A Fourth Church Sermon by Cynthia M. Campbell

October 17, 2004 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Hearing Voices

Cynthia M. Campbell
President, McCormick Theological Seminary

Psalm 34
Amos 8:4–8
Luke 18:1–8

In a broken and fearful world
the Spirit gives us courage
to pray without ceasing,
to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior,
to unmask idolatries in church and culture,
to hear the voices of peoples long silenced,
and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.

—The Brief Statement of Faith, PCUSA

Prayers of the People by John M. Buchanan, Pastor

Do you ever wonder whether anyone is listening? Don’t you sometimes wonder whether anyone ever hears? The psalm we just read together says, “The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and God’s ears are open to their cry. . . . When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears, and rescues them from all their troubles.” Isn’t there a voice deep inside you that says, “Really? How would we know that?” God hears and rescues, we say, but that’s not what happened for 14 Chicagoans killed last week when their bus went off the road in Arkansas; it’s not what happened for 6 people trapped in the stairwell during the fire in the 69 W. Washington building a year ago; it’s not what is happening today in Darfur, where the U.N. estimates that 70,000 refugees have died since March.

There are, in fact, two vexing theological problems here: First, why is there so much suffering? More specifically, why are there so many “innocent victims”? And second, where is God when all this suffering is happening? All of us ask these questions. Virtually every religion and philosophical tradition has attempted answers. So far as I can tell, these questions will never be fully answered, short of the second coming and God’s creation of a new heaven and new earth. Christian faith does not attempt a philosophical answer. The Bible, in particular, does not have a chapter that “explains” this. Rather, the Bible tells a story about God’s relationship with one people, Israel, a story that we believe represents God’s relationship with all humanity.

The core of the story is about Israel in slavery in Egypt. In the call to Moses, God said, “I have observed the misery of my people; I have heard their cry; I know their sufferings and have come down to deliver them” (Exodus 3:7–8). This is the heart of what Israel knows about God: God hears the cry of the suffering who long for justice and freedom, and God acts to vindicate, to liberate, and to heal.

Jesus told this same story, although with a somewhat backdoor approach, about the God who hears. The story has two characters: a widow and a judge. The judge is a local magistrate, the one who settles all the disputes that plague people living in community with one another—disputes about marriage and family and property and debt. He has perhaps grown cynical in his years of adjudication, or at least callous, for (the text says) “he did not fear God. He had no regard for people.” (See Johnson, p. 268.) He is a judge but has disdain for the core of the law of Moses, which is, of course, summarized as love of God and neighbor.

The appellant is a widow who has been persistent to the point of being obnoxious in seeking from the judge the justice or vindication she believes she is due. Jesus’ hearers see more in this than we do. First of all, women never, ever came to court on their own. They were always represented by some male relative. The fact that it is the widow herself who keeps on keeping on means that she is utterly destitute and completely fearless. Second, as Luke Timothy Johnson puts it, “in Israel, as in every patriarchal, agriculturally based economy, certain classes of people were endemically vulnerable: the orphans, the sojourners, and the widows” (p. 269). Thus, the law of Moses is very specific about their protection. For example, Deuteronomy 24:17–18: “You shall not deprive a resident alien or an orphan of justice; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pledge [that is, as security on a loan]. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this.” This section continues with the command to leave some of the grain in the field, olives on the trees, and grapes on the vine—left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow to harvest for themselves. The reason for the law is what is interesting: remember you were a slave and God heard your cry and redeemed you, set you free.

For a long time, the judge is impervious to the widow’s demands. Finally, he says to himself, “It’s true I do not fear God or have any regard for people. But this widow gives me so much trouble that I will give her justice!” (Johnson, 268). “I need her out of here and off my back!” Our translation hides the force of the judge’s words and thus the humor of the story. Luke Timothy Johnson translates this literally. The judge says, if I don’t put a stop to this, “she will keep on coming and end up giving me a black eye!” The judge isn’t just going to be worn out; this widow is mad enough and persistent enough to land a punch upside the head! You can see the headlines: “Bag Lady Assaults Judge!”

Listen, Jesus says, to what this judge says! And if this miserable excuse for a magistrate can do the right thing for a poor widow, what do you think the Creator of the universe, the Almighty, the truly just Judge will do for those who cry out for justice and for mercy?

This story is, it seems to me, one both of consolation and challenge. The consolation is found in the introduction to the parable: “Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” Pray without giving up. The words imply persistence and insistence. Keep on, keep it up, don’t lose heart! Remember what the psalm says: “I sought the Lord who answered me, and delivered me from all my fears. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” Cherish these words on dark days. Say them when you least believe them, because the God who heard Israel’s cry will hear yours as well.

This story is also one of challenge. Put most simply, because God is the one who hears, we are required to do the same. Because God’s ears are open to the cry of those who suffer, our ears are to be open as well. The law of Israel provided what today we might call a “social safety net” for the poor for one simple reason: because God redeemed Israel from slavery. The law of Israel that protected the vulnerable was based on the character of God. God hears, and so must we.

During the final presidential debate, moderator Bob Schieffer asked the candidates, “What would you say to the man who has lost his job, lost his benefits, and is working two jobs at minimum wage to put food on the table and pay the mortgage?” That’s really the question, isn’t it? Will we, can we hear? I, in fact, remember what that was like. When I was about ten years old, my father was laid off when the company he worked for left town. Because our home was paid for and my mother worked full-time and my grandmother was on social security, I don’t remember a sense of financial emergency. What I do remember is the bruising and brokenness of my father’s spirit and the many, many months it took to find another job that paid less and had no pension.

One part of our mission as church is to listen—in the words of our Brief Statement of Faith, “to hear the voices of peoples long silenced.” Because of who we know God to be, it is our job to be those who listen. This is not always easy. It is really not easy to work day in and day out with those who suffer, whether that means providing care to the chronically or terminally ill or counseling the homeless or teaching children who live with so many roadblocks to learning. It is not easy to listen, because sometimes the voices of those who suffer are strident and raucous and impolite. We can almost sympathize with the judge, who simply wants to make the voice of the widow go away! But listening is a spiritual discipline. In the words of Princeton theologian David Willis-Watkins, “Hearing the voices of the unrepresented, the crowded out, those who have none to care for them is at the heart of the gospel, at the heart of Christ’s own ministry, and at the heart of the ministry of those who are bound together . . . by the power of the Spirit” (Placher and Willis-Watkins, p. 170).

I often think what this church, what Fourth Presbyterian Church, would be like if you and those who were ministers and members here before you had not heard the voices of neighbors in Chicago. What would you be if you had not reached out to the children of Cabrini or the homeless on Michigan Avenue or older adults living alone in the city?

One of the most challenging and personally satisfying committees I ever served on for our denomination was the committee appointed by the General Assembly to prepare the final version of the Brief Statement of Faith, the newest of our confessions adopted in 1991. A committee made up primarily of theologians teaching in seminaries and colleges presented a first draft, which, according to the procedures specified in our constitution, was then handed over to another committee for revision. This second committee was much more broadly representative, more pastors and laypeople with a fairly wide range of theological views.

What I will never forget is the debate about the section printed on the front cover of the bulletin and in particular the lines, “In a broken and fearful world, the Spirit gives us courage . . . to hear the voices of peoples long silenced.” Some members wanted this line removed. Why was it there? Where was the biblical base? Isn’t this just political code and not a theological affirmation? One of the members of our committee was the Reverend Henry Fawcett, a Native American pastor who was on the faculty at Dubuque Seminary. Henry is a very quiet, gentle, and gracious man. He said little during our months of deliberations. The day of this debate, he stopped us in our tracks with this story.

A couple of years ago, he began, I went home to Alaska to close up our family home and prepare it for sale. My father had died, and others in the family no longer wanted or needed the house, so as eldest son, the work fell to me. You need to know, he said, that my grandfather was the first Christian in our family, really in our whole tribe. When the Presbyterian missionaries came to our part of Alaska, my grandfather heard the story of Jesus and embraced it with great joy. It was the practice of missionaries then to give everyone a new name, a so-called Christian name rather than the tribal names we traditionally used. That’s how I got to be Henry. The missionaries also taught our people that in order to be good Christians, they needed to get rid of all the trappings and artifacts of the old religion. So, in the early days, they got people to bring blankets and ceremonial robes and costumes and drums, and they had a big bonfire and burned everything.

So, Henry said, there I was cleaning out the family home. When I made it up to the attic, I eventually found an old trunk, way in the back, covered with an old carpet. It was a trunk I had never seen before. I pried it open, and there in the trunk were my grandfather’s father’s ceremonial robes, beautifully and lovingly decorated with beads and feathers. I took it out and put it on, and I heard their voices—voices that were silent no longer.

We believe in a God who hears—our consolation, our challenge, and our hope.

Works Cited
Johnson, Luke Timothy. The Gospel of Luke (Sacra Pagina Series, Vol. 3). A Michael Glazier Book. Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1991.

Placher, William C. and David Willis-Watkins, Belonging to God. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992.

Prayers of the People
John M. Buchanan, Pastor

New every morning is your love, dear God. We are grateful for this new day: for a clear blue October sky and bright sun; for the shining lake and brisk autumn breeze; for a blaze of color as nature, in your wise providence, moves from summer to harvest to winter. How majestic your name; how amazing the work of your hands. All nature sings the miracle of life, our lives. The diversity and resilience of human life testifies to your providence and grace. And so we lift our hearts and voices in gratitude.

Today, O God, we thank you for the human spirit and intellect, which you create in us and call to your service. We thank you for the quest, the search for meaning and purpose and truth, for the curiosity and impatience you create in us. We thank you for scholars and teachers and all those who give their lives to the quest. Particularly we thank you for those who invest their intellects in your service—for theological educators, for seminary and divinity schools, for McCormick Theological Seminary and its 175 years of faithful service.

We thank you, dear God, for human love: for the strong love of parents for children, for the capacity for passionate love you have created in us, for the earliest flicker of love we recognize in an infant’s smile, for the love we experience for our country, our church, our community. You have created us for love, O God, and taught us that our best worship of you is expressed in our love for one another, our neighbors.

And so we pray for those whose needs are most urgent this morning; those of our number who grieve the loss of a loved one, a deep disappointment, the loss of a job, a relationship. We pray your healing presence in the lives of those who are ill, those waiting surgery, those struggling to recover and return to health. We pray for the poor, those whose lives are hemmed in by the deprivations of poverty. Bless them, O God, and make us more impatient, more compassionate, more just.

We pray for our country, for President Bush and Senator Kerry. We pray for the men and women of our armed forces and their families. We pray for the people of Palestine and for the people of Israel. As we pray and work for a just peace, keep us always open to your Spirit and to one another, to those with whom we disagree and those with whom we share common hopes and dreams. Be with us in the week ahead.

Finally, we pray for ourselves. Give us what we need to be your faithful, courageous, joyful people, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.