Sermon: "Respect the Dignity of Every Human Being"
The Right Reverend Charles G. vonRosenberg
Third Bishop of East Tennessee

[This sermon by Bishop vonRosenberg was delivered using the following notes.]

This week has brought us the renewal of an American spectacle. Our political process determines, among other things, who will be in power for the next block of time in our country. Commentators offer words like "control," "influence" and "authority," as they analyze what has happened and what may soon happen in the realms of governmental power. Prospects for the "balance of power" have been continually debated and examined this week. Surely the idea and prospect of power fascinate us as much as the election process itself.

By contrast, two of our readings today mention a particular category of people who were powerless in the biblical world - that is, widows. In the time of our scriptures, widows possessed very little authority or influence. They had little control of anything, including their own lives. There were, in effect and in fact, powerless.

I must tell you about a widow in our day who proved herself anything but powerless. Perhaps you heard the story on NPR this week, as I did. She lives in Pennsylvania, as I recall, and she is 95 years old. She has been voting since the 1930s, and she did not want to miss the opportunity this year. However, she did not have transportation to the polls. So, she called "911" and told them of her dilemma. She said that this was a "civic emergency." The EMS folks referred her call to the local election office, and that organization sent a volunteer to provide a ride to the polls. Now, that lady was not powerless at all, in terms of using access to get things done. But, I digress.

The fact is that the plight of widows in biblical times was quite different. I found an interesting description of the circumstances of widows in The Interpreters' Dictionary of the Bible. The observation was made there that Old Testament Jewish law included "the Hebrew belief that death before old age was a calamity, a judgment for sin which was extended to the wife that was left. It was therefore a disgrace to be a widow (v.IV, p842). The Old Testament story of Ruth conveys this sense of calamity, judgment and disgrace.

To be fair, we need to add that a sense of compassion toward widows is called for, even in those times. However, that compassion - welcomed as it must have been - did not change the harsh reality of their plight.

We need to have this background and understanding, then, as we read of the encounters that Elijah, in the first place, and Jesus, in the second, had with widows. Remember that Elijah asked a poor widow to share some bread with him. And, even though such sharing would deplete the scarce provisions that she had for her son and herself, the widow offered what she could. A similar offering by a widow in Jesus' time has made "the widow's mite" a well-known term many centuries later. That widow in the Temple gave much more freely from her possessions than did the rich people that Jesus observed.

Thus, for us today, these widows present examples of sacrificial offering, of generosity and of self-neglect for the sake of others. Their messages are profound and significant for us in our day. These widows possessed very little. They were powerless in their day. Yet, by the examples of their lives, they caught the attention of Elijah and Jesus … and their examples are known to us many centuries later.

What, then, is the message for us today - in addition to the examples that these widows provide for us? What else can we learn from them and from the fact that Elijah and Jesus brought attention to them? In our day of fascination with power, what do the powerless have to teach us?

There are many lessons here, no doubt. However, I find myself drawn to the Baptismal Covenant more and more these days. That is the covenant - the agreement - that begins our lives as Christian people. That is the covenant that we renew from time to time in our corporate worship … and which we do well to look at and to reflect on at regular times in our own personal spiritual lives. The Baptismal Covenant provides us with a point of concentration - a magnifying glass - for understanding our theology as people who claim to be Christians. That covenant summarizes our call and responsibility that we have by virtue of baptism itself. I commend the Baptismal Covenant to your attention and to your prayers. You can find it in the service of Baptism in our Prayer Book.

One of the promises that we make in the Baptismal Covenant relates directly to the examples that widows in the Bible offer us today. We promise to "strive for justice and peace among all people and (to) respect the dignity of every human being" (BCP, p305).

My friends, this is not some tangent, related rather superficially to the substance of Christianity. No, this promise comes at the heart of our Baptismal Covenant … our agreement as Christian people with God Almighty. This statement of commitment describes who we are called to be - and who we are meant to be - as followers of Jesus Christ. The widows brought to our attention by Elijah and by Jesus remind us, therefore, of our call and of our identity.

You see, respecting the dignity of every human being is not an option for us, nor is striving for justice and peace among all people. Those describe characteristics of our identity. They are foundation stones of who we are meant to be. To use another analogy, that description is on our birth certificate as Christian people. Indeed, as followers of Jesus Christ, we "strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being." Amen.

Copyright © 2006 The Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee