"The Work of the Soul"

 

"Poverty is but the worst form of violence."
-- Mahatma Gandhi

 

 

READING I          from Wanting Wholeness, Being Broken, by Marilyn Sewell

 

"Susan Starr, a Unitarian Universalist community minister who worked with the urban poor in Chicago, recounted the follow­ing story in a sermon. She said that a homeless woman named Sarah crawled into a demister outside a McDonald’s in a futile attempt to keep warm one January night. She was found frozen to death the next day. Those who knew her, said Susan—shelter residents, “street peo­ple,” various social workers and church volunteers—were shocked and angry and were brought once again face to face with despair. Sarah’s homeless friends organized a funeral service, which turned out to be quite a media event. Cameras from the TV stations were there, and newspaper reporters interviewed anyone and everyone.

During the service, a time was set aside for those who knew Sarah to speak from their hearts about her. A man came forward. He stood in front of the group, his head bowed, tears streaming down his face. He didn’t speak. He stood and stood, weeping, but still he didn’t speak. Some people were embarrassed, wondering how to continue with the service. Finally Susan walked up to him, put her arm around his shoulders, and said, “Was there something you wanted to say?” “Yes” he said. “But I forgot what it was—something about love.”

Susan said, "I don’t know if that man is still alive as I speak today. But in that one moment in Chicago two years ago, he and I met as deeply as -. two human beings can meet. For in that one moment, his soul and mine were laid bare—the truth was revealed. I was the same as he. I have nothing to say, and my life is a struggle to say something I have forgotten, something about love."

 

READING II

This reading is a brief excerpt from the Nobel Lecture given in Oslo last December 10^th by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, when he was awarded the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize:

Your Majesties, Royal Highnesses, Excellencies, Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Today in Afghanistan, a girl will be born.  Her mother will hold her and feed her, comfort her and care for her - just as any mother would anywhere in the world.  In these most basic facts of human nature, humanity knows no divisions.  But to be born a girl in today's Afghanistan is to begin life centuries away from the prosperity that one small part of humanity has achieved.  It is to live under conditions that many of us in this hall would consider inhuman.

I speak of a girl in Afghanistan, but I might equally well have mentioned a baby boy or girl in Sierra Leone.  No one today is unaware of this divide between the world's rich and poor. Today's real borders are not between nations, but the between powerful and powerless, free and fettered, privileged and humiliated. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have entered the third millennium through a gate of fire.  If today, after the horror of 11 September, we see better, and we see further - we will realize that humanity is indivisible.  A new insecurity has entered every mind, regardless of wealth or status.  A deeper awareness of the bonds that bind us all - in pain as in prosperity - has gripped young and old. ...  The 21^st Century will require us to look beyond the framework of States, and beneath the surface of nations or communities.  We must focus, as never before, on improving the conditions of the individual men and women who give the state or nation its richness and character.

We must begin with the young Afghan girl, because even though her mother will do all in her power to protect and sustain her, there is a one-in-four risk that she will not live to see her fifth birthday.  Whether she does is just one test of our common humanity...  But it is the only test that matters. [So] we must begin with [that girl], recognizing that to save one life is to save humanity itself.

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Last week I spent three days at a study retreat with eight other ministers.  The group, traveling in a caravan of cars at one point stopped to get a closer look at a beautifully done nativity scene standing in front of the Amicable Congregational Church in Tiverton, Rhode Island.  The life-sized nativity figures had been carved out of wood by a chainsaw and were beautifully painted, and were standing in the familiar tableaux.  But as we looked, each one of us, for a moment wrestled with, "What is wrong with this picture? because there was something different about it. When we got out of our cars we could see that this was no usual depiction of the Holy family.  All of the figures were shabbily dressed and looked like modern, homeless people down on their luck. The mother and father were crouched with their baby apparently trying to get warm over a grated subway vent. The Joseph and Mary figures were called Jose and Maura, and the baby's name was Hope.

 

During the Advent season that comes before Christmas, one is supposed to be preparing for the arrival of God. The chainsaw nativity is an artistic reminder, or a caution, if you will, that we may be looking for the presence of the divine in the wrong places - the equivalent of a manger scene today might just be an inner city homeless family - or a Wareham or Middleboro homeless family for that matter.

 

Back in the time of Herod, when a messiah was being actively awaited, Jesus of Nazareth didn't have the right "look"  for a messiah. What would the right look have been like, you might ask.  Most Jews expected the coming savior would have the political authority to control nations… and the ability to impress the right people in large numbers… with vast power and resources at his command… the power to change the world from the top down. 

 

Spiritual power, divine power, is different - this power changes the world one person at a time through transformation of individual hearts from the bottom up. The chainsaw nativity is a reminder that today we are probably no more trained to respond to the divine than they were in the days of Herod.

 

I feel like I must confess to you what we did next. We never would have done this with a traditional nativity - we walked right in among the life-sized figures and took our places, joining the tableaux for a group photo. I felt a little sacrilegious at first - but I suspect now that this might have been just what the sculptor wanted. I think the message the chainsaw nativity conveys is that the divine presence dwells among us; and honoring that presence, envisioning ourselves as part of that picture, is probably just what we should be doing.

 

As I stood within the nativity, in a position of honoring this homeless family, I realized that any reproduction of that historic/mythic moment is a depiction our human obligation to respond to any family or person in need. When we finally 'get' that, it will become clear that the messiah, and Hope for humankind, have been within us all along, waiting to be born, waiting to be drawn out of us in the form of compassion and love.

 

 

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Last Monday night the City of Boston took its annual count of Boston's homeless. In what has become a December tradition, a few hundred volunteers fanned out and scoured the streets counting every homeless person they saw.  Monday night found 6, 210 homeless individuals, including 1,367 children, on the streets of Boston or in emergency shelters. This is a record number.  Mayor Menino cautioned that these are only the visible homeless that happened to be spotted on this given night.  Many more are living in cars, on the couches of friends or anywhere from the woods to the tunnels of the MBTA. The Mayor announced a gift of 500 blankets to the city's shelters, donated by Malden Mills. Not known for his eloquence, Mayor Menino, nonetheless spoke appropriately when he said, "There are faces behind these numbers.  These are real people."

 

So right he is.  And the chainsaw nativity implies that if we look deeply, here, in the faces of these real people, or into the face of the little girl in Afghanistan, will find the face of God.

 

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And it is no different here where we live.  There are increasing numbers of poor people in Lakeville, Berkley, Wareham, Carver and Middleboro, and they have faces, too, and they are real people. The church this year has received more calls from people down on their luck than before. Some want jobs, rent, money or both. I steer them to resources as best I can. I am able to refer them to the resource pamphlet that was drawn up by our Social Action Committee that is now being used town-wide. Our church is helping, of course, in other ways. Here at Christmastime there is always much that goes on behind the scenes to be sure no one goes without food, or a gift. Many of you who are able make very generous gestures to others here or to your neighbors. Many are working hard helping to build the Habitat for Humanity house on Oak Street.  Many are collecting money for the hungry in your Guest-at-Your-Table boxes.  These are generous, very good acts of charity but, sadly, they cannot eliminate the fact of poverty or the pain of it.  I will never forget a conversation I had with a young Middleboro man who still vividly remembers when, as a little boy, he received wrapped gifts under the tree which still bore tags that said, "boy - age 6." Poverty hurts.

 

In your order of service this morning there is a notice that our church doors are now being kept locked.  This change in policy has been reluctantly made by our Parish Committee because twice this month intruders have been found inside the building.  The first was a man who seemed to be inspecting our metal cash boxes in the kitchen when he was discovered.  A week or two later a different individual was found in my office.  Both of these men had been observed coming into our church after being asked to leave the church across the street. The secretary there gave us a call to alert us, so they were confronted here quickly and no harm was done.

 

Three hundred years before the birth of Jesus, Aristotle, observed "Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime."  The divide between rich and poor is growing, and we so lock our doors, here and across the country as people feel increasingly threatened by the desperation of the poor.  My emotions are running high as I share this with you. It pains me to lock our doors during the day, but we have no other way to ensure the safety of the church.  I am drawn to repeat for all of us the bewildered sentiment of the homeless man spoken at the funeral:   "I have nothing to say, and my life is a struggle to say something I have forgotten, something about love."  

 

We are, all the great religions tell us, to conquer with love.  But what does love look like in times like these? John Ruskin, back in 1866 said, "Do justice to your brother and you will come to love him.  But do injustice to him because you don't love him, and you will come to hate him." [1]

 

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Some of you may remember the Reverend William Sloane Coffin as a leader in the civil-rights and peace movements of the 1960s and 1970s when he was chaplain at Yale.  Now retired, he also served as minister of Riverside Church in New York City for many years.  As a special guest preaching at First Parish in Lincoln last month, he had this to say:

 

"Had I but one wish for all the churches of America today, I think it would be that they come to see the difference between charity and justice.  Charity is a matter of personal attributes; justice is a matter of public policy.  Charity seeks to alleviate the worst effects of injustice; justice seeks to eliminate the causes of it. Charity in no way affects the status quo (which is why charity is so popular in middle-class churches), while justice leads inevitably to political confrontation."[2] 

 

He also said, "Now let us recognize that beyond individuals, whole communities, even nations, have been stripped, beaten and left lying in the ditch.  And what these communities and nations need is not piecemeal charity but wholesale justice." [3]

 

Our challenges are great, at the local level and the international level. We are, by almost any measure, the strongest and richest nation in the world. In what way does affordable housing cost too much?  What are our priorities as a people? How is it that we are a nation that spends trilions on armaments, and yet, here in this state, as of January 1^st a person on Medicaid who loses a leg or other limb will no longer be eligible for a prosthetic device - artificial limbs will no longer considered a medical necessity. How can that be?

As of January 1 the poor in this state will also no longer be eligible for dentures or eyeglasses. How can we sleep at night if that is so?  And yet, our president talks incessantly about initiating a pre-emptive strike against a nation that will cost trillions.  Where is the outrage? 

 

With the public square as poor as it is, why does the public still rail against taxes of any kind?  Are we becoming a mean people? Is it really the case that our citizens would prefer to keep a couple of extra tax dollars in their wallet than allow their neighbor the gift of being able to walk or to see?

 

 In 1968 Martin Luther King observed that there was nothing new about poverty.  What was new, he said,  was that we now had the techniques and the resources to get rid of poverty.  The real question that confronts us is whether or not we have the will, or I might add, the compassion, the desire or the backbone.

 

 Modern prophets such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King have demonstrated for us that compassion frequently demands confrontation. Ah, those were great leaders you may be thinking - there is no leader out there right now,  no greatness to galvanize us and give us the power of numbers, and you are right.  But to that I would note two things:  it has been said acknowledged that people get the leaders they deserve - we have not yet called one forth. And the other point is this - the Spirit of Life does not demand of us that we be successful -- we are merely called to be faithful to the Spirit of Life.

 

Many of you must be wondering at this point, "What can I do?"  Again, many of you are already doing much.  But there are things you can do.  Stay informed.  Don't avert your eyes from what troubles you as you as you read the newspaper. It's so tempting to just say "It's too big.  I can't solve it, so I'm going to ignore it."  Having the steel to pay attention is key.  The Social Action Committee here at church is active and growing.  They are doing a lot you might not be aware of - so they have decided to run a brief column in our newsletter each month. They are working on both local and national initiatives - there may be a small way you can contribute to their work that may fit into your life.  Stay tuned.

 

When U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan received the Nobel Peace Prize he said "today's real borders are not between nations, but between the powerful and the powerless, free and fettered, privileged and humiliated…

 

We are seeing the divisions he speaks of right here, right now, in Middleboro, Lakeville, Wareham and Carver, as well as across the nation. The UN. Secretary General Kofi Annan says we must focus as never before on improving  the condition of the poor and powerless wherever they are.  Whether the poor survive, and I would add, live a humane existence, is a test of our common humanity, and it is the only test that matters.