a Lutheran church before that and I was asked to participate in that rally and the members of our choir were asked to lead that congregation in singing at that rally. And then when we got down to the Mall afterwards, you would have been proud to see our Minister of Social Justice, Louise Green, actually emceeing the first part of the rally, down on the Mall itself, [Applause] and what it reminded me is that increasingly this congregation is called on to provide leadership in our nation’s capital to be a voice for progressive religion, and I am looking forward, when I come back I the fall, to continuing that good work. [Applause]
When I come back this fall, this nation will be launching a new electoral cycle and it is an important cycle, for in the outcome of those elections, the issues of peace, justice and the very future of our earth are held in the balance. Our role in that election cycle will not be to support one candidate or the other; that’s not the role of the church. Our role will be to make sure that progressive religious values and the issues that we care so deeply about are the defining issues of the 2008 campaign. We have important work ahead of us and I look forward to returning to this pulpit in August so that together we can spread the good news of our faith to our larger world.
In closing, let me just say that there is one pastoral duty that I will continue while I am away. And that is that I will continue to pray for each and every one of you. And I ask that if you are praying Unitarians that you pray for me too. Sometimes people say to me, “Rob I have a hard time with prayer because I’m not sure that I believe in a God who answers our prayers.” Here’s what I know about prayer: When I pray for someone, the quality of my love for that person improves. Whether and how God answers our prayers is a mystery; it is a fact, though, that prayer increases our capacity for love of another person. So I will pray for you, and expect that, because of that prayer, my love for you will only grow stronger while we’re away. There may be something that you’d like to communicate to me about those prayers while I’m gone and in Pierce Hall, after service, there’ll be a box of little postcards for you to write either a good wish or a specific request for prayers while I am away and I will take that list, as well as the membership directory, with me so I can hold you all in my heart.
I will miss you. And I will pray for you. And I ask that, under Shana’s leadership, you all take good care of one another in my absence. And I already look forward to returning to you on August 19, and taking up again the work that we share together, the work of knitting our broken communities and our broken world back into one great family of all souls. I love you. Amen. [Sustained applause]