Labor Day Sunday: Partiality and Prejudice, did Jesus have to learn?

9/6/15

SO…it’s Labor Day weekend. I’m remembering the many times West-Park celebrated Labor to the  pulpit Sunday with special union guests sharing in service leadership. The time our unique music director Bill Schimmel brought in long time union musician and organizer Paul Stein to share old songs with us.  And most recently, our friends from National Movement Against Sweatshops.

What I’m interested in this week is prejudice and partiality. And I start with James, talking about experiences that seem to come directly from his church experience. His critique of favoritism coming from a long tradition within Judaism.

He’s talking about what happens on any given Sunday when you have two visitors, one rich and well-dressed, the other poor.

²For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, ³and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, "Have a seat here, please," while to the one who is poor you say, "Stand there," or, "Sit at my feet," ⁴have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? 

I love James, the brother of Jesus, because he is so direct.

Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? ⁶But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? ⁷Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?

He’s saying that since we have been baptized in the name of Jesus, if we mistreat the poor we’re giving Jesus a bad name, in essence we’re cursing him. We who bear his name become responsible for what is done in that name.

His court reference means something to me too, remembering going with different members of this congregation to housing court, seeing wealthy landlord after wealthy landlord putting people out from their houses, on sometimes flimsy grounds, sometimes just because they couldn’t afford an attorney. I cases where they’d actually paid the rent. Just so the new empty apartment could flip from stabilized or controlled to market rate. And out own experiences in court with all the pressure from judges to settle paying large sums of money we didn't have  just to make it go away.

I think about conversations about should anyone be able to sit in the sanctuary? Or  will their presence make others uncomfortable.? Worry about cleanliness? (Remember: We had over 100 occupiers here for weeks and  never a bed bug….good luck or maybe more….maybe God watches out..)

And once again the royal law, royal because it is the law on which Jesus’ reign is based…"You shall love your neighbor as yourself…and if you don’t do this, you are indeed a transgressor, that this is as important as adultery. Wish we could get that idea across…

SO here it is again The bottom line….¹⁷So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

(Lutherans vs catholics)

So sandwiched between two feeding stories (of the 5000, of the 4000) we find a story about different bread. Or at least crumbs. Keep an eye on Jesus here. They’re up  northwest of Galilee. A place despised by good Jews. A woman who Is most definitely not a Jew asks Jesus for help. And he responds with the language of prejudice. Of racial epithet.And she calls him on it. Was this compassion fatigue on his part? ( In at least 2 other places where a worn out Jesus is pressed to respond, as in Jairus daughter, Luke 8: 40-56, his response is  different. But those cases were about Jews ) What’s going on here? Did Jesus have to grow? To change? People are very troubled by this  possibility…

Brian Blount, President of Union Seminary in Richmond, Virginia…has written a long essay arguing that for Jesus, this is just an elaborate teaching scheme…Well, I just don’t think so…I believe that if indeed as we profess to believe that Jesus was  fully human, then his wisdom and understanding and clarity and judgment just may not be full formed from the first. He needs to experience this,

The empire says us/not us. Not the Jesus’ community where we’re all us.(But how many of  us are ready to go  go beyond Christian inclusivity, IE, Christian/not Christian….

Before we end, I’ve been thinking about the difference between prejudice and Prejudice is all the ways we speak of and refer to those who are not us. Prejudice takes those feelings and has the  power to impose them through policy and institutions.

This year is the 150^th anniversary of the end of civil war…there’s a new examination going on of reconstruction and what it meant. At the very least, we know that it’s not enough to blame it on the south and their race related laws. None of that could have happened unless there was support buy the north. It’s now clear that thee was increasing  anxiety that newly free slaves and lower working class whites would join together in a unified poor workingman’s movement. It had already begun.  Thus Jim Crow laws took on the purpose of separating potential white and black allies.

And even then black elite like Booker T. Washington defined  the problem as one of “race relations” vs reconstruction, justice.  The same issues are with us today, little changed.

Has anyone ever heard of the Labor Temple? In the lost pages of Presbyterian history lies the story of the Labor Temple. …Around the same as this church was coming together in 1910, the Presbytery of New York City responded  to requests of  a number of  committed former mission personnel. Their Labor Temple ran until 1957 long after other similar institutions had ceased to exist.

Charlie Steize, founder, wanted an extension of the church that would  provide hospitality, spiritual guidance and education. He also believed that as minister, it was essential that he and his family live in the temple. ,One of his more popular lecturers there was Will Durant.  His lectures at the Temple would one day become the acclaimed History of Civilization.

A later pastor ,Rev. Dr. Edmund Chafee, founded the Ministers Union of America (AFL/CIO) local 1. Where are they now that I need them? The MUA’s officers included clergy from two other long time activist congregations, Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn and ST. Jame s Harlem. And in line with the Temple’s sense of mission and core values, a number of the city’ rabbis drawn  the desire for a collective expression of fighting for a better world. More just. More humane.  I would like to have known these guys.

I’m proud that there was a Presbyterian Church once did this.

And I’m on the lookout for those who are burning to have a conversation on these and other classic texts.

Let us enjoy the rest of this weekend off.

SECOND READING JAMES 2:1-10 (11-13) 14-17

¹My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?²For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, ³and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, "Have a seat here, please," while to the one who is poor you say, "Stand there," or, "Sit at my feet," ⁴have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? ⁵Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? ⁶But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? ⁷Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?

⁸You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." ⁹But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. ¹⁰For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. ¹¹For the one who said, 'You shall not commit adultery," also said, "You shall not murder." Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. ¹²So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty. ¹³For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.

¹⁴What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? ¹⁵If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, ¹⁶and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? ¹⁷So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

GOSPEL MARK 7:24-37

²⁴From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, ²⁵but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. ²⁶Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. ²⁷He said to her, "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." ²⁸But she answered him, "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." ²⁹Then he said to her, "For saying that, you may go — the demon has left your daughter." ³⁰So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

³¹Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. ³²They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. ³³He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. ³⁴Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened." ³⁵And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. ³⁶Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. ³⁷They were astounded beyond measure, saying, "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."

Loving neighbors: One world, one pain

2/20

Jim is the first to arrive today to help set up. We open the church together. So I go out to the steps, I see Marty. I greet him. At first he looks puzzled. Then he says, “Oh, Reverend, I didn’t recognize you. You had all the accoutrements of a shammes.” I lift up the broom and dust pan and laugh and wave.  He comes closer. “Reverend, my father died at 70, may he rest in peace. When he was sixty two, some ministers came and said, “Kaplan, we know you’re a rabbi, but you have to take care of your family. You have to sign up for social security. And he  did. And my mother and we kids, we never wanted. Reverend, you have to take care of your family. Do not wait too long.” I thank him. Don’t say that he’s told me that before . “Remember,” he says, pointing a finger at me and looking me in the eye. Then walks off. Looking  over his shoulder he says, “Have a good Sunday.”

It’s time for worship. There’s lots on the table today.  A lot about love your neighbors. Love your enemies....The love your neighbors idea frames Leviticus 19. Everything that come before that passage is how you do it. The injunctions echo the Ten Commandments, expand on them. And always at the heart of Torah, there is  justice at the heart. For example, the idea of not stripping  a vineyard bare, or harvesting to the edges. The whole idea of gleaning, of leaving something for the  poor, the alien, the immigrant;  especially the undocumented, unprotected immigrant. The idea that we are not to extract every last penny of profit...or  even “keep the wages of a laborer until morning...”

How can that not speak to the idea of a Living Wage?

I’m thinking about Wisconsin this week. The most disturbing  part is the  attack on collective bargaining. Over 30,000 state employees rallied to protest. As an old union organizer  friend of mine in Portland said, the only alternative to collective bargaining is collective begging and we ain’t doing that.” My son Micah sent me a great photo from Egypt showing a man  with a sign saying, “Wisconsin, we are with you: one world, one pain.”

Can you believe that in 1910, the Presbyterians started something called the Labor Temple? At Union Square?  That the Board of National Missions had something called the Unit of City and Industrial Work ? That there was a Labor Temple School led by Will Durant that lasted into the ‘30’s? (By the way, that’s where Durant’s the Story of Civilization came from, his lecture series at the Labor Temple.)

A Columbia University article reported  that the Labor Temple was founded in 1910 by the Rev. Charles L. Stelze of the Presbyterian Home Mission Board. Under Stelze's leadership, the Labor Temple would be "entirely unsectarian, where every man, if he have a message, may give it expression, and if it be good it will receive attention." On its opening day, Labor Temple was attended by five hundred members of labor unions, Socialist, Anarchists, and persons who took interest in labor matters and sociologists.

And as could could be predicted, New York City Presbytery erupted with charges that Steizle and Durant presented socialist and pacifist lectures and promoted Bolshevism and Leninism. (Which Durant did not deny.) And criticized Henry Sloane Coffin for supporting them. How did our church come to abandon  working people?

Again, today in our neighborhood,  The Saigon Grill workers are organizing, protesting, calling for a boycott against the new owners even as the old owners were put away in jail this week. Some of our members would like to see us try and mediate this conflict even as others begin to reach out in solidarity. Our neighbor Trinity Lutheran is the workers’ gathering place. 

Love your neighbor, as you would yourself...that’s what all this is about. 

So now  back to Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount. And remember, he’s speaking to his disciples, those who have already made a commitment. But still, the deeper Jesus gets into his sermon, the harder it gets. Loving enemies? Do not resist an evildoer...really???

I believe that what he’s talking about is how our resistance can lead us to become what we hate. Walter Wink, from up the street at Auburn Seminary,  has written:

The very act of hating something draws it to us. Since our hate is a direct response to the evil done, our hate almost invariably causes us to respond in the terms already laid down by the enemy. To counter their espionage, we had a spy network; to make sure that no one cooperated with the enemy, we needed to spy on our own citizens. "You always become the thing you fight the most," wrote psychologist Carl Jung, and we have done everything in our power to prove him correct.

He goes on to point out that Churchill’s bombing of 43 German cities, including the firebombing of Dresden and Hamburg, were essentially terrorist acts directed at civilians. And  the single most deadly terrorist attack of all time was the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I say this even as one whose father believed that those bombings saved him from being shipped out to Japan. The target was civilians,the goal was, as we have come to call it, “shock and awe”...

In the world of the Sermon on the Mount, vengeance and grudges are simply forbidden.

Likewise, you become transformed by your fear, you become your fear. The Inquisition, born as a  response to the Protestant Reformation, revealed a church turned paranoid  and  violent in its efforts to defend itself.

In the pursuit of witches, the church, especially the  New England Puritans, became possessed itself. 

You become what you hate. It has been said that the reality of the new society that will be born is already revealed in the nature of the revolution that brings it about.Which is why the triumph of a non-violent  revolution in Egypt gives us so much hope. 

My reading of Walter Wink’s article from the 1980’s reminded me that, in his words, There is no more  classic instance of counterproductive violence than that employed by the Reagan administration against Nicaragua. When I remember the policies of President Reagan in Central America, his economic policies which so badly hurt working people and continue to haunt us today, it becomes hard, no impossible  for me to be objective in this celebration of his centenary. Funny, Ronald Reagan and West-Park, birthdays in the same year. I wonder if our Presbyterian Peacemaker friends of the ’80’s would see the irony?

Finally, Jesus tells us to be perfect. Perfect? Perfect? It was John Wesley and his idea of  Christian perfection that tried to live that out. For Wesley, perfection was not the state of being unable to sin, but rather the state of choosing not to sin. Wesley's perfection represented a change of life, a freedom from willful rebellion against God, impure intentions, and pride. Wesley also did not view perfection as permanent.

However, in our tradition, perfection  is simply  impossible. As the rolling Stones once sang:

Just as every cop is a criminal

And all the sinners saints

As heads is tails just call me Lucifer

I'm in need of some restraint

It is the very realization that we are none of us perfect that makes love of  neighbors, love of enemies possible and judgment impossible. 

We agreed that the words of the Sermon on the Mount are hard to live by. But that wrestling with their meaning is important.

Philip sang “Lord, I want to be a Christian” then  we all sang:

O for a world where everyone Respects each other's ways, Where love is lived and all is done With justice and with praise.  O for a world where goods are shared  And misery relieved, Where truth is spoken, children spared, Equality achieved. We welcome one world family And struggle with each choice That opens us to unity And gives our vision voice. The poor are rich, the weak are strong, The foolish ones are wise. Tell all who mourn; outcasts belong, Who perishes will rise. O for a world preparing for God's glorious reign of peace, Where time and tears will be no more, And all but love will cease.

And then once again, Ana’s warm cafe con leche. We pass the peace. And church is over.

2/21

The steps are empty, except for clothes and seed left for pigeons. I wish they wouldn’t do that.