There is a story in the Hebrew Scriptures about a man named Nehemiah. You might be expecting me to tell the story of Queen Esther and how she outed herself as Jewish just after the King declared his intention to exterminate all of the Jews in his kingdom, saving her people. That’s the story that’s the basis of Purim, which was celebrated this past Thursday evening through Friday, and which the Gill family will celebrate here after each service.
You might expect me to tell that story – and it is a great story, really – yet I’m going to tell a story from the book of Nehemiah (and if you haven’t yet guessed why, I’ll be telling you shortly).
In chapter 5 of Nehemiah, which most scholars think is historically reliable, Nehemiah says that “a great cry” rose up from the people in Jerusalem. The 1% were really sticking it to the lower 99% . There was a famine going on, and the people cried out that the rich were taking advantage of the situation, and they the average person was having to take out mortgages on their homes and farms just to buy food. (Price gouging in the 5th century BCE!) And the bankers and other power brokers were charging usurious interest on these loans, leading to bankruptcies and foreclosures. (Sound familiar? “The more things change, the more they remain the same,” right?)
One translation says that the people cried out, “Now our flesh is the same as that of our kindred; our children are the same as their children.” It makes me think of that famous extemporaneous speech Sojourner Truth gave on May 29, 1851 in Akron, Ohio in which she asked, “ if a woman have a pint, and a man a quart – why can't she have her little pint full?” and it’s powerful refrain, “Ain’t I a woman?” We’re no different from you, the 99% cry out to the rich. How can you treat us so badly?
The story tells us that Nehemiah heard the outcry of the people and he was incensed. Maybe it was the inescapable awareness of the injustice of it all. So he called “a great assembly” of the people and confronted the rich and powerful. Remember, most scholars believe that at least this section of the book of Nehemiah actually happened. Nehemiah called out the people of power, the people who had the power to make a difference, and he did so in the presence of “a great assembly” … in front of everyone.
One of the things that I find so fascinating in this story is that Nehemiah was one of the movers and shakers in Jerusalem at the time. In fact, he was governor! Installed by the King, with letters from the King declaring the King’s support of him and telling people to listen to him. Even so, Nehemiah knew that his one, lone, voice was not enough. He knew that, by himself, even he didn’t have enough power to make a real change in the status quo. And he wanted change. He wanted an end to the inequities, the injustices he could so plainly see all around him. So he gathered together a “great assembly” of the people so that, in addition to his political and economic power, he had with him “people power.”
In front of that crowd, with the obvious, undoubtable power of the people behind him, Nehemiah confronted those people who had the power to make changes, and they did: properties that had been foreclosed on were returned, interest was eliminated on all loans from that time on, and the interest that had already been paid on those loans was reimbursed in full.
Around this time of year there is an intense, well-nigh inescapable inescapable push by a few members of our congregation to get a whole lot of the members of our congregation to attend something called “the Nehemiah Action.” The Nehemiah Action is the largest public gathering in the Charlottesville/Albemarle area, and is one of the, if not the, biggest interfaith gatherings in the entire commonwealth. It is, you might say, “a great assembly.” (See why I told Nehemiah’s story?)
The Nehemiah Action is the culmination of a year’s – and sometimes more than one year’s – work done by IMPACT – Interfaith Movement Promoting Action by Congregations Together. IMPACT is an example of congregation-based community organizing, a form of coalition building that leverages the fact that a large number of people are already gathered together in faith communities. 27 different faithcommunities from within the Charlottesville/Albemarle area make up IMPACT -- Baptists, Catholics, Jews, Seventh Day Adventists, Methodists, Quakers, Muslims, Presbyterians, non-denominational Christians, Pentecostals, Episcopalians, Lutherans, … and us Unitarian Universalists. In fact, we’ve been part of IMPACT, and IMPACT has been a part of our social justice ministries, since the organization’s beginning – thanks especially to the work of one of my predecessors in this pulpit, the Rev. Leslie Takahashi, we were one of IMPACT’s founding congregations!
Each year, through an extraordinarily democratic process, the congregations that make up IMPACT select one concrete example of a real injustice experienced by real people in our community. It’s an issue that can be clearly articulated and for which a practical solution is possible. People spend the year researching the issue, learning how other communities elsewhere have tried to deal with it, and working with stakeholders and the people with the power to make a difference to come up with a solution that will work here in our community. If you want to talk about problems, if you want to create a committee to set up a task force to write up a report that then joins all of those other reports gathering dust wherever such reports end up, then IMPACT is not for you. If, on the other hand, you want to help develop real solutions to real problems experienced by real people, IMPACT is one way to actually have … well .. an impact.
In past years, through the work of IMPACT, and the “people power” behind it that’s on full display at the “great assembly” of the Nehemiah Action, there is now extended service on area bus routes, and an entirely new route to serve the needs of underserved neighborhoods. There is now a free dental clinic, with a full-time dental assistant, resulting in the first year a 1,165% increase in the number of people who previously had to go to an emergency room for their dental care because they couldn’t afford anything else. (That wasn’t a typo. An 1,165% increase in the number of people able to receive dental care. That’s real change; that’s having an impact.)
Even a behemoth like the UVA Health Service was moved by the “people power” of IMPACT, and they now have a program through which otherwise unemployed youth can get free training to become Certified Nursing Assistants, and get on the medical career ladder. During the first two-year pilot program, UVA planned to train 40 people. In January of 2017 they expanded the program, so that it now trains 80 people per year! And 76% of students from the pilot program are now working full time as CNSs.
Not a report. Not a wish list. Not an ephemeral hope. Real change for real people facing real injustices.
While I continue, folks who’ve been involved with IMPACT are going to walk down the aisle, distributing tickets for this year’s Nehemiah Action (which is on April 11th at 6:30 pm at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Performing Arts Center). If you would like to show up and be counted, if you would like to join the “great assembly” and show community leaders – the people with the power to effect change – the “people power” behind making real changes, please take one of these tickets. (Or take more than one and invite a friend to come with you! You don’t have to be affiliated with this congregation – or any faith community – to make a difference.)
Two years ago IMPACT saw the need for a women’s residential treatment center here in Charlottesville. In 2015 we learned that each year there were 3,150 people in our regional jail who struggle with addiction to drugs or alcohol in our regional jail. A majority of these inmates who are women are also survivors of sexual abuse or domestic violence. Residential treatment centers are considered the best way to provide real help, yet women had to go at least as far Richmond to find such a program, leaving their friends, family, and support networks behind. They had to leave their kids behind, too. Working with Region Ten and both City and County leaders, spurred on by the “people power” evidenced by the Nehemiah Action, the Women’s Center at Moores Creek opened on June 1, 2018. Now women, with their children under 5, can receive the care they need in ways that just weren’t possible before.
This year, IMPACT turned its attention to the issue of affordable housing for seniors. Did you know that 900 senior households in Albemarle County are having to choose between paying for medical care and making their rent payments? In the city there are generations of families that can't keep the roof over their heads thanks to Jim Crow-era zoning and land use policies that are still in place. Over 4000 people in the Charlottesville urban ring pay half of their income toward housing!
IMPACT is seeking ways to increase land availability, consistent long-term funding of local housing funds, and rezoning of space, as a way of addressing the need for increased availability of affordable housing for low-income seniors in Albemarle County and low-income renters/families in Charlottesville. On April 11th – 6:30 – 8:00 at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Performing Arts Center – a “great assembly” will be gathered to speak to those with the power to make change, calling on them to commit to doing so. I’ll be there, and I hope many, many, many of you will, too.
If you’ve been involved with IMPACT in any way this year, would you please stand or make yourself known? (And keep standing or holding your hand in their air.) If you have been actively involved with IMPACT in the past, would you join them? If you have ever attended a Nehemiah Action, would you please stand or raise your hand? And if you plan to attend the “great assembly” we call the Nehemiah Action this year, will you join this holy host.
Thanks.
Folks, this isn’t just “power to the people,” or “power for the people,” it’s “people power,” one of the most powerful things there is!
pax tecum,
RevWik
P.S. -- I feel that I should note that the story of Nehemiah's time as governor is problematic in some respects from today's perspective. In addition to the justice-minded reforms noted here, and his successful efforts to rebuild Jerusalem. he also sought to "purify" the city, leading him to ban marriages between Jews and non-Jews, and prohibiting non-Jews from working within the city.
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