Multiple Faith Perspectives

Sabbath, Winner tells us, is something special: “The Sabbath Queen.”1 She writes of a discipline, with so many restrictions and injunctions, with so much romance one can hardly not want to practice it. She writes of nostalgia of “a true cessation from th rhythms of work and world, a time wholly set apart, and, perhaps above all, a sense that the point of Shabbat, the orientation of Shabbat, is toward God.”2 It is God waiting for us to keep our appointment, like the two men in Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.”
Saturday my heart was beating fast the half-hour trip to Bay City. My thoughts oscillated between apprehension and a fierce attention to NPR’s Weekend Edition (Waiting for Godot is being staged in a destroyed neighborhood in New Orleans). Meanwhile I have my own appointments to keep. It was Saturday morning and I had yet to start my sermon on Zacchaeus. The week had conspired against me. Monday I spent the day trying to visit a parishioner in the hospital. Tuesday I spent the morning being selected for a Jury. Then lunch and to the office to finish reading for my class. Wednesday we had breakfast with some of our congregation, talking about not much at all. We left early because Foster was feeling sick. I then rolled 200 Pentecostal Evangels to hand out at the door that night. It was Halloween. Thursday we spent the whole day, dawn to dusk preparing, driving, anticipating and answering our ordination interviews. Friday I spent the day as juror on a drunk driving case. So much occupied my thoughts as I drove, I couldn’t imagine that this had only been one week. So much seemed so incongruous with my mission.
My mission itself was a source of anxiety. Instead of sleeping in, and watching cartoons with the kids I was off to fulfill a challenge for my masters course. I was going to a Sabbath Service at Temple Israel. I asked Steve what he thought of my going, and if he’d been going lately.
“I have not - between health and some MAJOR confusion over faith - been attending anywhere. I am not even certain there are regular services at the synagogue in BC anymore . . . The congregation there is very, very small and very, very protective.”
He suggested I go somewhere else, but I was out of options. So with not a little trepidation, I was on my way. Somehow NPR and all my distracted thoughts made the time pass quickly. I was already in Bay City and early. I drove by the synagogue to see that the parking lot was empty. I proceeded on to The Harvest, where I should have gotten my tea before sitting down and talking with the klatch of geezers I knew from my days of working there. By the time I looked at the clock it was time to run.
I didn’t even get across the parking lot before an older lady asked, “Who are you?”
I told her, “I’m Chris Hooton, I’m from Sebewaing.” I didn’t want to give away too much. I didn’t want to be turned away as an outsider.

I went in and found it was time for Bible study. Every one I shook hands with was keenly interested in knowing my name. And here I was. In the midst of my insane week (for this week has meshed into another with only this little pit stop) I came to a community celebrating Shabbat Shalom. The stark contrast between the promised Sabbath peace and my own stressful experience of late, has created in me the same nostalgia and romance that gripped Winner. I need to introduce more Shabbat Shalom to my Sabbath.
After Bible study, we went into the sanctuary. I stuck close to a new convert to Judaism, who helped me figure out the ropes. I put on a yarmulke, and entered. We prayed, some in Hebrew, some in English, we stood praying together silently, and we sung together. The Rabbi gave a sermon from the day’s Torah reading, “The Life of Sarah,” which is in-fact about Abraham’s mourning for her. She talked about how Jew’s mourn for their dead, how to live the life now.
Winner’s description of the mourning process in Judaism intrigued me, all the more since I ran across a “Guide for the living”3 on Temple Israel’s website while preparing for my visit, which gave many of the details of Jewish custom surrounding death.
“Resurrection,” Rabbi Dorit said, “is a mystical part of Jewish tradition, but it is peripheral, what really matters is this life now.”
In this I heard echo’s of Winner’s assertion that, “[p]ractice is to Judaism what belief is to Christianity.”4
At the end of the service she read the names of those who’s yahrziet was this week. The anniversary of their deaths are marked by lighting a candle and praying the Kaddish. I flipped to the English translation as relatives of the those being honored prayed. I was Surprised to find that it wasn’t a lament, but rather a song of praise to an almighty God. “Even in the pit,” writes winner, “even in depression and loss and nonsense, still we respond to God with praise.”5
Winner also notes that the Kaddish requires community. We would do well to learn to uphold those who mourn in our midst with such intentional discipline.
Community was a big part of my experience at the synagogue. After the service I stuck around for a brunch. I imagine the early church love feast looked just like it. They started by drinking a glass of wine to sanctify the day and then broke the challa with some salt, the bread harkens back to the waving of the grain offering and substitutes for temple sacrifices. I marveled at how the custom is similar to the Eucharist.
The Rabbi’s husband said, “Of course, Jesus was a Jew!”
The Eucharist is one of the things I am most impressed with in my visits to the Catholic church. I am impressed by the sacramental, the reverential receiving of the actual blood and body of Christ. The Tuesday Morning mass I went to this week consisted of some short devotional material and the readings, but the centerpiece was the taking of Christ.
The first time I went to mass, although I knew I couldn’t take the Eucharist, I sat thinking about what would happen if I did. I was so convinced at that holy moment that the elements would become flesh and blood in my mouth, that I was worried about what would happen to my evangelical beliefs then. Of course in talking about it afterwards with Father John and the monks who were there for special services, the differences in our beliefs all but disappeared.
Winner talks about the power of the candles in creating for the Jew an atmosphere of worship. At Temple Israel, I saw the ner tamid, “the eternal light, which is never allowed to be extinguished,”6 hanging above the ark. I am reminded of the tabernacle at Holy Family. The tabernacle is where the consecrated host resides. In a real way the tabernacle is the physical dwelling place of Jesus. At Holy Family it is situated beneath a skylight, the shaft of light serving the same purpose as the ner tamid, namely to recall the pillar of fire, the real presence of God. I have often felt that presence in a powerful way in the Catholic sanctuary. I am not sure if it is because God, with me, reveals himself in the rich symbolism around me, or if my Catholic friends are right, and there is a mystical concentration of the presence of God in the tabernacle. (If that is the case, I would very much like to stick my head in there.) The Iconography, symbolic and liturgical richness of the ancient Catholic church could inform the Pentecostal gatherings of my tradition.
We need not be afraid of traditions and practices from unfamiliar sources such as Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox, or even Sufi, Buddhist and other mystic practices. We have the Spirit within us. The Spirit is the soul of the forms and disciplines, so long as we are engaging the practices in him, they will give life.