ELEANOR ROOSEVELTJesus entered Jerusalem with a jubilant crowd. They were enjoying a great release of the tension and hope that someone would finally do something. For years the Romans had been sucking them dry. Taxes for the poorest of the poor at a rate of 60 percent. More and more foreclosures on lands that had been in a family for centuries. Once proud farmers now desperate to hire out as day laborers. Atrocities by soldiers on women. Hillsides lined with hundreds of crosses for those who protested. And even worse, neighbors turning on neighbors. Lifelong friends clamoring to side with the Romans against each other. Whole communities that lost the ability to celebrate anything. Bickering rife. The complete inability to trust. That was occupied Palestine. But when Jesus entered Jerusalem, there for a moment was an outpouring of hope. Riding along just like the prophet Zechariah had promised was the one who would lead them. Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! And as Jesus saw the city waiting on him, he began to weep, and said: “I wish you knew the things that make for peace. But they are hid from your eyes.” What were/what are the things that make from peace? And why are they still hid from our eyes? Today is the final part of the series of biographical sermons that seek to engage the struggles of Jesus as he journeyed to Jerusalem and the cross by telling the story of a modern figure. Today we remember Eleanor Roosevelt. She was born in New York in 1814, grew up in a well to do family, and attended Allenswood boarding school in England, returning to be featured in the debutant ball in New York City at the Waldorf-Astoria in 1902. Shortly thereafter she became engaged to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, her fifth cousin, once removed. The joke was: “let’s keep a good name in the family.” While engaged she joined the Junior League in New York City, teaching calisthenics and dancing to immigrants in slum areas and advocating for better working conditions in garment factories. She married Franklin in 1905 and over the next 10 years had 6 six children, though one died in infancy. At the end of the war years, we find her working with the Red Cross and Navy Department to help American service men and visiting shell shocked veterans and serving as a translator to international Congress of Working Women in Washington, DC. It was during this time that Eleanor learned of Franklin’s affair with Lucy Mercer. After some heated discussions in which Franklin’s family got involved, Franklin agreed to end the affair and the couple decided against divorce. (Although there are indications that Franklin’s relationship with Lucy continued in some form right up to the moment of his death.) The early twenties find Eleanor working for the League of Women Voters and engaging in a lot of public speaking, a skill she learned from Louis Howe, an advisor to Franklin who became her close friend and some say more than friend. In 1921 Franklin was stricken with polio. Eleanor becomes his nurse and advocate, pioneering together water therapy for polio patients, and returning him to public life. At the same time she joined the Women’s Trade Union League and began hanging around with union activists. By the late twenties she had added to her friendships Mary McLeod Bethune, who became the president of Bethune-Cookman College and educated Eleanor about the realities of black people in the south. When Franklin was elected president in 1932, Eleanor referred to herself as “plain, ordinary Mrs. Roosevelt,” but was the first president’s wife to hold press conferences herself (only female reporters were admitted.) During the depression years she worked on behalf of West Virginia coal miners and helped to initiated the National Youth Administration to employ young Americans. She brought NAACP leaders to the White house. In 1939 she attended the Southern Conference for Human Welfare in Birmingham, and defied local authorities by sitting with black people. She also arranged for Marion Anderson to sing at the Lincoln Memorial before an audience of 75,000. But it was perhaps after Franklin’s death that Eleanor really came into her own. In 1945 she became a member of NAACP and was appointed by Truman as a US delegate to the United Nations, where she helped found UNICEF. Three years later she would use her UN position to force a reluctant Truman to recognize the Sate of Israel. As a power house at the UN she was appointed to draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Preamble reads (in part): “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world, Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind… Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law…” And it goes on to innumerate 30 articles, these being a few: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person… No one shall be held in slavery…No one shall be subject to torture…No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile… Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal.” And there you have it. “Oh that you knew the things that make for peace…” There they are. Jesus knew them. He embodied compassion and respect for the least and the lost, and even for his enemies He knew that his followers in the Roman world, locked out of the power structures of the day, only had one power: to treat each other the way they would wish to be treated. That was the only way to lay the foundation for the kingdom of God and for a world at peace. How is it that the leaders of our nation today don’t seem to understand this? That if you give people hope under law they will negotiate with you. If you deny them hope, they will blow up themselves and you. Surely no easy solutions. Surely no condoning of monstrous evil. But how can we move toward peace if we are ignoring the things that make for peace? I once heard Eleanor Roosevelt speak. It was at Purdue University in the summer of 1957 at the National Convocation of Methodist Youth. I was all of 15 at the time, a hick from the sticks, wowed by the campus and the interaction and the music. And I sat down in the back of a room with 3,000 people to hear her. She spoke about the importance of the United Nations. That’s all I remember. That’s all I had the capacity to process in my 15 year old hick-from-the-sticks brain. The United Nations is important. But ultimately what I got out of that speech was that religious people (including we who were to become future leaders of the church) should be concerned about the affairs of nations. What came afterward was that war is too important to be left to generals and presidents, and if that is the case, certainly peace is too important to be left to them, and the common folks in churches like me and you need to voice concern as a part of our religious duty. Little did I know that I would have a daughter who works for UNICEF which Eleanor Roosevelt helped to found. And that the tag line on each of her e-mails would be a quote from Roosevelt: “You must do the things you think you cannot do.” And so to day we observe that Jesus rode into Jerusalem, into the seat of power, to change the world forever. And he had only one way to do it: to give his life. You must do the things you think you cannot do. And he embodied by every word and every movement that walls and fortresses are temporary and the love of God stands forever. You must do the things you think you cannot do. And he suffered rejection by the very ones who welcomed him, and he suffered torture, and he suffered death. You must do the things you think you cannot do. And do we today not know the things that make for peace? You must do the things you think you cannot do. |