Sunday, September 22, 2013
Sunday Reflection: Today's Sermon
Here is (most of) the sermon I will give today at First Covenant Church in Minneapolis.
First Covenant Sermon
September 22, 2013
“Advocacy for the Marginalized”
Text:
Luke 6:17-26
You
know, sometimes the Bible is not so reassuring for a fairly affluent, straight
white guy from Edina. This is one of those times.
Jesus
is talking about turning everything, EVERYTHING upside down. The poor
have the Kingdom, while the rich face woe. The hungry will be filled,
while those who are full will be hungry. Those who are reviled will
be blessed, and it’s bad when all speak well of you.
Just
as Jesus said about the temple, in our own lives no stone would remain
unturned.
This
is dangerous. And I know the dangerous Jesus.
As
was mentioned before, one of my projects has been trying Jesus on a capital
charge in a variety of churches and schools in death penalty states. The
point is to put into juxtaposition the political and faith beliefs of
Christians who support the death penalty. My job at the trial is to serve
as the prosecutor—I am arguing that Jesus is so dangerous that he must be put
to death.
It
is a very dark enterprise. It sets the prosecutor in me against my very
faith. I argue to the jury (the congregation) that Jesus is a threat to
four pillars of our society. He is a threat to our economy, to
capitalism, because he tells the rich to become poor. He undermines our
national security, because he teaches that we are not to resist an
evildoer. He threatens our families when he reveals that he will divide
mother from daughter, father from son. Last, he challenges our heritage
when he chooses leaders who are illiterate fisherman, people who have no access
to the rich traditions of our culture.
It
exhausts me to do this. The worst part is that each bit of it, all that I
discuss, judges me.
I am a teacher of the law, affluent, centered on family, and comfortable with
my safety. He challenges every bit of this.
Where
does this leave me? Maybe it means we must impoverish ourselves. I
am not going to do what too many people in pulpits do with that, which is to
say that Jesus somehow meant the opposite of what he was saying—“woe to you who
are rich” is pretty clear in its meaning. At the very least, we must
ally ourselves with the poor, the hungry, and the reviled. Their interests must be
ours. Christ commands it.
What
does it mean to ally ourselves with the poor, the hungry, the reviled?
1)
Work for social justice
The
last time I preached, it was at the Wren Chapel, on the campus of the College
of William and Mary. I was invited to do so by Joanne Braxton, one of the
most influential teachers I have had, who is a skilled preacher herself.
She is one of those teachers that mark you for life as one of theirs.
The
next day, we sat in her office and she pulled something from her desk and laid
it carefully on the table, her fingers resting on top of it like the gem that
it was. It was a gift, a paperback edition of Ernest J. Gaines's "A Lesson
Before Dying."
I
waited until I was in a calm, quiet place to read it, surrounded by tall pines.
The story is about a man condemned to die, in a time when black Americans saw
Joe Louis as the kind of hero we find hard to imagine anymore, a man who
carried the dreams of a people on his broad back.
The
part of the book that stopped me cold, as Professor Braxton knew it would, was
this:
“And
my mind went back to that cell uptown, then to another cell, somewhere in
Florida. After reading about the execution there, I had dreamed about it over
and over and over. As vividly as if I were there, I had seen that cell, heard
that boy crying while being dragged to that chair, "Please, Joe Louis,
help me. Please help me. Help me." After he had been strapped in the
chair, the man who wrote the story could still hear him cry "Mr. Joe Louis
help me, Mr. Joe Louis help me!”
It
stopped me cold, because I get letters that cry out like that. I run a
clinic that creates clemency petitions for prisoners serving very long terms,
desperate men and women. They pile up on my desk, white rectangular
envelopes with neat penciled-in addresses on the front and return addresses in
those remote corners where we warehouse men and women: Victorville, California;
Florence, Colorado; Alderson, West Virginia; Bastrop, Texas.
Inside
each, laid out in painstaking handwriting, is a story. It is always a tragic story.
They are from men, and sometimes women, who are in prison for very long terms
and have exhausted their appeals. They have no more hope through the courts, so
they write to me. They think I will know a way to get them out of prison after
20 or 27 or 35 years for a narcotics case almost no one else remembers. It is
emotionally draining to read these stories. Sometimes, I sit and stare at a
letter, not wanting to open it and let that tragedy out. Instead, I look at the
neat row of stamps, purchased with prison wages of 45 cents an hour.
Perhaps
writing to me is as hopeless as crying out to Joe Louis.
Maybe. Perhaps. But I can’t throw the letters away. I have to try something, so I do. I try to get the law to change, try to
get the President of the United States to take seriously the constitutional
duty of showing mercy through the pardon power, try sometimes to work with my
students to save just one of them.
I
have to. They are Jesus, who said when
you visit those in prison you visit me.
Their mothers, the ones who often write to me pleadingly, who have tried
to win freedom for decades, each one is Mary, Jesus’s mother, dutiful and
steadfast.
2)
Create reconciliation
Our
criminal law, particularly in relation to narcotics, is about retribution. It is about our society’s impulse to
hurt those who have done wrong.
It’s that urge that Jesus rails against, that he upsets in the midst of
turning everything upside down. We
can’t pretend that we do what we do, imprison millions, because it solves a
problem, because by now we know that it hasn’t. We can’t pretend it deters people, because it hasn’t. We do it to hurt people, and it does.
Mercy
is hard work, and our society too often is built in a way designed to push away
grace.
When
I do the trial of Jesus, I get the defendant (Jesus) a public defender. He is indigent, after all. The public defender is Jeanne Bishop,
who is a real-life public defender in Chicago. Her story goes deeper than that, though.
In
1991, her family—mother, father, three sisters—gathered at a restaurant in
Chicago. They were celebrating
something wonderful: The youngest
sister, Nancy, was pregnant. She
and her husband were ecstatic, as was the rest of the family, as they looked
forward to the first member of a new generation.
After
dinner, Nancy and Richard returned home to Winnetka, Illinois, a comfortable
suburb. David Biro, a 16-year-old
from the same town, was waiting for them.
He had a gun. First he shot
Richard in the head. Then,
apparently seeing that Nancy was pregnant, he shot her in the belly. They all died, on the floor of their
home. Nothing was stolen. Biro killed because he could.
This
year, for the first time, Jeanne Bishop did something remarkable. She decided to go visit David Biro in
prison. She had decided that
forgiveness, real Christian forgiveness, required that she have a relationship
with him.
That
first time, when she went to the prison, she was told to sign in. One of the items on the sign in sheet
was “relationship to the prisoner.”
The choices were “family member,” “friend,” “spiritual advisor,” “legal
visit.”
Jeanne
called the guard over. There was
no box for what she was, a forgiving, broken person. Too often, our broader community is that way; there is no space
for reconciliation.
We
are the ones to change that.
3)
Make ourselves vulnerable
Finally, to ally
ourselves with the poor, with the hungry, and with the reviled, we must make
ourselves vulnerable. That is a
part of the deal—it will not be safe and painless.
I
told you why Professor Joanne Braxton is remarkable now, with her gift of the
perfect book. I want to talk, as
well, about a lesson she taught me in college.
One
day in class, one of my fellow students had a headache and was in obvious pain.
Prof. Braxton paused and told us about something she had seen in Haiti: The
"snatching" of a pain. She explained that the snatcher would cover
the forehead of the subject with their hand, rest and feel the warmth of that
person, and then make a snatching motion. If done successfully, the subject was
free of the headache-- but the snatcher would now have it. It struck me, if
nothing else, as a wonderful model of empathy in that it involved not
"fixing" someone's pain or erasing it, but literally taking it on, as
an act of self-sacrifice. Christ, of course, did this very literally.
Many
years later, I found myself with a group of people on the roof deck of a bar
near Wrigleyville. It was very
late, and there was a small group of us around a table in the Chicago summer.
We
were talking about headaches, and I told the story of what I had heard in Prof.
Braxton's class. One woman I did not know, who was about 31 or 32, turned to me
and claimed she had a headache and dared me to snatch it. So, I did. I put my
hand flat on her forehead for a moment, feeling the warmth of her, resting her
hair in my other hand, and then... snatch! I was faking it, sure, but still, what happened…
It
floored me.
I
didn't get a headache. Instead, what I got was a deep and profound sadness that
was totally alien to me, like a dark cloud that filled me up. It was specific
sadness, too-- the regret that I didn't have a child, and might not ever have
one. Certainly, this was not my cloud of dread (I was 23 or 24 at the time). It
wasn't a guy thing... it was entirely hers. It was with me for weeks; I
couldn't shake it.
When
we ally with those who hurt, we will hurt. It is where Christ sends us.
My
dear colleague Susan Stabile leaves for a pilgrimage on the Camino in Spain in just
a few days. I will miss her
deeply, but a conversation this week let it make sense to me. She will leave everything behind. Her family. Her comforts.
Everything, really, that she cannot carry on her back. I was thinking about it wrong, though,
in wondering what could possibly be worth that sacrifice. She explained, kindly, that she doesn’t
do it despite vulnerability;
she does it because of the vulnerability.
Going without is not the sacrifice; it is the blessing.
She seeks grace and truth by making herself vulnerable.
Grace
can come, our unclean spirits cleansed, if we acknowledge in our hearts the
essence of humility: that there is a God, and it is not me. The God that is turns this world upside
down.
Comments:
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Good words as always.
I will never forget the day it dawned on me that me and my '91 Honda Accord (this was in 2003) stood infinitely closer to the one with a brand new Camry then I did to the immigrants at the bus stop, not 10 feet from my front door.
We had intentionally moved to the wrong side of the freeway to "experience" urban living and being a part of a community of color near Los Angles California.
But at some point it dawned on me that this was not an action born out of obedience to Christ, rather, it was an action like many, born out of an interest in doing something different and interesting. (To say nothing of the benefits we received for being frugal while in school.)
And then it got worse. At some point I realized I was subconsciously judging some people I knew well who did a lot to serve those in need, and also lived in a nice house and drove new cars. Not that I ever articulated it. It was just a subconscious thing.
And then it hit me. While the monetary value of the things I had might be lower than some. I essentially had all the same stuff. I had given up nothing.
Like many in the neighborhood I lived in, Jesus had no place to lay his head. In contrast I did have a place to lay my head, and a whole lot more.
Lord have mercy on me a sinner.
I will never forget the day it dawned on me that me and my '91 Honda Accord (this was in 2003) stood infinitely closer to the one with a brand new Camry then I did to the immigrants at the bus stop, not 10 feet from my front door.
We had intentionally moved to the wrong side of the freeway to "experience" urban living and being a part of a community of color near Los Angles California.
But at some point it dawned on me that this was not an action born out of obedience to Christ, rather, it was an action like many, born out of an interest in doing something different and interesting. (To say nothing of the benefits we received for being frugal while in school.)
And then it got worse. At some point I realized I was subconsciously judging some people I knew well who did a lot to serve those in need, and also lived in a nice house and drove new cars. Not that I ever articulated it. It was just a subconscious thing.
And then it hit me. While the monetary value of the things I had might be lower than some. I essentially had all the same stuff. I had given up nothing.
Like many in the neighborhood I lived in, Jesus had no place to lay his head. In contrast I did have a place to lay my head, and a whole lot more.
Lord have mercy on me a sinner.
Wow! A lot of chewing gum in that sermon! I'll definitely make your N.O. appearance, God willing and the Mississippi don't rise.
I would like to hear what you have to say about this conundrum.
Jesus had no qualms about raising Lazarus, a friend who came from a good family-one would assume-from the dead, yet did nothing to save the poor criminals whom he met for the first time on Calvary. Quixotic? Is it that he wasn't against the death penalty for criminals, even "minor" perps, even the one who repented, and even the one who needed more time to repent , and with it may have gained paradise?
Did he, perhaps so thoroughly beleive in separation of church/religion/faith in God, on the one hand and state on the other, that equally he would not condemn payment of taxes to the emperor, and the exercise of civil/state power in the matter of punishments for crime?
Considering the adultress whom he did save-from the religious sex police- have not the crminals at Calvary cause to complain?
I think there are lot's of sound aruments against the death penalty, but I'm not sure the argument from Jesus' precepts/pracitces is very helpful.
Tough duty, yours.
ELO'B
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I would like to hear what you have to say about this conundrum.
Jesus had no qualms about raising Lazarus, a friend who came from a good family-one would assume-from the dead, yet did nothing to save the poor criminals whom he met for the first time on Calvary. Quixotic? Is it that he wasn't against the death penalty for criminals, even "minor" perps, even the one who repented, and even the one who needed more time to repent , and with it may have gained paradise?
Did he, perhaps so thoroughly beleive in separation of church/religion/faith in God, on the one hand and state on the other, that equally he would not condemn payment of taxes to the emperor, and the exercise of civil/state power in the matter of punishments for crime?
Considering the adultress whom he did save-from the religious sex police- have not the crminals at Calvary cause to complain?
I think there are lot's of sound aruments against the death penalty, but I'm not sure the argument from Jesus' precepts/pracitces is very helpful.
Tough duty, yours.
ELO'B
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