If you have ever visited the Anglican Cathedral in Quebec City you will have noted that one of the distinctive features of the sanctuary of that church built in the early 1800`s is the set of inscriptions on either side of the high altar. One inscription bears the Ten Commandments and the other the Lord`s Prayer.

Such biblical inscriptions were much in vogue for Anglican sanctuaries throughout the 19th century. Here at St John`s we have the Lord`s Prayer inscribed on marble which for as long as anyone can remember has been situated here in the north transept. I do believe that I am correct in saying that it came from the original St John`s Church built in the 1860`s down on Sussex and Rideau where it was to be found in the sanctuary.

Early pictures of this building show an inscription framing the great arch into the chancel. The inscription read, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabbaoth" which is taken directly from the canticle of praise called Te Deum Laudamus found in the Office of Morning Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer. I don`t know when that inscription was removed- possibly when the chancel was enlarged 60 or 70 years ago.

Most practicing Anglicans born before the 1960`s would know the Office of Morning Prayer by heart since it was standard fare for morning worship until the 1960`s. As a minimum, the Victorians expected Anglicans to know the Ten Commandments, the Lord`s Prayer, and the Apostle`s Creed.

We seldom speak of the Ten Commandments any more. I don`t know why. Maybe people got sick of hearing and seeing them so often. Or, maybe they gave people the idea that Christianity is only about morality and since one doesn't need to be religious to be morally good, why bother going to church.

There is a story about a rabbi who was preaching about the Ten Commandments. Actually he was preaching about one of them in particular, that is, the sabbath commandment-commandment number 4. In the Catechism of the 1962 Book of Common Prayer it reads as follows:

Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all that thou hast to do; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it thou shalt do no manner of work, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter,( no mention of wife- somebody has to get dinner) thy man-servant, and thy maid-servant,( I'd like to have a couple of them, please), thy cattle, and the stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. ( BCP p. 547)

Clearly, the rabbi was not using the Book of Common Prayer but quite possibly they were written on the wall of his synagogue. In any case, in his sermon the rabbi was stressing the importance of sabbath keeping and making the point that all of the 10 commandments are of equal importance.

He said, "In God`s eyes there is no difference between breaking the sabbath and committing adultery- they are both Commandments of the Most High God"

And before he could continue with his thought a brave sinner in the congregation jumped to his feet saying, "Rabbi, I cannot agree with you, as one who has recently broken both of these commandments I can tell you they are not the same at all!"

And most of us would say amen to that. Now what did this bold confessor have in mind? Was he making the point that breaking one is much more fun that breaking the other (and I will leave it to you to guess which is which) or was he, half seriously, pointing out that no one really thinks that sabbath breaking is nearly as serious as adultery.

One thing we know for sure ...the personal and social consequences of adultery are far different from sabbath breaking.

Quite frankly does anyone even think about Commandment IV anymore? What with Sunday Shopping and Saturday Masses and two working parents and hockey and baby showers... well the list is endless...who has time for keeping the sabbath? Nothing in our contemporary lifestyle or value system leaves one small space for sabbath keeping. Most people today would be surprized to hear that the Judeo-Christian tradition advises sabbath keeping as a key spiritual discipline.

Somewhere along the line the understanding and practice of keeping the sabbath got trivialized and put aside for Christians.

Sabbath keeping is surely just one of those old-fashioned ideas devised to ensure that Sundays are boring and that churches have a monopoly on what everyone does.

On the other hand, maybe we`ve just lost sight of the importance of keeping the sabbath. Maybe the rabbi is right and maybe the ancient teaching about sabbath keeping has some wisdom in it for us. Maybe the consequences of sabbath breaking are every bit or even more serious than committing adultery.

There is a debate raging in some parts of North America about whether the 10 Commandments should be removed from or added to the public place -like halls of justice and government buildings. The debate is really the latest twist on the interminable debate about the separation of church and state. It plays out as another one of those power-plays by some conservative Christians groups to control of the public agenda.

As Christians we need to ask ourselves why it was that the ancient faith upon which were founded considered sabbath keeping to be so important. Why has it always been considered a key element of our stewardship of God`s gifts of redemption and creation?

Well, this morning I have dug out for you from the treasure chest of our faith just a tiny bit of the teaching about sabbath keeping.

According to Hebrew and Christian traditions sabbath keeping is intended to remind us several key elements of what it means to be fully human and hence fully reflecting the image of God within us.

First of all sabbath keeping is not about doing, rather it is about NOT doing. It is about BEING. When we take a block of time and set it apart from everything else we are claiming our freedom. We need to remind ourselves and others that we are not owned by anyone or anything. We are not owned by our jobs, we are owned by the endless obligations which push us daily, we are not even owned by our own obssessions. We are not even owned by God or the church.

Jews and Protestants, unlike Roman Catholics, share the conviction that not even Sabbath services are obligatory if they interfere with this aspect of sabbath keeping. We are even free to stay away from church and synagogue. We are radically free -even free to ignore or walk away from God.

Furthermore, In the Book of Leviticus, the second book of the Old Testament, the idea of sabbath keeping was also about knowing our place in the created order. Yes, we have been given the power to control and use the created order but we are not outside of it and we do not own. Leviticus reminded the Hebrews that the land belongs to God. The land is given to human kind to steward not to own.

To use contemporary language we might well say that sabbath keeping is about social and economic justice. The Book of Leviticus is a book of rules and regulations about how to be a good Jew- a kind of handbook used by priests and teachers giving precise instruction to the faithful about how to keep the law of Moses.

Key to being a good Jew was and is the practice of keeping the sabbath. It stipulated that every seventh year the land must have a holiday-it was to be left fallow and no produce was to be harvested from it by man or beast... "...but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of complete rest for the land, a sabbath for the Lord". Not only was this wise agricultural practice but it was also intended to remind the Hebrews that the land belongs to God. Leviticus goes even further by prescribing a Year of Jubilee. Every 50 years there would be a jubilee when all land transactions were evaluated and in some cases land redistruted just to make sure that the land did not end up in the hands of a few to the exclusion of others. No one was to forget that the land belongs to the Lord.

The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine, with me you are but aliens and tenants (Leviticus 25:23)

Wow! Isn`t it the most revolutionary idea you have ever heard. Capitalism is built upon the idea of land ownership and private property. Indeed, we have reached the point where water is also now considered a marketable commodity. And with communism the state owns the land. This levitical law proposes a radical new land value. What a different world this would be if the levitical ethos about the land was pervasive.

So sabbath keeping, in its biblical expression, is about personal freedom and economic justice. When we look about us today and see the violence and injustice surrounding the issue of land ownership we surely must realize that those ancient people got it right.

Is there some way in which Christians can revive, reclaim, restore, and recycle, this ancient piece of spiritual wisdom? Sabbath keeping is just exactly what we, in our frenzied over-consuming society need. We need a break, the land needs a break, the waters need a break, the very air we breathe needs a break.

Tapping our spiritual resources is what eco-justice is all about and what this summer series called the Web of Life series is about. Today is sermon number three in this series. Next week Rachael Crowder will share her insights in sermon #4 and in mid-September Adele Finlayson, another lay leader at St John`s, will do the same.

In July about 20 of us got together for three consecutive Tuesdays for a study session on enviromental issues from a religious and scientific perspective. I believe that that group is a fair sampling of both the high level of interest and of understanding there is in this parish about the issues which confront the world as a result of environmental degradation and land and water use in general. It was clear to me that there is a common will in this parish to get down to some planning and action- ways in which we, as a faith community, can be part of the solution, part of the growing world movement to change destructive attitudes and behaviours.

The first step for us as Christians is to access our own spiritual heritage. We can do this by rediscovering some of the treasures of our tradition as we have this morning. There are others too. For example, one thing we have always maintained at St John`s is the observance of Harvest Thanksgiving. For many years I considered this to be a quaint throw back to a social reality far removed from most of us as city-dwellers. I think differently now. Now I see this celebration of the harvest as an observance which merits much more attention

The Christian tradition has much to offer the human community in coming to terms with the environmental issues which face us.

I challenge us all to be about this work.