In my first year of seminary we juniors
were required to work with Austin Interfaith for our required field placement. The next two years we would be placed in various parishes for our field placement requirement. Most seminaries give you a pass on field work your first year, but my seminary felt very strongly that we should experience the work and ministry of Austin Interfaith. Austin Interfaith is a community organizing enterprise whose goal is to empower the powerless, to give voice to the voiceless, and to promote well being, justice and dignity where those virtues are compromised. Community organizing has a rich history in American culture throughout the twentieth century. Its champion was a man named Saul Alinsky, born in 1909, who wrote dozens of books on community organizing, the most famous of which was Rules for Radicals. He was widely praised and widely criticized over his career. Barack Obama was a community organizer, and as you know was derided for it by his opponents. There are several characteristics that define community organizing in its classical form: It is grassroots oriented; it is faith based; it is about empowerment, not protest; and it is nonviolent.
I had never experienced anything like it. Our first meeting was held at the Twelfth Street Baptist church whose members were predominantly Latino and African American. The church was packed. This community over the past several months had identified the greatest needs they lacked. First was equitable local immigration law enforcement, next was a living wage for the city of Austin, next was the need for equitable access to public transportation in all parts of town. All of these issues were going to be considered by the city council, and the election was just around the corner. The community had invited local politicians, Republicans , Democrats, and Independents to speak to the community as to how they would vote. Some politicians showed up others did not, but obviously the politician(s) who signed on to this gathering’s agenda would get the votes of some Eight hundred people. Similar events were taking place all over town. The room was electric with anticipation and energy. One Latino man spoke blindfolded to conceal his identity, because he was undocumented, as to the police’s capricious handling of nuanced immigration laws. But he spoke as one empowered. He spoke with authority and with the energy so palpable in the room. It brought tears to my eyes. I felt change possible.
We are reading right now in the Rector’s Forum excerpts from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous letter from the Birmingham jail. The letter is addressed to six prominent clerics in Birmingham, two of whom were the bishops of the diocese of Alabama. The letter was written along the margins of the Birmingham News, because the jail would provide no paper. These clerics were critical of King and his followers gathering in Birmingham, fearful that “trouble” might break out. King, a community organizer extraordinaire, and devotee of Saul Alinsky’s work, took the clerics to task for being so critical and for turning a blind eye to the injustice of racism as it was particularly manifested in Birmingham. From this letter we get the now famous phrase: “justice delayed is justice denied.” King also gives the clerics a theology lesson on the purpose of the gospels. That Jesus’ teachings were first and foremost about social, economic, and political change; to bring freedom for the captives and oppressed; to bring equity and justice to the social order. All these things he says to these clerics are “things that surely they must know,” and scolds them for their lack of solidarity with the very heart of the gospels themselves, and their seeming indifference to those treated with indignity which the gospels seek to succor.
He reminds them that he and the rest of us, were preceded by another community organizer and that was Jesus himself. And he reminds them also that the authorities, those in power, reacted to the Jesus movement the same way in the first century as they were acting in the twentieth. Sadly this prophecy became truer than we knew when King was shot dead in Memphis… “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills its prophets.”
The difficult question for me as the church emerges into the twenty first century…and for many of us…particularly we who share in the bounty of the status quo for which I am grateful…What is our vocation as Christians? What is our life’s work? What do we get up for in the morning? How do we become energized and vibrant for the cause of dignity, and freedom, and well being, salvation in short, for those in need of a life lived nobly? I think the answer lies in taking seriously our baptismal covenant; to give and give and give again our passion and energy in solidarity with those who gather in churches and synagogues and mosques all across this country working, pleading for the liberation that has forever been promised by our God. But first we have to open our eyes to the world’s hurt, and to those enslaved by indignity and injustice, and truly see them, and then pray for the will and courage to act…to act as if this gospel is true. And feel that change is possible. The city of Austin pays its employees now a minimum wage of $12.00 per hour. That is gospel action at the grassroots.
