Those who are Humbled -- a Report from CANAAC

Happy October, Presbyterian Women. I hope your fall is going well. I'll be seeing some of you in Arizona later this year! Today is World Communion Sunday, October 2. What better day for us to think together about the third beatitude!

In the third beatitude, Jesus says that "the meek shall inherit the earth." (Mat 5:5). As you now know from the study, Jesus is quoting Psalm 37, a psalm that challenges those who oppress the "meek" or the "humbled" as I have translated it. According to the Psalmist, these oppressors are wicked and wrongdoers (37:1 ff.) What makes them wicked? They plot and scorn, draw the sword and bend the bow, borrow and do not pay back, kill and oppress. By contrast, the meek are connected with those who are poor, who are oppressed, who are the target of those the Psalmist calls "wicked." It is for this reason, I have called them "humbled" and not "humble." Their humility-- or rather their humiliation -- is not a function of their piety but of what others have done and continue to do to them. 

Psalm 37, like many of the Psalms, invokes a day when injustice shall cease and when those who have been the victims of injustice shall be vindicated.  It holds up the hope that oppression will not be the ultimate victor, but that justice and just relationships between people will be the reality in God's holy reign.

Questions of justice are particularly poignant to me right now. Between Saturday September 24th and Thursday September 29th, I was part of a PCUSA delegation to the Caribbean and North American Area Council of the World Communion of Reformed Churches. There we gathered with congregational and Reformed churches from all over the region including Canada, the US, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Cuba. We met in the Dominican Republic to pray and talk together about our ministry together as a region. The basis for our justice work was the Accra Confession that starts on page 79 of your Bible studies.

There are many issues of justice for the economy and the earth in the Caribbean and North American context, but we paid special attention to those in the Dominican Republic. One of the most poignant cases was that of the Haitian migrant workers in the Dominican Republic. Many of these women and men cross the border in the island of Hispaniola to work in the sugar-cane fields that supply much of the sugar in North America. These Haitian workers, who come from the western side of the island of Hispaniola, are treated as undocumented farmworkers on the eastern side of the island of Hispaniola; Haiti and the Dominican Republic are on one island. As a result, these farmworkers, who do the backbreaking work of harvesting sugar cane for our western sweet tooth, are not citizens of the Dominican Republic and are not protected by its laws. Even more poignant are their children who are born in the Dominincan Republic. Since 2010, the constitution of the Dominican Republic doesn't allow these native-born children the status of citizenship. As a result, they don't have access to education or other government benefits.

Churches like the Iglesia Evangelica Dominicana and community organizations like MUDHA, El Movimiento de Mujeres Dominico-Haitienne  (the movement of Dominican/Haitian Mothers), try to address these humilations by providing basic elementary education.

I did not take many pictures of the children, but here is a video of them singing . The chorus means "I was born here."

 

The questions that we faced as an area council were: what does it mean to be the church together in this region? How can we support one another? What does the call to do justice look like and how do we read it? What does economic justice look like, not only in the Dominican Republic but in the whole Caribbean and North American region? What does ecological justice look like? What does justice look like for the most vulnerable in the society, the women and the children? What is our call as the church in this world at this time?

There are no easy answers to these questions. However, if we are disciples of Christ Jesus, then he calls us to think, to pray and to act in ways that honor those who are humbled: those who face oppression, injustice or death from others who are more powerful than they. For, says Jesus, they will inherit the earth.

Enjoy the fall weather that is even cooling down hot Atlanta!

Grace and peace,
M. Aymer 

Comments

[Debra Circle at First Presbyterian Church of Farmington MI]

Debra Circle discusses each lesson. One person takes notes and writes a confession which is OK'd by the whole circle. Our third confession follows.
Confessing the Beatitudes Lesson 3: Greatly Honored Are the Humbled!
Life is not always fair but God is always good. We have known examples of people who, by faith, remain humble in the face of oppression, not fighting back but relying on God. Some of us can put our parents in this category, others name some of their pastors and teachers in this category, and others think of world leaders who have set this example. We have learned from the way they lived and worked. We are grateful for their examples of how to remain humble and how to treat the humbled.
We confess that there is a stigma to being humbled by poverty and oppression, a stigma that can affect the whole person—especially in this country, where there is an emphasis on material things.
We confess that we are often are unaware of how humbled someone might be—even someone sitting right next to us in the church pew. These days we cannot tell if someone is living one month away from bankruptcy or living in a car. We cannot tell if someone is devastated by personal problems and is on the verge of divorce or other life changes.
We confess we can be an inspiration by listening to others around us and by praying for them. We can be open to be guided by God and depend on God to lead us in ways to reach out to the humbled. We can pass on the example set by our mentors who taught us to remain humble even as we reach out to the humbled.

[Peggy Carroll of University Presbyterian in Baton Rouge, LA]

We are a month behind everyone else since we spent our first meeting on the intoduction. It really helped in understanding the use of the Acra Confession and it's relationship to this study. I have really been excited about our own confessions which we write as a group each time. This is the one for December:
Honored are the humbled.
God Knows the suffering of all creation
We will pay attention to how our lives can bring pain to all creation.
God lifts up the humbled.
We will live our lives so that each day we serve God by respecting those who have been humbled and by working for peace and justice.
God's promise is our hope.
We will live in joyful gratitude, believing and trusting in God's promises.

[Margaret Aymer]

So glad that the video was helpful. I was really grateful to David, Cliff and Elizabeth for being part of the conversation!

[Louise Davidson]

Margaret, I will lead the Bible study in my circle tomorrow. To prepare, I attended a preparation session led by our DCE. We are circulating the wonderful DVD in the circle, also, so I watched it from the beginning. I want you to know the session with David Gambrell was especially helpful. We have not been doing well with confession and I think it is because we have not really understood what confession is and is not especially in our tradition. I think, while I will try to help the PW understand this particular beatitude, I'll show the session with David and see if we can get on track about confessing what we believe about God. Except for a small group of feminists who read and discuss theology together, we rarely share our ideas about this. Thank you and Horizons for this incredibly rich study.

[Frances Camille Williams-Neal]

Thank you Margaret for the study. Your lifting up of the Congo's richness in minierals brought to mind the Seminary Intern year that I spent in the DROC when it was known as Zaire (1977-78) under the auspices of the PCUS. In addition to the minerals mentioned in the lesson, I would light to highlight the rich Diamond resource that the Congo is. Some place the Congo as the fourth largest producer of diamonds in the world--including those used industrially. The same points that you mention regarding minerals also hold true in terms of the diamonds. Many refer to them as "blood diamonds".
Thank you for the introduction to the Study that you gave at Harvey Browne here in Louisville. Thank you also for the great care, energy, and thoughtfulness that inform your teaching of this whole Bible Study.