Shall We Long Endure? #3 | “Remember Egypt, Remember England” | A Sermon

0:00 Friends, in this winter sermon series, we are asking together, shall this nation long endure? And in our asking, we turn to a set of documents that Martin Luther King Jr. called our nation's promissory notes, sacred promises to the people of this land, not yet fulfilled for all. And as this country approaches its 250th anniversary, many are asking this question, does this still young nation have the constitution, as it were, and the moral compass that will enable us to endure? Last week, Reverend Scott pointed us towards the U.S. Constitution as the foundation of the law of this land, even procuring these amazing pocket copies for you to carry with you if you are also feeling in these days like you might need to reference it at any moment. We have additional copies available for you at the welcome table in the back as you leave if you'd like to also carry one in your pocket. And as we often do from this pulpit, we are inviting you to hold two sources of wisdom at once, the Bible in one hand and some of America's most revered historical documents in the other.

1:27 We are asking what perspectives does our faith bring to conversations about human freedom? What obligations do we have to each other as citizens and neighbors? And what is our responsibility to work together in pursuit of the common good. And today we turn our eyes to the Bill of Rights. The first 10 amendments to the Constitution, a set of foundations for the ways we live alongside our government, a much fought over declaration of freedoms, a list of ways the government shall not be permitted to treat its people. But first we turn to two texts in our scripture that outline the ways that God calls us to treat each other. In Deuteronomy 24 and Romans 13.

2:25 So let us listen for what God calls us to remember and who God calls us to love. from Deuteronomy 24, beginning with verse 17. You shall not deprive a resident alien or an orphan of justice. You shall not take a widow's garment in pledge. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you from there. therefore I command you to do this when you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field you shall not go back to get it it shall be left for the alien the orphan and the widow so that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings when you beat your olive trees do not strip what is left it shall be left for the alien the orphan and the widow when you gather the grapes of your vineyard do not glean what is left it shall be left for the alien the orphan and the widow remember that you were a slave in the land of egypt therefore i am commanding you to do this and Romans 13 beginning with verse 8 Owe no one anything except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.

4:07 The commandments, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandment are summed up in this word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. love does no wrong to a neighbor therefore love is the fulfilling of the law besides this you know what time it is how it is already the moment for you to wake from sleep for salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers the night is far gone the day is near. Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

4:54 This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Friends, as we begin today, I want to honor the tension that some of us may feel as we are embarking through another sermon series focused on our government, especially as the news of political decisions seems to inundate us. Perhaps you are feeling exhausted by the ubiquity of the pain of this time, and I just want you to know that I see you and I hear you in this feeling, and I invite you to hold on with me today because I hope there is also a balm for you here, food for your spirit today in this hour at this table.

5:44 One of our roles as theologians, as pastors here at Fifth Avenue is to ask, what does our tradition have to say to the moment we are in? To get outside of the trapping scroll, the urgencies of our algorithms, and ask, What does God's long view of humanity through the eyes of Christ have to teach us about our world? And for that, we turn to our scripture, which this morning is very, very clear from two very different portions of our Bible. First, in Deuteronomy, the final book of the Torah, the law given through Moses to the people of Israel, we hear over and over, give of what you have. to the resident alien, the orphan, and the widow. These three neighbors have the least resources or power.

6:40 This care for them costs us something. The gleanings of our fields, the olives from our trees. And in Romans, we have an epistle written by the Apostle Paul carried as a message of theology to early Christians living in Rome. where Deuteronomy tells us not to deprive a resident alien or an orphan of justice. Paul's letter tells us how all other commandments are summed up in saying, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. These texts are building on each other. Deuteronomy quoting Exodus, the Apostle Paul quoting the Gospels, which are quoting Leviticus 18. we read this phrase love your neighbor in Matthew in Mark in Luke in Romans in Galatians and in James love your neighbor love your neighbor love your neighbor as yourself this will cost you something but it will bring you closer to the kingdom of God closer to salvation Paul calls it it will bring us all the redemption that God offered to enslaved people in Exodus for Deuteronomy tells us remember you were slaves in Egypt remember you know what provision feels like after it has been denied you know what it is to be completely at the mercy of those who hold power over you, your lives held in the balance. So too did those who were drafting this very Bill of Rights. They wrote them in the aftermath of colonial rule. They wrote this list remembering England, just as Deuteronomy implores us to remember Egypt. Remember this treatment, our scripture says, so you do not impose it on another. Yes, the writers of these amendments

8:46 had lived under tyranny before and sought to defend against it for the rights of the people. And the definition of the people is operative here just as Reverend Scott considered two weeks ago who exactly is included in the definition when we say we, the people. These rights for as long as they have been ratified have also been selectively applied. Though this document refuted the treatment of the crown's subjugated people in the colonies, its immediate effect replicated a similar system of subjugation for everyone but the writers of these documents who were white men who owned land. None of these amended rights applied to enslaved or free black people, none applied to Native Americans, none applied to women. They forgot that they were slaves in Egypt. They forgot to glean for the least.

9:50 The people have long been caught up in defining this we. We have always had to fight to see these rights applied more equally. In the tension of this definition between living our freedoms and the exertion of the power of the state, where the poor and the marginalized and people of color receive the highest toll. but violation of these rights points us towards the moral compass of our faith of our scripture that we are to offer from our own resources to support the resident alien the widow and the orphan that in doing so we love our neighbor as ourselves the highest commandment that Jesus gives to us. And one that our government is certainly struggling mightily with to try to separate from the definition of this Bill of Rights, especially in this moment in my hometown of Minneapolis. Let's very briefly review this list of rights. Holding in your mind this

11:04 week's news. Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. Freedom of press. The right of the people peaceably to assemble. The right to call on our government to address and correct abuses of power. The right to bear arms. the right to hold your housing away from housing soldiers, the right for your person, your house, your property, your papers, to be free from unreasonable search and seizure without a warrant, The right of all people to be free from being deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of the law.

12:11 The right to a fair and free trial. The right to legal counsel if accused of a crime. Friends, this is just six of them, just the ones that have lit up the news this month. There are four more, and lucky enough for you there's a chance to hear about all of them today at 1245 on the second floor from a panel of these brilliant lawyers because there is so much more to say about the implications of them all. And many of you know that I am from Minneapolis partially because I talk all the time about loving the weather we're having right now. Enough so that my colleagues have started blaming me for the amount of snow we have because I've preached so many times about loving winter. But you know I am from Minneapolis and so many of you have thoughtfully checked in with me as you've been seeing the news and asked how my family is doing, how my community is doing there and I thank you for checking in. The reality is that every person I am connected to there, regardless of their immigration status or race, has been impacted in some way by the thousands of federal agents still carrying out arrests and raids on their neighbors, on their children's daycares, on their children's public elementary schools, on their neighbors, on their favorite restaurant, on the place they pump their gas, on their neighbor, in the grocery store parking lot, their neighbor, their next door neighbor, their child's five-year-old friends.

13:56 It is aggressive, it is deadly, it is traumatizing our children. It seems to have no end in sight. as we see with our own eyes this government trampling our Bill of Rights for an ever-widening group of people, I see something else happening in Minneapolis through the actions of my community and my friends. I see what is almost a new Bill of Rights emerging there, one that follows the compass of loving our neighbor as ourselves at great cost to ourselves because we know that our lives and our thriving are intertwined. This is just a short list of some of the things that my friends in Minneapolis are doing right now. Delivering groceries and clean laundry to those afraid to leave their homes.

14:56 organizing block-by-block group texts to check in on each other patrolling and safety vests outside the neighborhood elementary school to protect children as they walk from the bus to the door hosting immigrant families in their homes after agents have attacked their family members or broken down their doors they are living as though they know that action is the antidote to despair I have been so inspired by their courage and creativity and resourcefulness and yet one friend who I spoke with on the phone this week said to me Natalie I'm just tired and everyone else is tired too and it feels like there's no end in sight and the children the children as they always are are hit the hardest this friend is a labor and delivery nurse she told me how she had been doing some in-home visits for a mother who at 37 weeks pregnant was afraid to leave her house to seek prenatal care maybe our scripture would call this mother a resident alien. She immigrated to this country legally, as did her husband, who was detained earlier this month. After federal agents took her husband, they came into their home and debated with each other whether it was worth the hassle to also detain this pregnant mother and her three children under seven, the youngest of whom is just 18 months, the fourth about to be born.

16:51 What does this do to our spirits, to our nervous system, to our collective gathered bodies to hear about this scale of violence happening. I can feel it in my body now just telling these stories to you. And so when we get overwhelmed, it's easy to get stuck. It's harder for us to act on loving our neighbor as God calls us to.

17:25 But there is one other practice that I am seeing my friends and community in Minneapolis embody a version of free speech, and that is speech that sings. There's a group in Minneapolis, maybe you've seen them in the news, that are leading singing in the streets on blocks where neighbors have been taken. They sing simple songs learned and sung together on the spot by groups of 600 people or more as they walk slowly down the street in negative 10 degrees and snow, mind you.

18:06 I spoke with one of these singing organizers this week who told me that they do this because it communicates a message about what we care about in a way that people can absorb heart to heart, not just intellect to intellect. She told me the streets where they walk are quiet. People are hiding in their homes, afraid.

18:34 But at their very first gathering, she told me, we saw people pull back their curtains. Some came out on porches to wave. One small kid held up his puppy to see us through the window. we sing to show our neighbors we haven't forgotten about them we love them we are singing into their homes so they know they are not alone they are singing to remind their neighbors to hold on, to remind them that they are loved, to give something in the cold that costs them something. for those of us here in church we know that something happens when we sing together don't we it's a way to speak out that's not in the register of the violence we are speaking against it is loving it is uniting it is stilling it's a reminder to ourselves who we are They've been singing to each other.

19:45 Hold on. Hold on. on my dear ones here comes the dawn And they've been singing this not because they already believe, not because they can see the dawn. They are singing it so that they believe it, so that they feel in their bodies the dawn they are singing into being. They sing not because the lyrics are already true, but because we need a tune of hope to get stuck in our heads, in our hearts to help us act toward that truth. So we're going to try it together today.

20:41 Here in this sanctuary and our friends online, loud enough to encourage each other. I'll sing it the first time through. You can repeat after me each line.