The Rev. Mariclair Partee
Today, we have some familiar stories in the readings.
We have the story of Amos, a simple man, filled with the spirit of the Lord and driven to prophesy in the temple to the priests and elders. This man, a shepherd and “dresser of sycamore trees” – and I think that Old Testament scholars are still puzzling over what exactly a dresser of sycamore trees was or did, but whenever Amos’ name comes up, I immediately fill in “dresser of sycamore trees” – was sent a series of visions that shook him to his foundation and drove him to leave his flocks and his trees, go to the priests and the elders in the temple, and speak out against the actions of the king. For this he was run out of town, banished from the temple by leaders who refused to hear his message, who told him to take his message to Judah, to the Israelites, anywhere but in the temple, which the king supported. Amos spoke truth to power, and for that he lost his home.
The story of John the Baptist is even more familiar, I would imagine, though most know it as the story of Salome’s Dance of the Seven Veils. But the central figure of the story is John, a prophet living in the wilderness, preaching the coming of the Lord and initiating believers, using a ritual of water and words that was pretty identical to the one we will be using here, today, to welcome a new Christian. John was content to live in the desert, subsisting off of locusts and wild honey, dressing in the hides of wild beasts, until he caught word of the scandal occurring at the royal court, of a king murdering his brother to marry his sister-in-law, and so committing triple offenses of murder, covetousness, and adultery. He spoke out against this behavior and found himself in chains in Herod’s dungeon, though even this did not stop him from insulting the king and queen. We all know what happened next – a dance, a wish granted – Salome in this story is renamed Herodias, but dances for her stepfather at the behest of her mother, and appears not as a wily and wicked temptress, but as a child caught up in a struggle for power she doesn’t fully comprehend, trapped between the pride of her father and the vengeance of her mother, and manipulated by both. It is John who loses his life, though, ultimately for the offense of speaking out against what he saw as dangerous folly on the part of the ruling classes, once again, speaking truth against power, and for this, he loses his head.
This week I have been thinking a great deal about those who have spoken up in the face of might, as I have been reading the writings of Dorothy Day. The former Roman Catholics in the congregation today are probably familiar with Dorothy Day, described by many as a saint of the 20th century, but for those who are not, a brief biography:
Day was a staunchly secular communist and pacifist, writing for communist party publications, marching for women’s suffrage, working for the rights of laborers and those suffering the degradations of poverty in Chicago and New York in the early decades of the last century. She was a force in the workers’ movement and anti-war efforts, and then, just shy of her 30th birthday, was suddenly overcome by love of God and confirmed as a Roman Catholic. She brought all of her views on the rights of the common worker to dignity and a living wage with her into her new church, though, saw in Jesus’ love for the poor and his directions to his disciples to care for the outcasts as a call to everything she had been working for in her own life before becoming a Christian, and soon she was an outcast within her new church home. She was a thorn in the side of the Church, and she was a very vocal thorn- in response to the complicity she saw in the leaders of the Church in the Second World War, the denial of civil rights, the subjugation of the poor in third world countries, she quoted Romano Guardini, a German theologian and professor at the University of Munich who had been dismissed under the Third Reich, saying “The Church is the cross upon which Christ was crucified.” However, Day also said of her life and faith: “We have all known the long loneliness, and we have all found that the answer is community.”
In this spirit, Dorothy Day brought forth the Catholic Workers Movement, published a newspaper of the same name for over 35 years exhorting her fellow believers to take to the streets and fight for those who could not fight for themselves, and set up a network of Hospitality Houses and working farms across the United States in which devoted Catholic laity and clergy lived and worked in community with the poor and abused, living on starvation wages and helping to create a social fabric from within the working classes to promote reform in the factories, teach skills, and liberate the poor from the crippling cycles of poverty. Many of these Hospitality Houses are still in existence today, and a whole generation of Catholic social and liturgical reform can be traced to the spark Day and her compatriots created in the institutional church.
These days Day is regarded as a saint-in-waiting, but in her life she suffered constant censure and denial by the church she loved and devoted herself to. She spoke truth to power, and because of it she was ostracized, written off by the leaders of the church and derided as possibly insane.
So we have three stories, spanning the millennia, of individuals filled with the spirit of God and moved, no, compelled to speak up against people and institutions so much bigger, so much more powerful than themselves, despite the risk this posed to their lives, their families, their happiness.
What does that mean for us, as Christians, as Episcopalians? Our own church is meeting this week in Anaheim for our triennial General Convention, and in that meeting there is bound to be a lot of truth spoken, and a lot of power challenged. When it is sitting, our General Convention is the largest legislative body in the Western world, with over 8000 lay and clerical deputies from all over the nation. There is an argument among historians about whether our twin houses of bishops and deputies was the model for the framers of the Constitution when they designed the House and the Senate, or if it was the other way around, but regardless, a meeting of General Convention is a wonder of administration and canonical procedure to behold. To be fair, for many, it also puts truth to that old saying about watching sausage being made.
That body is struggling this week with some very big issues, and all sides are presenting their arguments and bearing witness to the truth as they believe God is calling them to testify. We must pray that at the end of this time together, none lose the church they have called their home, and that everyone holds onto their heads.
Let us pray:
Almighty and everlasting Father, you have given the Holy Spirit to abide with us for ever: Bless, we pray, with his grace and presence, the bishops and other clergy and the laity assembled in your Name, that your Church, being preserved in true faith and godly discipline, may fulfill all the mind of him who loved it and gave himself for it, your son Jesus Christ our Savior; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, Amen.
