First Church in Cambridge, Congregational UCC
17 October 2004
Waiting for the Punch Line
First things first. I have to apologize to you all for not submitting a sermon title for this week's bulletin. I was away at a training all week that I'll tell you about in a moment. Not until I sat down yesterday to collect my thoughts and write my sermon did I realize that I didn't even have a title to submit. Well, I do now, and its this: "Waiting for the Punch Line."
The fact is there are at least two punch lines in our parable today. The first one comes early on when Luke begins our passage for today with the punch line of Jesus' parable. Before he even tells the story of the widow and the unjust judge, he tells us what the parable is about. "Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart." An unusual start, don't you think? Usually, the brilliance of Jesus parables, at least as a rhetorical model, is that it is up to the listener to discern what the parable is about. Usually, there are any number of interpretations. But, Luke seems to take the fun away from all this. He tells us right off the bat exactly what the parable is about. Granted, a parable is not a joke, but if it were, none of us would be laughing at this one. If the punch line comes first, how are we to be startled into any kind of thoughtfulness?
Fortunately, there is another punch line of a sort that comes in the midst of the parable itself. In just six lines, a sort of mini-drama unfolds between a widow who has been wronged and an unjust judge who couldn't care less. The widow comes at the judge repeatedly, demanding that he grant her justice against her opponent. We don't know who did what to the widow, but we do know that the judge finally relents to her plea, however ignobly. He thinks to himself, "because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming." We can say why he is called the unjust judge. But get this...the phrase, "she wears me out" in Greek, is literally translated to mean "she gives me a black eye". It's a literal punch line, get it? In one of the commentaries I read, the footnote explaining the translation said the original Greek word was a boxing term! With that in mind, we gain a new appreciation for the kind of tension that is present in this little story. In the political and social stratospheres of first century Palestine, widows were typically accorded no power, physical or otherwise, no voice, and little or no access to money. The fact that this woman was able to get close enough to the judge for him to hear her case is a show of her courage and perseverance. The fact that the judge could well be feeling like she might punch his lights out is all the more telling. She was a powerless widow. He was powerful judge. Somehow, through her prayers, through her persistence, through her not losing heart, she forced the judge to act. I'll return to the parable in a moment, but first, we have to deal with the last lines of the passage, after the story is over. The Lord said, "Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them."
Huh? Are we to take from this passage the idea that God, like the judge, answers only the pleas, or prayers, of the squeakiest wheel? I suppose we could try to be generous and give God the benefit of the doubt here. With all of the juvenile prayers that humanity has muttered to God from lotto lines and sports fields, maybe God does get a little cranky from time to time and just wants us to go away. Any takers for that interpretation? I didn't think so. With our fellow Sox fans, we can all say, "Keep the Faith", right? (Maybe not after last night!)
Squeaky wheels or not, Jesus was not so optimistic nor naive to assume that every prayer cried was a prayer answered; that is not the point of this passage. If we remember Luke's opening, the parable is about praying always and not losing heart. According to Luke then, the parable is not so much about God as much as it is about us. The parable is about what the practice of prayer and of not losing heart can do to change and transform the life of a disciple, in whatever circumstance. It's no coincidence that Jesus chooses a powerless widow to convey this message. She was ready for some change in her life. Its no coincidence that the parable depicts a widow engaged, not in a moment of prayer, but in a moment of public tension and struggle against the powers that be, in this case an unjust judge. Her persistence and her righteous agitation even, won the day. The tension starting building the first time she asked the judge to grant her justice, and she asks again, and again, until the judge finally relents and recognizes her case. If ceaseless prayer and not losing heart are what the parable is ultimately about, we can assume from details of the story that neither come easily nor without some serious tension nor struggle.
From the first century to the twentieth first century. Did any of you by chance catch Eileen McNamara's column in the Boston Globe last Sunday morning. She introduced a story of a group of Haitian nursing home workers that have been coming together in their local churches while building relationships with those in other congregations throughout the Boston Area. They have begun to share their stories of mistreatment. They are stories of being spit on and cursed at by patients and then fired for complaining to their bosses, of being forbid by administrators to speak their native Creole language even on their lunch breaks, of having their jobs threatened when trying to receive emergency calls at work from family members in Haiti. Over 60% of nursing home patients are never visited so these care workers offer elderly patients some of the only human contact they have, and most do so with love and compassion for the elderly. And yet most nursing home administrations have done nothing to counteract what these aids have called a culture of disrespect for their lives and their work. All but two or three administrators, out of over 30 attempts, have agreed to sign on to a patient and worker Bill of Rights that asks for nothing but recognition of their dignity as human beings.
Roughly 80% of nursing home aides in Boston are Haitian. Through the help of community organizing efforts of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, these Haitian workers have begun to find some common interests with those who are not Haitian, namely those who are concerned about the quality of the care and the environment in which their elderly parents are living in these same nursing homes. Haitians, and African-Americans, and Anglos, Christians and Jews, urban and suburban faith communities have been building relationships over the last year and a half through a community organizing campaign that has involved hundreds of individual meetings and small group meetings. They have shared their pain and anger filled concerns about the treatments of these workers as well as the treatment of those who live in nursing homes. They are now seeking recognition both from state government officials, namely Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey and the Attorney General Tom Reilly, and from the nursing home industry.
Last Thursday, the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization hosted an action at Temple Salem in Dorchester, a predominantly Haitian Seventh Day Adventist church, where they invited the Attorney General to come out and hear their concerns, to acknowledge their Bill of Rights, and to demand that changes be made in nursing home administrations to bring about a culture of respect. They had a simple request for Reilly. It was nothing as vague as demanding justice against their opponents. They asked him, very specifically, to write a letter to the Massachusetts Extended Care Federation, an organization of private nursing home owners and administrators, reminding them of what was already the law, namely to treat their workers with dignity and respect. Leaders in several Haitian churches, along with community organizers and other local synagogue and church leaders met with O'Reilly's office on several occasions prior to this action. They asked him for the letter twice before only to meet his postponement and then his refusal to do so. As it turns out, asking him to communicate their concerns to nursing home industry, which receives 1.6 billion dollars a year in government funds, would strain his relations with some deep-pocketed political allies in the industry. Well, on Thursday, after turning down two prior requests for a public meeting, after saying he was not ready to write that letter, and after learning that there would be 500 people gathered from the city and suburbs, including some fifty mostly Haitian Certified Nurses Aids, he showed up at Temple Salem to hear their pleas.
I'll let you know what happened in a second, but first I need to insert a little confession. The leadership training I attended in Braintree all last week was sponsored by the Industrial Areas Foundation, a national organization that trains civic and congregational leaders, lay and clergy, in strategies for doing this kind of broad based organizing. The 60 or so participants in the training were from Baltimore, New York, DC, Philly, Atlanta, and Boston. There was even a man there from Santa Cruz, who was there as a member of Dave Grishaw-Jones church. A few of the local folks at the training were involved in nursing home campaign so we all got an insider's view of the big event as it was unfolding. A part of our training was to take a field trip together to observe this local action. I hope you can forgive me for still being a little fired up about it all. Now, back to the action, briefly, and then back to the parable.
Temple Salem was packed by 7:00 on Thursday night. In my entire lifetime, I have rarely seen such a diverse gathering of individuals and congregations coming together around a common issue. Catholics and Jews, liberal and conservative Protestants, rich folks from the Newton and Brookline and poor folks from Dorchester and Mattapan. 500 hundred people waiting to here what Reilly would say. Were it not for the songs that were being sung, you would have been able to cut the tension with your hand by the time that Ray Hammond, the most powerful African American minister in Boston, walked in escorting the Attorney General. The Haitian and American National Anthems were sung. A Haitian pastor set a theological context for the conversation, invoking Jesus words "when I was sick, you visited me". Two brave, and otherwise powerless, nursing home workers shared their heart wrenching testimonies of mistreatment through thick accents to a teary-eyed audience. Then the powerful Ray Hammond introduced the even more powerful Attorney General. He knew what the crowd wanted to hear. He started with a bad joke about the Red Sox, and then told stories of his family members in nursing homes. Though we sympathized, we all thought he was going to going to dodge the bullet. A leader was prepared to ask him outright for the letter at the end of his speech if he made no mention of it. Then, towards the end of his words, he said it, almost as if in passing and in only one sentence. He made a public commitment to write an advisory to the Federation. When he was done, he was rewarded with a standing ovation. In the evaluation of the action the next day, we all agreed that he did not plan to say that he would write the letter. Rather, it just came out. Something about the power of the care workers testimonies, and the power of the interfaith, multi-racial, and multi-cultural relationships that had been developed around the issue, swayed him to put what was clearly right before what was politically expedient. In the end, the punch line of the action last Thursday night had very little to do with the Attorney General's commitment to do his job and write the letter. The punch line came the next morning when we heard one of Haitian leaders say that in all her years living in the U.S. she had never before felt so proud or so powerful. She never before dreamed that the struggles of her people in Boston would be so recognized. She was well aware that she could not have developed that pride and power alone, and so perhaps the hardest hitting punch line that t he event delivered, came through the relationships that had been built across so many otherwise dividing lines.
Okay. I know I got carried away there in telling that story. I know it was one of things where you kind had to be there to get it. I also know you don't need my help in drawing out the parallels between what happened on Thursday night and between our parable for today. The similarities are real. In both stories, the least powerful in society persisted in creating enough tension to bend the ear of power itself. But there are real differences too. In first century Palestine, perhaps it was possible for one of the most powerless people in society to find her way to a face-to-face conversation with the judge. But today, a powerless individual can't do it alone, no matter how persistent they are. Today, one congregation can't even do it alone. As individual or even as institutional members of what is often the called the civic sector, we too rarely have the voice and the power to be heard or recognized by the media, by corporations, or by politicians, unless by chance they are sitting in our pews in their private time. Whether the powerful are just or unjust, chances are they spend most of their time interacting with others like them, and not enough of their public time hearing stories, face to face, of powerless widows or nursing care workers.
We can and must pray for justice, and pray always. We cannot and must not lose heart. But without broad-based relationships, without that power of organized people recognizing the issues about which they share deep concerns, we are left lurking in the something that is more like a shadow of justice, rather than bringing the long term light of justice to bear through substantial, systemic change. Mainline churches like ours do great work supporting charities and doing service. Its important work even as we realize our efforts are mostly band aids to problems that are so desperately in need of institutional reform. But a part of what is missing from the work of our mainline congregations is the patience to build relational power, to build power in numbers, to build a power out of persistence that can bring real tension to the public sphere, and that can bring a hard hitting punch lines to power. As I learned in my training, community service, necessary as it is, has very little tension. Community organizing thrives on it.
Now...I know I'm not telling you anything you don't already know here. I know this church worked hard in building relationships with other congregations and agencies around an issue about which we care deeply, namely equal marriage. I'm sure that even in this church, and in your conversations with others, there was a deep and prayerful tension at work that changed you, as individual members and as a congregation. The punch line of that broad based effort is written in part on the large banner on our front lawn. First Church celebrates Equal Marriage. I just celebrated an equal marriage yesterday afternoon, at a Unitarian Church in Lexington, where I co-officiated at a wedding of two women who have been together for sixteen years and who have 4 kids. I'm still wiping the tears. There happened to be an NBC Nightly News cameraman there recording some background footage for an upcoming segment. If it airs, we could say we lucked out in sharing that punch line with those both within and outside of Massachusetts. I have to say though that having the media there just made me wonder all the more what our next punch line will be. What is the next issue that will galvanize our passion and indignation such that we move beyond the more common tasks of service and charity. I can hardly wait to see!
Our vision, our way of hospitality, calls to at once go deeper in our spiritual lives and to make our relationship with one another more personal and meaningful. At the same time, it calls us to be on the Open Road, building public relationships. It calls to spiritual formation, as well as public formation. It calls us continue bringing some serious punch lines to power. Ultimately, it calls us to ever deeper notions of Christian Discipleship. Our parable reminds us that the work of prayer and persistent care for the least of these among us will not be without tension. It will only come if we pray always, if we do not lose heart, and if we never forget that our deepest relationship is with God, in whom all of our relationships live and move and have their being. Amen.
© 2004, Daniel Smith