"The Real Reason for the Season", November 28, 2021

The Real Reason for the Season

by Rev. Jamie Green Klopotoski

Based on Jeremiah 33:14-16

November 28, 2021

St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Gloucester, MA

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0HI1WgE5yo

I have a confession to make: sometimes I am not a very patient person. I really hate waiting in lines. Slow internet connections make my blood boil. I go out of my way to drive the route with the least amount of traffic lights. I avoid busy restaurants. Because waiting is the worst. There’s a funny episode of South Park where one of the main characters, a 4th grade boy named Eric Cartman, cannot wait for the new Nintendo video game system to come out in 3 weeks. The episode begins with Cartman pacing back and forth in front of a store at the mall muttering, “Come on…come on!!” He is so frustrated. He can’t sleep at night, he can’t function. He tells his mom that it’s like waiting for Christmas times a thousand.  

Waiting for Christmas. You know, there’s a word for that. “Advent”. The season of Advent is all about waiting. The word “Advent” comes from the Latin word meaning “coming” and is used to describe the 4 weeks leading up to Christmas, which starts today. This season is called Advent to refer to the many centuries of waiting by the Israelites who fervently hoped and prayed for the coming of a savior, the Messiah, to be born. We know this savior to be Jesus, the baby born in a manger on Christmas. 

Sometimes I think we have forgotten “the reason for the season” in the midst of the busy-ness and chaos of what the Christmas season has become: fighting crowds, spending money, stressing out about buying all the right presents, waiting in long lines and traffic jams, cleaning up messy kitchens, untangling extension cords. There’s a funny song that I hear on the radio every year that reminds of the craziness that Christmas has become, called “The Twelve Pains of Christmas”, a parody of the Twelve Days of Christmas. It features such pains as: Stale TV specials, Batteries not Included, Finding parking spaces, Facing your in-laws, Five months of bills, Sending Christmas cards, Hangovers, Rigging up the lights, and Finding a Christmas tree. This year in particular, I’ve been reading a lot of news about how difficult the holidays are going to be, that Christmas is “at risk” due to things like the continued pandemic and supply chain issues. I saw a meme going around social media that said, “Saying Christmas is ‘at risk’ due to supply chain problems leads me to believe that you don't know the reason for Christmas.”

Our scripture lesson from Jeremiah this morning reminds of us of the real reason for the season. It begins with Jeremiah’s optimism of God’s salvation: “The days are surely coming…” Such hope and promise must have been a great comfort to those who first heard them. For centuries, the Israelites had been persecuted. Between being held as slaves in captivity and getting lost and wandering around in the desert, the history of Israel was filled with brutality and their future had always seemed bleak. But tragic events in 586 BCE caused Israelites to lose almost all hope of a bright future: Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple and sent the people into Exile. This is when Prophet Jeremiah writes to the Israelites to encourage them to have hope, hope in God’s righteousness, hope for a new and better future, hope for deliverance, renewal, and liberation. 

But in the meantime, the Israelites would have to wait. And waiting is the worst. Waiting can be discouraging. Demoralizing. Waiting can bring depression, paralysis, denial, hopelessness. Waiting can create despair. It would have been super easy for the exiled Israelites to devolve into violence and chaos and just give up. But Jeremiah’s words encourage the Israelites to wait patiently with hope, instead of impatiently with despair. Jeremiah is desperately trying to keep the Israelite’s hope alive. 

Even for me the eternal optimist, it’s sometimes hard to keep my hopes alive. Especially when the wait is long and discouraging, I feel like giving up and letting my hopes die. For example, it has always been my hope to help make the world a better place, but every time I turn on the news, a little bit more of my hope dies, a little bit more of me feels like nothing I do will ever make a difference and I feel like giving up. Maybe you feel that too, or maybe you have other dead or dying hopes in your life. Maybe you were hoping to make some changes in your life, maybe you made an important New Year’s resolution 12 months ago, maybe you make the same one each year, but year after year nothing seems to change and you struggle and you don't even expect a change anymore. Maybe you've hoped for peace and harmony in your family, but now you have gotten to the point that you are just willing to live with discord because you have given up hope for anything more. It might be in your career, where you were hoping things would be better or that you would be at a different place and it's just not working out that way. When things are broken, it’s hard to see the light in the darkness, to see hope in the midst of despair. It’s easy to just give up. I think we have all felt at least a little bit of the hopelessness and despair that the Israelites felt, and we, like them, need to be constantly reminded that the darkness will not last forever, the light will eventually come, that we need to wait patiently with hope. 

We are lucky because we know what happens 500 years after the start of the Babylonian exile. After much waiting and much strife, the savior did finally come.  He came to save them, to rescue them, to bring them justice, to give food to the hungry, sight to the blind, and love to the lost and lonely. The birth of Jesus fulfilled the hopes of the Israelites for a better world and a better future. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; Joy to the world, the Lord has come. This is the reason for the season: the fulfillment of hope represented by a baby born in a manger. God heard the cries of the oppressed and brought deliverance. When we celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas, we celebrate the birth of love, the birth of peace, the birth of joy, the birth of hope. 

But sometimes it feels like we are still waiting for a savior. Waiting for a change in our lives. Waiting for the end of loneliness or grief. Waiting for the world to finally be at peace. Waiting for a day when people no longer have to flee their country in order to stay alive. Waiting for a day when people of all nationalities, all races, all genders, all orientations, are treated with love, dignity, and respect. Waiting for a day when no more unarmed black boys are shot dead by police. Waiting for a day when mass shootings are no longer the norm. Waiting for a day when violence is no longer the answer to brokenness. Waiting for action to be taken against climate change. Waiting for the world to be a better place. 

The good news is that the savior has already come, and he is called “Emmanuel” … which means “God With Us”. Our savior is here, God is with us.  God will journey with us through the darkness to the light. God is working with us and through us to usher in the hopes we long for: a change in our lives or a change in our world. But things can’t change overnight. We will still have to wait. But as Jeremiah reminds us, we need to wait patiently, with hope, not with despair. We can’t just give up because it feels like it will never happen. We need to keep going, keep trying, keep doing what we can. We cannot give up hope that we can make a change, that we can make a difference, in our own lives or in the world. 

But what does it look like to wait with hope? I’m reading a wonderful book right now called: “Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy” by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone. In it, they describe the difference between having passive hope and active hope. Passive hope is about waiting for someone else to bring about what we desire. Active Hope is about becoming active participants in bringing about what we hope for. Active Hope requires us to take steps to move ourselves in the direction that we hope for. They write, “Active Hope is waking up to the beauty of life on whose behalf we can act.” The invitation of the book is to stop being overwhelmed and start living in a way that makes a difference even if it's one small step toward our hopes. Active Hope is about doing the best you can.

Today, the first Sunday of Advent, the day we celebrate hope, is a great day to begin to practice an active hope, to take one small step towards moving our lives or the world in the direction we hope for. One step we could take is re-imagining those “Twelve Pains of Christmas” so that we can bring the “reason for the season” back into our Advent and Christmas traditions.

When we put up Christmas lights, can we remember there is light in OUR darkness, can we consider how we can be the light in someone else’s darkness? When we plan our gift giving, can we consider what we can give to others instead of more stuff -- a hug, a smile, a gesture of love, time, togetherness, support, encouragement? When we gather with our families, can we practice unconditional love for ourselves and for people with whom we don’t agree? When we are stuck in traffic jams, can we practice forgiveness, understanding, and patience? When we are waiting in lines, can we wait with a patient and loving heart, and give a gift of peace, a simple smile, to the cashiers and those waiting around us? 

Let’s do the best that we can to wait with an active hope; hope that one day God’s love will reign, that one day God’s peace will be the light that drives away all darkness. May we be agents of hope and builders of the Kingdom of God here on earth as it is in heaven. Amen. 

"Hot Dogs and Ubuntu", November 21, 2021

 Hot Dogs and Ubuntu

By Rev. Jamie Green Klopotoski

Based on 1 Corinthians 12:12-27

November 21, 2021

First Baptist Church, Gloucester, MA

Watch here: 

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/476126755790467/permalink/4549823641754071/

Back when I was the Youth Minister at a church in Needham, Massachusetts, I led a week-long Vacation Bible School every summer for kids. During our prayer circle one year, I had every kid hold hands and each take a turn to say what they were thankful for. I got the usual “friends and family” responses: “Mom”, “Dad”, “My Sister”, “My Best Friend”, “My Cat”, but then it came time for a young girl of no more than 4 years old to speak. She quite excitedly said, “hot dogs.” Most of the adults in the room laughed. But I was impressed. Earlier in the day, we had eaten hot dogs for lunch, and this wise young girl was able to be thankful for even the most obvious, most mundane, most simple thing. Hot Dogs. I later organized a scavenger hunt for the kids to complete, and one of the items was to make a list of 100 things they were thankful for.  A few of the kids thought I was kidding… or that I had made a typo… did I mean 10 things? No, I meant 100. They thought that there was no way they could come up with 100 things they were thankful for. But I asked them to think about those hot dogs we had for lunch. How did those hot dogs get on their plates? Could we be thankful for the volunteers who cooked the hot dogs that day? The refrigerator that kept the hot dogs cold? The stove that warmed them up? The grocery store workers who sold them to us? The truck drivers who transported them to the store? The factory workers who originally made and packaged the hot dogs? The farmers who raised the animals? The artists who designed the label?  After considering the long journey it took for a hot dog to get on our plates for lunch, the kids easily came up with over 100 things to be thankful for with absolutely no problem. 

Every Thanksgiving, I think of this little girl from Vacation Bible School and the journey of her hot dog lunch. One of my favorite Thanksgiving traditions is going around the dinner table to have each person say what they are thankful for. My friends have learned that if they are sitting at my table, I am not going to allow them to give the “friends and family” answer. Of course we are all thankful for our friends and families, but there are SO many other things to be thankful for. I like to challenge people to dig deeper in their reflections of gratitude, to consider the journey of literally anything we have, just like the Vacation Bible School kids reflected on the journey of their hot dog lunches. If hot dogs aren’t your thing, maybe think about the journey of a cup of coffee. It requires farmers to plant, harvest, pick, and the sort coffee beans. Workers to process, dry, mill, and roast the beans. Artists to design the packaging. Planes and ships and truck drivers for distribution. Business owners to run coffee shops. Baristas to serve the final product. Mechanics and engineers and factory workers to design the trucks for truck drivers, the farming equipment for farmers, the roasting and brewing equipment for baristas, the packaging supplies like tape, cardboard boxes, cups, and labels for retailers. Schools and teachers to educate all these people, daycare centers to take care of all their children, more factories and retailers and tons of other workers to make everyone’s clothing, furniture, food, refrigerators, and cars, electricians and plumbers to enable electricity and running water, and sanitation workers to clean up after everyone. All of that (and more!) just for a cup of coffee. Without all of these people, that cup of coffee could not exist. So shouldn’t we be thankful for all those people, without whom we wouldn’t have coffee or hot dogs or any of the other things are lives are blessed with?

Ultimately, my hope in getting people to follow the journey of a hot dog or a cup of coffee is that it will remind us of how much we need each and every single human being on this planet. We need all of the individual parts of God’s interconnected creation to work together in order to have a functioning society. That was the Apostle Paul’s message in his letter to the Corinthians that we read this morning. Paul had gotten word that the community in Corinth was basically falling apart. People were no longer working together, were no longer seeing other as equally valuable. They were separating themselves into categories; groups that were seen as superior treated like kings and queens,  but groups seen as “weak” were neglected, despised, shamed, and mistreated. The Corinthians were failing to acknowledge that they were dependent upon each other, that they needed each other to prevent their community from falling apart. So Paul wrote them a letter to remind them that each individual in their society was just as important as every other individual, that all members of the community were needed and were all equally valued by God. 

In order to teach them this lesson, Paul used a metaphor, comparing the human body to the body of Christ. Even before the advent of modern science, the Corinthians would have understood that the human body is made up of different parts that all rely on each other and need each other to function. Without an ear, the body couldn’t hear; without an eye, the body couldn’t see. All of the individual parts of the body have a special and important role in making the body work, and all parts should be equally valued, respected, and cared for. It’s the same with the body of Christ, made up of different individual humans with unique gifts, abilities, personalities, languages, and cultures. All of the individual parts of the body of the Christ have a special and important role in making the body work, and all parts should be equally valued, respected, and cared for. Despite our obvious and many differences, we are called to work together in unity, as one body. We are not just individuals living alone in the world, just like the body isn’t one giant ear or eye; we are a part of a complex interconnected system. At the heart of Paul’s message is our interconnectedness: Christ is all and is in all, and we need all, in order to be who we are. 

South Africans have a word for this: UBUNTU. Ubuntu is a Bantu word used to describe the universal bond that connects all humanity. It is sometimes translated as “I am what I am because of who we all are.” South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu used the idea of ubuntu in his theology to fight against apartheid. He once described ubuntu as meaning, “A person is a person through other persons. We need other human beings in order to be human. We are made for togetherness, we are made for family, for fellowship, to exist in a tender network of interdependence.” His youngest daughter, Reverend Mpho Tutu, said this about Ubuntu: “Everything that I do has an effect on you and your well being. Everything you do has an effect on me and my well being. Even though we are different people, we are essentially interconnected.” Interestingly enough, Ubuntu is also the name of a free, open-source computer operating system, where people are encouraged to share their talents to make improvements on the system, so that it continually gets better and better. It was named after this philosophy of Ubuntu, the belief that we can create something better when we work together.

The imagery of the body of Christ and the concept of Ubuntu urge us to consider our interconnectedness. Both Paul and Desmond Tutu wrote that if we realized that we were interconnected with everyone else on the planet, then our actions would change. We would bless others as we realized we have also been blessed. We would be more giving to others as we realized how much we have been given by others. We would care more about each other and treat everyone with dignity and respect as we realized how much we needed each other. We would always look out for one another, because, as Paul wrote, “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it” but “If one part is honored, every part shares in its joy.” Desmond Tutu wrote, “What you do affects the whole world. We are diminished when others are humiliated, diminished when others are oppressed, diminished when others are treated as if they were less than who they are. But when you do good, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.” 

Desmond Tutu tells a story about what he considers to be one of the most formative experiences of his life. He said, “When I was a very young child, I saw a white man tip his hat to a black woman. Please understand that in my country such a gesture is completely unheard of. The white man was an Episcopal bishop; the black woman was my mother.” He says that with the tipping of a hat, a simple gesture of respect and love, his reality was changed. Just one small seemingly insignificant action had a huge impact on him. Imagine how easily that action could have been negative, and could have made Tutu angry or resentful or full of hate instead of love. It could have affected the trajectory of his entire life, it could have affected the future of South Africa! Every small and seemingly insignificant action we take and every word we speak matters, because we are all interconnected. 

It is unfortunate that so many of us forget the fact of our interconnectedness as we go about living our seemingly independent self-made lives. I think that if Paul saw our society today, he would desperately want us to understand how interconnected we are. I imagine that if Paul were to write us a letter, it would sound a lot like his letter to the Corinthians:

“Dear Earthlings, I see there are many divisions on the planet today. Have you forgotten that you are all members of the body of Christ? Remember, it’s like the human body. From your hands and feet that help you move and manipulate the world around you, to your nose hairs and fingernails that protect your bodies from viruses and bacteria, all of the individual parts of the body have a special and important role in making the body work. If the trillions of cells in your body can cooperate to make your body work (including 25 trillion red blood cells, 147 million platelets, 45 million lymphocytes, 38 trillion bacteria cells, 86 billion neurons, 85 billion glial cells, 240 billion liver cells, 1.6 trillion skin cells, 50 billion fat cells, 2 billion heart muscle cells), then the 7.9 billion people on this planet should be able to get along. It doesn’t matter whether you are black or white, rich or poor, young or old, cooks, doctors, teachers, scientists, janitors, artists, office workers, trash collectors, farmers, factory workers, CEOs, truck drivers, musicians, maids; you were born of one spirit. Christ is all and is in all, and we need all to survive.”

I pray that one day, the whole world will be able to heed Paul’s words, to understand our interconnectedness, and work together for the common good. This understanding can start with us. The first step we can take is to reflect on what we have to be thankful for. Perhaps we can all take a moment this Thanksgiving as we gather around the table with our friends and family to reflect deeply on things in our lives that we have to be thankful for. You can start with something like your morning routine. You can be thankful for your bed, for a roof over your head, for your toothbrush and your toothpaste, for a hot shower, for your bowl of cereal or cup of coffee, and then dig deeper into any one of those things and be thankful for the many people it took for those items to complete the journey to your home. I hope that as gratitude fills our hearts by reflecting on all the ways in which our lives have been blessed, we will be inspired to be a blessing to others. Because we need each other. Because ubuntu. I am what I am, you are what you are, we have what we have, because of who we all are. 

Let us pray, Blessed and Holy One, we praise your name for the many good gifts you have given us. We love you for blessing our lives with so much greatness, so much love, so much grace. Help us to take time each day to consider all the things in our lives that you have given to us. We thank you so much for the energy that feeds our souls, the sun that warms our bodies, the air that fills our lungs, for farms and gardens, manufacturing plants and factories, farmers and factory workers and truck drivers, grocery store cashiers and coffee shop baristas, refrigeration and freight trains, indoor plumbing and electricity, clothing and furniture and cars, hospitals, doctors, and nurses, schools and teachers, our intricately complex human bodies, cups of coffee, and even hot dogs. May we experience the holy in everything, in everyone, in every moment of our interconnected lives. Amen.

"No More Squid Games", November 7, 2021

“No More Squid Games”
by Rev. Jamie Green Klopotoski

Based on Mark 12:41-44
November 7, 2021 
St. Paul Lutheran Church, Gloucester MA
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXnO8VStESs&t=1310s

I just finished watching the first season of the newest sensation on Netflix called “Squid Game.” If you have not yet heard of this show, you are not alone. While it debuted on September 17 of this year with over 142 million households in the world tuning in, *I* didn’t know anything about it until weeks later when it was mentioned on NPR. The show is a South Korean drama, subtitled and dubbed in English, about a group of 456 people desperately drowning in enormous debt. They were all at a point in their lives where they would do anything to try to pay off their debt in order to financially support themselves and their families. They were recruited to compete in a series of children's games, like Red Light Green Light and Tug of War, for a chance to win a ton of money—45.6 billion South Korean won, or about 38.4 million US dollars. The twist—if you lost a game, you were killed. These people were literally fighting to the death for this money. For the record, I’m not sure if I actually recommend watching this show because of its extremely gory violence and brutality, but the message of the show is deep and meaningful. It depicts the gravity of economic inequality, the depressing struggles of living in poverty, the stark reality of class divisions -- social injustice issues that happen all over the world, not just in Korea, which I think contributes to the show’s worldwide appeal.

Interestingly, “Squid Game” is not the only popular show on Netflix right now about living in poverty. Over 67 million households in the world have watched “Maid” which debuted on October 1. It is based on the real-life memoir of a struggling single mother who fell into poverty after fleeing an abusive relationship. She gets a low paying job working as a maid for the rich while trying to secure housing and support her young daughter. 

I think it is fascinating that these two shows about people living in poverty are so popular, and I’m torn about how I feel about this. On the one hand, I am disturbed that people find entertainment in watching others live in desperation. On the other hand, maybe it’s a good thing that these issues are being brought to people’s attention. I am hopeful that the more we are aware of the problem around us, the more we will actually do something about it.

Awareness of a broken social system is exactly the message Jesus is preaching to his disciples in this week’s gospel story, though it is very rarely ever interpreted that way. All around the world, I guarantee there are ministers who are using the story to encourage their members to donate more money to the church. I’m guilty of doing it at other churches. Mark 12:41-44 appears to be a straightforward story about generosity and sacrificial giving; Jesus praises a poor widow for giving money to the temple treasury even though she had so little. As the interpretation usually goes, if this woman, who only had a few coins left to her name, could be generous enough to give everything she had, then you can find it in your heart to part with at least a little bit more of your money to support the church. It’s what I was taught as a child in Sunday School and what I continue to hear preached about to this day, especially because it shows up during the season of Pledge Drives and Stewardship Campaigns, like the one this church is launching next week. 

I’m not saying that this message of generosity is a bad thing, but I’m not sure it was the message that Jesus intended, because it fails to take into account the beginning of the story, verses 38-40, before the widow is seen giving all her money to the temple. Jesus tells his disciples to "Watch out for the leaders of the temple. They like to wear fancy robes and have the most important seats in the synagogues and places of honor at elaborate banquets. They devour the houses of widows and show off with lengthy but empty prayers." Throughout the gospels, Jesus grows more and more frustrated with temple leaders. In this case, he is upset that they spend the temple money on themselves instead of redistributing it to the poor like they are supposed to.  In contrast to the greediness of the scribes, Jesus then lifts up the poor widow as an example of generosity and selflessness. But I don’t think the message is “be like the widow and give all that you can”; I think the message is, “don’t allow this unjust system to remain in place.”  The widow gave her money expecting that it would be used to do God’s work, but it turns out her money just supported the temple leaders’ extravagant lifestyles. The widow is the victim of an oppressive system. She gave everything she had to make rich men richer, and Jesus is trying to tell us that that is just not right. 

Taken as a whole, Mark 12:38-44, like “Squid Game” and “Maid, provides a case study in poverty, exploitation, and income equality. These stories remind us that we continue to live in an economy that siphons its resources upward and leaves the vulnerable to face destitution. The wealthy grow wealthier at the expense of the poor, which creates a great divide between the “haves” and the “have nots”, the scribes and the widow, the Squid Game players and the game organizers, the homeowners and the maid, the CEO and the worker, the rich and the poor. This was the reality in the time of Jesus, and it’s the reality of our world today. And it is not right. 

Here are a few numbers for you to consider. According to the Economic Policy Institute, chief executives of big companies now make, on average, 320 times as much as their typical worker. Even companies that lost money during the pandemic last year paid their CEOs extravagantly. 

Boeing had to lay off 30,000 workers and reported a $12 billion loss. But its chief executive was rewarded with $21.1 million in compensation. Even if he worked 80 hours a week, all 52 weeks of the year, that still amounts to over $5000 an hour. 

Norwegian Cruise Line lost $4 billion and furloughed 20 percent of its staff, but more than doubled the pay of its chief executive to $36.4 million. That’s almost $9000 an hour. 

And at Hilton, where nearly a quarter of the corporate staff were laid off and the company lost $720 million, its chief executive received compensation worth $55.9 million. That’s over $13,000 an hour. He makes more than 1800 times the federal minimum wage of just $7.25 an hour. 

I am sure that these men and other CEOs have worked incredibly hard to get to the top of the corporate ladder. But something I wish they (and all of us) would take into consideration is that they didn’t do it by themselves. There is no such thing as a self-made man or self-made woman. Financial success is dependent upon the rest of society. Anyone who claims they worked their way to the top all by themselves are mistakenly unaware of the fact that it took our entire interconnected society to get them where they are today. The CEOs of Boeing and Norwegian Cruise Line and Hilton didn’t make the cars they used to drive to work, or pave the roads they took, they didn’t manufacture the computers or phones they used, they didn’t drive the garbage trucks that disposed of the company’s waste, or pump the building’s septic tanks. 

Consider the cup of the coffee those men probably drink every day. It requires farmers to plant, harvest, pick, and the sort coffee beans. Workers to process, dry, mill, and roast the beans. Artists to design the packaging. Planes and ships and truck drivers for distribution. Business owners to run coffee shops. Baristas to serve the final product. There’s also the people who make the trucks for the truck drivers, who make the farming equipment for the farmers, who make the roasting and brewing equipment to turn coffee beans into coffee, and who make packaging supplies like tape, cardboard boxes, cups, and labels for retailers. There are schools and teachers to educate all these people, daycare centers to take care of all their children, factories and retailers and tons of other workers who make everyone’s clothing, furniture, food, refrigerators and cars, and sanitation workers to clean up after everyone. All of that (and more!) just for a cup of coffee. Without all of these people, that cup of coffee could not exist. 

Our very lives depend on interconnectedness. We cannot and do not do this thing called life by ourselves. If we could begin to understand this interconnectedness and how much we rely on other people to do anything, then maybe we could start to break down the huge divides that exist in our society. 

During the last year of his life, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr put justice for poor and working-class people at the center of his agenda. He launched his Poor People’s Campaign, and traveled the country preaching the gospel of economic justice. On March 18, 1968, two weeks before he was assassinated, he gave a speech in support of the Memphis sanitation workers who were on strike to demand a living wage and union rights. He said, “It is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages. So often we overlook the work and the significance of those who are not in professional jobs, of those who are not in the so-called big jobs. But let me say to you tonight, that whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity, and it has worth. One day our society must come to see this. All labor has dignity.”

It is a beautiful and powerful speech, and it deals with a lot of the issues we're still dealing with today. I think he'd be shocked and appalled that nothing much has changed. The gulf between people with inordinate, superfluous wealth and the people suffering in abject, deadening poverty continues to grow.  As people of faith, we cannot tolerate the inequality that is plaguing our world; we must speak up and work against it. We must stand up for those who are most vulnerable. We must stand against laws or customs that exploit the poor. We must enact policies – and vote for politicians that advance such policies – that mirror God’s intention to care always and foremost for “the least of these”. 

Jesus advocated for a society in which all are cared for, even and especially the most vulnerable. So that must be the calling of those of us who follow him: a call to dismantle the systems in our society that lead to poverty – the systems around us that devour people’s whole lives. But even being able to see those systems requires paying attention. I would guess that not many people at the temple that day noticed a poor widow giving a few almost worthless coins. But Jesus saw her because he was paying attention. He brings her from the margins to the center of the story. I bet even fewer people realized the exploitations of the temple leaders and their abuses of the money they were entrusted with. Jesus brings it to the disciples’ attention. We, too, need to pay attention if we are going to notice not only the person on the street being passed by, but also the systems that work behind the scenes to perpetuate poverty. It’s easy for many of us to go through life without noticing the systems that steal life from other people. 

The story of the poor widow’s offering is a call for us to pay attention. Jesus paid attention, Jesus cared, and Jesus invites us to care and to pay attention too. To care for the people living on the edges of society, those trying to figure out if they can pay for their heat or rent or groceries this month, stressed and worried and desperate. Stephanie Land (author of “Maid”) lived in that desperation and said it was incredible, but sadly rare, when someone treated her as a human being, with compassion and empathy.  Let us show compassion and empathy for the truck drivers and factory workers, farmers and baristas, cashiers and artists, sanitation workers and maids, orphans and widows and everyone in between, all the people we rely upon every day for everything we do and everything we have- for everything we eat or drink or use, for our coffee and cereal, toothpaste and medicine, clothing and houses, cars and cell phones, absolutely everything requires other people. Let us be aware of our interconnectedness, how much we need other people, and work to ensure that all receive a living wage and a chance to live a fulfilling life. Let us advocate for a system that does not leave anyone behind, that allows everyone to have equal access to the abundant world God created. We need each other, so we need to care about each other. No more Squid Games. Amen. 

Sources:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mark-12-38-44-the-value-of-chump-change_b_2083237

http://thetextincontext.com/a-poor-widow-and-the-false-dichotomy-of-charity-vs-justice/

https://www.davidlose.net/2015/11/pentecost-24-b-surprisingly-good-news/