Festina Lente

(The Centered Christian)

 

1^st in the sermon series,

Jumbo Shrimp Christianity:

Oxymorons for Christian Living

 

(Jesus) said to (the disciples,

“Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while . . .”

After saying farewell to them, he went up on the mountain to pray.

(Mark 6:31, 46)

 

 

A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on the 17th Sunday after Pentecost, September 23, 2007

First United Methodist Church, 605 West 6^th, Mountain Home, Arkansas 72653

 

 

Among the four gospels Mark is, I think, accurately described as an “Action” gospel, more focused on what Jesus was doing than what he was saying, shortening the sermonic discourses which Matthew records at length.  Mark Moves.  From its opening verse Mark spends no time with genealogy (as Matthew and Luke) and no time with an esoteric mix of creation theology and Christology (as John).  Mark sprints out of the gate with Jesus’ baptism and temptation in the wilderness, a pace which, once set, is maintained throughout.  Mark is by far the shortest gospel, not because there’s less in it, but because it Moves, offering Jesus’ ministry with a frenetic, peripatetic pace.  Reading Mark one gets the sense of Jesus’ ministry as multi-tasking, rushing back and forth to keep the spinning plates from loosing momentum and crashing to the ground.  It’s no wonder, then, that our text comes to us in the language of near exhaustion.  Having been sent two by two into the villages surrounding the Galilee, Jesus says to the disciples, “Come rest a while.”  But even then, seeking retreat, the crowds follow and Jesus is moved with compassion because of these sheep without a shepherd.  Rest was delayed by necessity, but his body and soul craved a quiet time of re-energizing reprieve, so he sent the disciples to the other side, to Bethsaida, as he retreated alone into the northern hills bordering the Galilee.

 

I want you this morning to think of this juxta-positioning in Mark of restless activity on the one hand, and secluded retreat on the other, as an example of Festina Lente.  Festina Lente is a Latin phrase meaning, “Hurry Slowly.”  It’s an oxymoron of contradictory things, like Jumbo Shrimp.   “Hurry Slowly?”   How does one do that?  Historians of ancient Rome tell us the phrase was a favorite of Caesar Augustus, something he often said to his generals.  “Festina Lente – Urgency is required, but be sure your urgency is not thoughtless, but a careful urgency.  In your urgency don’t make rash miscalculations that will cost you the battle. Hurry, but hurry slowly.”

 

If Caesar thought Festina Lente good advice for a general’s living, I think the phrase is equally valid as advice for living in general.   Life is often filled with hurry, perhaps never more so than in our Information Age, a day when technological knowledge is exponentially growing.   Fifty years ago the prognostications were that technology would create an Age of Convenience that would dramatically slow our lives.  The true effect, of course, has been the reverse.  When has any previous culture been in such a hurry?  It seems our bodies and spirits don’t always adapt well to the peripatetic pace of the post-modern life.  So we crave opportunities, in the midst of the hurry, to slow down. 

 

Festina Lente is descriptive of being Centered, of recognizing the distortions both of a life of constant hurry, on the one hand, and a life of unexcused slothfulness on the other.  Festina Lente, my first oxymoron, is the mantra of the Centered Christian.  

 

Festina Lente lies at the heart of God’s revelation to his people in the Old Testament, discovered in the message of Shabbat, the Sabbath, the gift of God to his people.  The fundamental lesson of the Sabbath announced in the creation narrative of Genesis was -- in the midst of your hurried living, break the cycle, slow down.  

 

I sought to write the pastoral prayer this morning in the spirit of Festina Lente.  May I remind you of some of its words?  “In grace you gifted your people with Shabbat, one day of rest from the hurried pace of the week’s earning and amassing.  Grant us the grace which this Lord’s Day offers – to slow down and lay aside worldly pursuits, to allow our hearts and minds to be attentive to your Presence, reminding us that your Call is to a higher purpose than merely to live so as to win a cubicle and a parking place for our shiny possessions, while our soul grows thin within.  May we, today, slow down and honor your Presence in our midst.” 

 

Festina Lente reminds us that life is more than a quest for earning and amassing, while the soul grows thin within.  It is this truth that is a central reason for our need for regular, weekly worship – to rest our souls, to bathe ourselves in liturgy and prayer, praise and song, meditation and devotion.  Most of you have already made worship a priority in your lives, and for those who have not yet done so, I suggest the best way to live a Centered life of Festina Lente is to regularly be refreshed in spirit and soul by worship.

 

One of America’s best known preachers is Barbara Brown Taylor of Columbia Theological Seminary.  She speaks of how she, though thoroughly a Christian, has adopted a more Jewish practice of Shabbat.  She admits that engaging in the practice of Sabbath-keeping was a rough ride for a couple of years, precisely because of the slowness required, none of which comes naturally to Americans.  Americans are sold on speed, invested in restless productivity, convinced that multi-tasking is the way of happiness and success.  “Stopping for a whole day,” she says, “can feel, at first, like a kind of death.”  Shabbat, I suppose, was always precisely that.  On Shabbat, something of us, something fundamental about our humanness, is supposed to die and be laid to rest.  The Sabbath becomes a weekly slice of eternity, a glimpse of eternal rest feared at first, but only at first.  Once experienced it is gradually desired, even craved.

 

At first, Rev. Taylor said, to own a full day of doing no work made her want to check her temperature, because being sick was the only way previously that she had ever slowed down.  She was filled with a sense of guilt, of wasting time.  Time billowed out in front of her and she had a sense that the clock was ticking away on her life and ministry. 

 

I know this feeling well.  While I’ve not sought to do as Rev. Taylor in establishing a weekly Shabbat experience, I have for years retreated to a Benedictine monastery two or three times a year for two days of rest and worship.  I find myself unable to restrict myself to rest and worship, always including study and planning.  Indeed, this very series was conceived at my last retreat.  To do otherwise would expose myself to guilt.  I know that guilt to which Rev. Taylor refers.  It takes a while, more than two days, I’m sure, to de-tox from the pace we set for ourselves.  For me, it takes mere hours for guilt to set in, a sense that I am wasting time, a sense that time is ticking away on my life and ministry. 

 

Rev. Taylor says it took about seven years, but that finally her commitment to a fuller Shabbat has changed her life.  We Christians take an hour here or there on Sunday and call it Sabbath.  “It’s not enough,” she says. “The biblical Shabbat was a full day, about 25 hours, actually.  You haven’t had the experience until you’ve done it for the full 25 hours for a couple of years at minimum.”

 

Seven years of Shabbat?  For a Christian, Protestant, non-monastic, preacher?  Are you kidding? “The first couple of years,” she says, “I paced as much as I rested.  But by year three I came to count on Sabbath the same way I count on food or breath.  I could work like a demon the other six days of the week as long as I knew the 7^th was coming.  For the first time in my life, I could rest without leaving home.  With sundown on the Sabbath, I stopped seeing the dust balls, the bills, and the laundry.  They were still there, but they had lost their power over me.  I lived as if the Kingdom of God had come and when I did, the Kingdom came, for 25 hours at least.  Now, when I know Shabbat is near I can feel anticipation bubbling up inside of me.  Shabbat is no longer a good idea or even a spiritual discipline for me – it’s an experience of divine love that swamps both body and soul – it is the weekly practice of eternal life.”

 

Now, I’m not suggesting that our church adopt Shabbat regulations, but I’ve been to Israel enough to know how observant Jews crave the Sabbath.  Their very greeting changes from “Shalom” to “Shabbat Shalom,” as if this day requires something different, something celebratory, even in our most casual connections.  Perhaps, at its core, Shabbat Shalom means something like “Festina Lente -- Hurry Slowly – You’ve hurried through the week, now take time to rest, to celebrate life and God.” 

 

So increasingly, I crave retreat.  I’m not talking about vacations, which are often more exhausting than one’s day-to-day life, nor certainly am I talking about clergy conferences and Leadership functions such as I will be made to endure beginning tomorrow.  I’m speaking of brief sabbaticals of rest, moments of withdrawing for worship, meditation and prayer, for writing something other than sermons/devotionals/funerals. 

 

I feel the need to apologize that I can only describe this from the perspective of ministry.  I leave it to you to translate into your own occupation, your own need for re-energizing reprieve in order to stay refreshed, creative, sharp, fulfilled.

 

Perhaps you can translate the words of the late Henri Nouwen, one of modern Christianity’s best known writers, into your own occupation, as he spoke to ministers about this need for Festina Lente.   “Your being present to your community may require times of absence, prayer, writing, or solitude.   (Times of absence) allow you to be deeply present to your people and speak words that come from God in you.  When it is part of your vocation to offer your people a vision that will nurture them . . . it is crucial that you give yourself the time and space to let that vision mature in you and become an integral part of your being.  Your community needs you, but maybe not as a constant presence.  Your community also needs your creative absence.  You might need certain things that the community cannot provide.  For these you may have to go elsewhere from time to time.  This does not mean you are selfish, abnormal, or unfit . . . it means that your way of being present to your people necessitates personal nurturing of a special kind.  Do not be afraid to ask for these things.  Doing so allows you to be faithful to your vocation.”

 

Jesus seems to agree, calling his disciples to a private place and, when he put his disciples on the boat to Bethsaida, retreating into the surrounding Galilean hills to pray alone.  His ministry, the crowds seeking his words and his touch, his love and his grace, made his a life full of hurry.  The Jesus of Mark Moves, but also seeks to counter-balance that movement with rest. 

 

Our goal-oriented lifestyles tend to look at such times as waste and ask, “What’s the point of that, what is it achieving, what is it getting done?”  It doesn’t seem, at first glance, to fit into our larger objective.  We go to school to get a job.  We get a job to make money.  We make money to buy stuff.  We work harder to make more money to buy more stuff.  The “hurry” element of our existence is beyond question and, in Western culture, imperative.  But the “slowly” element, we learn soon enough, is just as vital. 

 

Life goes wrong when the “hurry” element becomes our sole concern, and life goes wrong when the “slowly” element becomes our sole concern.  We need both in order to be Centered.  Festina Lente.  Both are important for spiritual formation, for living in such a way that is more than earning and amassing, as if life could pitifully be contained in an office cubicle and a parking space.  The really sacred thing to which we are called is not a thing at all – it is time.  Not space, not things that can be measured.  Time is holy.  Time is the very first thing called holy by God , “God sanctified Shabbat, and called it holy.”

 

If this sanctuary is a sacred place, a cathedral of God’s presence, this day is a cathedral in time – a day when we learn, not to have but to be; not to own but to give; not to control, but to share; a day when we learn to say “No” to ourselves, in the name of a higher “Yes,” a day when slowness opens our hearts to recognize the true meaning behind all our hurry. 

 

My friends, the first Oxymoron for Christian Living which I offer you today, the Oxymoron of Centeredness which will prepare us for other truths of the spirit . . . is, Festina Lente!

 

Sources and notes:

“Sabbath Resistance,” an essay by Barbara Brown Taylor in The Christian Century, May 31, 2005.

 

Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love, Image Books, 1996, page 68.          

 

Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Sabbath, Harper Collins, 1951.