Advent OL 1 BFC 2018
Luke 1:46-55; Isaiah 60:1-3
December 2, 2018
We cannot understand how radically counter-cultural Sabbath
is unless we understand Sabbath story being written for people who have lived
in slavery and oppression. The Sabbath
story is written for people as they reflect back on that slavery and oppression
living in bondage, captivity, and exile.
That story always ends in one way . . . always . . ., “Remember, you
were once strangers, foreigners, immigrants, in Egypt, so shall you treat the
stranger, foreigner, or immigrant.”
Jewish scholar, Jeremiah Unterman, writes that within
the legal portion of the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, there are
more than 50 references to the resident stranger, foreigner, or immigrant, most
all of them positive.[1]
Care for the stranger is understood as imitatio Dei, imitating God through the
keeping of the commandments.[2]
Over and over again that familiar refrain, “remember
you were once strangers, foreigners, aliens, and immigrants. . . so shall you
be in the world.” We are to be people of
historical empathy and moral memory.[3]
“You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress them, for
you were strangers in the land of Egypt”(Ex.22:20).
“You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the
soul of the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Ex.23:9).
“The stranger who resides with you shall be to you
as one of your citizens; you shall love them as yourself, for you were
strangers in the land of Egypt” (Lev.19:34).
“You too must befriend the stranger, for you were
strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deut.10:19)
“You shall not hate an Egyptian, for you were
stranger in the Egyptian’s land” (Deut.23:8).
“Always remember that you were a
slave in the land of Egypt; therefore do I enjoin you to observe this
commandment” (Deut. 24:22)
In
ancient Mesopotamian tradition, proclamations of liberty were signaled by the
raising of a golden torch outside the entrance of the city or the released
region. A new day was proclaimed. A new song was to be sung. The oppression, violence, and injustice of
the former ruler were now proclaimed over and done. The golden torch proclaimed a day of amnesty
and jubilee, an area free, from oppressive taxes, “forced labor, and military
draft, cleared from debt and released from debt slavery.”[4] That torch proclaimed release, a radical act
of institutional justice.[5] Liberty and that torch went by the same
Hebrew name: derôr.
Later in Jewish story and mythology,
the torch becomes synonymous with the presence of God. That torch, that derôr,
is proclaimed in the book of Isaiah as the Jewish exiles hope for a release and
return to the promised land:
Arise! Shine!
For your light has come! The
glory of the Living God has risen upon you!
For the darkness covers the earth and the deep darkness the
peoples. But upon you, the Living God
shines. God’s glory appears over
you! And nations will walk toward your
light, and rulers to the brightness of your dawn! I will set Peace as your overseer, and
Justice as your taskmaster. No longer
will “Violence!” be heard in your land, “Devastation!” or “Destruction!” within
your borders. You will call your walls
“Salvation!” and your gates “Praise!”
The sun will no longer be your light by day, nor will the moon
illuminate your brightness. But the
Living God will be your light forever.[6]
We
quote that Scripture when Advent rolls around--to define the ministry and
mission of Jesus. Luke’s gospel
continues on in the book of Isaiah and quotes from the book of Isaiah as Jesus
announces his ministry at a synagogue in Nazareth. Here is that continuing scripture verse from
Isaiah:
The spirit of the
Living God is upon me, because the Living God has anointed me, has sent me to
bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim
derôr
(liberty) to captives, to open the prison
doors, to proclaim the year of amnesty.[7]
This
liberty, this derôr,
is to be done by the Jewish people in gratitude for their own liberation and
Exodus from the Egyptian Empire.
In contrast to a society which
commands the Jewish people to “work harder, work longer, and bring their
children”, the Sabbath teaching demands that there shall be days and years when
even slaves and beasts of burden shall not work and the land shall lie
fallow—unharvested and uncultivated. God
will provide and the poor will be able to glean the crop that is unharvested
Maybe you know
of such an Empire yourself that had its very own version of derôr. The people who live in the Empire I think of
has a woman holding a golden torch in one of its most prolific ports, outside
its largest city. Lady Derôr,
Lady Liberty stands proudly to welcome those who are burdened and laden down to
a place of rest, a place where the words “liberty”, “freedom”, “amnesty”, and “sanctuary”
are not so bastardized. These holy words
do not mean “freedom to oppress” and “an amnesty for too big to fail” and
“liberty to exploit” and “release to a golden parachute,” that they come to
mean “freedom to amass and hoard” and “liberty to indebt you with one more
credit card or one more home mortgage loan.”
We . . . we are
the courageous people who remember our stories so that the imitation of God and
solidarity with God might continue in our land.
We use holy words that show God’s kindness, mercy, and care in the world. And we hope against hope that these holy
words help to re-set us, our nation, and our world. The Holy Family, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,
makes its way as immigrants to Bethlehem and then as refugees to Egypt. We pray someone remembers. We pray that we might remember. May it
be so. May it be so. Amen.
[1] Jeremiah Unterman, Justice for All: How the Jewish Bible
Revolutionized Ethics (JPS Essential Judaism) (Lincoln, University of
Nebraska Press, 2017), p. 46
[2] Ibid, p. 33.
[3] Rabbi Barry L. Schwartz, “For
You Were Strangers in the Land of Egypt,” The
Jewish Standard, February 10, 2017, https://jps.org/for-you-were-strangers-in-the-land-of-egypt/.
[4] Richard H. Lowery, Sabbath and Jubilee (St. Louis
[5] Ibid.
[7] Isaiah 61:1-2; cf. Luke
4:17-19
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