Readings for 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time: EX 17: 8-13; PS 121: 1-8; 2 TM 3:14-4:2; LK 18: 1-8;
Amy Goodman is in trouble. She's the television journalist my wife and I had dinner with last summer. She's the host of "Democracy Now: the War and Peace Report" -- a daily news hour on the Pacifica Radio and Television network.
In the face of mainstream media's refusal to cover significant grassroots events and issues, Ms. Goodman's program has been called "probably the most significant progressive news institution that has come around in some time" (by professor and media critic Robert McChesney.) In addition to sources such as OpEdNews, Information Clearing House, and Alternet, "Democracy Now" is an invaluable fountain of information about issues that touch all of our lives. Amy's program is an example of what can be accomplished for peace and social justice in the face of overwhelming odds.
Anyway, Amy is in trouble. Or should I say that judges in the North Dakota legal system are in trouble. I mean the court's black robes there are about to tangle with a woman who is stronger and more committed than all of them put together.
The issue at hand is a charge of criminal trespassing against Ms. Goodman. It stems from her coverage of Native American protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline -- a nearly 2000-mile, multi-billion-dollar construction stretching through North and South Dakota, Iowa, and Illinois. The pipeline cuts across Sioux Tribe sacred sites and burial grounds at their Standing Rock Reservation. Defense of those holy grounds has brought together thousands of Native Americans from across the country and Latin America, as well as indigenous peoples from around the world.
On Labor Day weekend this year, while Amy was covering that resistance, security forces of Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), the pipeline's builders, set dogs on the Standing Rock "Protectors" (they refuse the name "protestors"). She filmed a dog whose mouth was dripping with Protectors' blood.
Amy's honest reporting (protected by our Constitution's First Amendment) proved offensive to ETP, their security forces, and to the local police. Hence the charges.
_____
Please keep all of that in mind as we attempt to understand today's liturgy of the word. In the context of an unjust legal system, our readings raise the question of what it means to "pray always." Jesus says it means persistently demanding justice. Amy embodies that meaning.
Actually, the readings compare what might be termed men's intermittent way of praying with women's unrelenting persistence. For instance, in today's readings, men shockingly pray that God might intervene to slaughter their enemies.
In contrast, the woman in today's gospel is in it for the long haul. She indefatigably confronts the power structure of her day as her way of "praying always." That is, like Amy Goodman, she persistently works to bring her world into harmony with God's justice. According to Jesus, that's what prayer means.
Take that first reading from Exodus... Did it make you raise your eyebrows? It should have. It's about God facilitating mass slaughter. It tells the story of Moses praying during a battle against the King of Amalek. It's a classic etiology evidently meant to explain a chair-like rock formation near a site remembered as an early Hebrew battleground.
"What means this formation?" would have been the question inspiring this explanatory folk tale. "Well," came the answer, "Long ago when our enemy Amelek attacked our people, Moses told Joshua to raise an elite corps of fighters. During the course of the ensuing battle, Moses watched from this very place where we are standing accompanied by his brother Aaron and another assistant called Hur.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
