"For This I Came.."

Lectionary Scripture:

John 18:33-37

December 14th, 2005, a group of 115 faith leaders took up a position outside the U.S. House of Representatives Cannon office building in Washington, D.C. On that frigid blustery morning, men and women and young and old went down on their knees to block an entrance to that building. They did so “to testify to the truth” that federal budgets are moral documents. What prompted their civil disobedience was Congress' plan to pass a budget making deep cuts to services and support for the country’s most vulnerable and needful citizens. They planned to do this while also giving generous tax breaks to the country’s wealthiest people. It was nothing less than a case of robbing the poor to reward the rich.


The anticipated budget called for funding cuts to food stamps, student college loans, healthcare for the poor, enforcement of domestic violence no-contact orders, and resources for child foster care. In short, what Congress planned to do was immoral. So faith leaders from around the country assembled to protest. Peacefully but with one loud clear voice, these faith leaders proclaimed to Congress, “Shame on you!” Before the protest was over, all of them were arrested. I know because I was one.

Unlike Jesus in his encounter with Pontius Pilate, we were treated respectfully duirng and after our arrests for speaking the truth we came to proclaim. For proclaiming his truth, Pilate mocked Jesus and then humiliated and tortured him.  Pilate did so to placate the religious authorities who arrested Jesus on dubious grounds of treason for claiming kingship over the Jews. Pilate found no basis to those charges and it's likely the religious authorities could have cared less about the claim as well. What actually terrified them was the message Jesus had for his people.  It was a simple yet straightforward message that God loves us unconditionally and calls us to create an earthly kingdom wherein we love one another as fully and completely as God loves us.

What terrified the religious authorities about the message was its immense popularity; a popularity which threatened to unravel their carefully controlled system of rewards and punishments and ritual purity; a system which garnered them incredible influence, power, wealth, and control over the people.  It was therefore a message the chief priests and scribes weren’t going to allow.  So on trumped up charges they took Jesus to Pilate. Believing that only death could stop Jesus, the priests threatened Pilate with appeals to Caesar unless he executed Jesus.  With Pilate being the only civil authority possessing power to issue a death sentence, Pilate literally washed his hands of the situation.  He did so out of fear for the loss of his political capital in Rome should appeals go forward to his superiors in Rome.  Pilate then complied with the chief priests and through their complicity as "the powers that be", Jesus was then put to death.

Nearly two thousand years later, we’re still struggling against the powers that be to proclaim and bring to life the truth that Jesus was called to proclaim. The dynamics of domination and empire-like control over the world continue to preoccupy so many of our political and religious leaders.  At times, it seems a form of psychopathology and dysfunction all its own.  For me, the worship service the night before our arrests in December 2005 served as a reminder regarding how critical it is that we continue to proclaim God’s love and pursue the cause of the Peaceable Kingdom, especially when our government forgets itself and those for whom it exists to protect and serve.  Leading out with such a witness at that worship service was the Reverend Barbara Williams-Skinner of the Skinner Leadership Institute. She immediately captured our attention as she spoke of God’s imperative to overcome poverty.  She then admonished that we don't know who we are anymore. We may call ourselves Methodists, Lutherans, Baptists, or whatever, but all that is immaterial she said, "....for what we are is Kingdom People and that means we strive to free the world of poverty, war, sickness and disease."  To do that, Barbara said we must get a grip on the fact that first and foremost we are children of ”the most high God and as such we are warriors for the poor and voices for those who've been silenced by our culture and society."

Following Barbara, the Reverend Ray Riviera of Latino Pastoral Action spoke and counseled that when the empire and its laws sacrifice the poor, then it cannot expect continued support.  He then urged that while not supporting the empire’s decrees may offend some of our constituencies, we should take courage and place our trust in God remembering that within the workings of the empire we're to keep first and foremost in our minds to whom we ultimately belong.

Perhaps the oldest minister speaking at the service was John Perkins, Chair of the Christian Community Development Association. A young man during the 1960s civil rights movement he had participated in numerous acts of non-violent civil disobedience. At the beginning of his remarks he said, “I’m getting too old for this.” Everyone laughed and applauded.  John then followed with quotes from Matthew, Chapter 25, which says that when we care and respond to the least of God’s children then we have ministered to Christ himself.  John then witnessed of growing up on a plantation as a share cropper, a life which he said wasn’t any different from slavery and how that life caused his mother’s death from starvation while she tried to nurse him as a seven month old baby. John then closed his sharing with these words, “You serve God when you serve those who are broken in our society.”

Jim Wallis followed as the last speaker at the evening. He summed up the spirit of the gathering and encouraged us for the events to follow the next morning.  He said, “Any gospel that doesn’t bring good news to poor people is not the gospel of Jesus.”  Bolstering our resolve for the prayer vigil and arrests to come the next day, Jim shared emphatically that Jesus always stood with poor people and that we confuse them if we fail to do likewise.  He spoke passionately that the real scandal of Christmas that year had nothing to do with forcing Target and Wal-Mart to greet customers with “Merry Christmas.”  The real scandal he said are those who would send away the hungry to fill the rich -- they are the ones living in total contravention to the love of God.  Jim then asked us to pray for changed hearts and changed votes in Congress and to remember that the following morning we’d enact a Christmas Pageant of our own as the police picked us up and carried us off to jail. Keenly aware of the distress we’d feel at being arrested, Jim closed the service with a text from Hebrew Scripture in Habakkuk. It’s a text that he carries around at important times and it reads as follows, "Then the Lord answered me and said: Write the vision, make it plain on tablets so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay." After the scripture, we joined hands and sang the spiritual, "We Shall Overcome." Following a benediction, the worship presider asked us to turn to each other and wish one another a good night by saying, "Hope to be arrested with you tomorrow."  Laughter and hugs followed as we left the church sanctuary.

The next morning following a press conference with the media outside the House of Representatives office building, we went to the nearest entry of the building. We took up a position blocking the building entrance and then knelt in prayer and sang songs. Before long where we knelt, I found the feet of a Capitol Police officer before me.  A few moments later I was arrested for unlawful assembly and refusing police orders to leave the area.  My arrest happened early into our protest likely because I evidenced signs of exposure. We had been out in the cold for several hours and I was trembling uncontrollably from its effects.  I was certainly grateful to the officer for taking notice.

Handcuffed and then bused to a makeshift jail inside a large garage at Capitol Police headquarters, we finally had a chance to warm up.  Officers searched and documented us and ordered us to give up our coats and any other belongings we had, the items would be returned upon our release. Officers then removed our handcuffs and instructed us to sit on plastic chairs that had been set up in long rows. We were not to move from the chairs at any time unless an officer gave us permission and escorted us by the arm. Even a trip to the washroom required an officer escort who maintained line of sight upon us at all times. It was clear that we were under arrest and detainees, but there was always an air of respect and even admiration from the officers. One sergeant said to a small group of us, “We’ve never had such a pleasant and polite mass arrest as this one.” As the last of our group cleared the initial processing and police began to release us one by one after paying a $50 fine, we sang Christmas carols to keep up each other’s spirits. We were a choir of angels all our own.

The whole experience yielded an important lesson for me which is that the truth which Jesus came to proclaim continues to need ardent proclamation now. In the week which followed my arrest, I felt led to write this adaptation of the Magnificat which is also known as the Song of Mary, the mother of Jesus. You can find the original version in the Gospel of Luke (1:46-55).  My adaptation reads as follows: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior who has looked with favor on our lowliness. Surely, from now on all generations will call us blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for us, and holy is God’s name whose mercy is from generation to generation. For God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts and has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; filling the hungry with good things. The servants of Israel are in remembrance before you, O God, praising your mercy according to the promises made to our ancestors and descendants forever and ever. Amen."

As to the success of our protest and its goals of changing hearts and minds and votes, there was a bit of success with Congress. Publicly some House of Representatives members shamed Congress with the knowledge of the arrests of faith leaders from around the country who had felt it necessary to leave their houses of worship and pastoral duties to go to Washington and protest.  In response, Members of the House decided not to cut food stamps as deeply as they had first planned, but they still cut everything else and gave a big hand up to the rich.

So the proclamation must continue my friends and it will surely remain a long hard slog toward God’s Peaceable Kingdom for all, but as a Canadian friend tells me, “Sometimes as persons of faith we have the honor of raising our voices together in protest. At other times, it takes courage to speak in a lone voice above that of others.”

If you’ll be the voice in your community helping God to heal and reconcile and bring about the kind of justice that respects and uplifts all human life, then you like Christ will know the reason for which you were born. Like him, you too will speak your truth to the powers and majesties of this earthly realm and say, “For this I came...”