Justice Work is Pastoral Care in Public

My Sermon for tonight, Shabbat B’har-B’chukotai 5781

1/

The first time Ruth came to my rabbinic study, it was winter. I remember because as cold as it was outside, my office was so warm, I was schvitzing through my dress shirt.

2/

Ruth was a single mom, in her late 20s; she was in Minnesota having fled an abusive relationship in another state. She did not disclose much of her circumstances, but shared that she worked a minimum wage job in Minneapolis

3/

and cleaned houses on the weekends, putting her toddler in front of a television while she worked for extra money to make rent and pay for their broken down car and for child care for her son.

4/

She asked me for money—not for rent or food which she supplemented from the food shelf. She asked me for money for diapers.

5/

So much of the time—not always, but with substantial regularity—people share their private pain with clergy: They come to our office—virtual now—and pour out their hearts. They’ve lost a job. Their loved one is sick and they can’t afford the bills.

6/

A family member has mental illness and is struggling or has died by suicide and we need to bury them. A parent is aging and they are exasperated and demoralized because it is difficult finding care.

7/

Their marriage is shaky because they are working so hard and taking care of the kids is exhausting and they have no time for each other. They’ve experienced harm because they are Black or Queer or female or trans.

8/

On the one hand, these seem like private individual problems. We rabbis do the work of pastoral care as we listen to people in pain and we to tend the wounds and the wounded.

9/

But the truth is, so much of our individual pain is part of a broader system. Ruth was a single mother who worked nearly 60 hours a week. The fact that the rent is high in Minneapolis and there isn’t enough affordable housing directly impacts individuals like her.

10/

The lack of access to quality affordable health care and mental health care is a systemic problem. The Minnesota legislature’s refusal to properly and robustly fund public education impacts our families—

11/

as does the lack of affordable childcare and the fact that wages have remained stagnant for years—especially if you’re Black or Brown or Trans or a woman or an immigrant—and even more so if you’re a combination of more than one.

12/

The painful truth is there are people and systems who are vested in keeping our pain private; they exploit our pain and our labor, they sell us products as a solution, they divide us politically for their own material gain.

13/

We must ask ourselves: What is moral or spiritual or ethical about keeping silent in our pain? Who is served by the silence?

Never the people suffering.

14/

As we learn in Exodus [2:23]:

וַיְהִי֩ בַיָּמִ֨ים הָֽרַבִּ֜ים הָהֵ֗ם וַיָּ֙מָת֙ מֶ֣לֶךְ מִצְרַ֔יִם וַיֵּאָנְח֧וּ בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֛ל מִן־הָעֲבֹדָ֖ה וַיִּזְעָ֑קוּ וַתַּ֧עַל שַׁוְעָתָ֛ם אֶל־הָאֱלֹהִ֖ים מִן־הָעֲבֹדָֽה׃

15/

After generations of enslavement, Pharaoh died. The Israelites were groaning under the bondage and cried out; and their cry for help from the bondage rose up to God.

Vayizaku. They cried out.

16/

Bible Professor Walter Bruggerman teaches about the cry of the slaves; he writes:
Pain brought to voice in public speech so that it is heard out loud promptly rearranges all power realities that are thought to be settled.

17/

The cry changes circumstance for the slaves, for the shut-down slaves have been displaced by voiced possibility. The cry changes matters for Pharaoh, because now the reductionisms of manageable technology and administrable labor have been altered by the fresh insistence

18/

that the slaves are not mere statistics but are named historical agents. [Delivered Out of Empire, Page 4]

19/

The commentator Sfono explains that the Israelite’s cry was not a gentle cry, but a howling, a wailing. The Israelites cried out—Vayizaku—God heard their suffering and responded. God heard us when we cried out:

20/

that we could no longer tolerate the people we loved being disregarded, degraded, dehumanized. Loving people demanded we cry out.

21/

Jewish tradition teaches, “Ahavah m’kalelet et hashura.” Love disrupts the usual order of business.

When we love each other, we are implicated in each other’s lives, we are responsible for each other.

22/

We are not out protesting in George Floyd (z”l) Memorial Square because it’s fun or entertaining.

We protest because—like our ancestors in Egypt—we love our neighbors and we love our fellow congregants

23/

and as long as our Black and Brown beloveds are being harassed, intimidated, followed, assaulted, brutalized, and murdered by the police then it is our religious obligation to show up in public, to cry out together—

24/

Vayizaku— for racial equity and justice and human dignity, and to keep doing so until we are able to transform the system that wounds them.

25/

Justice work is pastoral care in public.

When we’re at the legislature or marching or gathering in candle light vigil, we are crying out on behalf of ourselves and those who are suffering;

26/

we are elevating the prophetic voice for Divine equality and human dignity; we are reminding one another that we are not alone; we are caring for and loving each other in public.

27/

Rabbi Rachel Shabat-Beit-Halachmi, in a recent Facebook post, wrote on women publicly sharing their pain of being harassed, abused, and assaulted by men. “In rabbinic terms,” she said, [speaking in public]… allows us to offer not only testimony,

28/

but to speak our moral truths, to offer our religious critique of a society/community, to support those who do come forward, and --most importantly--

29/

the exposure of such abuses in the press can help protect potential future victims and create a deterrent for current and future offenders. [Personal correspondence, May 5, 2021].”

30/

Justice work is pastoral care in public.

What does that mean? There is a through line between our private pain and our public activism. The prophets of the Hebrew Bible understood this.

31/

They cried out against a world that caused people harm and suffering because this is not part of the Divine plan. God dreams of a world of justice, equity, and dignity; our responsibility is to partner with the Divine to make it so.

32/

When someone like Ruth comes to my office and says that they are hungry, I give them money or a gift card to a grocery store. And it is incumbent upon me to ask, “Why are people in America hungry?”

33/

In Torah this week, we learn of the shmita year [Lev 25:4]:
וּבַשָּׁנָ֣ה הַשְּׁבִיעִ֗ת שַׁבַּ֤ת שַׁבָּתוֹן֙ יִהְיֶ֣ה לָאָ֔רֶץ שַׁבָּ֖ת לַיהוָ֑ה שָֽׂדְךָ֙ לֹ֣א תִזְרָ֔ע וְכַרְמְךָ֖ לֹ֥א תִזְמֹֽר׃

34/

Every seventh year, we are to let the land lie fallow—sh’nat Shabbaton—an entire year—to give our land a rest, to forgive debts, to help our neighbors in distress. The Torah speaks both of our individual and our collective responsibility;

35/

Torah sets out the way we must organize our society to fulfill our ethical obligations to each other. The Torah does not say, “Look, if you’re in the mood to be nice today, that would be really great, but I don’t want to trouble or bother you.”

36/

C’mon folks! The shimta year wasn’t conjured up as a gesture of kindness for folks like Ruth who needed their loan forgiven or food to eat from the farmer’s gleanings.

37/

The Torah mandates that to be in right relationship with each other and as a society, we must organize our political system and social structure to care for our most vulnerable. They are not the last people on our communal priority list; they are at the center!

38/

Justice work is pastoral care in public.

Vayizaku. We cry out. We bring private suffering into the public square so the community—and God—can be held accountable.

39/

When we show up in public, when we engage in justice work, we lift up the pain of individuals and we cry out together—like our ancestors did—to pierce the universe and bring forth liberation for us all.

40/END

#ShabbatShalom