The First and the Last

On October 5, 2017, the New York Times published a story that would not only rock Hollywood but also the rest of the nation.  It was an expose of one of the most powerful men in the film industry, Harvey Weinstein.  It detailed decades of sexual abuse by a producer who promised career advancement in return for sexual favors.  Several women came forward to tell their stories, among whom were actresses Rose McGowan and Ashley Judd.[1]

This was just the tip of the iceberg.  Within days, Weinstein would be sacked by the board of directors of his company.  Soon, more women would come forward with charges of molestation and rape.

At about the same time a liberating breeze had blown across the land, the #MeToo movement.  This group of women were putting piggy, entitled males on notice that their bad behavior was not to be tolerated.  These women meant business – and a good deal of that business would be conducted in a court of law.

While Anita Hill never got her due from the cavalier dismissal of her story by then Sen. Joe Biden and a bunch of other obtuse men on his committee – the Hollywood women blowing the whistle on Weinstein did. 

On March 11 of 2023 Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years imprisonment for rape and sexual assault involving two of these women.[2]

The outpouring of blame against these women by many was unbelievable.  Poor, poor boy.  They’re just making this stuff up to get in the spotlight or squeeze money out of him.  After all, he has very deep pockets.

The rich, the famous, other entitled folks who claim prerogatives over those without power  –  the so-called entitled First folks.  You know them.  They’re on TV nightly.

“If you’re famous, you can do whatever you want.  Grab ‘em by the [wherever].”  That from one of our most famous sexual predators – and buffoons.  One without a clue!

This behavior from the entitled had even insinuated itself early on into the Jesus Movement.

“Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house, he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?”  But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest.  He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be the first must be the last of all and servant of all.”[3]

We see in the letter of James, a warning against showing favor to the entitled. 

“My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?  For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Have a seat here, please,’ while to the one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there,’ or ‘Sit at my feet,’ have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?”[4]

God’s preference is for the poor, the shoved aside, the locked out.  God meets us in our extremity.  Jesus said, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

Those considered Last, the “least of these,” are regularly discounted by the powerful and those claiming privilege.

Sarah Smarsh, coming from a “dirt-poor,” working class family, certainly knows the struggle to be heard, and believed.  Yet she is now a college professor with another work that has also become a National Book Award Finalist, Bone of the Bone. [5]

“Today in America, for instance, a woman who accuses a celebrity of rape is presumed to be seeking money and attention, and a dark-skinned man who insists he’s minding his own business is wrestled to the ground by police officers when a White finger points his way.”[6]

When slave memoirs were written – works of the “least of these,” the “last” – they had to be published with accompanying testimonials by a White person to their veracity and the good character of the author.

When Harriet Jacobs published her memoir, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl in 1861, her editor attested at the introduction to the readers that Jacobs had “lived with a distinguished family in New York and has so supported herself as to be highly esteemed by them…I believe those who know her will not be disposed to doubt her veracity, though some incidents in her story are more romantic than fiction.”[7]

These are stories of the “Last.”  How shall they be first?

In this life, the Holy Spirit, that teacher, that stirrer-up-of imagination, that paraclete, advocate, comforter pulls us up to our full personhood.

Like the Black kid seen on the playground with a shirt saying, “I am Somebody, ‘cause God don’t make no junk.”[8]  Also, that pride slogan serving as the title of an album by the Halo Benders, an indie rock band of the ‘70s.

This God “…raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap to sit with princes, with the princes of God’s people”[9]  Blessed be the name of the Lord!

Teachers who pull out of us our best stuff, who guide us into full personhood – they are the agents of this one same Spirit.  We’ve most likely encountered one or two of such guardian angels in our lives.

Mentors and friends who have guided us.  Allies who have struggled alongside of us – all agents of the Spirit.

This is Sarah’s story.  Raised up out of the dust and grime of poverty to amazing accomplishment.  She worked in a biker bar in her twenties to complete her first book, Heartland, the story of growing up in a poor family. A National Book Award Finalist.[10]  “You go girl,” prompts the Spirit!

Praise to the Spirit who lifts those of no account up out of the dust, giving them power to exercise their agency and native talent.  The Last ever becoming First.

She grew up on a wheat farm in Kansas and was the first in her family to graduate from college.  She knows well how class defines people. 

From West Virginia comes another such story, Hill Women by Cassie Chambers.[11]  Cassie grew up in the hollers of the Appalachian Mountains in one of the poorest counties in Kentucky.  With the coal mining industry and tobacco farming in decline, not much was left but crumbling buildings and poverty.

“You don’t go to Owsley County, Kentucky, without a reason.  You can’t take a wrong turn and accidently end up there.  It’s miles to the nearest interstate, and there’s no hotel in town.  It doesn’t cater to outsiders.”^[12]

She tells of Granny, who had been a child bride, who raised her and gave her the values of family, hard work and faith.  Her own mother, Wilma, who was married at nineteen and pregnant with Cassie and brought her into the world only months later.  Moved by that God Spark of Possibility, Wilma beat the odds and managed to finish school. 

Guided by her “hill women” values and the grounding of kin, Cassie would go on to graduate from Harvard Law.  Yet, as her Ivy League education opened up many doors, Cassie felt that this privilege was pulling her from the reality of her home and clan.  So, she moved back home to Owsley County to work with her Kentucky folks to set up free legal services.  Raised up out of dust is she and the clients whom she assists.

Yes, the Last are ever being raised to sit among those who consider themselves the privileged First.  And most remember their roots, the struggles that have molded their character and values – and Paying it Forward.  Giving back as agents of the Spirit’s creative generativity.

Blessed be the name of the Lord who would lift us all out of the dust of that which constricts, that binds our sight, that diminishes our full personhood.  The Last – a mentality which so often inhabits each one of us – becoming First in the eyes of God.  Because God “Don’t make no junk.”

Praise to the Lord who lifts the weak out of dust, placing them, placing us, among those who are important somebodies in the eyes of God.  Fit for Gospel service.  Amen.

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[1]“ Harvey Weinstein timeline: How the scandal has unfolded,” Reuters, February 24, 2023.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Mark 9:33-35, NRSV.

[4] James 2:1-4.

[5] Sarah Smarsh, Bone of the Bone: Essays on America by a Daughter of the Working Class (New York: Scribner, 2024).

[6] Op. Cit., 72.

[7] Op. Cit., 74-75.

[8] “God don’t make no junk” was an empowering slogan of the Black Power movement in the seventies.

[9] Psalm 113:7-8, NRSV.

[10] Sarah Smarsh, Heartland (New York: Scribner, 2018).

[11] Cassie Chambers, Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains (New York: Ballantine Books, 2020).

[12] Op. cit., vii.

September 22, 2024
18 Pentecost, Proper 20

Jeremiah 11:18-20; Psalm 54;James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a; Mark 9:30-37

“The First and the Last”