Speaker urges ‘Jubilee’ for women, oppressed
By Paula R. Kincaid, The Layman Online, July 18, 2000
LOUISVILLE — Katie Geneva Cannon, associate professor of religion at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pa., used Gideon, one of the judges of Israel before the children of God were governed by a king, to define the Old Testament concept of “Jubilee.”
Cannon, the first African-American woman to be ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) was the speaker at the opening worship of the 2000 Churchwide Gathering of Presbyterian Women. The theme of the gathering is “Sound the Trumpet! Proclaim Jubilee!” Jubilee is described in Leviticus 25; Gideon is introduced in Judges 6.
Cannon’s message to approximately 5,000 women was “Living the Life of Jubilee: Against Impossible Odds.”
Crying out to God
Cannon referred to Judges 6, where the Midianites and Amalekites had destroyed the crops and so impoverished the Israelites that they cried out to God for help.
In relating this story to living the life of Jubilee against impossible odds, Cannon said, “In order to survive and sometimes in order to literally stay alive there are times in our past or could be times in our future when we abdicate, when we relinquish, when we let go of our commitment to God as our creator and our sustainer,” she said. “The inability to trust God, the impossibility to maintain our faith and survive at the same time is the political downfall of any oppressed people.”
Time and time again Christian women and Christian men have been forced to “make a choice between holding on to faith in God and staying alive.”
Today’s Gideon situations
There will be a Gideon situation even in this day and time, she said, adding that we, too, can embrace Gideon’s lesson for whatever is keeping us from being in right relationship with our Creator and right relationship with each other. “We too can cry out like Gideon … trusting in our heart of hearts that God hears our cry and that God can and God will deliver us.”
In verse 11, Cannon said, the angel of the Lord came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah and the angel told Gideon, “The Lord is with you.”
Gideon was “living in a difficult, embarrassing, compromising situation,” said Cannon, He was “bent over and bowed down trying to make ends meet,” yet he received a messenger from God who not only said the Lord is with you, but also called Gideon a “mighty warrior.”
Gideon’s question
Then in verse 13, Cannon said Gideon asked the angel, “If the Lord is with us, then why do all these things happen to us?”
“When we look into the faces of those outside in the city of Louisville, and we think about our loved ones, family and friends back in our home congregations, we can see that our brothers and sisters everywhere are asking God in the year 2000 the exact same question that Gideon raised, ‘Lord, if you are with us, why are all these things happening to us?'” said Cannon.
“Everyday in our cities of America there are children killed by firearms. God, where are your people?
“Everyday in American 2,660 babies are born into poverty and in every 24-hour cycle 8,490 are reported abused and neglected. In a world where women do about two-thirds of the unpaid work; in a world where women own only one percent of the property; in a world where women make up 70 percent of the work force, people in the church community as well as those outside the church are asking, ‘Where is the evidence of God’s deliverance?'”
‘Where is God?’
Cannon continued, “People across this country are crying out ‘Where is God? Will God deliver us?'”
Stating that as a nation we are building more prisons; limiting access to public education; that 44 million people in the USA have no health care; and that resegregation is occurring, Cannon said that “in this time of Jubilee, people everywhere are crying out in agony, ‘Where is God? Will God deliver us?'”
In verse 14, she said we hear God’s response to Gideon’s question, and it is the exact same answer for us. The messenger of God told Gideon, Take this might of yours and deliver your people from the hands of the enemy.
“The Bible is telling us God is with us … and now God is commissioning each and every one of us to live the life of Jubilee,” said Cannon.
‘I will be with you’
Gideon, Cannon said, asked God, “How can I do this?” And God replied, “I will be with you.” The Lord told Gideon to tear down the community altars to Baal during the night and build a proper altar to the Lord and offer a bull as sacrifice.
“If we as a people are going to survive, if we are going to persevere, if we are going to live the life of Jubilee then we’ve got to transform the altars,” she said.
Cannon said people must free themselves from any and all graven images. They must let go of the rightness of whiteness. They must confront the status quo and say no to the discrimination against those who “have not” by those who “have.” “We need to figure out what altars in our life do we need to abolish. …You and I know we are living in a serious season of injustice,” she said.
Messing with the status quo
In verse 28 of Gideon’s story, the people woke up the following morning and were angry that someone had torn down the altars. Cannon said they asked, “Who has done this? Who committed this evil against us? … Who messed with our traditions … the traditions that even if it kills us we’ve got to follow onward just because we’ve always done it this way.”
When the people found out it was Gideon, they went to his father, Cannon said, saying “We want your son so we can incarcerate him. … We want to annihilate him for messing with the status quo.”
‘What do we do?’
In these times, she asked, “What do we do? What do we say to the powers … who say to us go get your sons, go get your daughters, go get your teachers, go get your nephews, go get your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren, go get your sisters and your brothers and hand them over to us.”
She asked, “What are we saying, what are we doing to the global capitalists, the gang bangers? What are we saying when the Bible-thumping homophobes demand the souls of the people in our families, the people in our churches, the people in our communities?
“Just like Gideon’s father we too are required to stand in solidarity with the oppressed, the marginalized.”