October 20, 21 2007
Pentecost 21 Proper 24
The Rev. Barbara Schlachter

Have you ever thought about what you might look like when you are really old?  Now don’t laugh—there are few of us here this morning who are really old!  I was thinking about myself as really old the other morning and had this image of myself looking like Mammy Yokum.  You would have to remember the cartoon strip ‘Lil Abner to know how that might look: really short, a big wart on her chin with a hair sticking out of it, a black felt hat and a corncob pipe sticking out of her mouth.  Although I can’t imagine the corncob pipe, I can see the big wart on my chin and the hat—and I already have the short.  A kinda female Popeye, maybe.

Anyway, the reason I was thinking about this was I was imagining myself as the widow in today’s gospel—please don’t anyone tell my husband—and lying on my death bed, and with my dying breath hitting one more send on the Episcopal Public Policy Network for yet one more justice issue and then leaning back and expiring.

It kinda made me chuckle so it’s okay if you laugh.   Pause.  I said, ‘It’s okay if you laugh.”

Well, here we have this dearly beloved gospel story about the persistent widow.  We were clearly warned she was coming.  The collect was a prayer that the Church may persist with steadfast faith. Paul admonishes Timothy to be persistent with the proclamation of the gospel whether the time is favorable or unfavorable. 

And here is our dear importunate widow who reminds me of a character from Joseph Heller’s Catch 22.  She is US serviceman Nateley’s woman; he has done her wrong, and she will not stop from seeking justice until she gets it.  She shows up all the time and everywhere until then.

And we get a picture of a widow that may look like a cross between Mother Theresa and Golda Meir who is not going to step out of the judge’s life until she is granted justice.  He finally cries uncle and gives her what she is due, not because he is just but because she is so darn persistent, what used to be called “importunate.”

And so we are told we are to be also in our cry, our prayer, our working prayer for justice. 

There are only two characters in this story, and it is kind of creative fun to imagine which one we are.  Are we more like the judge or more like the widow?  Is our society more like one than the other, or the church more like one or the other?

Working on the image of God as Israel’s husband in the lesson from Jeremiah and the Church as the bride of Christ, it could be that the widow is the Church itself, clamoring for justice in an injust world.

Maybe we as the society are the unjust judge and God is the widow bereft and abandoned by God’s people calling us to justice.

Whichever way you prefer it, the bottom line is the same.  It is God’s will that there be justice for widows, orphans and the stranger—the Hebrew scripture big three. The question is are we persistently working for justice, actively hindering it or have we just given up?  Or perhaps forgotten altogether that justice is central to the gospel?

A few weeks ago I went on what became for me a religious pilgrimage to a site in this country probably not associated with pilgrimage, not in the way Canterbury or Jerusalem or Mecca are associated with pilgrimage, anyway.  But on my way back I felt I had had a profound religious experience; I had been altered by my journey and this is one definition of pilgrimage.

Where was this pilgrimage site?  New Orleans.  New Orleans two years after Katrina.  “How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!” was the first line in the Old Testament reading the day after our return.  It is a difficult place to drive around.  Hard to see the abandoned, devastated houses, to feel the absence of human habitation in so many neighborhoods.  Then one can go into the French Quarter and find it equally hard to drive around because it is so crowded and lively.  One would never know what lies just a few miles away.

It is easy for those who come to the Big Easy not to know.  It seems easy for government agencies that should still be at work there not to be there at all anymore.  But the Episcopal Church like a persistent widow is still there working for justice.

I was there with four other women from Iowa.  They called us the five unskilled women from Iowa.  They could have added the adjective “old” because the interns who are in charge of the rebuilding are in their early 20’s and as we know about age, perspective is everything. These eight young people, a number of whom are from Iowa, are directing the rebuilding of as many as 17 houses at a time.  They receive referrals from other agencies like Beacon of Hope, a United Way and Diocese of La. Organization, to work with people who are unable to do or even figure out how to do this work for themselves. 

We showed up at a place called the Warehouse, so called because it was a warehouse, I guess, every morning at 8 to receive our working assignment for the day.  Two days we painted, one day we picked up plastic bags and broken glass from a lot that used to have a church on it, and two days we gutted houses, as well as various ones of us doing a few other things related to health and caretaking ministries.

The week before we were there the House of Bishops met, and in addition to their work in meetings, they and their spouses were also able to help with the rebuilding efforts.  Katharine Jefferts Schori in her newscast last week said, “We met intentionally in New Orleans, as an act of solidarity with the people of Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf coast, so that we might represent the prayers and concern of the whole church, and offer a small contribution to the rebuilding effort.”  She went on to say that they were told 100,000 housing units were lost during Katrina and its aftermath, displacing nearly 250,000 people.  Only about 4000 of those units have been made habitable so far.

There are signs all over the place that read like a lament:  Come Home.  Come Home.  The city mourns those who have moved away and not returned, and agencies like Beacon of Hope housed at a Homecoming Center at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, itself devastated by the flood, provide help for those who want to return.  Many will not ever come back; many have found hopefully better lives elsewhere, for as a nation we discovered that as usual, it was the poorest of the poor who were the hardest hit.  Katrina revealed the neglect of our nation for its poor in a way that should embarrass us—not because it was revealed but because it exists.    

There are many questions about whether some of the neighborhoods should be rebuilt, being below sea level.  There are no easy answers for the Big Easy.  But to walk away is not an option for us as a church or a society.  We were there on Oct. 1, the date that FEMA stopped picking up debris from gutted houses in a city where the government has no revenue to do it either.  We saw mountains of debris.  The Gospel the next day was if you have faith as a mustard seed you could move a mulberry tree or a mountain, as it is put in another of the gospels.  This is the kind of faith we need to have, for there are mountains to move.

We went to an Episcopal Church that has a healing service on Wed. evenings followed by supper where musicians eat free and the rest of us pay $5.  Then there is a concert by one of NOLA’s musical groups, followed by an open mike.  The man who is in charge of this program sat next to me at supper.  He said, “We have been abandoned by the government of this country, but not by the people.  Thank you for coming.”

There is so much that I could say about this experience, so much that you would indeed think I was the persistent non-widow widow.  But just let me say that we will go back, and we will take others with us.  The shirt I am wearing under my alb says “I helped rebuild New Orleans… Have you?”  We can all go to New Orleans—maybe not physically, but we can send our money with those who can go, and we can pray.

It is probably no secret to any of you that I believe that part of the baptismal mandate of all Christians is to work for social justice.  It says that in our baptismal covenant and in so many places in scripture.  We are also told today to cry to God for justice day and night.  One thing I know, that is if we are praying for justice, justice will become a priority for us, because whatever else prayer changes, it changes us. 

Do we have the faith to keep praying?  Do we have the faith of a mustard seed?  Do we have the faith of a widow?  And do we have the heart for compassion for the widow, the orphan and the stranger?  And to what kind of action will our prayer and our faith lead us?