We Are All Prisoners

Deuteronomy 5:12-15; Luke 1:46-56

A Sermon Preached by Donald Mackenzie

December 4, 2005

University Congregational United Church of Christ

Seattle, Washington

“Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt…” Deuteronomy 5:15a

We are all prisoners of some kind aren’t we? At one time or another, we are all held captive by money, art, sex, politics, religion, violence, fear, anxiety, (the list may seem endless.) Perhaps it should end with we are all held captive, in this culture, by the absence of Sabbath.

This second sermon on the topic of Sabbath focuses on the liberating dimension of Sabbath. Last week Catherine’s sermon focused on rest and waiting, the central feature of Sabbath. One of the important consequences of this rest and waiting is liberation and our reading from the Book of Deuteronomy includes a phrase that is missing from the version of the Ten Commandments in Exodus: “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.” (Deuteronomy 5:15) It is the word “therefore” that seems to be key to this phrase. God created Sabbath because we were not free. So Sabbath can liberate us. The fundamental evidence for this reality is found in the Magnificat, the song of a woman set free by the love of God.

A couple of weeks ago, I experienced Sabbath at several levels in several different ways but the most dramatic were two events. Flying into Tel Aviv at dusk and sitting by the window I could see the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean and, with my heart in my throat, I remember thinking, “It’s really there. I really did live there. I didn’t just dream it.” Judy and I were evacuated from Lebanon during the Six-Day War in June of 1967 and we haven’t been back. When we left, we didn’t know we weren’t coming back. Though Israel and Lebanon are right next to each other and the Israeli and Palestinians landscapes were so similar I felt reconnected with that very defining experience. I called Judy and told her that even though she was here in Seattle, she was also there. It was an experience of taking in a reality that God was providing for me and it was liberating.

On our trip we spent six days in and around Jerusalem and Bethlehem, two days near the Dead Sea and then three days up in the Galilee before returning to Tel Aviv and our trip home. That last Saturday, Sabbath or Shabat, we were by the Sea of Galilee and I had the opportunity to do a teaching on the story in the Gospel of John where Jesus appears to the disciples for a third time after the resurrection. There in the morning mist Jesus is standing on the shore and the disciples are out fishing—they have returned to the familiar in the wake of the crucifixion. This story contains a healing moment for Peter because as Jesus commissions him for ministry the commissioning takes three parts corresponding to the three denials the week before. We had experienced the need for healing on the first day of the trip when we visited the Church of St. Peter Gallicantu, the location of Peter’s three denials of Jesus. It all seemed to be the perfect frame for the trip—we began with the need for forgiveness, this is where we all are, and we ended for the experience of forgiveness—something each of us needs—but I learned that morning, we must be free, we must be liberated, to receive it.

When I finished my part and Jamal Rahman began with his comments about forgiveness from the Islamic perspective, Rabbi Ted Falcon pulled me aside and said, “I have an idea.” This is the Sea of Galilee. Let’s baptize everyone.” I was temporarily beset with fears. We don’t baptize anyone without doing it in the context of our worship. I didn’t want to make Christians of any of our Jewish brothers and sisters, so with my head swimming, I suggested that anyone Jewish who wanted to be baptized could consider it a blessing. Anyone Christian who had already been baptized could consider it a reaffirmation of baptism. Anyone who had not been baptized and who really wanted the sacrament could talk with me about coming here for baptism during worship. At the same time that I was doing this, Rabbi Ted was doing a mikva—the Jewish ritual cleansing that was the basis for John’s sense of baptism and Jamal was using water for an Islamic ritual. As far as I know everyone did all three and I will never forget the tears and sense of healing and the image of God in the face of every person on that morning by the Sea of Galilee. Something had happened on our trip, something involving our observance of Sabbath that permitted this healing moment.

I hasten to add that for Christian people, the Sabbath is observed not on the seventh day but on the first day, Sunday. In fact every Sunday is not only Sabbath, it is also a witness to the resurrection of Jesus, an event where we learn over and over again and in many different ways that God continually is making everything new through forgiveness, liberation and recreation.

Sabbath is liberating. But to what end? Just for our own personal pleasure? No, God calls each person to respond to the need to help with the recreation, the healing, the salvation of the world. We need the being dimension of Sabbath to strengthen the doing dimension in our activities of daily living. This morning we will have the opportunity to write letters to lobby our congress via Bread for the World. Recently over 700 million dollars has been cut from the Food Stamp program, a move that will push 230,000 people from the program. And on the broader, international level, we are calling for an end to extreme poverty, hunger and disease, this in the week of World AIDS Day. These letters can make a difference and this sort of doing can not only come from our liberation but also increase it. Stop by the Bread for the World table in the narthex after worship.

And so on this day, let us resolve, each of us, to begin creating Sabbath space in our lives, giving thanks to God for the gracious gift of forgiveness and recreation and for the news announced to Mary that can now be heard by each one of us. Let me conclude with this quote from Archbishop Oscar Romero:

“This is the Christian’s joy: I know that I am a thought in God, no matter how insignificant I may be—the most abandoned of beings, one no one think of. Today when we think of Christmas gifts, how many outcasts no one thinks of! Think to yourselves, you that are outcasts, you that feel you re nothing in history: “I know that I am a thought in God. Would that my voice might reach the imprisoned like a ray of light, of Christmas hope—might say also to you, the sick, the elderly in the home for the aged, the hospital patients, you that live in shacks and shantytowns, you coffee harvesters trying to garner your only wage for the whole year, you that are tortured: God enternal purpose has thought of you. God loves you and, like Mary, he incarnates that thought in the womb. Thanks be to God. Amen.