FOR THE SOJOURNER, THE ORPHAN, AND THE WIDOW

A Labor Day Sermon by James Ishmael Ford
1 September 2002

The Text
When you reap your harvest in your field, and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow; that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat your olive trees, you shall not go over the boughs again; it shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not glean it afterward; it shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I command you to do this.

Deuteronomy Chapter 24:19-22

Yesterday eleven thousand janitors in the Boston area voted to strike. This strike, if it actually takes place, is part of a larger issue being debated within many of our communities about the differences between minimum wage and living wage. And this debate, in turn, rests upon our communal reflections about what might be called economic human rights. Now I suggest this whole issue of whether there are economic human rights raises fundamental questions of a religious, of a spiritual nature.

As tomorrow is Labor Day, and in honor of the moment, I want to begin this sermon with a religious critique of the capitalist ideal. Essentially I suggest capitalism is based upon a partial vision of who and what we are. I suggest more harm than good will follow societal choices that are made when we’re stuck in that partial vision as our guiding principle.

Now, by itself this partial vision isn’t bad. It holds up the individual, at least in theory, which is a very good thing. But, and much of this sermon turns on this point, we are more than individuals capable of making contracts, of acting for our individual economic advantage. So, while allowing our creativity and adventurousness and desire to excel, all aspects of the capitalist vision, is without any doubt a good thing, to exclusively follow this individualist impulse eventually reduces us to economic units with the sole goal of making and spending money.

Now I’m not trying to deny the successes of capitalist perspectives. And in a harsh and precarious world, a philosophy that calls us to consciously take care of ourselves has legitimate appeal. It makes sense. But, it is also a philosophy that ultimately calls for a vision of dog-eat-dog. It is a zero sum game with a few winners and many losers. In its fullest form the creativity of capitalism becomes greed and its energy becomes violence.

The good news, and this really is good news, is that we don’t have to live in a dog-eat-dog world. The good news is we can achieve a society that rewards initiative and hard work without abandoning the least among us. The least among us, those who in that Biblical passage are remembered through the phrase "the sojourner, the orphan and the widow." We need to remember all for whom that phrase stands.

Here we come to a way into the spiritual element, the religious element of this concern. Who are the poor? Who are those today that fall into the Biblical category of sojourner, orphan and widow? The list is long, too long, I fear.

It includes those who because of age, physical or mental conditions cannot work. It includes those who are struggling to raise children alone without adequate access to resources. It includes immigrants, legal or not. And it includes those who have had good education’s, previously worked in good jobs, and fill all our stereotypes of success; but who perhaps simply have the wrong specific skill for the moment. That category "the poor" definitely includes people who are willing to work.

And this is significant. Potentially, that term "the poor" can mean anyone. Now most of us in this room are doing all right by our contemporary North American standards. Please note that word "most." It should be remembered that not all of us here in our community are doing so well. The truth is life is often hard, very hard. And even for those among us who are "doing all right," that still doesn’t mean it’s easy.

The mortgage for most houses in Newton and surrounding communities is staggering. Very few among us, however well paid, are more than a month or two without a paycheck from those very mean streets. We don’t like to think about it. It is an awful thought. But probably the reality of our precariousness hangs somewhere in the back of our heads.

Everyone’s middle class lifestyle is tottering, always, at the edge of collapse. A divorce, the loss of a job, a dip in the stock market, and nearly everyone in this room is at risk. Within our capitalist culture, nearly anyone who reflects on the precariousness of it all, is frightened. And that’s an evil perspective from which to make choices.

So, what is the more expansive vision? What corrects the excesses of a philosophy of relentless individualism, and its ethic of the devil taking the hindmost? Well, I often speak of how we have deep intuitions of connection. To find our way through we need to attend to what this intimation of connection might be.
Certainly this sense is found in our sacred literatures. And this sense often arises in our dreams. I suggest however they come to us these intimations point to a mysterious reality, where we find we are in some authentic way connected, each of us with the other.

This is not a metaphysical statement. I suggest when we look at our simple biology we can discover some sense of this connection. Life rises on this planet, bubbling in all its diversity out of a single source. Genetics reveals that every human being is related. We are literally all cousins. And it doesn’t take much of a push to see how in fact all life is related. We who cling to this small planet spinning through the great night are in some authentic sense all family.

Now about those poor. I hope I’ve established not only that any one of us can be those people, but also that they’re all related to those of us who have been more successful in life. To put it bluntly, if we truly are as connected as I suggest we are, then when we speak of the poor we’re talking about our mothers and brothers and children. This is a truth we need to comprehend, as uncomfortable as it might be for those among us who are doing rather well at the current time.

Now you and I each of us are unique, never to be repeated. We need, always, to remember this is true. You and I, and our feelings, our fears and anxieties, our joy and our happiness, all our dreams as people are precious and unique. This understanding is enshrined within our contemporary Unitarian Universalist statement of Principles and Purposes as the very first, calling us to acknowledge the "Inherent worth and dignity of every person."

As our uniqueness is understood, and in our culture this has been celebrated to the max, then I hope we can also see that other facet of reality: how we genuinely are bound up together. And here is the point for today. This communal vision is just as important as the truth of our individuality. We are all part of the shimmering mystery that is the web of life on this planet. And we find this insight enshrined within our contemporary Unitarian Universalist statement of Principles and Purposes as "respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part."

And, this is my point. We need both insights together. We need to see each of us, ourselves as unique. And at the same time we need to see how we are completely relentlessly wondrously connected. This can be hard to do. It is hard to do. In our culture of divisions it can seem like squaring the circle. We are either individuals or a mass, but we cannot be both.

Our western logic, as powerful and useful as it is, has in one sense betrayed us here. It is a categorical assertion of our Aristotelian logic that "A" cannot also be "B." But here in our humanity we discover the bumblebee, improbable, some say impossible, but there it goes, buzzing along. Here we are living within a dual reality of absolute uniqueness and absolute commonality.

I suggest a way of approaching this is to think of both of these truths as an eye. When we allow ourselves to see with both eyes, knowing our uniqueness and our connectedness, then we gain a healthful perspective. At that moment our actions become compassionate and wise. But we also need to cultivate this dual vision. Often it takes a certain intentionality. But we can do this in a variety of ways.

We need to reflect, to look within our hearts, to see who we are as we really are. We also need to study widely, to look at our communities, and to reflect on the consonance or dissonance between what we’ve seen to be real and true and good and what is actually happening. Then, always, always, we need to act.

For many of us a core spiritual practice is found in simple service. So, for example, this summer I managed to get down to the South End and Haley House to help with breakfast one day. We made oatmeal and eggs and fed fifty hungry men.

I was traveling a lot, and while I wanted to spend more time there, it was what I was able to do. They’re a very interesting crowd, part of the Catholic Worker movement, which I’ve long found a fascinating phenomenon. I find doing things for real people with my hands is a spiritual practice, and can be part of coming to wisdom.
This is a practice many of us have taken on. We here in this community have all sorts of opportunities to be involved in that hands-on way. Members of our congregation serve as mentors and chaperones in the Stand High/Stand United program sponsored by the UU Urban Ministry, we sort food monthly at the Greater Boston Food Pantry, we meet monthly with members of the Myrtle Baptist Church to cook meals for area shelters, and we serve monthly at the Women's Lunch Place. And that’s just what I think of off the top of my head.

Of course often there is a need for more than our commitments to hands on service. So for many of us authentic spiritual practice naturally expands to include more than those we can directly touch with a bag of groceries. This can be very important. I suggest as a spiritual, as a religious concern, we really need to become radicals. We need to cut to the root of the matter. We need to challenge the status quo, to shake the foundations of the mighty. We need to discern the truth of our lives, and to speak it to authority. Not service or activism, but both.

But this is a sermon, a spiritual reflection and not a political speech. I really am talking about various kinds of spiritual practice that take us to understanding and inform our choices in healthy ways. I’m trying to point out how wide and various these disciplines can be.

And I’m trying to underscore how important it is to try and do something. We need to cultivate those ways that reveal to us the twin truths of individuality and commonality. We need to cultivate those ways that remind us when we fall into one partial perspective or another. We need a path of remembering the truths we discover. The suffering of the world may hang in the balance. It is that important.

Our actions of service can be central parts of the task. Giving our hands to small acts of care and concern are powerful things. So are our choices of political engagement. So, also, some among us pray, some among us meditate. Others among us simply like to stop and think things through. Any of these things help. All of them together bring us to wisdom.

Each of these actions, both inner and outer, cultivate within us willingness, and an openness. Openness. That is the central ingredient. Openness is our spiritual path, is what all these practices are about. This openness of our hearts and minds is essential. This openness allows the creative synergies that make our choices authentically healing.

This path of humane spirituality is our Unitarian Universalist way through to see the world both as it is, and as it might be. This is the way of connecting our bodies and our minds and our hearts as one thing, what I like to call our body knowing.

So, let me draw all of this together with just a few concluding thoughts. Out of meditation and reflection and prayer we find something. Out of our giving time to others we find something. Out of our study and engagement we discover something. Within this rhythm of pause and action we reveal something that has been there since the creation of the stars and planets.

Each individual is precious and unique, and every blessed one of us is a member of the family. There is no one whom we can exclude from the family, at least not without a terrible rupture of the fabric of existence. And so the purpose of our gathering here, the purpose of our reflection and prayer and meditation, the purpose of our actions both small and great really is simple. We do all this for the sake of each one of us, for you and you and you and me. We do this for the sake of the family, which is for the sake of the world.
It is our great calling from the heart of the cosmos.

Amen.