June 8, 2008

It has been a significant week for our country for those of us who are closely watching the Presidential election process. This week the Democrats finally settled on a prospective candidate. That meant that we would say goodbye to an historical first of a woman candidate seriously vying for the presidency. Hillary Clinton almost secured the Democratic nomination. She almost made history. Whether you loved, liked or loathed Hillary Clinton, you cannot help but meditate on the fact that history in this country was made this year in terms of women and their roles as leaders. With Senator Clinton's concession speech now behind us, we can focus on the two leading candidates for the highest office in our country. One of those two men is of African American heritage. Again, unprecedented in our nations' history. A new leader who is not defined solely by his ethnic background and yet is a fundamentally a product of his multi-cultural heritage. There are woman leaders around the world and there are people of color in leadership around the world. Yet now, our country has shifted in its ability to consider electing a person in these categories when we have never been able to do that in the past. I think these two realities came about because of people and movements that go way back into our past. Individuals who put their lives on the line to push a movement one step forward in their time, knowing that it would take years and generations to fully complete the process.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton is not a household name. She was born in 1815 and died in 1902. When she was 11 her only brother died and her father was in such grief. He had hoped that his son would join him in his law practice. With his death her father lost that hope. Elizabeth decided to be that "son" for her father. She prepared to go to college herself, studying Greek, Latin, mathematics and every subject for college applications. Not one college accepted her. She watched women come to her father for legal help and she watched the law stand in the way of these women defining their own lives. She married abolitionist Henry Brewster Stanton and on her wedding trip, she traveled to London with him to attend the World Antislavery Congress where Henry was a delegate. There were seven U.S. women who were there as delegates but they were refused admittance to the main room. After much arguing and debate about their presence, they were seated up in the balcony behind a screen. In that balcony, an opportunity presented itself; Elizabeth Cady Stanton met Lucretia Mott and forged a friendship and partnership to work to change laws. In 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, these two women held the first Women's Rights Convention and addressed the revolutionary ideas of: women controlling their own money and property; women sharing guardianship of their children; and education and careers being opened to them. Elizabeth also proposed at that 1848 meeting the shocking notion that women should have the right to vote.

"Newspapers ridiculed the women. Ministers denounced them from the pulpit. Elizabeth's father was so upset that he came to her home to see if she has suffered a mental breakdown." (from the Storyteller's Companion to the Bible by D. Smith and M. Williams Eds.) Six years later when Elizabeth was about to address the New York legislature on the need for changes in the law, her father sent her a letter demanding that she not speak publicly on these issues before a group of men and telling her that she would embarrass him publicly if she did. (Ibid) She didn't back down. She told her father that he was the one who showed her how inequitable the law was. She reminded him of all the women who had come to him seeking legal aid and been blocked by laws that gave power to their husbands and men. Judge Cady changed his mind during that conversation, had his daughter read him her speech and helped her clean up the legal arguments before she presented it to the state legislature. Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote a letter to President Theodore Roosevelt when she was 87 yrs. old and asked him to be the leader who would open doors for women. She died while composing the letter. Eighteen more years passed before the 19^th Amendment was ratified in 1920. Elizabeth Cady Stanton's work was not in vain. 88 years later women in our country not only have the right to vote, but we have witnessed the most promising woman candidate running for President. While it is sobering how slow progress is, we would do well not to miss the change.

You could take any major change in the world and trace it back to individuals who made that change happen through their perseverance, energy and intractable commitment to that cause. Oftentimes it is grief or loss that galvanizes a person to begin the path of commitment to something. Like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, it is often the disenfranchised that start the process - the outsider who wants in - rather than the insider who wants change to take place. Those who shake up our world aren't necessarily those with education, power, and money.

In fact, if you sat down to strategize how to build a movement, you probably wouldn't pick a remote place without access to education, media coverage or financing. But Jesus did. Jesus started a movement without any of the above. He lived in a remote town; he never held any office or position of authority; he didn't publish and he shunned political office. And yet, he asked people to follow him. In fact, he reached out to both the powerful and the nobodies. He followed a persistence theme in biblical history by deliberately seeking out the nobodies and holding them up. The Bible is a very odd book if you are looking for information about leadership. Yet, look at the way that Jesus made change and infused his followers with passion for an enduring movement.

Jesus ate with and talked with everybody. In our story today, we see evidence of his ease with people from all levels of society. The tax collector Matthew was probably not a wealthy man. The chief tax collectors were quite wealthy but Matthew was not a chief tax collector and probably worked under a wealthy man. Yet he was looked upon with scorn because he was the IRS of his day and he separated people from their money. We hear that Jesus sat at table with unnamed sinners. We don't know their sin but it certainly didn't help his reputation. Jesus engaged the Pharisees who questioned him about his company. He didn't dismiss or belittle them but he did tell them that his requirement was mercy, not sacrifice.

Jesus received the leader of the synagogue who came to have Jesus heal his sick daughter. On the way to this leader's house he took the time to stop and attend to a bleeding woman who reached out for his help; in the process she made Jesus ritually unclean by touching him. Jesus seemed not to notice that, but tended to her instead. When Jesus got to the house of the synagogue leader, he went in and healed a young girl while the crowd outside the house laughed. Jesus never made a choice to heal or speak to someone because of their social location. He didn't avoid people in power, nor did he avoid people on the fringes of society. He called, healed and reinstated everyone he came in contact with. While we think of Jesus as a loving, compassionate Rabbi, I think of him as a man with a spine of steel.

What is the message to us about leadership, change and our role in the process of making the world a more just and godly place? First, I think we are taught to take the long view of things. Real change and justice don't happen overnight. The hemorrhaging woman bled for 12 years. Laws and perceptions don't change overnight. Emotional wounds heal in months and years, not days and weeks. So, we need to prepare ourselves for a lifetime of change and shifting so we don't burn out in despair. We must learn to pace ourselves and balance our challenging views with patience as things slowly unfold. We need to do this so we aren't tempted to give up. In any long race, pacing is the key.

We also need to build our base solidly. Jesus didn't jump out there as a flash in the pan. We know that he was bright and studied in his early years but he didn't begin to train and lead others till many years had gone by. He also took the time to carefully bring people along. We witness him many times teaching his disciples and patiently addressing their ignorance or their inability to grasp an idea. He didn't belittle them, but calmly re-shaped their views to reflect what God would have them do. We, as people of faith, need to build our base. We need to spend time reading our scripture, mining the pages for direction, vision and clarity. We need to remind ourselves that we are here worshipping in the house of God because we agree that God has claim over our lives and we need to spend time discerning what that claim means for us. That cannot be done without study, prayer and community. So, we are invited to build our base with the presence of God's spirit in on the bottom floor.

Finally, we are called as disciples of Jesus to learn from people at all levels of society. The maid and the garbage collector have things to teach us just as the judge and the doctor do. If we simply insulate ourselves from others through economic cocoons, we have a limited view of our society. People like us reinforce the experience of people like us. Spend time with someone who is different than you. Listen to them. Consider their perspective. Understand their challenges; challenge their understandings. When we go out to do mission work, time and time again we are taught that we are not simply "giving to those in need." Instead, we are giving and receiving from one another or else it is a paternalistic charity instead of life-changing justice. It is not easy to consider the perspective of someone whose life experience is radically different from ours, but if we are able to open ourselves to listening, we may learn things about ourselves and our world that we could never learn otherwise.

The Bible is not a blueprint for how to build a society piece by piece that reflects God's vision for the world. Instead, it is a biography of humanity in relationship with God. This biography includes stories of great faith and triumph as well as scandalous failure and despair. It is designed to inspire us and challenge us to open our hearts and minds to God's powerful spirit. Its goal is to open us to divine vision. May we be both inspired by that vision and empowered to take the daily steps that keep us on the path seeking our God.