“And you will be blessed…” 

Rev. Sharon James Fazel

Luke 14; various

What I share with you today comes first from personal experience, and then from stories written by others for major publications. But first, we begin with the Gospel of Luke, which will be read intermittently throughout my message this morning. Listen:

On one occasion when Jesus* was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath, they were watching him closely. Just then, in front of him, there was a man who had dropsy3And Jesus asked the lawyers and Pharisees, ‘Is it lawful to cure people on the Sabbath, or not?’  4But they were silent. So Jesus *took him and healed him, and sent him away. 5Then he said to them, ‘If one of you has a child* or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a Sabbath day?’ 6And they could not reply to this.

As I grabbed a napkin at Caribou Coffee shop, where I retreated the other day to work on this morning’s message, a phrase on a brochure caught my eye: “Who knew giving back was so easy?” it said. “Wow! Is this synchronicity, or what?” I thought.  The story from Luke has Jesus telling a parable about someone encouraged to invite strangers to dinner, because giving without thought of return is what God asks of us. And now here’s this question on a brochure, right before my eyes!

When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. 8‘When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; 9and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, “Give this person your place”, and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. 10But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, “Friend, move up higher”; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. 11For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’

So, I took the brochure, and looked it over. “Project 7” is a for-profit company that claims to give back more than 50% of its annual profits “to the 7 most critical areas of need in the world. Hence the name Project 7.”  Short titles and identifying glyphs on the brochure mark those 7 areas: “house the homeless, help those in need, feed the hungry, hope for peace, build the future, heal the sick and save the earth.” Save the earth? Their product is bottled water-- bottled in plastic! So – I read the plastic bottle (believe me, these bottles have almost as much writing on them as the Anoka Union!) Turns out they’re made of OXO biodegradeable materials, which makes them susceptible to light, heat, moisture and mechanical stress. In other words, they break down in a landfill, allowing them to be eaten by microbes and absorbed into the ecosystem, without doing any harm to nature! Not bad, I thought. Here’s a somewhat upscale coffee shop, at least it’s not likely to be patronized frequently by many of the folks who appear at our church door in need of a $10 grocery or gasoline card. And, they’re aware enough of  “giving back” to feature a company and a product that both donates funds to important causes, and takes into account its own carbon footprint in the process. Not bad. Yet, the appeal is still within the confines of a comfortable middle class. It’s a pretty “clean” way to “give back.” Okay…

He said also to the one who had invited him, ‘When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. 13But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. 14And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’

I drank my caramel northern light latte and munched my raspberry orange scone, and explored the UCC website for inspiration … And there it was: a reference to a woman whose story might be in Jesus’ own encyclopedia of parables, if he had read the New York Times last month. Judith Dunnington Peabody’s obituary tells the same kind of story that Jesus often lived. According to the political blog Daily Kos:

“She grew up in a world of privilege, attended Miss Hewitt’s Classes in New York City and graduated from the Ethel Walker School in Connecticut. Her coming out party was held at the Piping Rock Club on Long Island. And, after two years at Bryn Mawr, Ms. Peabody married Samuel Peabody, the founder and headmaster at Groton, whom Franklin Delano Roosevelt called among the great inspirations of his life.

Way back in 1985, before President Reagan ever mentioned the acronym AIDS, not too many years after the virus had stopped being called by the acronym GRID (gay-related immune deficiency) – Judith Dunnington Peabody got involved.

And not just in the charity-dinner circuit sort of way (although she did that, too) but in an actual way – with the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in NYC,” (noweasels, Daily Kos, July 27, 2010). 

A 1987 New York Times article said this of her involvement with GMHC:

“She introduces herself to the members of her counseling group as Judy, or occasionally as Judy Peabody. Sometimes she tells the participants that she has been a volunteer at the Gay Men’s Health Crisis for a year and a half, and once in a while she tells them she is a care partner, the increasingly common term for people who accept responsibility for helping a person with AIDS. She gives no hint that in other circles in the city her formidable name would be instantly recognized. In any case, that would make little difference to those in whose lives she has come to figure so prominently. In the fall of 1985, Mrs. Peabody…turned up unannounced at the Gay Men’s Health Crisis…The group, which is open to the spouses, lovers, parents, siblings and roommates of people with AIDS – or to anyone else with the primary responsibility for the care of a person with AIDS – focuses on the emotional difficulties, practical problems and turmoil faced by care givers. In the group they can vent their feelings and help one another. The group meets every other Friday evening and Mrs. Peabody is always there.”

              Judith Dunnington Peabody’s life of service didn’t begin with her marriage, either. She was born into wealth. Around the time she graduated from Bryn Mawr, when she was just 20 years old, Sam Peabody picked her up for one of their first dates at what he called “a youth center for delinquents.” He also reported that she told him, “’Please don’t tell my mother. She thinks I’m having French lessons,’” (Bruce Weber, “Judith Peabody, Socialite and Volunteer, Dies at 80,” New York Times: July 27, 2010)

In addition to serving on the board of the New York Shakespeare Company and supporting both the American Ballet Theater Company and the Harlem Dance Company, Mrs. Peabody, in the 1970’s, also worked with a Hispanic gang trying “to re-channel its energies into rebuilding a crumbling building in East Harlem.” Her husband Mr. Samuel Peabody reported that “one night she invited them all for dinner to our apartment. The doormen were, well, a little surprised. It was a great night,” he said, (Weber).

13But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. 14And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’

I’m frankly not sure what the resurrection of the righteous really means to us personally today – whether it’s an event in time and space that will someday take place, or one that has already taken place, or whether it’s a longer process that is an evolution of body, mind and spirit. But obviously the writer of Luke believed it is or will be a rewarding moment for those who participate in it.

Whatever it is for us today, it was a promise of salvation to the biblical followers of Jesus – a moment to be anticipated with joy because of its offer of divine redemption.

To be sure, any for-profit company who donates 50% of its profits to causes that work to “feed hungry children, to abolish the trafficking of 40,000-50,000 women, men and children into the United States, and to free homeless women and children” of the domestic violence that made -- and keeps-- them homeless… any company who contributes to such causes as a policy of its business plan, is truly a champion in my book. It seems to me to be the flip side of systemic corporate abuse and oppression, something we’re a bit more familiar with. We could sure use more Project 7’s these days. I’d even go so far as to call it “systemic compassion.”

And yet …Judith Anne Walker Dunnington Peabody was born May 30, 1930, and died July 25, 2010. It seems to me that she, indeed, according to Luke’s Jesus, will be truly “blessed” and repaid… ‘at the resurrection of the righteous,’ if she hasn’t been already. Would that each of us might say the same of ourselves someday.

Let us pray.

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