1.

Poema Still I Rise

2. Dar intro sobre el tema y lo que hicimos en all staff y conectarlo con la reflexión.

Exodus 20:10-11
but the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any
work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor
your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. 11  For in six days the LORD
made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on
the seventh day. Therefore, the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Sabbath is for everyone.

The final form of the book of Exodus was written by a group of exiled priests in
Babylon, estimated between 587-539 B.C. It tells what happened from the 12 th
century to the 4th century B.C. This information is of great importance to me
because it places the writing of the book in a historical context of oppression. It
tells the story of enslaved people in a foreign land.

The history of the Hebrew people in Exodus does not begin with testimonials of
triumph or heroism, but under oppression and suffering, marked by the apparent
absence of God (enslaved workers, terror of the oppressor to the oppressed,
genocidal policies). We must recognize that human history includes periods of
exploitation so cruel that for many that any possibility of hope was aliminated (Ex.
6:9). Yet, when the human being is so oppressed and denied a future, God is there
to sustain us as a source of hope and new possibilities, even if we may not
recognize it ay first. Many times the source and agent of hope may not be
identified exactly as God, but may be in form of unexpected human agents such as
the case of the five midwives who faced the power of the Pharaoh. We also
recognize that it was the outcry of the Israelites that mobilized the liberating work
of God (Ex 2:23b).
Close your eyes and imagine with me:
 You are an enslaved person in Egypt living in very poor conditions.
 You wake up early in the morning, have some bread for breakfast and leave
to your assigned duties.
 It is a really hard physical job, with not enough breaks to rest or to drink
water; people dying next to you because of exhaustion.
 Your shift ends when the sun hides. You work from sunrise to sunset, and in
summer that can be 14 hours straight in temperatures between 94-100
degrees.
 You are not well fed either; you don’t have enough time or resources to
bathe and refresh every day. So, you go to sleep late at night, exhausted.
Just to start the cycle again the next morning.
There is no rest. You need Sabbath.

You may open your eyes.

Why is this historical context about Exodus relevant to verses 10-11? Because
when the writers talk about Sabbath–a holy celebration–they are telling their
oppressors that even God rested, so they need to rest too.

The celebration of the Sabbath becomes then an act of resistance against

oppression. It is revolutionary. It is a slave telling their owners that they DESERVE
to rest. Their God gave them one day to rest from their oppression. They are
saying that they would not produce wealth or profit to their owners for one day.

Now, please, close your eyes again:

 You are a Puerto Rican young man, in your twenties; your parents cannot
afford to pay for your studies in the university, so you need to work to help
your family.
 In Puerto Rico the minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. With a full-time job,
you will earn $15,080 per year. Not enough to pay rent, food, and
transportation.
 You see an advertisement in social media. There is a job fair because a
company in Alaska is looking for people to work in a salmon packing facility.
 They offer to pay for the airplane tickets and benefits include housing. The
salary is $15.00 per hour.
 When you arrive, you learn that you will be working 16 hours shift from
Monday to Sunday. With no breaks to rest beyond lunch time. The free
housing is a big room full of bunkbeds, with no privacy and no safe space to
store your belongings.
 When you realize that the company is not giving you what they promised,
you decide to leave. But the company will not let you go until you pay them
back the $2000.00 they invested in your transportation, and you must pay
for your return ticket.
 There you are with no hope and no means to get out of the situation.

This is the true story of Javier Vázquez Mateo in 2017. An example of modern-day
slavery.

There was no Sabbath in the salmon factory.

You may open your eyes.

Today we celebrate Juneteenth (jun-tiinth). On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln

issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Enforcement of the Proclamation generally
relied upon the advance of the Union troops. It wasn't until 30 months later, on
June 19, 1865, that the slaves in Texas heard that under the General Order No. 3
they were finally free. The freedom was there for them by the Emancipation
Proclamation, but no one told them.

There was no Sabbath for the enslaved people in Texas.

In the Bible, exile is not just deportation or flight to a foreign land. It is also
oppression and undignified life in one's own land, in the country where one was
born. If the prophets had not been bulwarks against the oppressors who wanted
to occupy the land of God's people, the exiles probably would not have had the
strength to dream about a better life.
We cannot ignore all the people who live in exile in the United States and Puerto
Rico—people who are slaves of big pharma, slaves of capitalism, slaves of the
exploitation by their employers (and worse if you are undocumented), slaves of
prejudice, slaves of bigotry, and so on. These people need someone to tell them
God made them free, that they are worthy no matter how they look or what their
gender identity might be. They need someone to say that the oppression they are
enduring is not OK. That it is not normal, and they don’t deserve it.

In ABHMS we work and pray every day to be that voice and to be a resource to
equip leaders and prophets. The church must continue raising its prophetic word
against injustices. Sabbath is resistance and a revolutionary act of hope. Though
celebrating or observing sabbath may not immediately change their situation, it is
an act of freedom –expression their resistance to their current oppression and
hoping for a new reality and at least that their current reality will not completely
break them.

God is building a reign of justice for everyone here and now. Let’s go and tell the
people. Let’s proclaim Sabbath. May the church and ABHMS be the prophet that
the exiled people of the United States and Puerto Rico need.