H. Stephen Shoemaker
Myers Park Baptist Church
Charlotte, North Carolina
October 17, 2004
PRAYER, FAITH AND JUSTICE
Texts: Deuteronomy 1:16-17; 24:17-18; Luke 18:1-8
Did you see the extraordinary exhibit called
"Courage" at the Museum of the New South this year? It retold in
multi-media one of the most important justice stories in American history –
the story of the lawsuit for a school bus for blacks in Clarendon County,
South Carolina, which led to the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision in
the Supreme Court.1
I
Blacks and whites in Clarendon County in 1947 went to
different schools, and despite the legal warrant of "separate but
equal" there was huge disparity. Black children walked up to nine miles
to go schools which looked like abandoned tobacco barns. White children rode
school buses to handsome brick buildings. Seventy-five percent of the children
in Clarendon County were black, but the twenty-five percent white population
received sixty percent of the education funds.
In 1945 a courageous black preacher J. A. DeLaine took on
the cause and found one man, Levi Pearson, who would sue the school board for
a school bus to carry black children to school. Pearson’s child walked eight
miles to school. The judges in the case, who, to use Jesus’ words
"neither feared God nor had respect for people," dismissed the case
on a technicality. That fall Pearson had his line of credit cut off with a
white fertilizer supplier.
But Rev. DeLaine and Levi Pearson would not be deterred.
They visited a young lawyer in Columbia named Thurgood Marshall. Marshall said
he’d take the case if they got more plaintiffs. DeLaine said, "If you
need one hundred, I’ll give you one hundred."
By November 1949, 107 Clarendon County parents and children
had signed a petition asking for equality in education for black children.
At the top of the petition form were the names of Harry and
Eliza Briggs, who had opened their home where people could come and sign the
petition.
The white community began to put what they called "the
squeeze" on the signers. Harry Briggs lost his job at the gas station;
Eliza lost her job as a hotel maid. Rev. DeLaine lost his teaching job.
(During these years the Ku Klux Klan shot into DeLaine’s house in the night.
Both his house and his church were burned to the ground. Later he left the
county, never to return again.) Signers of the petition had their mortgages
called in; their credit lines were stopped. Reverdy Wells learned that his
high school transcript had been altered to include an "F" before it
was sent to Temple University, where he was denied admission.
But these people would not give up, and the lawsuit went
forward to the district court in Charleston. There they found an ally in a
white judge named J. Waties Waring.. The other two judges ruled against them,
but Waring wrote a dissent which said "segregation in education
can never produce equality." (That is still
true today where our Charlotte schools are being dramatically re-segregated
racially and economically. A huge issue for the welfare of Charlotte is: Will
we build a school system that will serve well all our
children; the educationally gifted and economically privileged and the
economically and educationally challenged? And this in the new era of
"choice.")
Judge Waring became an instant outcast in the white social
circles in Charleston, and he eventually moved to New York.
But his dissent made possible an appeal to the Supreme
Court. And later the case joined with four others to become the landmark Brown
vs. Board of Education in 1954.
Here is a story of prayer, faith and justice, of prayer and
persistence. Here is a story of just and unjust judges – of widows, orphans
of disregarded citizens who never give up hope in God and the justice God
intends for all.
II
Today our children begin a new rotation study, this time on
Moses. The law of Moses in ancient Israel made sure that the most vulnerable
groups in their society had protection and help. The three are always named
together: Widows, orphans and "resident aliens"
(sometimes called "strangers" or "foreigners" or to use a
term for our day: "immigrants." There’s another important issue
for us today). These were the three groups most easily exploited. So judges in
Israel were specifically charged to protect them.
This is what we heard in our Deuteronomy text for today. And
the text also says why we are to protect and care for these persons:
Once we were slaves in Egypt, and God came to help us. Now can we not help the
most vulnerable in our midst?
III
So with all this in mind, Jesus told a parable:
"In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared
God nor had respect for people."
This man was among the urban elite of his day. He held a
place of honor and power and wealth. But he had neither reverence for God nor
respect for the dignity of persons.
Throughout the Bible the two are bound together. If you have
reverence for God you will have respect for people made in God’s image. If
you showed respect for people you showed reverence for God.
This judge had neither. "In that same city," Jesus
went on, "there was a widow who kept coming and coming and coming to him
saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’"
For a while the judge refused to hear her case. The next
words the judge says to himself. In a comic book the words would be in a
bubble with little bubbles increasing in size leading from his head to the
words: "Though I neither fear God nor have respect for people, yet
because this woman keeps badgering me, I will grant her justice so she does
not wear me out by her continual coming to me."
The verb "wear me out" means literally "give
me a black eye." It is a boxing term.
Sometimes we finally help someone just because we are worn
out by their irritating persistence. Just to get rid of them. A terrible
motive, but perhaps God can even use that!
But the verb might suggest that the man was acting in
professional self-interest: "If this woman keeps coming to me and making
such a ruckus it will give me a professional black eye!" Who knows, this
might have been re-election year for the judge! God can use that too!
So Jesus says, turning our minds now from the judge to God
and from justice making to prayer:
Will not God grant justice to
God’s chosen ones who cry out
day and night? Will God delay long
in helping them? I tell you
God will quickly grant justice
to them. And yet, when the
Son of Man comes will he
find faith on the earth?
Will he find people praying, believing, hoping in God, not
giving up on the world?
This parable now turns us to the meaning of prayer. It is
about prayer and persistence, persistence fueled by prayer and prayer keeping
on keeping on in the faith and in the fight for justice. One black preacher
said of this parable:
Until you have stood for years
knocking at a locked door,
your knuckles bleeding, you
do not really know what prayer is.
In this parable Jesus does not equate God with the unjust
judge who needs to be worn down by our prayer before he answers our cries.
The judge has become callous to God and to human needs. It happens. It happens
to us.
The parable equates the widow to the kingdom of God. The
kingdom of God keeps coming, knocking, making a nuisance of itself, keeps
beating on closed doors until they open and the kingdom comes, comes on
earth as in heaven, and heals the world.
The widow is Reverend J. A. DeLaine, Levi Pearson, Harry and
Eliza Briggs. The widow is you when you keep praying, keep working and
do not give up on God or on the world.
IV
Which leads to my last word about intercessory prayer.
What is intercessory prayer? Here is one way I image it: When we pray a circle
is formed: You and God and the one you pray for are now joined together in the
same spiritual space. Who knows what can happen when that happens! And who
shall underestimate it?
I have been taken by the words of Rowan Williams, Anglican
theologian and Archbishop of Canterbury in his essay "Intercessory
Prayer."
Intercessory prayer, he writes, "at its simplest is
thinking of something or someone in the presence of God."2 But
this holding of God and another in the same space is a struggle, a battle, an
agonia. It is
. . . the struggle not to let God and the world fall
apart from each other: because that is the centre of this prayer, the
recognition that, in spite of appearances, God and the world belong
together. There is no place where the love of God can’t go. And that is
unbearably hard to believe.3
It is some days very hard to believe that God’s love goes
everywhere. So Jesus urges us to keep praying and not lose heart. If the
unjust judge will finally judge for the widow out of lesser motives, how much
more will God who loves us come to our aid!
The church is called to many things, but at its heart it is
called to prayer. As T.S. Eliot wrote in "Little Gidding,"
. . . you are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel .. . 4
We kneel in adoration and thanksgiving and in the offering
of self to God, but we also call out in intercession, praying for ourselves
and for others.
This kneeling is our calling out to God. We hold God in one
hand and the world in the other, God in one hand and people we love in the
other hand.
Some people hold on to God and let go of the world. Others
hold on the world and its great needs and let go of God.
Jesus calls us to hold on to both. It is not easy. It
is sometimes a battle, but we battle on! And we battle with spiritual weapons,
not the weapons of the world. So Paul urges us on:
Stand therefore. Stand! Put the belt of truth around
your waist; put on the breastplate of righteousness and justice; For
shoes lace up the gospel of peace. For a shield carry faith, for a
helmet put salvation on your head and as your sword carry the Word of
God.
Ephesians 6:14-17
And then he adds, Pray!
1. The story is taken from exhibit pieces at the Museum of
the New South and The Charlotte Observer, Special Section, Section Z,
January 25, 2004.
2. Open to Judgement (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1994), p.
138.
3. Ibid., p. 139.
4. Four Quartets (New York: A Harvest book, 1943), pp. 50-51.
