B Advent OL2 BFC
2014
Isaiah 52:3-10
December 7, 2014
In the late
19th Century, Father Joseph Cardijn saw the deplorable conditions
that existed for Belgium’s workers. As
soon as Belgian children were able, they left school and church to the
hopelessness within the factory. Belgian
workers worked 12-14 hours a day with no rest and earned the equivalent of a
penny per day. Children were locked or tied to their
workspace so that they could not wander around.
Belgian workers had no advocates—certainly not among industry
executives, not at city hall, and, sadly, not even in the Christian
Church. Belgian Bishops refused to do
anything, fearful that they might provoke bloody class warfare. In such a context, faith seemed lost. Hopelessness pervaded the Belgian working
class. These realities began to press
upon Cardijn.
Just after Father
Joseph Cardijn’s father died, Joseph pledged that he would give his life to
procure the salvation of the working class.
And receiving the solidarity of a priest was no common thing. Cardijn had already experienced the sting of
friends working in the factory who believed that Joseph had betrayed them by
going off to seminary and joining the institution that ignored their plight and
left them to toil in suffering and misery.
Bucking the wider culture and seeking a new path, Cardijn sought to
bridge what he referred to as the “abyss”, the gulf which had opened up between
the working class and the church.
And so he
began by listening. In his first assignment
as priest, he greeted workers every day, formed bonds with them, not to invite
them to church, but to walk beside them and ask them about their
conditions. No other priests had had the
courage to approach workers. Seeing
clergy, workers would routinely hurl insults at them for the indifference the
church displayed to their suffering and misery.
But Cardijn was different.
Throughout his life, he was known as someone who very rarely spoke. Rather, Cardijn listened intently to the
interests of young people. In so doing, he
gained the trust of young workers, and young workers, in turn, brought the
gospel back into the factory.
Cardijn
discerned that God sought out something different for the young workers of Belgium. So Cardijn acted to form and strengthen
unions. He will be forever known for
starting the Young Christian Workers movement.
In that movement was a process he offered workers that trusted in their
own strength and ingenuity and made them subjects of their own history. The process began with seeing or observing of
their plight and the conditions factory workers labored under. What were the realities of their lives? Next, workers were to judge or to discern
their experience in light of the Biblical story. What did the Bible say about those who lived
in suffering and misery, oppressed by the systems and structures of the
world? The final step in this process
was then to act on the insights gained from their discernment. How
did this analysis call them to action? As
workers began to recognize God’s intent for their lives and their power to
transform the system, the process developed by Father Cardign—see, judge, and
act--became used for worker’s rights movements across Europe.[1]
And this
process became popular not only among workers across Europe. As the gulf between everyday people and the
institutional church widened in Latin America, Father Cardijn’s process became a
way to listen to the misery and suffering and hopelessness in that part of the
world as well. Roman Catholic church
workers began to listen and “see” or observe the social misery around
them. Priests, nuns, and catechists encouraged
the people of Latin America to become subjects of their own history—to not wait
for God but to recognize that God was waiting for them. They were to see or
observe the social misery they found around them. They were to judge or discern the root causes
of this social misery placed alongside Biblical story and the story of
God. And then, discerning what God had
called them to do in their time and place, they were to be actors in a story
where the God of the poor and the Mother of Mercies thundered throughout
history to bring justice and mercy to those who lived in hopelessness and
despair. They were no longer waiting for
God or believed God indifferent to their plight. Rather, they began to see themselves
collaborating with the historical narrative of God. Their action led to further reflection and the
seeing or observing of their situation to start the whole process over
again.
As a result
of using the see, judge, and act model, people began to recognize the great power
God gave them to not only critique the status quo, but to also courageously
speak God’s light and life into their suffering and misery. For we would be hard pressed to find a
Scripture verse in the Bible that suggests that poverty, violence, and misery
happen as a result of God’s will or because the poor lack work ethic or
character. That story, that work ethic
or character leads to an entire class or people’s plight, is not
Biblical and manufactured routinely outside the story of God.
About ten
years ago, however, some community groups working in Latin America began to
realize that this whole process, the see, judge, and act model, left them burnt
out. Even with the incredible successes
achieved by this model, to see, judge, and act, over and over again left many
dry and burnt out by the continuous reflection and work involved. To enter back into the suffering and plight
of the people left many drained. And
becoming a slave to a process, even one which brought salvation and liberation,
seemed to run counter to a God who intended joy for the people.
So a new element
was added to the process by church workers in Latin America who recognized that
dry and burnt out did not correspond to a relationship with the Living God. The element needed was celebration. By celebrating the work that had been done
through the process, individuals and communities would then have the energy to
start the process all over again.
Celebration was a sure sign that we were not exchange one dull and
lifeless process for another.
Celebrative joy reflected God’s intent for the people and communities of
the earth.
During the
Advent season, we often read Scriptures from the prophet Isaiah who foresaw
that the lavish living of Jewish leaders, their institutional violence and
failure to protect the economically poor, would eventually doom the Jewish
people. Isaiah saw God unable to remain
with the Jewish people. God’s holiness
did not allow for it. Instead, flanked
by mythical creatures, Isaiah pictured God withdrawing to the holy throne in
heaven, leaving a nation that had routinely subjected its people to violence,
suffering, and misery to its own devices.
To the
prophet Isaiah’s way of thinking, the Babylonian Empire became the rod of
punishment for these national sins. The
Temple and Jerusalem, the special place of God’s abiding, was razed to the
ground and reduced to ruins. The land,
the fruit of God’s promise, was laid waste by warfare and sold out from
underneath the Jewish people. Many of
the Jewish leaders, the representatives for God, were either slaughtered or
carted off in chains to live with other Jewish people in a strange land. There in that strange land, Babylon, these
exiled Jews built homes for other people to live in. There in Babylon these exiled Jews farmed the
fields but the fruit of the land was intended for Babylonia’s rulers. Isaiah told them that God could no longer
abide by their violence and injustice. In
the Exile, these chickens came home to roost.
Their leaders had created a great gulf between God and the people.
This explained,
the prophet Isaiah reasoned, why the Jewish people were now at the mercy of the
Babylonian rulers and their armies.
As a
conquered, occupied, and exiled people, pain and suffering and hopelessness
became their lives.
That pain
and suffering and hopelessness became part of the Gospel narrative as
well. We know that some 600 years after
the Exile, Gospel authors believed the Roman occupation to be a time of similar
time of pain and suffering and hopelessness and death. For the Gospel writers quoted heavily from
the book of Isaiah to help their readers understand the time in which they
lived.
As Babylon
fell to the Persian ruler, Cyrus the Great, 70 years later, exile slowly came
to an end. The horrific time of warfare,
dislocation, and poverty for the Jewish people receded. The second writer in Isaiah, named
Deutero-Isaiah, considered responsible for chapters 40-55 of the book of Isaiah,
then tried to entreat many of the Jewish people still living in Babylon to come
back home to Judah and Jerusalem. This
was no mean feat. Jews living in Exile had
had to learn to plant fields, raise families, and build lives over the course
of three generations in Babylon. They
had come to terms with what it meant to live in Babylon some of them winding
their way through the Babylonian system to become leaders or integral parts of
their communities, perhaps forgoing what it meant to be a Jew to do so. Now were they to pluck up their lives and
walk the hard road back to Judah and Jerusalem?
So
Deutero-Isaiah makes the invitation to return back to the homeland not only
about coming back home to the land of your ancestors but to know that, after 70
years, God was also returning back to the land of Judah and Jerusalem. God is also returning home.
As the
Jewish people return from Exile, this Scripture verse from Isaiah imagines the
Babylonian ruler replaced on the throne by God. God as peace, good
news, liberation, salvation, well-being, and life-giving order overthrows
Babylon. But for that good news to reach the Jewish people, certain
things must take place. It is found in the Scripture reading Jessi placed
before us today.
First, there
must be people seeing, looking for, observing, or watching for that good news
to arrive. As sentinels, there must be people ready to receive it.
Second, there must be people who judge or discern and determine what the plain
meaning of this good news is. There must be people who ponder, judge, or
discern its meaning. Third, there must be people who are runners or the
messengers. These people will act on this good news and share it
with others. Finally, celebration and singing are necessary to refuel the
nation and the community. In the passage read for us today, it says that
even the ruins of Jerusalem will sing in joy.
Who will the people be to join with those ruins and celebrate this good
news so that the community and nation have the energy to see, judge, and act
upon the good news again?
Not everyone
can do all of the tasks needed. But within a spiritual community there
are always people needed to be the watchers or seers, the sentinels, the
discerners or ponderers, those who judge what the good news means and how it
should be interpreted, the actors or runners who tell the rest of the world how
God is moving to remove the gulf and restore peace. And, finally, there must be those who help
the community celebrate. New life, peace, and good news depend on all of
the people in these roles shattering the status quo through the roles they play
in God’s story. We must recognize the
hold the status quo has on all of us to keep us in a place where we think of
ourselves as the objects of history, twiddling our thumbs until God comes to
save us. As people of faith, we are not
objects of history, waiting on God. For
it is not God’s will that people live injustice and violence. So we should be listening closely and asking
questions of people who are working out God’s purposes to bring about joy.
This is our
story. It is found not only in Isaiah
but also in the Christmas story we read from Luke every year. The author of the gospel Luke uses this
Scripture verse from Isaiah so that we might hear the story told again.
The language of the New Testament is Greek, and the Greek word for messenger
is angelos, the word we translate as messenger or angel.
Those angels announce peace, bring good news, announce salvation, and tell
those that are listening that God reigns. In that Christmas story the
messengers come to announce a peace that depends on having the freedom and
imagination to speak the world differently. The shepherds go to see or observe
this good news. Mary, the mother of Jesus, ponders and discerns. She judges what this good news means.
The shepherds go home celebrating the news. That is how important
the Exile story was to the story of Christ. In the life, mission, and
ministry of Christ, time after time the gospel writers saw the life-giving
order, salvation, well-being, good news, liberation, and peace that would
imagine the world differently.
With the
events that have unfolded in Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, over the
past few weeks, we, as a primarily white congregation need to be good
listeners. The gulf has grown wide, and
if peace is to be attained, we need to listen for how the Living God is
speaking to our African-American sisters and brothers. We should also take stock of those places in
Billings that we can see or observe suffering or misery. How do we listen to those people or peoples
so that they might become subjects of their own history or future? As people of faith, how do we begin to see
God collaborating with us to end suffering, misery, and hopelessness.
The young
Dan Cohn saw the misery and suffering, the hopelessness going on in Ferguson
and discerned the collaborating God calling us to action. I believe Dan is right. God is calling him, calling us to
collaboration. So there will be a vigil on Wednesday at 7:00
p.m., here in the church, for all of us to hopefully listen intently for the
way the Spirit of God is moving among people who should be celebrating the joy
God intends for them, that out of the ruins of the Jerusalem, or Ferguson, or
Staten Island, that a song of joy might be lifted.
Through this
communion today, we said that there is no gulf too wide that we cannot somehow
transform so that we might be the sentinels, ponderers, messengers, and
celebrators of God’s peace. Hebrew
Scripture scholar, Walter Brueggemann wrote that “[p]eace depends on having the
freedom and imagination to speak the world differently.”[2] Let us not speak with the violence and
injustice of the world to bring about peace but imagine a different world where
peace is maintained by those who listen closely to those living in misery and
suffering. The dawn comes and God is
waiting. Amen.
[1] “The Life of Joseph Cardijn,” CIJOC ICYCW, http://www.cijoc.org/node/18; Cardijn Community International, “Cardijn ‘A
Wonderful Listener,’” Cardign.info,
March 18, 2014. https://login.frontier.com/webmail/. Meinrad Scherer-Edmunds, “See-Judge-Act-How Young
Christian Workers Renewed the Church,” Salt
of the Earth, http://www.cfm.org/jocist.pdf.
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