Exodus 9:1

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: “Let my people go, so that they may worship me.’”  (NIV)

Reflection by Kenneth L. Samuel

In the southern church I serve in Georgia, congregants are sometimes disturbed when they hear “too much politics from the pulpit.”  “Just stick to the gospel,” they say.  “All we want to hear is what saith the Lord!”

I suspect that my church is not unlike many.  In the minds of many Christians, there is a vast divide between sacred worship on Sundays and the everyday political debates that plague us.  But our faith is built upon God’s direct intervention into a political debate that took place in Egypt centuries ago.  The issue was whether the Hebrew slaves, who held up Egypt’s economy with their free labor, should be liberated.  God anointed and empowered Moses and the freedom fighters in Egypt, and after some 400 years of political, social and economic enslavement, the children of Israel were set free.  The political climate in Egypt leading up to the liberation of the Hebrew slaves must have been tense, to say the least, but God was certainly the instigator of it all.

So what does this have to do with worship?   God said to Egypt: “Let my people go, so that they may worship me.”  This doesn’t mean that oppressed people can’t worship God.  It means that all people should be free to bow to no other god but God.  No person should have to bow to any god of racism, imperialism, sexism, heterosexism, nationalism or materialism.  God wants all people free to worship God and God alone.

Worship, at its best, is a celebration of God’s liberating activity in the world.  When we are liberated from every dimension of personal, inter-personal and political distress, we are made free to bow before no other god, but God.  Political?  Yes.  Divine?  Resounding yes!

Prayer

Dear God, empower our struggles against every exalted oppression that rivals your place on the throne.  Make us free to worship you and you alone.  Amen.

About the Author Kenneth L. Samuel is Pastor of Victory for the World Church, Stone Mountain, Georgia.

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