Broken. On empty.
Worldwide, impoverishment shackles women to unspeakably harsh conditions and makes them vulnerable to predators. Lacking protection, they are sold into human trafficking rings, subjected to forced labor, forced prostitution and forced removal.
Widows and orphans find themselves penniless and defenseless. More than 115 million widows live in extreme poverty around the world, with a half billion children dependent on their care and support: Gary Haugen, in The Locust Effect (2014, Oxford University Press), presents in careful and disheartening detail a discussion of the sea change needed to uphold the rights of impoverished women and children. Sadly, in many places, traditions and customs regard women as being less valuable, subordinating them and treating them as property.
Sometimes, we have to interrupt ourselves in our relative comfort and estimate how we can bring to bear our best resources in the name of changing criminal, wrongful patterns.
Pope Francis faces an extraordinary possibility. He could rely on Catholic teaching which proclaims that humans are all part of "one bread, one body," emphasizing that women and men are equal to each other; and he could promote an exemplary practical consequence of this teaching by embracing "the priesthood of all believers," welcoming women as well as men to follow a vocation into ordained ministry.
It would be a dramatic change, an arrow pointing toward new expectations and possibilities regarding the status of women.
Coretta Scott King said that in the moments after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, turned to her and said, "This is what is going to happen to me also. I keep telling you, this is a sick society."
She could only agree that he was right; and he was. Yet his service to equality and his fierce courage to reject violence couldn't be killed. He took us with him to that mountaintop, entrusting to us a new vision and a way forward.
Pope Francis must indeed feel the challenge of the past century's social justice visionaries, many of them cruelly vilified and rejected -- many sent by violence from the world. Assassination is on the rise: the "kill list" is now an openly acknowledged part of U.S. policy. I know that women here will continue to pray for a sick society, and for the Pope, long after I leave.
I will continue to feel deeply moved by our "mountain man's humble, direct plea, asking us to focus for 40 days on our very sick world. Lent ended on Thursday. Then came "Good Friday" and Saturday is the anniversary of our loss of Dr. King.
On April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his death, Dr. King told us that "we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway."
In just a few more weeks, I'll be moving on from here. The other members of our congregation will remain, and, along with so many of the world's most expendable people, will remain nearly invisible to corporate forces driving humanity to nightmarish war, horrifying inequalities in wealth and education, and the irreversible destruction of natural resources nearly as precious as the squandered hopes of these women.
Where you stand determines what you see. Transformation of the Jericho Road must begin with actually stopping there. In Atwood Hall, our "mountain man" earnestly spoke to us as the people with whom the transformation starts, as people both vital and central to the healing he yearns for. If it comes, it will have started in a million places like this one.
Recognizing our need to support one another, to overcome the scourges of our time, to pick up a pace commensurate to the needs of those surrounding us, focused on our sick society with the same determination to heal that we would bring to a very sick child, we all have the task of going beyond our places of comfort, of escaping the stable and trotting if we can't manage to gallop, of building new affinities in which to imagine and then co-create a better world.
I hope the Pope will pick up the scent of spring renewal, maybe even imagine a Kentucky Derby, as he prepares to speak a clarion and expansive wake-up call, calling us to sing another song, a new song: just as we've called to him.
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