“Creating Space for Transformation”
The Book of Jonah
Third Sunday after Epiphany January 22, 2012
Reverend Deb Davis First Congregational UCC
In last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine … the cover story details the life of Judith Clark … a woman who has been in prison for three decades … due to her involvement in a 1981 robbery of a Brink’s truck in Nanuet, New York. Two armored-car guards were shot and two police men were later killed at a roadblock.
As the article explains it, the 31-year-old Clark was one of four people arrested that day for robbery and murder … all four … folks who had been part of a wild tribe of radicals since the late 60’s. Clark was the driver and was not one of the shooters. But for her involvement she was sentenced to a minimum of 75 years in prison … most of her time has been served at Bedford Hills in New York.
At the time of her arrest she was the single mother of an infant daughter … a daughter that was subsequently raised by Clark’s parents. Those who would later recall her trial – where she acted as her own lawyer and boycotted the courtroom proceedings … remember her most for her cocky, defiant smile … her lack of remorse … her conviction that her behavior was justified.
But over the course of these past 30 years in prison … the author interviewed many people … including the prison warden … who believe Clark has become a different person … and the article tells the rather amazing story of her journey of transformation … and of those who are now working to obtain a pardon for her.
The turning point came for Clark after she had been in solitary for two years for having planned a prison escape … when a sociologist who was studying violent-prone activist visited her … and didn’t mince words.“I understand how you did this to yourself,” she told Clark. “What I don’t understand is how you did this to your daughter.”
For the first time since her arrest several years earlier … Clark began to weep … and the sociologist nudged her even further: “You can’t cry for yourself and your daughter … and not see that the children of the men who were killed … cried the same way for their fathers.”
In the very last two paragraphs of the article … the author tells how Clark had recently spoken at a Bedford Hills Prison event … and her theme … to my surprise … was none other than the Book of Jonah … our assigned lectionary text for this Sunday … the very same story that Jim has read for us this morning.
Clark told her prison audience that she had spent years in self-destructive behavior … … and then … like the biblical Jonah … had been cast overboard into a storm-tossed sea because of her actions.
And like Jonah … Clark continued … she found rescue in the belly of a fish … in her case … Bedford Hills Prison.
It was in prison … in the belly of that fish … she said … that she learned who she really was … a place that allowed her to finally be able to walk out of the cave she had been living in … and enabled her to see again … and to feel again.
She realized that she had been using radical doctrine the way other prisoners had used drug. … that her time in prison cleared her head of the fog that the radical rhetoric had put her in … … and it allowed her to think about those who were affected by her crimes … … not the least of which was her own daughter.
For Clark … transformation took years in the belly of that fish … … for Jonah … the character in our lectionary text this morning … it took only three days. But the point is this … sometimes it takes an intentionally created space … a special place … an area set apart … for transformation to happen.
I asked Jim to read the whole Book of Jonah this morning … even though the lectionary assigns us only a few verses on this third Sunday of Epiphany … because sometimes those selected verses taken out of their contexts make a lot more sense when we put them back into the entire story.
And when we read the whole of this ancient story … we realize just how totally modern it is … … that even these 2,500 years later … the human condition has not changed all that much.
I suspect we can all connect our lives to Jonah’s story in several places: We hear God’s call … and we decide to move in the opposite direction … … We are called to enter the enemies’ camp … and we don’t want to go … … God asks us to speak a word … and we are only willing to whisper … … Our enemies surprise us by doing something good … and rather than delight in that … it makes us mad … … We want God to hate who we hate … and God won’t do it … … We want revenge on those who have hurt us … and God offers them undeserved mercy instead … … We, too, get so mad at God and the way of the world … that we feel it would be better if we just went ahead and died.
Yes, there are many places where our story can connect to this wonderful, ancient biblical story. But this morning I would like us to connect to it where Judith Clark connected to it … and that is by thinking about those spaces that God has sometimes created for our transformation … … and how it is also up to us as church … to create such spaces for others.
I don’t know if any of you have ever considered our teen ministry at Cahoots as the belly of a fish … but I would like you to consider that this morning … consider that we as church - at base – are trying to create a space for transformation at 218 West Maumee.
Granted this “belly of the fish” isn’t wet and dark and scary … like Jonah’s was … … and it isn’t the isolated space behind bars like Judith Clark’s was … … but still I think it might be productive for us to think about Cahoots as the belly of a fish anyway … as a place set apart … intentionally created space … where transformation might happen.
Some of you know that from the very beginning we have used the Search Institute’s 40 Assets in our work at Cahoots … copies of those 40 Assets have been available in our hallway magazine rack … for many years … and a put some copies of the assets on the Information Table this morning that I hope you will pick up and read.
And what those 40 Assets suggest … based on a whole lot of research … is that the more of these assets kids have … the more of these building blocks for life that they can claim for their own lives … the better they will function in the world.
Now the list of Assets includes things like family support, creative activities, caring school climate … … and, this is where we come in … caring neighborhood, other adult relationships, community values youth, and religious community.
In other words … we are important not just to our own children and grandchildren, our own nieces and nephews … … we are also important to every young person in this community ... so important that eight years ago we decided to open Cahoots … to create specific space … to create the belly of the fish if you will … a place set aside for transformation.
Through mentoring, tutoring, a report card incentive programs, family dinners, Tell It Like It, trips to camp, experiences with the arts … and much more … Cahoots has become the belly of the fish … has become intentional space where kids are valued … where adults care … where transformation happens in large and small ways.
And now others are joining our effort … several youth serving agencies have decided to join forces … and the group has begun a campaign to make the whole community aware of these 40 Assets… and just how important they are to our youth. They are calling the effort, Just Say Hi.
Some of you may have read the newspaper article about Just Say Hi in The Herald- Republican … or noticed the hallway bulletin board when you came in this morning … and if you haven’t read about it … I hope you will.
Because all of us are needed … every single one of us can be a part of this effort … to make our community supportive of kids … to continue to create that “belly of the fish” at Cahoots.
Perhaps if we can do that … continue to create that space for transformation … perhaps one young person from our community will be saved the fate of Judith Clark … and perhaps one child will be spared the pain … laid upon Judith Clark’s young daughter. Amen.
