Episodes
Sunday Oct 13, 2013
Justice Always
Sunday Oct 13, 2013
Sunday Oct 13, 2013
Rev Dean Snyder
Luke 18:1-8
We are all concerned about the shutdown of the federal government and its impact on the lives of people who are federal employees or contractors. One of our Foundry leaders has begun a group for persons impacted by the shutdown to get together for support. Contact Pastor Theresa if you are interested in information about that group.
The shutdown is also impacting the most vulnerable people of our nation and city. An article in the Washington Post this week said that our friends at the Latin American Youth Center and Sasha Bruce Youthwork who work with homeless and at risk youth have had to furlough more than half of their staffs and reduce their programming to essential services.
All sorts of services that are dependent upon federal and city money are in crisis. We heard about one crisis as a result of the shutdown that we felt we just had to do something about.
We found out from one of our members that DC Safe’s funding ended last Tuesday. DC SAFE operates the only shelter in the District that provides immediate aid to victims of domestic violence 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
So Ben Roberts, our interim director of social justice ministries, talked to DC Safe this week and Foundry made a contribution of $2,500 to help keep the shelter open during the shutdown. The money came from the Christmas Catalogue’s greatest need fund and the senior pastor’s discretionary fund.
We wish we could help more organizations. We are very grateful that we had some resources available as a result of your generosity to help make sure a woman in Washington, DC, in danger because of domestic violence has someplace to get help during these strange times in our nation.
Prayer
We are studying Foundry’s core values this month. You will find them on the last page inside your bulletin. Today the core value is “We welcome the hard work of prophecy. Our close proximity to power gives us the chance to speak for the powerless. We are mindful that prophets examine themselves closely before sharing their message with the world.”
People of faith do two kinds of ministries to address the needs of the world around us. One we call ministries of mercy. In Foundry’s statement of call we call this active service. Ministries that actively serve people in need in practical and often personal ways.
Sandwich 1000, our Walk-In Mission, our English as a Second Language Classes, our cooking ministry, our service at N Street Village and Christ House are wonderful examples of ministries of mercy. Ministries of mercy are a source of great spiritual growth for those of us who do them because they draw our consciousness toward the poor and vulnerable and, thus, toward Christ who is poor and vulnerable.
We are also called to ministries of justice. Ministries of justice are what Foundry’s statement of call calls prophetic leadership. We are called to change the world.
For many years Foundry provided ministries of mercy to the LGBTQ community here in Dupont Circle and the district. We had LGBTQ potlucks – low key social gatherings. But for more LGBTQ people than you would guess, coming to one of the potlucks was an important part of their coming-out experience. We had and have LGBTQ Bible study and retreats. The focus is personal caring and mercy and relationship.
But Foundry also has a LGBTQ Advocacy ministry … people who are working strategically to end discrimination against gay people in the United Methodist Church and within society. The focus here is justice.
Foundry has ministries of caring and mercy toward the homeless. But it also has a ministry to end homelessness. The focus here is a just society in which no one remains homelessness.
It is like the old metaphor of the place on the highway that had so many accidents that the ambulances became expert at getting there within minutes to get accident victims to the emergency room. Until someone said, “Why don’t we get some engineers to help us figure out why so many accidents are happening here and make changes in the highway to stop the accidents.
As followers of Jesus, we are called to both ministries of mercy and ministries of justice.
As people who are part of the Methodist movement, we are called to both active service and prophetic leadership because that was at the heart of Methodism’s beginning.
The first building Methodists ever owned was a former storehouse for canons and gun powder in London, England, that had been damaged in an explosion. Methodism’s founder John Wesley leased it when he was 36 and named it “The Foundry.”
Richard Heitzenrater says that Wesley and the early Methodists developed five kinds of programs to
serve the poor at the Foundry.
1. Food, clothing and shelter for the most destitute, those physically unable to work.
2. Materials and start-up money to help people start their own small business, like knife sharping or shoe repair.
3. Schools for the children of the poor;
4. Literacy programs for those who did not have Access to other education to learn to read and write;
5. Free medical clinics for those without access to health care.
I am fascinated by how similar many of the ministries of mercy that happen here at this Foundry are to the ones that happened at that Foundry.
Sometimes our board here at Foundry worries that we take too many special offerings. They are afraid you will suffer donor fatigue. So you should know this.
John Wesley. Methodism’s founder, once took seven offerings in one weekend to support ministries with the poor in one day. His brother Charles wrote a letter complaining about it to a friend.
He wrote: “How many collections think you has my brother made between Thursday evening and Sunday? No fewer than seven. Five this one day of the same poor exhausted people. He has no mercy on them.”
Charles goes on in his letter to suggest that if John doesn’t stop taking so many offerings for the poor someone is going to have to take a collection to help the members of the Foundry who will have no money left.
Ministries of mercy were at the heart of Methodism’s beginnings and so were ministries of justice … prophetic leadership.
John Wesley had a particular passion for prison reform. He visited prisons into his 70s and he wrote newspaper op-eds and lobbied for a more humane prison system.
John Wesley was famous for his opposition to gin. His opposition to gin, it turns out, was not solely based on the addiction he discovered among the poor. One of his main arguments against government support of gin distilling was that it increased the price of grains and made bread expensive causing hunger among the poor.
He was a fierce proponent of job creation and criticized severely the wealthy who spent their riches living in luxury rather than creating jobs.
Active service and prophetic leadership.
For me, the biblical hero of prophetic leadership is the widow Jesus talks about in Luke 18.
I love this widow.
In Jesus’ time, widows were the people in all of society with the least power. First, they were women who had no political power at all. Secondly, they had no husband which meant they had no one with power to advocate for them. Widows had the least power of anyone.
The judge whom the widow was trying to influence was not a good person. He did not fear God or respect people.
But the powerless widow just kept bothering him until he acted justly, not because he was committed to justice, but because he knew she would not leave him alone until he did what was right.
The widow of Luke 18 was the heroine of democracy before democracy was invented.
Nationally we seem stuck these days. Capitol Hill seems stuck. Leaders seem to be having a hard time leading.
I don’t know who among our leaders fears God and respects people and who doesn’t.
But I believe justice happens not because of good leaders but because people like the widow of Luke 18 pound away at it day in and day out. When people keep doing the hard day by day work of prophetic leadership even bad leaders who don’t fear God or respect people cannot ignore it forever.
Prophetic leadership is like prayer. The moral of Jesus parable is that we should be persistent in prayer. If the widow of Luke 18 was able to get justice from a bad judge because she was persistent , how much more likely will we, if we pray persistently, get justice from a good God?
Next year when Foundry celebrates our 200th anniversary, it will also be the 25th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989. A lot of political leaders have taken credit for the collapse of the Berlin Wall. There are those who believe that the collapse of the Wall did not happen because of political leaders. It happened because of people like the widow of Luke 18 who worked and prayed for years.
It started in the early19 80s, years before the Wall came down, they say. It started in St. Nicholas Church of Leipzig, East Germany.
A small group of people at St. Nicholas started a Monday evening prayer service for peace. The prayer meeting started quite small, just a very few people.
It began to grow. Then people drifted away and the group would become small again. But they continued to gather to pray for peace Monday after Monday.
Then In 1988 attendance began to grow dramatically. Attendance grew so high that East German officials began to worry. They posted roadblocks and detained people to try to prevent them from going to those services.
Finally, on October 8, 1989, the secret police were preparing to shoot and kill in order to stop people from assembling for that prayer service. That night the church was packed with more than 2,000 people, and another 70,000 were on the streets outside.
The crowds left the church and they began to march toward the City Hall, where the armed guards were waiting for them. The troops never opened fire. They retreated inside City Hall and they watched as the marchers placed their candles on the steps of the City Hall and stood there in a silent vigil for peace.
According to Andrew Wolf, the commander of those troops stared out the window at that crowd and he was heard to mutter: “We planned for everything, we prepared for everything, except for candles and prayers.”
On November 9, 1989, history shifted and the wall came down because of a small group of people who had begun praying persistently at St. Nicholas Church.
Even politicians who do not fear God or respect people will do what is right and just, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because of persistent prophetic leaders like the widow of Luke 18.
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