Sermon: Sabbath as resistance

Sermon: Sabbath as resistance

Text: Luke 13: 31-35

* Many direct quotes from the Walter Brueggemann's Sabbath as Resistance are included in this sermon.

Two summers ago, Lynda Unfried, Erica Young, John Badertscher and I made our first visit to the Woodydell Housing community on St. Annes Road. This visit was planned after John shared some of his concerns at the Council meeting, asking "What would have to happen so that folks in any one of the pockets of poverty around us would know that we see them, care about them, and are ready to share food with them and listen to their voices?"

During our first visit I didn’t realize that not only were we cautious first-time visitors; we were pilgrims in learning the art of neighbouring. We passed by an abandoned square of community garden that showed, by then, only small traces that it was once tended by “Green Thumb Community Participants.” They called the garden “Woodydell Super Garden.” (As you see the words in the screenshot of the newsletter, on the screens for you.) The community garden had been “alive and thriving” until 2013 when Manitoba Housing decided to pave over the garden as part of their plan to renovate the Housing complexes. Instead of growing things, the plan was to set up tables with sun umbrellas and chairs on the newly paved concrete yard. Why? Our group didn’t get a satisfactory answer, just as the concerned staff didn’t successfully get the answers from the Housing corporation.

The community garden had been and could have continued to be a place where the residents would not only grow food for their daily needs but also feed their sense of belonging to the earth; the sense that the earth is self-sustaining and also serves as our connection to this planet, to all that has made and sustains us. Recollecting the moment when our group walked past the garden, I now realize that I was a pilgrim, a truth reconfirmed when John recommended that I read Sabbath as Resistance, written by Walter Brueggemann, for further reflection. And here is the book: Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now. In this second week of Lent, I would like to invite us to take a time of retreat to feed our awareness of the importance of keeping the Sabbath in our lives; how it becomes an act of resistance and alternative. I believe that it also sheds the light of meaning upon how we take up residence in the Kingdom of God.

Here, we need a definition of Sabbath. The Sabbath sanctifies time through prescribed forms of rest and inaction. "On this day, certain workaday activities and ordinary busyness are suspended and brought to a halt. In their stead, a whole host of ways of resting the body and mind are cultivated." Those words are from Michael Fishbane, who continues on, explaining, "One enters the sphere of inaction through divestment, and this release affects all the elements of the workaday* sphere. Business activity and exchange of money are forbidden, and one is urged not just to desist from commerce but to develop more interior spheres of settling the mind from this type of agitation...

Slowly, under these multiple conditions, a sense of inaction takes over, and the day does not merely mark the stoppage of work or celebrate the completion of creation, but enforces the value that the earth has a gift of divine creativity, given to humankind in sacred trust. On the Sabbath, the practical benefits of technology are laid aside, and one tries to stand in the cycle of natural time."

The choice of an economic image by Fishbane, "Divestment" suggests that we should consider the Sabbath as an alternative to the endless demands of economic reality, more specifically the demands of market-driven ideology. A great example we can see of the image of divestment or ‘escape’, comes from the story of Exodus: the exodus from Pharaoh's insatiable thirst for production. In the story, Israel is delivered from Pharaoh's anxiety system and comes to the wilderness; there, Israel is given bread that it is not permitted to store up. But even more remarkable than the daily gift of Manna - provision is made for the Sabbath. Israel cannot store up bread for more than a day; except on the sixth day Israel may store up enough for the seventh day so that everyone can rest on that day. This unexpected provision is surely a sign that this bread of life is not under the demanding governance of Pharaoh; it is under the sustaining rule of the creator God. Even in the wilderness with scarce resources, God mandates that Israel pause for the Sabbath.

We are very familiar with the dramatic, triumphant story of Exodus, where even the sea splits in two, allowing the Israelites to escape from slavery. I wonder what  the story might inspire in us if we ask how this biblical story can be translated into what Pharaoh’s oppression would represent today. Have we escaped it? Where are we in the story - still in slavery? At the edge of the sea? Are we in the wilderness? The experience of oppression can be subjective; any situation that prevents us from fully enjoying freedom can be our oppression. I would like to focus today on Pharaoh’s “anxiety system” that demands and is designed to produce more and more surplus. (picture) More bricks. (Picture) More storage rooms. Let's hear some of the Pharaoh's words in Exodus to learn what his anxiety-driven, production-demanding program sounds like. (Before the service, ask some church members to read the following, shouting them from the pews)

"Why are you taking the people away from their work? Get to your labours!” (Exodus 5:4)

"...Yet you want them to stop working!" (v. 5)

"You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks as before; let them go and gather straw for themselves. But you shall require of them the same quantity of bricks as they have made previously; do not diminish it, for they are lazy." (vv. 7-8)

"You are lazy, lazy; that is why you say, 'Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord.' Go now, and work; for no straw will be given you but you shall still deliver the same number of bricks. You shall not lessen your daily number of bricks." (vv. 17-19)

What do these statements and commands sound like to you? What emotions do they evoke as you hear them? How would you compare these demands with the messages we hear from our contemporary system and pursuit of commodity and productiveness?

Brueggemann suggests some of his translation of Pharaoh’s "bricks" to the contemporary terms that follow. 'The advertising game": one more product to purchase, one more car, one more cell phone, etc. An educational advantage, (increased government funding to private schools, education as a privilege, not a right), supplementary extracurricular activity that keeps families on the move and in their cars every day, an expansive and aggressive military. Over-production and abuse of the land. Violence. In this anxiety-driven Pharaonic system, in the interest of commodity and increased power and wealth for a few at the cost of all, we not only are denied our right to live and recover a full sense of self but we also live with a sense of danger that redefines our neighbours - global and local - as slaves, threats, rivals and competition.

The idea of Sabbath cannot be reduced to Sunday morning services. Yet, gathering to explore the true meaning of worshipping God - anxiety-free creator, our Maker - on Sundays, I believe, can be our way to participate in the creation liturgy that expresses our resistance to the contemporary Pharaonic system which keeps urging to us to "work, work, work, improve, improve, improve, increase, increase, increase, have more, want more, do more."

Sabbath is not Sunday. It can be symbolically and realistically any date of the week, any portion of the day, that we can find within our prescribed limits (schedules), in which we can recreate the creation liturgy or creation relationship with God to produce, simply, rest. The Sabbath is relationship (covenant) resisting commodity (bricks.) The benefit of having retreat, a deliberate, regular, turning away from the workaday* world cannot be exaggerated.

Faith produces a trust-based lifestyle and altruistic behaviour. Just imagine what can happen when we believe that the Creator is anxiety-free and we are invited to just imitate God's way of being. This world of ours would be anxiety-free! When we think of it, it is amazing - God exhibits no anxiety about the life-giving capacity of creation. God knows the world will hold, the plants will perform, and the birds and the fish and the beasts of the field will prosper. Instead of covering the earth with cement, we could cover the earth with tenderness and care. That’s the way of being envisioned by Jesus; it’s how we become a resident of the Kingdom of God, it’s how the Kingdom of God resides in our thoughts, emotions, spirituality, in our body, and in our relationships. Instead of looking at a plot of earth and thinking, “More bricks!’, we could be thinking of the potential of that soil for daily sustenance of the body and soul, or even of the simple pleasure of digging our hands into the dirt and holding on to the roots of the earth, our existence and our home. May we be blessed in our pilgrimage of exploring the meaning and the importance of keeping the Sabbath - by recreating the liturgical time of creation; holding up the sacred in relationship with our Maker and in the art of neighbouring.

* Many direct quotes from the Walter Brueggemann's Sabbath as Resistance are included in this sermon.

The Epiphany sermon (3): The Glory is... ,Transfiguration Sunday, 2016

Sermon: The Glory is…   

Texts: Exodus 34:29-35, Luke 9:28-36

Today's Gospel tells us that, "While Jesus was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white." Moses and Elijah appeared in glory, talking to Jesus about his imminent departure.

Epiphany is not a single event - this is the third epiphany. The new star that guided the Magi was the first epiphany. Jesus' baptism - the second epiphany, with the splitting of the heavens, the dove descending and the voice of God affirming Jesus as the beloved Son. Now the transfiguration - another brilliant kind of epiphany with such details as the mountain, Moses, Jesus' face and clothes changing to be dazzling white, the voice, the glory! The story of Epiphany - the manifestation of light - tells the identity and the destiny of Jesus.  This epiphany of transfiguration tells of Jesus’ departure.

He must go to Jerusalem, proclaim and suffer - and die.  Before Jesus begins his ministry, Jesus receives heaven's confirmation as the Divine Son in baptism. In today's story, Jesus receives Heaven's confirmation again before he turns towards Jerusalem and towards the glory on the cross. Today is the last Sunday of the season of Epiphany. We are in transition to the season of Lent, the season of passion.

(Picture) It’s both painful and beautiful that God reveals God's love toward Jesus, as the sovereign son and the suffering servant, with a garment of light - a light of dazzling brightness. It is “a light from heaven, brighter than the sun (Acts 26:13)”  - the description Acts uses to illustrate Saul’s experience of the risen Jesus.

The flood of light, the glory in its dazzling brightness, which the text calls, “white” is beyond any parallel, hard to translate into our ordinary experiences. It is Divine.

But - if the only thing we take away from this story is the brilliance of the light, the glory of the light, we are hearing just half of God’s story.  

In the following scene, what appears is a cloud. A cloud that overshadows. A dense, dark, thick cloud that terrifies Peter, James and John as they enter it. Peter reveals his ignorance and inability to understand what is happening before his eyes, by saying to Jesus, "Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah!” He’s insisting on settlement, permanence, not knowing that the conversation Jesus had with Moses and the prophet embraces the opposite, "departure.”

I wonder about the composition of this cloud. Why do we see a cloud here? Is the appearance of a cloud a report about the actual weather conditions on the mountain? Is it accidental? Does it make the story more dramatic? Many Gospel stories are not just reports; they are parables. Every word has its reason to be written, is necessary, and informs us about the nature of God, people and the world.

Since the earliest imaginings of the Hebrew people, the Bible witnesses that the glory of God appears in the form of a cloud. God tells Moses, "I am going to come to you in a dense cloud." The Bible states that "The glory of the Lord resided on Mt. Sinai and the cloud hid it for six days,”; this is the context of the first story we heard this morning. When the cloud envelops the mountain, Moses goes up to God. Cloud is the tent, the canopy, the dwelling presence of God. Many of us remember the familiar story of God guiding the Hebrew people out of the hostile empire, Egypt, into the wilderness, to the promised land. In their exodus journey God was a pillar of cloud in the daytime and a pillar of fire in the night. Clouds of glory have long been a sacred symbol of God's presence, not terror, not secrecy, not incomprehensibility, but protection, saving the people of God from human enemies and non-human wilderness.

I’m interested in exploring more about God’s glory and how it is related to our experience of life. What transforming meaning does it have for our lives?  

We often hear others say,  “Glory be to God”. My first encounter with that praise was when I watched the Miss Korea national beauty contest on TV. Apparently 30 % of the Korean population self-identifies as Christian. So, it’s no surprise that many of the beauty pageant winners are Christians, and when they come up on stage with tears and pride, they say “I would like to give thanks to my family and all glory to God.” As if they had been trained, raised with the idea that Glory is success. Glory is triumph. Glory is light, purity, all that represents the brightness of life, as opposed to the dark, the shadow, insecurity, ambiguity, failure, death.

However, when we read about glory in the Bible with openness and a different reading strategy, some stories teach us that we need to see darkness differently; we need to see God and Glory and Messiah and the cross differently.  

We might think of God's glory as distant, ethereal, unearthly, supernatural, as pure mystery, yet today’s transfiguration story inspires us to see that God’s glory surrounds the humans, the mountain, the place where the disciples were lost in sleep, not only in dazzling white, but also in the dark clouds.

We might think that God's glory affirms the supremacy of light against darkness. We learn that  oppositional viewpoint, the binary of light and dark, very early. Perhaps in Sunday School, with the first chapter of Genesis: God calls the light “good”, so that dark, as the absence of light, must be “bad.” Early western modernity, colonization, excuses for slavery “systematically encoded ignorance, inferiority, and evil" as darkness. The "New World”, as the European narrative went, "was formed out of the darkness beyond the sea, out of subjugated, dark-skinned populations." African skin was translated through Biblical quotes as "The curse of Ham" or the "Mark of Cain.” Blackness is condemned as fault, inferiority, stain.

I wonder whether the light supremacism which has a very important place in our Christian symbolism must be a permanent one?

We are quite familiar with one theological doctrine that originated from St. Augustine: creatio ex nihilo, meaning: God's creation/God creates out of nothing. In Genesis, God says “Let there be light" and we think it means that the light displaces the darkness and puts it in its place as chaos, identifies it as evil. In this understanding the light has no relation to the dark. Light has  also been used to represent male reason, and Dark, feminine confusion.

Today's transfiguration story tells us that "Then from the cloud came a voice that said, "This is my Son, my chosen; listen to him.” Interestingly, we discover that in today's story, God does not speak from the light of "dazzling white", but from within the thick, dense cloud, which is not gray, (which would not be "terrifying" darkness), but rather brilliantly and possibly, a "black incandescense." (Catherine Keller)

The story of Jesus' transfiguration does not tell us to simply be amazed by the dazzling white light that may be as bright as the light of a million fluorescent light bulbs or the focused power of the noonday Sun. This story teaches us to be amazed by the possibility of finding a new luminosity within us and within God's glory that reveals itself in both the light and the dark cloud, in the white and in the black. In Aesthetics in Blackness, Bell Hooks says, "Racism has created an aesthetic that wounds us, a way of thinking about beauty that hurts." The supremacy of whiteness, the rule of light, hurts human conceptions of justice and possibility, the full potential of our ability to appreciate God in each and every thing.

Where is the purest white? It is as abstract as it is almost non-existent and not real. The dark can never be white, and never bright enough.

The white supremacy, the light supremacy hurts.

The light is just half the story of God's Mystery. Peter fails to understand that Jesus and the followers of Jesus must take their own departure.

Peter fails to see that he needs to journey with Jesus towards the valley, Jerusalem, towards the cross, not settle on the mountain. We too must journey on in our faith, and not settle in one brightly- lit spot.   

New theological reflections challenge us to decolonize our way of approaching the old, treasured symbolism of light and dark, white and black, purity and duality, look past a facile, self-serving interpretation - look into the depths of God. We are encouraged to learn our God; our God is never a God of ‘segregation.’

What is the dark? The dark is none other than that which exceeds our knowledge; our security; our arrogance; our familiarity. God’s glory gleams in dark, in flesh, in matter. The cloudy radiance can never be truly banished - it is present in our locations, our lives, it teaches us. In the end, Peter turns his head toward the cloud - the black incandescence, the black effervescence, and hears God say, “This is my Son, my chosen. Listen to him!” God speaks to us from the cloud, from the force field of all colours, all beauty, all reason, all power, all in God and God in all.  

The Epiphany sermon (2): The Shepherds

Sermon: The Shepherds

Text: Luke 4:14-21

On January 3rd, in our first Sunday morning service of the year, I invited us to imagine who the Magi are and what it means to follow the light of the moving star. We saw the Magi as all who are drawn to the light that directs us to the path of new hopes and new dreams. We are still in the season of Epiphany; in this season we reflect on the light of God that is manifested to different people in different places. In our era, light is plentiful; even at night we possess an affluence of lights. The nights in Winnipeg are soberly lit, I would say, compared to some metropolitan cities like Seoul, where I came from, whose nights dazzle with glaring neon signs that stay ablaze until the break of dawn. In the old times (before the invention of gas lighting) ordinary people, the majority of the population - could not afford wax candles. When night fell, it was dark, very dark. We’ve learned how to domesticate the night with artificial light - it’s easy to forget what a spectacle the blazing night sky of the First Christmas must have been.

The Christmas story and Epiphany are burnished with the imagery of light. These stories are filled with light, radiance, luminosity, glory, revelation. We are told that the Magi were guided by the star to show them the way to the infant Jesus. When it comes to the shepherds, they encountered not only the star but also, “The multitude of the heavenly host”, the firmament ablaze with God’s glory; which means that not just the single extraordinary star, but starlight, in its complete brilliant array, met those who were watching over their flocks that night. Then an angel (a being of light) appeared and announced to the shepherds the good news that a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord, had been born for them.

I invite you to wonder with me what is so special about these particular shepherds that the story needs to mobilize all the celestial lights of the midnight firmament to greet them on top of the already astounding spectacle of an angel in a blaze of light. Who do the shepherds represent? Who are they? Compared to the Magi, they sound ordinary, young and naive, multiple and random - anyone could be the shepherds - in other words, they could be anyone.

Who are the shepherds? The shepherds in the Christmas story were from the marginalized peasant class, the people who most acutely experienced oppression and exploitation by Rome and its client rulers. They were the "lowly" and “hungry" in the song of Mary (Mary’s Magnificat). And they are the first ones to hear of Jesus' birth. The Messiah and his mission are focused primarily upon the peasant class, the poor, the despised and deprived. John Dominic Crossan emphasizes that the only city that Jesus ever went to was Jerusalem. Otherwise, he was active in the countryside, in small towns and villages where the peasant population lived.

In these two Gospel stories that are presented in the season of Epiphany, I see a very important theme that links the nativity story of the manifestation of light and today’s Gospel story. The light that fascinates the shepherds foreshadows what we hear today from the Gospel of Luke, which records the first public speech of Jesus after his baptism. In today’s story, in the Synagogue, Jesus declares, citing from Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor… He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.” The first concern of the Messiah, the Saviour who delivers Israel, is to bring good news to the poor.

Now, the Bible says he "stood up" to read and he chose to read from the book of Isaiah. As he recites the Servant Song, Jesus declares that God has “anointed” him. He is the Anointed One:  the King of the Jews, (in the Hebrew Bible, the King is the One who has been anointed.), the Messiah, the Christ, the Saviour (which means the rescuer, the deliverer.) The coming of Jesus gives light to those who sit in darkness; the result is the guidance of our feet to the way of peace, through the rescue, deliverance, liberation, protection and healing of the poor. This vision of peace counters, opposes, and turns over the program of Roman imperial theology and its theory of peace by violence, force, and domination. If Jesus declares that the bringing of good news to the poor is the reason for the Messiah’s coming and the Messiah’s mission, what would be the first thing that we, the followers, need to be concerned about?

Reading our Bible with care enables us to see another very important point: the first public word of Jesus, apart from reading Scripture is, “today”. The first public word of Jesus that was recorded in writing is “today.” “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” “Today” is never allowed to become yesterday, or to slip back into a vague ‘someday’.

We might wonder what are the differences between the movement of baptism that was initiated by John the Baptist and the kingdom movement of Jesus. First, what these two people share in common: both lived in the same matrix of Jewish life, part of a people who suffered immensely under the boots of the Roman Empire and client rulers like Herod. In their faith, God is just and God is in control of the world, but the reality that they had to reckon with was that the world is unjust, particularly for them. Jewish people shared a great anticipation and a desperate longing to see the Messiah coming and turning the world upside down, to see God’s justice establish a totally different, peaceful order to the world. They had the Messianic belief that God would eventually come down and clean up the mess of the world and destroy the evil powers, recover the good order of creation, and deliver Israel from its oppressors. That is what the coming of the Kingdom of God meant to most people.

John the Baptist proclaimed that the Kingdom of God is imminent, which means it is coming, soon - it is near, but not yet here. John taught people how to receive baptism, a symbolic reenactment of the Exodus. He calls the people to come to him and be baptized in the water of the River Jordan; in this way his people relive the Israelites’ crossing of the Jordan River in their journey following the exodus from Egypt. By baptism in the river, they leave behind their sins, which are washed off, forgiven, as they enter into the promised land as a purified people. John believes that as they cleanse their heart, they prepare the way of God’s coming. John points to the future as the point of time when all will happen, the eschaton (meaning the ‘end’) being projected into the future. In the end, and it is very soon, the world will turn upside down, all earthly messes will be cleaned up, all injustices turned to justice; it is God’s work to do, as long as we prepare the way.  

Now, what Jesus proclaims is that the Kingdom of God is present; with Christ, in our hearing, as the Word dwelling among people and in our hearts. Jesus makes sure that people understand that there’s no need to point to the future; no matter how soon the future is, ’soon’ can be … just about ‘forever’ when it means ‘whenever.’ John says the Kingdom of God comes ‘at any time soon’, yet it is not the trembling reality of ‘already’ that transforms here and now and each individual. Jesus’ point is clear: the eschaton (the end) is now. The beginning, the transformation of the earth, is also now. The future has no effect on now. It is not only chronologically impossible, but only what is already in being and becoming can have any effect on the future. And the process of new creation is interactive; God won’t do without us and we can’t do without God, today.

The light that guided the Magi, the light that enraptured the hearts of the shepherds shines today. On Jan 3, I was able to identify myself with the Magi as the Gentile, the foreigner, the dreamer, the seeker, one of the divergent people who are drawn to the light. Today, I admit that it is a harder task for me to see myself in the story of the shepherds in the Christmas story and in the real world. Through my life, I have been separated from the poor - protected from poverty and all those who live with it. I grew up within a community of Christians, yet I rarely had the chance to make any meaningful contact and relationship with the life of the poor. Most churches I know and have been a part of are not inclusive of the poor, beyond the point of being a good institution which practices charity. Yet we hear today the kingship of the Messiah, the love of God, is radically inclined to hear the outcry of the poor, the despised and the ignored, in our society and in the world.

Our promise as a church, as a people of God, ought to be that our liberation will be bound with theirs. We will each carry our torch to enlighten ourselves and spark the torches of all lives around us, because, as Gloria Steinem said, ‘Only if each of us has a torch, (to enlighten) will there be enough light.’ So that we, together, create the path of the star and the full firmament of stars that are not fixed but moving now, our dreams echoing God’s.