Having just spent a day in Memphis, Tennessee, I am reminded of how much of our shared experience has been an impulse towards justice – and how much has been retrenchment into the compulsion for control to benefit a few.
The day was one of contrasts. In the morning, staff from the appropriately named Hope Credit Union described their work in five southern states promoting economic empowerment, mostly within communities of color. At lunch, we heard from the Black Clergy Collaborative about their work towards civic engagement and structural change, through the lens of predatory lending. The day ended with a tour of the Memphis National Civil Rights Museum, commemorating the centuries-long commitment of activists to secure for Blacks those “inalienable rights” described in the US Constitution. While the timeline in the museum ended with the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the wall of the ramp leading me out of the exhibit displayed moving silhouettes of civil rights marchers. As I returned to the reality of my world, I joined those silhouetted marchers walking towards justice.
Now, as I write on a bus heading for Montgomery to learn more about Hope Credit Union’s work, I can read Matthew 9 with new eyes.* The workers are to be found within the harvest. Sometimes I am a worker, and sometimes I am the harvest. In this light, the Matthew passage is an invitation for all of us to join in the work of Christ to “freely give” just as we have freely received. It’s an invitation join to all of those who partake in that long march towards justice, however that journey manifests itself in our reality. I am the worker and I am the harvest. And so are you.
–Kate Lasso, Eighth Day Faith Community
• What does justice work look like in your day-to-day world?
• Can you think of times when you are the worker tending the fields compared to when you are being tended to by others?
• How do you, like Jesus, proclaim “The kingdom of heaven has come near?”
Please take this opportunity to learn more about Hope Credit Union and its justice work to improve lives in underserved Deep South communities.
