I
had one of those glorious experiences last Sunday evening where I got to hear
Dr. Nichole Keway Biber speak. She is a
tribal citizen of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians and a part of
the Turtle Clan. I have become aware of
just how important turtle is to Native story, Anishinaabe story, in places like
Michigan because this land we sit on originated when muskrat plunged to the
bottom of the water, sacrificing his own life, to come up with the mud that was
then spread over turtle’s back as a safe place for humankind to place its
feet. That is why this land is referred
to as turtle island. Muskrat sacrifices
for us. Turtle is the safe place for our
feet to rest.
Dr. Biber is the
Mid-Michigan Campaign Organizer for Clean Water Action after having received
her Ph.D. in English from Michigan State University. Do you ever have the experience of saying to
yourself, “Yeah, this person, they are going to be one of the real
wisdom-givers in my life. I can just
feel that.” That’s how it felt when I
met Dr. Biber at the Michigan Climate Action Summit this summer.
Molly
Mechtenberg, leader of the faith-based Hope for Creation, based in Kalamazoo,
asked if I would come to their event focused on water. My high theological reason for deciding I
would come was, “Well, the Bears were on a bye week so sure.” And lo and behold, Dr. Biber was one of the
featured speakers. I counted myself
blessed.
Dr.
Biber sings and speaks with what Cornel West, quoting Socrates has said is, parrhesia
(παρρησία). Parrhesia is “clear
speech, frank speech, fearless speech, unintimidated speech, speech that flows
from your soul not to show that you’re clever and smart, but to show that
you’re courageous and wise.”[1] Parrhesia implies a willingness to
speak for the common good, even at great risk.[2] Parrhesia is speaking with a
relational wisdom. With clarity and
dexterity, Dr. Biber said that the measure of our relationship with water is
not in what it can produce in GDP but asking, “Is the water cleaner than it was yesterday?”
She
spoke of the need for humility, recognizing that when we walk into creation as
humankind, we walk in lower than others.
In the great Anishinaabe creation story, that water was first home for
others before it became a home for us.
Then she spoke a
great wisdom story of her people. When
the Anishinaabe were facing great hunger and famine, one clan said, in full
humility, we will sacrifice ourselves to become the whitefish that will feed
all other clans. So they did. And so they have.
And in their
humility, Dr. Biber said, they told us, “As things go for us now, so they shall
go for you.” And is that not where we
are? Is the threat against the whitefish
population in Lake Michigan a sign of where we are? How do we now speak with parrhesia—clearly,
frankly, fearlessly, relationally, for the common good?
In our gospel text
for today, both pray-ers stand off at a distance from others. The tax collector stands far off because of
his despised role in the community. The
Pharisee stands by himself so as not to be in contact with anyone who might
thought to be impure. Both of them are
representatives of the same oppressive system, a tax system based on extraction
from a population that is below subsistence level or barely hanging on.
The Pharisee profits
from the system, an elite official directing religious obligation to pay tithe
and tax to enforce the Temple cult. The
tax collector is working class collecting tolls, duties, and tariffs at the
behest of others. The Pharisee is
honored for his direction of the oppressive system. The tax collector is shunned for the way he cheats
the public on behalf of others.
The Pharisee’s prayer
is grandiose, self-congratulatory, and denounces “extortioners, swindlers, and
adulterers,” presumably a swipe at somebody like the tax collector. He shows himself to be religiously pious
while also insulting the tax collector. His
prayer refuses to be relational. Gratitude
is to be one of the first movements of prayer, a gratitude which understands
that earth, water, and goodness existed long before us. And his form of God is to deny his
relationship with the tax collector, “I thank you, O God, that I am not like
him.”
John Chrysostom,
early Church Father and Archbishop of Constantinople said, “We do not give
thanks by speaking ill of others.”[3]
“I have much to be
thankful for, therefore it must be that God has rewarded me, therefore I must
be righteous, therefore I am not a sinner.”[4] Hmm, hmmm, hmmm (humming, looking at
nails, brushing them off). And
especially: I am not a sinner like . . . well, you know . . . them! He has gone from praying to peaking,
directing his attention away from God to comparing his life with that of the
tax collector. All relationality is not tied up humility but in arrogance
without any understanding that he and the tax collector are bound up in the
same system of harm.
Consider Mrs. Turpin
from the short story "Revelation" by Flannery O'Connor. She was
a good, decent, upright, and proud woman who did everything right, except that
she was a self-righteous racist. She was a person, writes O'Connor, who, when
she entered heaven, needed "even her virtues burned away."[5] Mrs. Turpin may be good and righteous in a
vacuum but she is unwilling to be humble enough to speak and live with
relationality, how she operates within a system that harms and destroys.
In contrast, the tax
collector’s prayer is short, recognizing the part he plays in the system, “God,
be merciful to me a sinner,” accompanied by extreme gestures of remorse and
humility. He knew who he was in the system,
how it harmed and did damage. “This kind of humility, when accompanied by
change of behavior is, according to Jesus, the gateway to healing.”[6]
What is needed, Dr.
Biber said, is restoration. We need to
choose a healing from the violence that has originally been done and
restoration so that what we will have tomorrow is a material place that is
better for children and grandchildren.
Can we begin to work on that, as a joint project, as a people together,
humbled by the way we have participated but with full wisdom that God will join
hands with us? Or is it too hard to
admit where we have been and where we are . . . to chart another path?
My good friend Josiah
Hugs, a leader in the Wellbriety Movement, a path of recovery from addiction,
would regularly point out to me people who were blaming to others, swinging
wildly to avoid holding themselves accountable for the harm caused by their
struggles. Josiah would say that though
they had stopped drinking they were still living out their addiction, not
recognizing their complicity in the system.
In effect, never growing up, always the adolescent, never taking
ownership of the humility necessary to recognize that the water was first home
to others before we arrived on the scene.
Restoration never is accomplished.
I see that behavior
as a sickness in our country. Must
America always be the adolescent? Must
it always be the country that never matures?
Sometimes we sound so much like the adolescent boy who enjoys the
cruelty, speaks ill of those who are unable to defend themselves, free from
boundaries and accountability. Never are
we accountable for systems and structures that harm?
How even in the
Christian Church we regularly fail to speak humbly, clearly, frankly,
fearlessly, relationally, for the common good?
Humility as a nation and as a faith seem no longer available to us as
precious values. We want to keep faith
out of politics because, at best, we are afraid of someone else’s faith
carrying the day politically without a thought to a faith that engages in
humility to say, “But I could be wrong.
I might be complicit. The water
was here for others before I arrived on the scene. God have mercy on me, a sinner, a participant
in systems that harm. May it be, O God,
that this is the day I make sure that the water is cleaner than it was
yesterday, that I move to recover and restore on this day.”
I hope that you all
get a chance to hear Dr. Biber speak or present. She is one of those people who speaks with a
wisdom that calls us to a deeper place, a strongly material place, a relational
place that, in humility, seeks healing and restoration. Amen.
[1]
Peter Cunningham quoting Cornel West, “In keynote address, Cornel West urges
integrity, action, and ‘soulcraft’,” YaleNews, February 5, 2018, https://news.yale.edu/2018/02/05/keynote-address-cornel-west-urges-integrity-action-and-soulcraft.
[2]
“Parrhesia,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrhesia.
[3]
Grant Gallup, Homily Grits, http://andraomeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits/msg00015.html
[4]
David Ewart, “Luke 18:9-14,” Holy Textures, https://www.holytextures.com/2023/04/luke-18-9-14-year-c-pentecost-october-23-october-29-proper-25-ordinary-time-30-sermon.html
[5]
Dan Clendenin, “The Pharisee and the Tax Collector,” Journey with Jesus,
October 16, 2016, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/1148-the-pharisee-and-the-tax-collector
[6]
Ched Myers, “Leveling Social Terrain (Lk 18:9-14),” Bartimaeus Cooperative
Ministries, October 22, 2025, https://bcmonline.org/2025/10/22/leveling-social-terrain-lk-189-14/.
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