Jesus tells a parable about a “judge in a certain town who neither feared God nor respected any human being.” Jesus’ listeners know the truth about judges, men of status. Judges can act as tyrants, as this one does, specifically acting as a tyrant against a “widow.” Jesus’ listeners also know the truth about widows, women of no status. Yet, she is the person Jesus notes as courageous for pursuing goodness.
John Woolman was born on this day in 1720. John held status as a white man and having the ability to read and write. As an adult he took a job preparing documents. John used his status to witness his Quaker faith, specifically when people presented a document for the sale of a Black human being into slavery. John was persuasive in encouraging white men of status, especially Quakers, to release their slaves. In 1758 the Quaker’s Philadelphia Yearly Meeting banned slave trafficking and removed from positions of status members who kept slaves. This was not yet a popular position though, and Woolman, along with other white abolitionists, was targeted with persecution, even by fellow Quakers. We can look up to these abolitionists for their courage in pursing goodness. It is important to understand that Woolman’s persecution and courage pales in comparison to the average Black person alive during his time. Concerning Black abolitionists, we can know the persecution and tyranny targeting them and their courage and pursuit of goodness – Elizabeth Freeman, William G. Allen, William and Eliza Parker, William Wells Brown, Sarah Parker Redmond, Frances E.W. Harper, and others whose businesses, churches, homes, and communities were destroyed, whose education was thwarted and speech and books were censored, and who were terrorized under the legal tyranny of white vigilante committees and police departments with their mob violence. But can we any longer know the courage of Woolman, Freeman, Allen, and every Black slave? The tyranny of white supremacy evident in Donald Trump and his Executive Order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” is censoring their truth and their courage. MAGA is the Gospel parable’s ‘judge in a certain country who neither feared God nor respected any human being.’ Like that judge, for MAGA, terror and tyranny reign. But terror and tyranny have always reigned over the average person of color during any time in this country. People of color have always known a tyrannizing presidency with a complicit Judiciary and Congress made up of loyalists across the government, for example at the FBI, DOJ, and DOD, who have demonized them and lied about Affirmative Action and DEI and immigration to divert blame from the rulers’ own tyranny. People of color have always known a U.S. system censoring and silencing their speech and press and comedians and authors for having opposing views as they have always known a media relaying prejudicial and deceitful supremacist content. People of color have always known politicians and police who criminalize Native life and Black and Brown life and criminalize activists working to secure human rights as they have always known the gutting of programs that provide basic needs, for example underfunding and destroying public services like schools and hospitals. People of color have always known the incentivizing of violence by white militia groups entitled to terrorize people of color – as well as the use of the military and militarized federal agents to grab them off their streets and take them to hell-hole prisons. Welcome to life on the U.S. National Reservation. Be sure to gain some skills during your time on the U.S. National Plantation.
“I saw in these southern provinces so many vices and corruptions, increased by this slave trade and this way of life, that it appeared to me as a dark gloominess hanging over the land; and though now many willingly run into it, yet in future the consequence will be grievous to posterity.” (John Woolman)
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, together we are the courage needed in this time of tyranny.
Question: How close does the tyranny of wealthy white slave owners (aka capitalists) feel?
October 19, 2025 Gospel Luke 18:1-8 Twenty Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time