Whose Seat

We are creatures of habit.  When I look around the church on any Sunday morning, I can pretty much predict where I will find everyone seated.  We also are creatures of prerogative and entitlement.  We know who belongs where.

There’s a story told of one of the first Black women who showed up for worship at All Saints in Pasadena.  As she sat up toward front waiting for the service to begin, she overheard two women behind her speaking loudly enough so she would hear, “Why don’t they just go to their own church?”  “What’s she doing here anyway?” the other commented.

She paid them no mind.  She’d heard it all before.

After the service was over folks had stayed for coffee, conversation and the action tables out in the patio.  Afterwards, she found her car and was leaving, driving past the front of the church.  There she saw one of the two woman who had been sitting behind her out there on the standing at the curbside in the sweltering heat.  She pulled over, leaned out the window and asked her if she needed a ride home.

That offer began a fifty-year friendship.  Some days it’s all about who’s sitting where and coincidence, and where the Spirit plops us down. 

We shouldn’t be so presumptuous about such things, the book of Sirach consuls its readers.  “For the beginning of pride is sin, and the one who clings to it pours out abominations, Therefore the Lord brings upon them unheard of calamities and destroys them completely.”

Likewise, Luke.  “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; and 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…’”

And if you’re throwing a party “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind and you will be blessed.”  And they will have the best seats in the house.

So, who would you choose for those coveted seats?  Who might God choose?

It might be thirty-six Mayan women who fought back, who refused to accept their degradation by government paramilitaries during Guatemala’s civil war.  They were systematically raped and brutalized for months on end by these roving patrols of government-supported thugs.[1]

Because they lived in remote villages, these Achi Mayan women were at the mercy of these men looking for subversives and anyone cooperating with the other side.  When rounded up, some of the victims were as young as 12 and 14, raped and held captive for weeks on end – the age of some of Epstein’s and Maxwell’s victims.

Four decades later, dozens of these women have come together to prosecute their attackers for crimes against humanity.  These women, many in their 80s, now have a last chance to see these man brought to justice.  The final case went to trial this past April.

Others have stepped forward to confront other crimes committed during that brutal civil war.  A war conducted by the brutal dictator Efrain Rios Montt, supported by the U.S. as more then 200,000 were killed or disappeared, most civilians.  U.S. foreign policy at its finest.

One of the survivors of a most notorious massacre, Jesús Tecú Osorio, then just a child, worked for months on a farm after being abducted by a patroller.  In 1993 he led an effort by the survivors of the killings in their village to prosecute the perpetrators, including those who murdered his entire family.

While interviewing survivors, he came across those Achi Mayan women who had been abducted and raped by the patrollers and soldiers.  Could these men be prosecuted for sexual violence as they had been for their role in the massacres?

He, working with many of these women, decided to try.  With the legal aid society that Jesús had created, lawyers, also Mayan, began meeting with many of the women in Rabinal to build a case.

For years, these women had sheltered in anonymity, barely speaking of the horrors they had endured.  Brutal assaults that left some pregnant.  Many suffered miscarriages.  One victim said she never even told her husband what had happened.

As they continued meeting, their courage grew.  “I feel more like talking, because it isn’t just me.”[2]

In 2014 the first case went to trial.  While only a few were named as plaintiffs, the case relied on the testimony of all 36.
 
One woman, Paulina Ixpatá Alvarado had been held 25 days at the barracks.  She took the stand to describe to the judges how she and others had endured the nightly assaults.

After a landmark ruling in the women’s favor, another judge freed the imprisoned men, “finding the women’s testimonies insufficient, and dismissed the case.”[3]

Again, these strong women banded together and managed to get that judge removed.

“For years [Paulina’s] community had cautioned against speaking out, believing nothing would be done. ‘That’s why we have to persist,’ she said in an interview.  ‘Because if we leave it be, it will stay like this – sealed away.’”[4]

These courageous women and their supporters, Jesús and his companions at the legal aid society he founded — these will have front row seats at the Banquet of Life.  Serving has already begun.

And we are blessed by their courage and perseverance.  In the face of the growing totalitarianism in our own nation, the Spirit has provided all patriots the courage to resist.  How dare we, in the face of what these Guatemalan women have endured…how dare we stay silent!

Daily we have front row seats to the opportunity for involvement.  The sign urges, “If you see something, say something.”

That’s what I do in the checkout line at the supermarket.  My opening is there in the increase in grocery prices.  In a very loud voice, I castigate the effects of Trump’s tariffs.  How my coffee prices have gone up 20 percent.  How we can barely afford hamburger anymore.  “Is this what we voted for?” I ask those standing with me in a raised voice.  Then I’m on to the Jeffery Epstein sex scandal, Trump’s buddy for 10 years.  What did he know and when did he know it?  And what are they hiding?  Yes, by golly, by then I’m on a roll.

This is what Sister Simone Campbell of “Nuns on the Bus” calls “checkout line evangelism.”  Helen asked me as I explained my method, “Is Jai kicking you in the ankle by now?”

Given what these Achi Mayan women have endured and their courage to come forth, my meager protest pales in comparison.  Nothing on the order of Jeremiah’s dramatic diatribes.  Or Elijah’s excoriations of King Ahab.

Like that old gospel hymn, “Down to the River to Pray” …”studying about that good old way and who shall wear the starry crown.  Good Lord, show me the way.”

Like those Achi women who in their courage and fortitude now wear that starry crown, that’s where I want to be headed.

Like a young ten-year-old boy who threw himself on top of a classmate and took the bullet himself in a Minnesota mass shooting this past week at a Catholic school.  That kid already wears that starry crown.  And has a front row seat at the Lord’s table.

And when the heavenly banquet is served up, here are the seats of honor.  Reserved for those who have washed their white robes in the blood of the slaughtered.  Reserved for those who put stranger and friend first.  Reserved for those who have endured unimaginable suffering in Guatemala and Gaza.

In the meantime, we lend our feeble efforts to building up the Kin-dom of God, the Beloved Community.  Trusting that the Spirit will have a reserved seat for us at that table.  Just as long as I get there before the coffee’s gone and the beer’s finished.

In the meantime, “studying about that good old way and who shall wear the starry crown.  Good Lord, show me the way.”  Good Lord, show me the way.  Amen.

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[1] Annie Corral, “The 36 Who Fought Back,” New York Times Magazine, August 10, 2025.

[2] Op cit., 30.

[3] Op cit., 32.

[4] Ibid.

August 31, 2025
Pentecost 12, Proper 17
Sirah 10:12-18; Psalm 112;
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14