The Work is Outdoors (6.14.20)

The Work is Outdoors
June 14, 2020
Section One: Words shared at the Uptown Interfaith Solidarity Walk + Prayer Service
Section Two: Words shared after the walk with the St. Charles Ave. Baptist Church
Rev. Elizabeth Mangham Lott
St. Charles Ave. Baptist Church

SECTION ONE: Gathering for Interfaith Prayer Service

In Wendell Berry’s fiction, he returns again and again to the imagined small Kentucky town of Port William. Spanning decades, the American backdrop to his small-town stories inevitably speaks to wars that break out: Vietnam, Korea, WWII. But when Berry writes of the backdrop of war, he writes something like, “The War broke out again.” As though War itself is a pulse or a drumbeat; The War is always there but sometimes underground and then, almost inevitably, bursting above ground yet again.

This moment in which we find ourselves is not a new moment. Yes, stories are new, statues being ripped down and tossed in lakes and rivers feels new. COVID-19 disproportionately impacting people of color maybe seems new. But this moment in streets across the United States is not new. Oppression is not new. Power structures that dismiss and favor a few over the many are not new. Shouting down injustice and demonstrations of protest are not new. We are in a moment that is part of a long movement, and we white folks and white communities of faith are being called to act, together, out of love and compassion for our neighbors.

While we gather today from varied faith traditions, we share sacred stories and ancient texts that call us to act for good in the world on one path. In fact, those sacred stories point to the empires and powers of the past and ask, even demand, resistance to oppression and the structures and systems that benefit the few at the expense of the many. It is in that tradition that we hear our call to action today.

Naming the Evil Among Us: 

In the last minutes of George Floyd’s life, we heard the last minutes of Eric Garner’s. In the shocking injustice of Breonna Taylor’s death, we remember Tamir Rice struck down as a child. In this PRIDE month, we mark two deaths just this week of Black trans women, Riah Milton and Dominique Fells, who were targeted and killed because of embodying their true gender identity. And the death and suffering is not always so direct or obvious. Since March of this year, some 7 out of 10 COVID-19 deaths in Louisiana were people of color. This loss of life is absolutely tragic and also not at all random.

Systems and structures that lead to suffering and death have been created to protect and serve the white folks who created them. It’s a hard reality to face because we have been taught that 245 years of a country can be considered ancient history. These systems and structures aren’t ours. We didn’t build them. Ah, but they are. And we benefit from them every day. My life is made more comfortable and more protected because I was born with white skin. That is not to say I do not know suffering. But it is to say that the color of my skin is not among the reasons.

This moment is not new. It is like seeing a floating piece of ice among calm waters and realizing we are hitting an iceberg. We must see with clear, open eyes if we are to take any lasting action. We must allow our hearts to be softened by the words of scripture laid upon them. Without the clouds of guilt and shame, we must honestly face the realities that benefit us at the expense of others. Only then can we begin to dismantle them and dream a better, more just world into being.

Rejection of Silence / Commitment: 

I have been rather quiet and tucked in at home until today. My questions to myself and to God has been: What is my calling in this moment? What am I to do? When am I to speak? When am I to listen and hear? I have been known to rush, heart first, into moments like this, but I am learning that some of my instincts to march and protest and show solidarity have, perhaps, been photo op moments. Moments in which I show up for the public call to action and then return to my ordinary life without participating in the work of change.

Real change, the radical work of bending the moral arc toward justice together kind of change, requires movement communities who play all sorts of different roles and are committed to the long, slow work ahead. In these movement communities, the work will not all  be public, it won’t all have emotional payoff, and there will be hidden work like pouring the coffee and ordering the stamps and assembling the list of senators and representatives to write that may not even get any credit but is absolutely essential. We must commit to the tedious, painstaking work of sustainable change because of our love for our neighbors; not for the social media likes or the public credit but for true equity and justice that lasts.

Friends, we have gathered you here today because all of our houses of worship are on St. Charles Ave., the most prominent and privileged Avenue in our city, that places a call upon us to speak truthfully about this moment and what our complicity has been in getting to this place. Again, not clouded by guilt and shame, but moving forward together with open hearts and open eyes.

There are many asks on the table right now, and we all must engage in a process of discernment to determine where we will join in and what work is ours to do. There are calls across the country for restructuring city budgets to have less policing and more social support, mental health resources, and intervention services. There are calls for renaming plazas and streets and reimagining the images and inspirations we want to claim as a community to call us to our best and highest selves through the shared symbols of our cities. This current calls for change join the ongoing work of dismantling the system of mass incarceration, safety and equity for trans siblings of color, and on and on and on. We must not say the work is too big or too much or too daunting. We must discern what is ours to do and begin to work there.

We, your faith leaders, have already committed to each other to be in conversation about what our collective undoing work looks like. We will continue to meet, to discern, to talk, to partner in public ways and private ways, big ways and small ways, to travel in this journey together.

For today, this one small moment among a movement, may you commit to asking the question in your heart, “What work is mine to do?” Listen for the answers. Then commit to joining your movement community of faith to do the work.

SECTION TWO:
Matthew 9.35-10.8
Parts were ad libbed based on notes

the work isn’t about a building

a gathering place

an indoor something to be protected and guarded

it’s about a movement

in the streets

into the cities and towns

going two by two to where the suffering is

feeling it deep in your body

empathizing and being filled with compassion

then doing something about it with your own life and ability and power

—

Before we get to verse 35 of Matthew 9, I think we need to hear the action of the preceding chapters in rapid succession. Jesus is born, named, blessed, protected. Then he is baptized, blessed, tested, and returns home. There he immediately begins teaching, gathering disciples, healing people, blessing them, and teaching some more. Matthew says he goes up a hillside and teaches huge crowds—turning everything they’ve ever been taught on its head and then pushing it farther. The crowds go wild at this remarkable way of getting a faith like nothing they’d ever heard before. 

Eugene Peterson writes, “Jesus came down the mountain with the cheers of the crowd still ringing in his hears. Then a leper appeared.” He healed the leper and blessed him. Then a Roman captain came in a panic asking healing for his servant. Jesus heals him. He then walks into Peter’s house, and Peter’s mother-in-law is sick in bed. Jesus heals her. “That evening a lot of demon-afflicted people were brought to him. He relieved the inwardly tormented. He cured the bodily ill,” reads verse 16. After this flurry of healing and blessing work, he knows he needs to get away and be quiet because the crowds are gathering as the word of his healing spreads. He invites his disciples to follow, they get in a boat and leave for quiet rest. Immediately, a storm surrounds them. The disciples panic, Jesus stands and silences the wind, quiets the sea, and the disciples are shocked.

Rest doesn’t happen in Matthew’s telling of the story. Jesus is after quiet, but when they land on the other side of the lake they are immediately met by two men possessed by demons. Jesus heals them. They get back in the boat and go back home. On the other side, men are waiting for them with a paraplegic friend on a stretcher. Jesus heals him. He takes a break to eat with a tax collector and disreputable characters. The same religious leaders who criticized him for the way he healed people then criticized him for spending his time with crooks and riffraff. Jesus looks at them and replies, “I’m after mercy, not religion. I’m here to invite outsiders, not coddle insiders.”

He manages one more teaching lesson before a local official appears and asks Jesus to resuscitate his daughter who just died. On the way, a woman who had been hemorrhaging for 12 years reaches out to touch Jesus’ robe, and she’s healed just because she believes she can be and tries. Jesus arrives at the house, revives the girl, and news spreads. Jesus leaves the house, two blind men follow him, and he touches their eyes to give them sight. Right after that a man arrives who had been made speechless by an evil spirit. Jesus heals him. People know what Jesus is doing, and the outsiders he’s inviting in are applauding him while the insiders he isn’t coddling are calling it hocus-pocus and the devil’s work. 

THEN Jesus made a circuit of the towns and villages. Where he taught and met and healed. He”healed their diseased bodies, healed their bruised and hurt lives. When he looked out over the crowds, his heart broke.” And this is when he prayed for the 12 and invited them to pray, too. He knew he couldn’t do all of the work by himself, so he sent them out in his way and in his name. He commissioned these 12 friends by name and sent them out with instructions to start right where they already lived—healing the sick, raising the dead, touching the untouchables, kicking out demons, sharing from their well of love and generosity. He invites them, blesses them, and sends them to live into the Jesus Way with more love than money, and more intuition than a plan. He trusts them to get it right. 

Compassion is more than a warm feeling and wishing strangers well. This is a life’s work of resisting our own darkness and chasing after the light of God in the world, in ourselves, and within all those whom we meet. Compassion is active. Compassion is persistent. Compassion is active. Compassion is persistent. Compassion is a guide.

The churches of guilt, fear, and manipulation will be no more. The churches of entertainment and passive participation will be no more. We are moving forward and far backward at once—retuning to the Jesus story as voluntary and active participants who are named, blessed, and sent out to live this thing out in real time together. This is an emerging path that we are trodding together. 

Suu Kyi describes another path; “a threefold path of compassion that is directly related to her Buddhist inheritance and practice. She describes this compassionate way as ‘The courage to see. The courage to feel. And the courage to act.’ To live compassionately, she says, is to courageously see the connection between ourselves and those who suffer. Not only do we see the connection and become aware of it, but we allow ourselves to feel it. Finally, it is not just to see and feel the connection but to act on it, to courageously take responsibility for those who suffer.”

This is what Matthew is describing in the gospel lesson before us today. “When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.“ Jesus then sends his students out in search of lost sheep and instructs them, “As you go, proclaim the good news: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ 8Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.” We get jittery when we hear the instruction to proclaim the good news because we’ve witnessed or horribly wrong that can go—knocking on doors, interrupting strangers to inquire about their eternal salvation. What is good news according to Jesus? The good news is healing. The good news is restoring health and wholeness and community. The good news is enabling someone to thrive physically and spiritually and even financially—not burdening them unnecessarily with payments for the life-giving care they’ve received. 

John Philip Newell observes of Jesus in these gospel stories, “He notices. He allows himself to be conscious of the needs of others—their health, happiness, hunger.” It is also in Matthew’s gospel that thousands have gathered “around Jesus in the countryside, to be in his presence, to be taught by him. And who notices that the crowd is hungry? Jesus himself. He makes the connection between his own needs and their needs. He says, ‘I have compassion for the crowd,’” and he feeds them.

What must we notice in a radical, path-trodding way together? We have already begun this work here. We are already on this path, and it’s not an easy one. We are on a path that is asking live purposefully and compassionately—the way modeled by Christ Jesus. 

We must notice the same suffering and injustice and basic life needs that Jesus noticed. In our modern context, that means realities and root causes of poverty. It means advocating for prison reform and robust health care and mental health care. It means speaking to our nation’s gluttonous military spending. It means expanding our knowledge of and attention to refugees, immigration reform, and the Sanctuary movement. It means working with civic leaders, attorneys, judges, faith leaders, and neighbors to abolish the death penalty. It means responding to another headline of a mass shooting by giving flesh to our prayers as we work for comprehensive gun reform even though it seems impossible. It means listening with open-hearts to the voices of Black Lives Matter, joining as allies, and seeing the great injustice and reality that black and brown bodies are not treated the same as white bodies in this country, particularly by the police and the criminal justice system. It means we must resist in formal, organized, deliberate ways when our government pushes policy and law and executive orders to formalize and increase the suffering of our brothers and sisters who are LGBTQ, people of color, undocumented workers, stuck in the system of incarceration, and generally underrepresented by those in power. 

Compassion is active. Compassion is persistent. Compassion is a guide. Compassion is the fire in the belly of the Holy Spirit guiding us forward on the path we cannot see.

May you, my brothers and sisters, be filled with the compassion of Jesus Christ today. Amen.