Matthew 9:35-10:23 (CEB)
Jesus traveled among all the cities and villages, teaching
in their synagogues, announcing the good news of the kingdom, and healing every
disease and every sickness. Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion
for them because they were troubled and helpless, like sheep without a
shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The size of the harvest is bigger
than you can imagine, but there are few workers. Therefore, plead with the Lord
of the harvest to send out workers for his harvest.”
He called his twelve disciples and gave them authority over
unclean spirits to throw them out and to heal every disease and every sickness.
Here are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon, who is called Peter;
and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee; and John his brother; Philip;
and Bartholomew; Thomas; and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of
Alphaeus; and Thaddaeus; Simon the Cananaean; and Judas, who betrayed
Jesus.
Jesus sent these twelve out and commanded them, “Don’t go
among the Gentiles or into a Samaritan city. Go instead to the lost sheep, the
people of Israel. As you go, make this announcement: ‘The kingdom of heaven has
come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with skin diseases,
and throw out demons. You received without having to pay. Therefore, give
without demanding payment. Workers deserve to be fed, so don’t gather gold or
silver or copper coins for your money belts to take on your trips. Don’t take a
backpack for the road or two shirts or sandals or a walking stick. Whatever
city or village you go into, find somebody in it who is worthy and stay there
until you go on your way. When you go into a house, say, ‘Peace!’ If the house
is worthy, give it your blessing of peace. But if the house isn’t worthy, take
back your blessing. If anyone refuses to welcome you or listen to your words,
shake the dust off your feet as you leave that house or city. I assure you that
it will be more bearable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on Judgment Day
than it will be for that city.
“Look, I’m sending you as sheep among wolves. Therefore, be
wise as snakes and innocent as doves. Watch out for people—because they will
hand you over to councils and they will beat you in their synagogues. They will
haul you in front of governors and even kings because of me so that you may
give your testimony to them and to the Gentiles. Whenever they hand you over,
don’t worry about how to speak or what you will say, because what you can say
will be given to you at that moment. You aren’t doing the talking, but the
Spirit of my Father is doing the talking through you. Brothers and sisters will
hand each other over to be executed. A father will turn his child in. Children
will defy their parents and have them executed. Everyone will hate you on
account of my name. But whoever stands firm until the end will be saved.
Whenever they harass you in one city, escape to the next, because I assure that
you will not go through all the cities of Israel before the Human One
comes.
I have to be honest, Dorothy Day has always been a hero
to me, but I really did not know much about her personal life until I began to
explore her more carefully. And the more
I learned about her, the more I appreciate her.
Dorothy Day was born in New York in 1897 to a middle
class family.
In 1906, the family was living in San Francisco during
the terrible earthquake in April of that year.
Dorothy later said that as a result of the community’s
spontaneous response, and the self-sacrifice of neighbors --- that she drew a
powerful lesson about individual action and Christian community.
She asked:
why can't we be that way all the time?
Dorothy's family was not active in a Church community ---
her father actually considered himself an atheist.
Yet, when Dorothy was 13 she was baptized in the
Episcopal Church in Chicago, and it was only after a deep friendship with
Eugene O'Neil that she ultimately became a Roman Catholic.
While she lived in Chicago, she lived close to the
neighborhood known as "back of the yards" referring of course to the
stockyards on Chicago's south side.
While living there she read and
was greatly influenced by Upton Sinclair's The
Jungle.
She was a voracious reader and was greatly influenced by
Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Thomas A Kempis' powerful book The Imitation of
Christ.
Each of those writers pointed
out the depravity of society in how they treated the poor and called for
personal responsibility.
Dorothy became a huge advocate of PERSONALISM
The idea that every Christian
has a personal responsibility to get involved in taking care of our brothers
and sisters.
She believed that we should not be
sending them off to some agency
Instead
the words of Jesus rang true:
YOU GIVE THEM
SOMETHING TO EAT
We should do something for the
other because that changes us
In an interview she once said:
"If you take the Lord's
words, you will find that they are pretty rigorous. The "sermon on the mount" may be
read with great enjoyment, but when it comes to practicing it, it really is an
examination of conscience to see how far we go."
She was firmly opposed to the state solving the problems
of poverty
She said:
"We are living in these
times, a time of tremendous failure of man's sense of responsibility for what
he is doing. He has relinquished it to
the state. He is not obedient to his own
promptings of conscience."
She was firmly convinced that WE (you and I) should be
solving those problems not some government agency.
One of her first forays into social activism took place
in November 1917, when she was arrested for picketing at the White House in a suffragette
march
She was severely
beaten by the police and sentenced to 30 days in jail,
Serving 15 days --- ten of them on a
hunger strike
while in jail she studied the
Psalms
Sept 24, 2015, Pope Francis to spoke to the Congress,
listen to what he had to say:
My visit takes place at a time
when men and women of good will are marking the anniversaries of several great
Americans. The complexities of history and the reality of human weakness
notwithstanding, these men and women, for all their many differences and
limitations, were able by hard work and self-sacrifice – some at the cost of
their lives – to build a better future. They shaped fundamental values which
endure forever in the spirit of the American people.
. . .
I would like to mention four of
these Americans: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and Thomas
Merton.
. . .
In these times when social
concerns are so important, I cannot fail to mention the Servant of God Dorothy
Day, who founded the Catholic Worker Movement. Her social activism, her passion
for justice and for the cause of the oppressed, were inspired by the Gospel,
her faith, and the example of the saints.
. . .
Three sons and a daughter of
this land, four individuals and four dreams: Lincoln, liberty; Martin Luther
King, liberty in plurality and non-exclusion; Dorothy Day, social justice and
the rights of persons; and Thomas Merton, the capacity for dialogue and
openness to God.
And yet, while she can be praised by the Pope, in death
--- during her life she was often attacked.
She, and the Catholic Worker strongly opposed the Vietnam
war
They
organized some of the first anti-war demonstrations
The first person arrested for
burning their draft card was a member of the Catholic Worker
J. Edgar Hoover wrote that Dorothy Day was
a very erratic and irresponsible
person who has a very hostile and belligerent attitude toward the FBI and makes
every effort to castigate the Bureau
Hoover had her listed as a dangerous radical and put her
on the subversive list of people to be rounded up and arrested in case of a
national emergency
And now the Roman Catholic Church
has begun the process of making her a saint!
It was Pope Leo XIII in his "On New Things" in
1891 that set the stage for social justice within the Roman Catholic Church
But it was
Dorothy Day who lived it out
Social justice has always been a part of our Methodist movement.
John Wesley (1703 - 1791) long pushed for social justice
Christine Pohl writes quoting Wesley from a sermon:
Wesley located himself squarely
within the teachings of the ancient Christian tradition when he insisted that
any resources we have beyond necessity or possibly convenience belong to the
poor. For Wesley, the difficult problem of destitution in the midst of plenty
could be solved readily—by a voluntary redistribution of resources. If
Christians would be content to live simply, they would have ample resources to
share. Holding on to more than was needed or used literally stole life from
others. Wesley wrote that many brothers and sisters, the “beloved of God, have
not food to eat; they have not raiment to put on…. And why are they thus
distressed? Because you impiously, unjustly, and cruelly detain from them what
your Master and theirs lodges in your hands on purpose to supply their wants”
Wesley's motto was
Earn all
you can
Save all
you can
Give all
you can
He died poor, by worldly standards, and yet rich in the
standards of the kindom
The official Book of Resolutions of the United Methodist
Church (2016) states:
The United Methodist Church
believes God's love for the world is an active and engaged love, a love seeking
justice and liberty. We cannot just be observers. So we care enough
about people's lives to risk interpreting God's love, to take a stand, to call
each of us into a response, no matter how controversial or complex. The church
helps us think and act out a faith perspective, not just responding to all the
other 'mind-makers-up' that exist in our society."
We live the kindom message of Jesus as we GO into the
world to make a difference.
And, yet we are reminded in our Gospel lesson this
morning, that far too few answer the call
Too few are willing to go into the world, and breath into
the culture kingdom values through their lives.
And Jesus reminds us that many will not like it when we
do that --- that they will see this message as too revolutionary, too
political, too much to bear.
And we
know what we ultimately did to Jesus --- he was murdered by the state
When people questioned Dorothy Day about reaching out to
the poor, the alcoholics, the immigrants --- saying shouldn't they get what
they deserve her answer was quite simple: "God save us if we got what we
deserved"
Earlier this year PBS created a documentary of Dorothy
Day and I highly recommend it.
The title of the documentary is the same as I titled this
sermon (I didn't even know of the documentary at the time) based on something
that Dorothy said that really sums up her life.
"The greatest challenge of
the day is how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has
to start with each one of us."
The documentary ends with people sharing how they were influenced
by Dorothy
The great theologian Cornel West declared
She embodies so much of what we
need now, which is genuine empathy for others.
Martin Sheen, who as a struggling actor went for months
to her Hospitality House in New York to receive food said:
Her life was instinctual
She saw somebody fall, she'd
help them up
She saw somebody hungry, she'd
feed them
And her grand-daughter Kate Hennessy who wrote a
biography of her grandmother:
She leaves us with a model on
how to be authentic.
How to have integrity.
How to live as if your life
really means something.
In 1973, at the age of 75, Dorothy was arrested for the
eighth, and what would be the final time --- she was with Cesar Chavez and the
United Farm Workers in California supporting their strike. A picture of her "lecturing" the
police has become iconic.
Dorothy died in 1980, living to the end with a vow of
voluntary poverty --- giving all that she could to support the least, the lost
and the last of our society.
Rev. James Martin wrote:
If anyone deserves to be a saint
it’s Dorothy Day, not only because of her decades of direct service to the
poor, her critique of the systems that kept people in poverty, her heartfelt
invitation of thousands of people to participate in the corporal works of
mercy, and her moving writings; but also for her personal piety and generosity.
Dorothy was known to say:
"Don't
call me a saint; I don't want to be written off that easily."
James Martin continues:
What Dorothy certainly
opposed—and what saint wouldn’t?—was being put on a pedestal, fitted to some
pre-fab conception of holiness that would strip her of her humanity and, at the
same time, dismiss the radical challenge of the gospel.
The challenge for us is simple --- has Jesus given us a
conscience for the poor, for the marginalized, for the least in our society?
And if Jesus
has, what are we doing about it?
God of each and every one of us,
Your servant Dorothy Day exemplified
the faith by her life of prayer, voluntary poverty,
works of mercy, and witness to the justice and peace
of the Gospel of Jesus.
May her life inspire each of us
to turn to Jesus as our Savior,
to see the face of Jesus in the world’s poor,
and maybe especially during this time in the faces of our
black brothers and sisters.
Help us to raise our voices for God's justice.
And to not become discouraged or to grow weary before we
see your kindom come.
I pray this in the name of Jesus, who showed us a better
way.
Amen.
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