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Sermon September 16, 2018
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers, LSW
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen’s
Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 19, track 1
http://lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp19_RCL.html
Wisdom cries out in the street;
in the squares she raises her voice. Proverbs 1:20
…those who listen to me will be secure
and will live at ease, without dread of disaster.’ Proverbs 1:33
Please be seated.
One year when I was serving on the Harrisburg School Board, a new program was adopted. A woman in the District had benefited from this program when she was in high school in New York City. The program was called Aspira and while it was for all students, it was rooted in the culture of Puerto Rico. The program was started by a teacher and social worker, Antonia Pantoja. Dr. Pantoja even came to visit us and I was able to meet her.
The program provided additional support for students who were of Latino/Latina heritage. In some cases, the young people did not even know Spanish; however, their lives were rooted in this cultural heritage. Some students were bi-lingual or faced additional barriers due to language. Many of the students faced additional challenges as they planned for their future.
There was one young man who had excellent grades and college seemed appropriate for his next step. However, no one in his family had attended college and he assumed he would graduate and find a job. I was so surprised and had been mostly ignorant about how the fact that my parents had gone to college made a difference in how I approached what I would or should do after high school. With the help of the Aspira program, this young man was able to go to college.
Antonia Pantoja was quite a woman. It seems wherever she went and wherever she lived, she created programs to help people. For her work in creating Aspira she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
In awarding her this honor, President Clinton said that peace and respect were the values that defined her work. (http://www.naswfoundation.org/pioneers/p/pantoja.htm)
A friend and colleague said her conversations with Dr. Pantoja always involved addressing or worrying about a social concern or an injustice. She said that Dr. Pantoja’s work was “constant, her mind never rested, and everything she did was steeped in her values and ethics. As a result, her friends and admirers were both in high places and in the Barrios; they were politicians, fundraisers, policy gurus, and in the arts. They lived in the contiguous United States, in Puerto Rico, and many parts of the world. Her friends and admirers were of all ages and all ethnic groups.” (http://www.naswfoundation.org/pioneers/p/pantoja.htm) Dr. Pantoja died in 2002.
Dr. Pantoja, I believe, is a wonderful example of a woman of wisdom. She used her gifts and resources to help others throughout her life and wherever she was. While there were certainly challenges and worries, I imagine she had an inner peace that sustained her, because of the knowledge that she was doing all she could to make life better for others.
In our reading in Proverbs today, we hear that wisdom is shouting loudly in the streets. Wisdom is doing everything possible to grab our attention. This wisdom being written about is given from God and each of us has this gift. It doesn’t look the same by any means, yet in our relationship with God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, we are given wisdom.
We are given wisdom about how to live our lives. We are given wisdom to think about and to discern what is the best path for us and for our communities. We are given the wisdom to explore to the best of our abilities the possible outcomes and consequences of our actions. That can be a tough one.
For instance, when I worked for the social workers association in Pennsylvania, I was involved in setting some policy that affected social workers. We always did our best to craft something that worked well…that protected the public and also was fair to the professionals. However, sometimes there were things we had not foreseen – unintended consequences – that made things worse. While we tried to anticipate these things, we were not perfect. Luckily, sometimes the law could be amended, but not always.
What is the wisdom God has given to you? I also think we hopefully continue to grow in wisdom through our life experiences. We can remember Dr. Pantoja who did wonderful things to strengthen the lives of others.
We can know that even when things are challenging, when we live in wisdom, we will have internal peace.
Amen
