Isaiah 58
St. John’s United Church Sunday Service – August 21st, 2016 Scripture: Isaiah 58:9-14 Reader: Brent McNeill Reflection: Rev. Karen Verveda SCRIPTURE READING:
Isaiah 58 9
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, 10 if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. 11 The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. 12 Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in. If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honourable; if you honour it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;* 14 then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken. 13
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REFLECTION: Isaiah 58:9-14 Saying Hello—Following the ‘Red Thread of Longing’ This week Canada's Indigenous and northern affairs minister wept as she apologized to Manitoba's Sayisi Dene people for the government's role in forcibly relocating them 60 years ago, a decision that led to hunger, violence and death. It was one more step in the long road towards Truth & Reconciliation that we as Canadians are walking. It is definitely one of the ways that this generation of Canadians is seeking to live into what the prophet Isaiah calls, “removing the yoke, the pointing the finger, the speaking of evil” and instead “offering food to the hungry and satisfying the needs of the afflicted.” Speaking at a ceremony held Tuesday afternoon in Tadoule Lake, Manitoba, Carolyn Bennett offering a formal apology on behalf of the Canadian government to survivors of the 1956 relocation saying, "Today I stand humbly before all of you and offer the following words: We are sorry. Sixty years ago, the government of Canada made a tragic and fatal decision that continues to impact all Sayisi Dene First Nation members to this day." On August 17 in 1956, a government plane arrived in Little Duck Lake, loaded more than 250 community members and flew them to the barren tundra outside Churchill, Manitoba. They were promised food, shelter and the means to make a living there. Instead, the community had to build shelters from the nearby garbage dump and survive on food scraps. A few years later, community members built unheated shacks a few kilometres away, in a small shantytown that they called Dene Village. There was no food or jobs. Alcohol-fuelled despair set in and deaths were commonplace. Some people froze, others were murdered or died in house fires. Female survivors said rape was common. By the time the government agreed to relocate the people to Tadoule Lake in 1973, the damage was done: of the 250 plus members who had been originally moved, 117 had died.
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"It is unbearable to consider what you lost during the years in Churchill," Bennett said. "No one, and no people, should have had to experience such treatment in Canadian society." The minister acknowledged that the federal government relocated the Sayisi Dene "without proper consultation, without explanation and without adequate planning" to locations far away from the traditional lands that had sustained them. She went on to say that, "This shameful chapter in Canada's history is one that stems from the pervasive legacy of colonialism—a legacy of disrespect, lack of understanding and unwillingness to listen." Along with the apology, the federal government is providing some financial compensation, a small amount of which is going to individual survivors, more than 80% of the money will be put in trust for community development. In addition, a monument has been established at Churchill cemetery showing some of the names of those who perished after the forced relocation. One survivor, Peter Thorassie, was nine years old when he was put on the plane. He responded to the apology saying, "Sixty years is a long time for an apology, but at least it's better than none.” Edna Jawbone, also relocated to the Dene Village with her family, says she's worked on healing from the experience, but going back to the community is still difficult for her. "All the hardships and the hard times that our people went through — it still hurts, just landing here. Like, it really hurt us." Chief Ernest Bussidor, who was born one month before the relocation, says that many in the community suffered post-traumatic stress. "I probably witnessed a lot more tragic events than I should have. A lot of children died. That kind of stuff never leaves you…. People freezing to death, fires, you name it." Assembly of First Nations’ National Chief, Perry Bellegarde says no apology or compensation can undo the suffering of the Sayisi Dene. But the apology is the first step toward healing. "You cannot achieve reconciliation without truth. That's why this apology is important. It acknowledges the severe assault on their children, their families, their human rights and Indigenous rights." It is clear, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, that removing the yoke of colonialism is one of our key learning edges as Canadians, as North Americans. And it is going to take the commitment of several generations to really rebuild the 3
ruins, raise up the foundations, repair the breach, and restore the ruins. But today we can celebrate new clarity and commitment that has led to this apology, to taking this step on the road of truth and reconciliation. I have no doubt that the prophet Isaiah would celebrate with us … I suspect he might also encourage us to deepen our reflection about what we are learning. He might encourage us to see the connections between what we are learning from our own experience and the wisdom that has been passed on to us by our ancestors in faith. In our reading today Isaiah connects removing the yoke of oppression with honouring the Sabbath. And we might consider how honouring the Sabbath might support or deepen our journey on the road of truth and reconciliation. Thomas Currie suggests that honouring the Sabbath is a spiritual practice that sets us free. That might be a surprising suggestion to some of us. One of my favorite preachers Barbara Brown Taylor playfully pokes fun at some of the ways that the church has practiced keeping the Sabbath saying “Depending on when and how you were raised, for all practical purposes the commandment might as well have read, ‘Remember the Sabbath day and keep it boring.’ It was the day you could not. You could wear blue jeans, could not play ball, could not ride bikes, could not go to the movies, could not do anything but go to church in the morning and again at night”. She suggests that if we were to read Leviticus 25 we would be reminded that Sabbath is intended to be a gift. We would be reminded that it was intended to be a gift not just for those who have voices to say how tired they are; but also for tired land, tired fields, tired vineyards, tired vines, and even tired grapes on the vines. We would also discover that Sabbath is not only about getting a little rest but it is about freeing slaves, forgiving debts, restoring property, and giving the land every seventh year off. In fact, on Friday evenings when three stars can be counted in the darkening sky, observant Jews light two Shabbat candles. They light one for each of the Sabbath commandments in the Torah. The first candle is lit as a reminder of the Sabbath commandment found in the book of Exodus:
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Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God: you shall not do any work—you, your son, or your daughter, your male or female slave, or your cattle, or the stranger who is within your settlements. For in six days God made heaven and earth and sea, and all that is in them, and God rested on the seventh day; therefore God blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. (Exodus 20:8-11) In the book of Exodus, Sabbath rest is based in the story of creation. On the seventh day God rested. And God did not just call the day of rest good, or very good. God blessed it and called it holy. And so the first Shabbat candle reminds the people, made in God’s image you too shall rest. The second candle is lit as a reminder of the second version of the Sabbath commandment found in the book of Deuteronomy. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God freed you from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. (Deuteronomy 5:15) In the book of Deuteronomy Sabbath rest is based in the story of the Exodus from Egypt. God’s people cried out to God. God heard them and sent Moses to free them from bondage in a land that was not home. Resting every seventh day is how God’s people remember their divine liberation. And so the second Shabbat candle announces, made in God’s image you too are free. You’d think that honouring the Sabbath would be a favourite commandment not to mention a simple one to keep. What’s not to like about freedom and rest? Who’d turn down an invitation to put your feet up and take a nap? And yet, today, we hear the prophet Isaiah warning against trampling the sabbath in the pursuit of our own interests and affairs and binding freedom with yokes of blame, hunger and affliction. It seems that honouring the Sabbath is something we have to deliberately choose, and doing so takes wisdom and practice. Thomas Currie, whom I mentioned earlier, suggests that the reason honouring the Sabbath requires some spiritual discipline is because it challenges the human desire, the human anxiety to be able to save oneself. He puts it pretty unequivocally, “All desire the power to save themselves. All.” The danger of being concerned only with our own salvation is that we become 5
blind. Our neighbours become invisible to us. The purpose of the Sabbath, he says, is to set us free from this affliction. Honouring the Sabbath is an invitation to rest from our labours, and to delight in the gifts God provides that cannot be bought or earned or brought forth through our own efforts. And as such it set us free to see each other, to see our neighbours, those who are different from us not as something to be used or as an object of pity or duty, but as a gift. The Sabbath is intended to help us discover and tap into a radical freedom such that we are free to forget ourselves (because we come to know that God will never forget us) and this is a freedom that offers extraordinary vision. It is the freedom that enables a despised Samaritan to stop and render aid when a priest and Levite have business elsewhere. Those who pass by scarcely notice the one by the side of the road. Only the Samaritan stops and turns his attention towards this other. The Samaritan is free to see the other and to recognize in him or her a child of God. It’s the freedom that enabled Nicky Hamblin to help Abbey get to her feet. All of this is worth reflecting on in these early days of “new beginnings and saying hello”. Thresholds, new beginnings, are a liminal space, and offer a holy opportunity to consider what has brought us to this moment, and what matters, and where and on what are we being called to focus our time and energy? Today we remember that Sabbath rest is key in grounding us as individuals and as a community in what matters. It is the place from which to begin. It frees us to see our neighbour, and to hear the deep cry of their heart. And this kind of attention to the deep needs of neighbours that helps us see what I call “red thread of longing’ that we can follow and that can help us find the path of justice and joy, and guide our journey. Honouring the Sabbath— taking some time every week to rest from our labours, and to delight in the gifts God provides—which we can do in lots of different ways … through gathering in community worship, singing praise, offering our prayers to God, sitting in quiet meditation, taking a moment to light a candle and remember someone who touched your life, sharing a meal around a common table—all these ways of resting in God and delighting in God’s gifts—set us free from the anxiety and the burden of saving ourselves. It reminds us we are held by something so much bigger than ourselves. And knowing this deep in our 6
hearts and bones grounds our capacity to be present in our “hellos” … the hellos we say as we greet each other on a Sunday morning, the hellos we say throughout the week as we meet those in our community and in world in which we find ourselves. Sabbath rest grounds our capacity to really see our neighbours and to really hear our neighbours needs and deep longings for healing and liberation. And attending to this longing for life will help us find our way as people and as a community and show us how the gifts and resources God has given us allow us to participate in bringing about God’s kindom of justice and joy. Then we shall call, and God will answer; we shall cry for help, and God will say, Here I am. May it be so. Amen.
7
Isaiah 58 9
Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, 10 if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. 11 The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. 12 Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in. If you refrain from trampling the sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honourable; if you honour it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs;* 14 then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth; I will feed you with the heritage of your ancestor Jacob, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken. 13
1
REFLECTION: Isaiah 58:9-14 Saying Hello—Following the ‘Red Thread of Longing’ This week Canada's Indigenous and northern affairs minister wept as she apologized to Manitoba's Sayisi Dene people for the government's role in forcibly relocating them 60 years ago, a decision that led to hunger, violence and death. It was one more step in the long road towards Truth & Reconciliation that we as Canadians are walking. It is definitely one of the ways that this generation of Canadians is seeking to live into what the prophet Isaiah calls, “removing the yoke, the pointing the finger, the speaking of evil” and instead “offering food to the hungry and satisfying the needs of the afflicted.” Speaking at a ceremony held Tuesday afternoon in Tadoule Lake, Manitoba, Carolyn Bennett offering a formal apology on behalf of the Canadian government to survivors of the 1956 relocation saying, "Today I stand humbly before all of you and offer the following words: We are sorry. Sixty years ago, the government of Canada made a tragic and fatal decision that continues to impact all Sayisi Dene First Nation members to this day." On August 17 in 1956, a government plane arrived in Little Duck Lake, loaded more than 250 community members and flew them to the barren tundra outside Churchill, Manitoba. They were promised food, shelter and the means to make a living there. Instead, the community had to build shelters from the nearby garbage dump and survive on food scraps. A few years later, community members built unheated shacks a few kilometres away, in a small shantytown that they called Dene Village. There was no food or jobs. Alcohol-fuelled despair set in and deaths were commonplace. Some people froze, others were murdered or died in house fires. Female survivors said rape was common. By the time the government agreed to relocate the people to Tadoule Lake in 1973, the damage was done: of the 250 plus members who had been originally moved, 117 had died.
2
"It is unbearable to consider what you lost during the years in Churchill," Bennett said. "No one, and no people, should have had to experience such treatment in Canadian society." The minister acknowledged that the federal government relocated the Sayisi Dene "without proper consultation, without explanation and without adequate planning" to locations far away from the traditional lands that had sustained them. She went on to say that, "This shameful chapter in Canada's history is one that stems from the pervasive legacy of colonialism—a legacy of disrespect, lack of understanding and unwillingness to listen." Along with the apology, the federal government is providing some financial compensation, a small amount of which is going to individual survivors, more than 80% of the money will be put in trust for community development. In addition, a monument has been established at Churchill cemetery showing some of the names of those who perished after the forced relocation. One survivor, Peter Thorassie, was nine years old when he was put on the plane. He responded to the apology saying, "Sixty years is a long time for an apology, but at least it's better than none.” Edna Jawbone, also relocated to the Dene Village with her family, says she's worked on healing from the experience, but going back to the community is still difficult for her. "All the hardships and the hard times that our people went through — it still hurts, just landing here. Like, it really hurt us." Chief Ernest Bussidor, who was born one month before the relocation, says that many in the community suffered post-traumatic stress. "I probably witnessed a lot more tragic events than I should have. A lot of children died. That kind of stuff never leaves you…. People freezing to death, fires, you name it." Assembly of First Nations’ National Chief, Perry Bellegarde says no apology or compensation can undo the suffering of the Sayisi Dene. But the apology is the first step toward healing. "You cannot achieve reconciliation without truth. That's why this apology is important. It acknowledges the severe assault on their children, their families, their human rights and Indigenous rights." It is clear, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, that removing the yoke of colonialism is one of our key learning edges as Canadians, as North Americans. And it is going to take the commitment of several generations to really rebuild the 3
ruins, raise up the foundations, repair the breach, and restore the ruins. But today we can celebrate new clarity and commitment that has led to this apology, to taking this step on the road of truth and reconciliation. I have no doubt that the prophet Isaiah would celebrate with us … I suspect he might also encourage us to deepen our reflection about what we are learning. He might encourage us to see the connections between what we are learning from our own experience and the wisdom that has been passed on to us by our ancestors in faith. In our reading today Isaiah connects removing the yoke of oppression with honouring the Sabbath. And we might consider how honouring the Sabbath might support or deepen our journey on the road of truth and reconciliation. Thomas Currie suggests that honouring the Sabbath is a spiritual practice that sets us free. That might be a surprising suggestion to some of us. One of my favorite preachers Barbara Brown Taylor playfully pokes fun at some of the ways that the church has practiced keeping the Sabbath saying “Depending on when and how you were raised, for all practical purposes the commandment might as well have read, ‘Remember the Sabbath day and keep it boring.’ It was the day you could not. You could wear blue jeans, could not play ball, could not ride bikes, could not go to the movies, could not do anything but go to church in the morning and again at night”. She suggests that if we were to read Leviticus 25 we would be reminded that Sabbath is intended to be a gift. We would be reminded that it was intended to be a gift not just for those who have voices to say how tired they are; but also for tired land, tired fields, tired vineyards, tired vines, and even tired grapes on the vines. We would also discover that Sabbath is not only about getting a little rest but it is about freeing slaves, forgiving debts, restoring property, and giving the land every seventh year off. In fact, on Friday evenings when three stars can be counted in the darkening sky, observant Jews light two Shabbat candles. They light one for each of the Sabbath commandments in the Torah. The first candle is lit as a reminder of the Sabbath commandment found in the book of Exodus:
4
Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God: you shall not do any work—you, your son, or your daughter, your male or female slave, or your cattle, or the stranger who is within your settlements. For in six days God made heaven and earth and sea, and all that is in them, and God rested on the seventh day; therefore God blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. (Exodus 20:8-11) In the book of Exodus, Sabbath rest is based in the story of creation. On the seventh day God rested. And God did not just call the day of rest good, or very good. God blessed it and called it holy. And so the first Shabbat candle reminds the people, made in God’s image you too shall rest. The second candle is lit as a reminder of the second version of the Sabbath commandment found in the book of Deuteronomy. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God freed you from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. (Deuteronomy 5:15) In the book of Deuteronomy Sabbath rest is based in the story of the Exodus from Egypt. God’s people cried out to God. God heard them and sent Moses to free them from bondage in a land that was not home. Resting every seventh day is how God’s people remember their divine liberation. And so the second Shabbat candle announces, made in God’s image you too are free. You’d think that honouring the Sabbath would be a favourite commandment not to mention a simple one to keep. What’s not to like about freedom and rest? Who’d turn down an invitation to put your feet up and take a nap? And yet, today, we hear the prophet Isaiah warning against trampling the sabbath in the pursuit of our own interests and affairs and binding freedom with yokes of blame, hunger and affliction. It seems that honouring the Sabbath is something we have to deliberately choose, and doing so takes wisdom and practice. Thomas Currie, whom I mentioned earlier, suggests that the reason honouring the Sabbath requires some spiritual discipline is because it challenges the human desire, the human anxiety to be able to save oneself. He puts it pretty unequivocally, “All desire the power to save themselves. All.” The danger of being concerned only with our own salvation is that we become 5
blind. Our neighbours become invisible to us. The purpose of the Sabbath, he says, is to set us free from this affliction. Honouring the Sabbath is an invitation to rest from our labours, and to delight in the gifts God provides that cannot be bought or earned or brought forth through our own efforts. And as such it set us free to see each other, to see our neighbours, those who are different from us not as something to be used or as an object of pity or duty, but as a gift. The Sabbath is intended to help us discover and tap into a radical freedom such that we are free to forget ourselves (because we come to know that God will never forget us) and this is a freedom that offers extraordinary vision. It is the freedom that enables a despised Samaritan to stop and render aid when a priest and Levite have business elsewhere. Those who pass by scarcely notice the one by the side of the road. Only the Samaritan stops and turns his attention towards this other. The Samaritan is free to see the other and to recognize in him or her a child of God. It’s the freedom that enabled Nicky Hamblin to help Abbey get to her feet. All of this is worth reflecting on in these early days of “new beginnings and saying hello”. Thresholds, new beginnings, are a liminal space, and offer a holy opportunity to consider what has brought us to this moment, and what matters, and where and on what are we being called to focus our time and energy? Today we remember that Sabbath rest is key in grounding us as individuals and as a community in what matters. It is the place from which to begin. It frees us to see our neighbour, and to hear the deep cry of their heart. And this kind of attention to the deep needs of neighbours that helps us see what I call “red thread of longing’ that we can follow and that can help us find the path of justice and joy, and guide our journey. Honouring the Sabbath— taking some time every week to rest from our labours, and to delight in the gifts God provides—which we can do in lots of different ways … through gathering in community worship, singing praise, offering our prayers to God, sitting in quiet meditation, taking a moment to light a candle and remember someone who touched your life, sharing a meal around a common table—all these ways of resting in God and delighting in God’s gifts—set us free from the anxiety and the burden of saving ourselves. It reminds us we are held by something so much bigger than ourselves. And knowing this deep in our 6
hearts and bones grounds our capacity to be present in our “hellos” … the hellos we say as we greet each other on a Sunday morning, the hellos we say throughout the week as we meet those in our community and in world in which we find ourselves. Sabbath rest grounds our capacity to really see our neighbours and to really hear our neighbours needs and deep longings for healing and liberation. And attending to this longing for life will help us find our way as people and as a community and show us how the gifts and resources God has given us allow us to participate in bringing about God’s kindom of justice and joy. Then we shall call, and God will answer; we shall cry for help, and God will say, Here I am. May it be so. Amen.
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