"Showing Up" -- A sermon for All Saints' and the Sunday before midterm elections

I was invited to preach at First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Fayetteville on Sunday, November 4, which was All Saints' Sunday as well as the Sunday before the 2018 midterm elections. My sermon was called "Showing Up," and was based on Exodus 1:8-22 and Luke 18:1-8.

I was nervous to preach this sermon. But this has been a year, and a week, of stepping outside of some of my comfort zones, and this felt like an important time to take a risk.

(I snapped the photo to the left, of a rabbi addressing the Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C., during a Poor People's Campaign rally this past summer.)




You can listen to the sermon, and/or read the manuscript, below:

“Showing Up”
A Sermon for All Saints and the Sunday Before Midterms
First Christian Church of Fayetteville
November 4, 2018

I’ll be honest with y’all. My heart has felt heavy over these past few weeks.

            My heart has felt heavy as it has stretched to absorb a recent national news cycle dominated by violence and threats of violence. Last Saturday, the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in the history of our country occurred in Pittsburgh, with a shooter targeting Jewish worshipers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood. Earlier that same week, there was a deadly shooting at a grocery store in Kentucky in which the perpetrator first attempted to attack a predominantly African American church. Both shooters, in other words, targeted faith communities – places that should be sanctuaries, places of refuge – and targeted these faith communities out of bigotry and hatred.

            And of course all of this happened in the course of two weeks with headline news about bombs being sent to prominent political figures and journalists, with a divisive political environment that seems deeply committed to playing on the worst fears and biases of our public debate, with confusing announcements of troop deployments which I know have impacted folks here in Fayetteville, with a shooting of a state trooper and a shooting following a fight at a high school here in North Carolina, with a shooting at a yoga studio in Florida which killed a college student and a college professor and was again preceded by racist and misogynistic rants from the shooter – friends, my heart has been heavy this week.

            So I don’t know about you, but I know I am in need of the words of Jesus this morning. I need a story that Jesus tells his disciples and friends. A story about their need to pray always. And not to lose heart.

              It’s a story about showing up, over and over again, in the face of seemingly impossible odds. It’s a story about wearing down structures of power and injustice and violence. It’s a story about refusing to lose heart.

            “In a certain city,” Jesus says, there is a public official, whose job it is supposed to be to serve people, particularly, as in this story, people like a widow, vulnerable to mistreatment and harm in their society. And yet this corrupt public official cares little for a God of love and justice, and has no respect for the people he is meant to serve. Can you imagine?

            Now this widow – someone who, in the ancient world, would have been viewed as personally and economically vulnerable – goes to this corrupt official and asks for a measure of protection and equal treatment. The official ignores her claims. And, to be frank, “Powerful man ignores powerless woman” isn’t frontpage news. That’s just the way things go, right? Game over, widow – time to go home.

            But this widow refuses to stay home. She keeps showing up and showing up and showing up until the official exclaims, “I can’t take it anymore! Sure, I don’t care about God or about people, but I’m going to give this woman justice so that she doesn’t keep coming back and wearing me out.”

            Now remember, friends, this is a story Jesus tells about the need to pray always and not to lose heart. Jesus is giving us a picture here of prayer that is not just about bowed heads and closed eyes. A picture of hope that is not about wishful thinking or sunny optimism. In this story, prayer is pictured as a showing up, in body and in spirit and in voice, a showing up with the conviction that the impossible is possible. Showing up for justice, showing up for mercy, showing up for the good and the right, showing up again and again until even powerful corrupt people with no respect for God or for anyone are so worn out that they just do the right thing out of fatigue – this, says Jesus, is what prayer looks like. This is a form of prayer that we pray with our whole lives. When we show up like this, Jesus says, the God who is a Just Judge, a Merciful Judge – this God shows up with us. This showing-up faith is the cure, says Jesus, for a heavy heart.

            Our Hebrew Bible reading today gives us yet another picture of folks who show up for what is good and right; two more Jewish women, just like that persistent widow, who refused to lose heart. Shiprah and Puah were Hebrew midwives. Their people were oppressed, enslaved under Pharoah. They were ordered to assist Pharoah in his hateful and genocidal scheme against the Israelites; but they refused to obey this immoral and unjust order. Instead, they resisted in the most important way they knew how – they showed up and they did their jobs, with persistence and moral courage. They continued to deliver and care for children in spite of the edicts of powerful corrupt people with no respect for God or anyone. And when they were questioned, they cleverly played on the same racist and bigoted tropes that the powerful ruling class believed about their people, saying, “Oh, you know those Hebrew women, like big animals, pushing out babies before we even get there!” Subverting the very lies being told about their people in order to save their people. And they kept doing what they knew they were called to do. And they kept saving the lives of children. They kept providing health care for people who were supposed to be denied coverage by the Egyptian Pharoah Health Care System. And in spite of the impossible odds against them, they didn’t lose heart. They prayed with their whole lives. They showed up.

            When I reflect on the showing-up prayer of the persistent widow, the showing-up faith of the Hebrew midwives, I can’t help but think of other examples of those who have refused to lose heart, who have shown out their faith by showing up, even in the face of violence, in the face of hate, in the face of impossible odds.

            I’m thinking today of the medical team at Alleghany General Hospital, many of whom are Jewish, who treated Robert Bowers, the man who killed 11 people and wounded 7 at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. In an interview, Dr. Jeff Cohen, the president of Alleghany General and synagogue attendee, said that the shooter was like a lot of people his team treats in the hospital – “some mother’s son,” said Cohen, who was “scared and confused and didn’t quite understand.” Of his medical team, Cohen said, “They did their job. They confronted the problem and they were true to their core beliefs.” Understand that Cohen’s team treated Bowers even as he continued to hurl anti-Semitic threats and insults at them. And how did he and his team respond? They showed up, and they did their jobs, and they were true to their beliefs, even and especially in the face of violence and hatred. They treated a man because he was a human being, because human beings deserve to be treated with dignity and respect – the humanizing impulse that is the opposite of violence and bigotry. I learn from these doctors what faith looks like. They showed up. They did their jobs. They didn’t lose heart.

            I’m thinking today of February, 1960 – of Ezell Blair Jr., Franklin McCain, Joseph McNeil, and David Richmond – four African American men, young men at the time, students at North Carolina A&T University, who started the sit-in movement at a lunch counter in Greensboro. These four students who decided, in the course of a late-night hangout in their dorm room, to stand up for the good and the right by sitting down where they were told “people like them” were not supposed to sit. Just four of them, at first – but of course, that’s two more supporters than the midwives had at first and three more than the patient widow. Just four of them, but soon their friends came, and friends of friends, and then when college students left for summer break, high school students started showing up to take their place. And they challenged a system of segregation that cared little for a God of equity and justice, a system that had no respect for people. And they wore down the powers that be. Oh, friends, never doubt that when young people, when high schoolers and college students decide not to give up on something that they can’t wear you down eventually! From these students, and from their modern-day equivalents who stand up and speak out and walk out and sit down for what they believe in, I learn what faith looks like. I learn what it means to pray with our whole lives. I learn what it means to show up.

            And I am thinking, this morning in particular, of my parents. My father, Gary, a two-tour Vietnam veteran who has struggled with mental and physical health conditions throughout my life, showed up yesterday to knock on doors and encourage people to vote along with my wife Leigh and me. My father is 79 years old, and he walked miles with us yesterday, standing with us as we encouraged people to show up to the polls. On Tuesday, my mother Marion, a retired public school teacher, will be volunteering for 12 hours at the polls, making sure people, no matter their political party or identity, are able to exercise their democratic right and responsibility.

My parents are retired. In my opinion, they’ve earned a bit of a right to relax, to unplug, to remove themselves from the fray. They could, if they wanted, just stay home. And yet they refuse to just stay home. They are showing up this week because they refuse to lose heart. Because hope doesn’t look like wishful thinking. It looks like walking miles and knocking doors and talking to people who might or might not agree with you, talking in a way that humanizes and respects our shared dignity. They are showing up. Because prayer doesn’t just look like closed eyes and bowed heads but like a commitment of our whole lives. A showing-up kind of faith.

            Friends, on this Sunday, we honor All Saints Day – a day to remember that we are surrounded by a great cloud of faithful witnesses who have persevered, who have run the race, who have shown us a showing-up kind of faith. Perhaps you have your own saints you remember this day, people who showed up for you, whose names and memories you honor and whose stories give you hope and remind you not to lose heart. I want you to add some saints to your list today. I want you to include on your list a patient widow, whose name may be forgotten to us, but who Jesus holds up as an example of how to pray always and not to lose heart. I want you to include on your list of saints Shiprah and Puah, Hebrew midwives who showed up and provided care and saved lives in the face of violence and threats of violence. I want you to include on your list an innumerable caravan of saints who march onward throughout the pages of our faith history, praying with their whole lives – saints who, we proclaim by faith, continue to show up with us so that we never show up alone.

            And I want us all to remember that list of saints this week, as we commit ourselves, once again, to praying with our whole lives, to not losing heart, to showing up. Jesus asks us, at the end of this story, “When the Son of Man comes – when the One Who is Most Human shows up with humanity – will such a showing-up faith be found on earth?” Friends, what would it take this week for us to be able to answer Jesus: “Yes, that faith is here”?

            Perhaps it would take showing up at the polls and voting, not out of fear of the Other, but out of hope for a world in which all are cared for and human dignity is respected. I’m not talking about particular candidates or parties or constitutional amendments here – I’m talking about demanding a politics based on dignity and humanity and values. I’m talking about showing up for justice, for mercy, for the possibility of a kinder and better world.

            Perhaps it would take showing up to care for those who are most vulnerable in our society, to ensure that the modern-day equivalents of the persistent widow don’t have to stand up for justice on their own, but are joined by us as part of their great cloud of witnesses.

            Perhaps it would take showing up in our relationships, in our caregiving, in our jobs, in our daily interactions, in a way that shows forth our values, that refuses to let our differences divide us but rather calls us all back to our shared dignity and humanity.

            Perhaps it takes walking, or marching, or sitting-in, or standing up, or having difficult conversations, or holding hands, or speaking up, or singing out.

            Perhaps it takes thousands upon thousands of seemingly small, insignificant acts, in the face of impossible odds, in the face of violence and threats of violence, in the face of bigotry and fear – thousands upon thousands of acts of praying with our whole lives, of showing up, of refusing to lose heart.

            Friends, I confess to you. My heart has been heavy these past few weeks. And so I need the words of Jesus this morning, reminding me that there is a cure for a heavy heart. And that cure looks like a persistent widow. It looks like two Jewish midwives. It looks like a type of prayer that is a commitment of our whole lives. And it looks like a faith that shows up.

            May we make it so – by the grace of God.