Backpack Justice

"Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbors work for nothing, and does not give them their wages" (Jeremiah 22:13). 

The Church of the Common Ground meets every Wednesday in Woodruff Park in downtown Atlanta.  The day was beautiful, the park full of business people and people with no place else to go.  The noise around us was cacophonous -- cars honking, sirens screaming, fountains gushing, people talking, music playing.  But that did not deter our group from serious consideration of Jeremiah's words.  Mitsy knows what it's like to be labeled as homeless, and therefore not get paid a full day's pay for a full day's work.  "Yeah," she said, "they see someone with a backpack and they figure they can get something for nothing."  Backpack justice.  Others shared stories of injustices done to them, sounding at times resigned to their fate and at times determined to break the cycle. 

Into the midst of the conversation walked Teresa.  Applause broke out as she approached.  She just passed an exam that will allow her to become a nursing assistant, a dream she has had "forever".  There is hope.

Eucharist followed Bible Study, along with laying on of hands and anointing for healing.  Teresa joined Deacon Carol in praying with the one being anointed as the rest of the group remained in silent prayer.  There is always hope.

I've been reading the book  The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor: Seeing Others Through the Eyes of Jesus by Mark Labberton.  He takes his readers on a spiral through Seeing, Naming, and Acting as a way toward transformation and justice.  Good stuff for a Lenten study.  His chapters on "naming" especially touched me.  He talks about how the names we use to describe others shape their lives, and our own.  "Names are first and foremost expressions of relationship (p. 128)," he says. Generalizations we use (i.e., the homeless, the poor, the hungry) objectifiy and distance "us" from "them".  Labberton goes on to say, "Justice renames the forgotten as the remembered, the widow as the loved and the oppressed as the treasured" (p. 155).   When "the homeless" become Teresa and Mitsy and Lamar and Walter our relationships are transformed.  We become friends.  We begin to care on a very personal level about the injustices that shape their lives.  "Outreach" is renamed as simply what we do every day.  "Homeless ministry" is transformed into relationship building within our communities of faith.  "Programs" are transformed into acts of worship.  "Us" and "them" are renamed brother and sister in Christ and "that homeless man" becomes my friend, cherished by me and cherished by Christ.

The Jeremiah passage we studied on Wednesday concludes, "He [the former king] judged the cause of the poor and needy: then it was well.  Is not this to know me? says the Lord" (Jer. 22:16).  How will we come to know God?