March 23, 2025 • 21 mins
The unnamed antagonists in our lives—systemic forces like poverty, racism, corruption, and trauma—shape our stories in ways we often fail to recognize. Drawing from personal experiences fostering rescue dogs, teaching high school students, and insights from Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, this message explores how these invisible forces impact those Jesus calls us to serve.
Guest Preacher Ryan Blanck introduces us to Polly, a rescue dog whose fear of men revealed a history of abuse without speaking a word. Consider Fantine, whose desperate measures to support her daughter weren't moral failings but responses to a system designed to crush her. And there's Jay, a struggling student whose test scores tell almost nothing about the real challenges he faces daily. These stories challenge our comfortable assumptions that success comes simply through hard work and determination.
When Jesus speaks about the hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, and imprisoned in Matthew 25, he's not just calling us to occasional charity but to genuine solidarity with those facing these unnamed antagonists. This means recognizing systemic injustice, humanizing those affected by speaking their names, and being present even when we can't solve every problem. Sometimes, like with a fearful rescue dog, the most important thing we can do is simply sit on the floor, create a safe space, and let trust develop gradually. As followers of Jesus, we're called to see beyond categories and statistics to the beloved individuals made in God's image. Have you taken time to learn the names and stories of those society would rather keep nameless?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ryan Blanck (00:00):
It's wonderful to be with you all again.
I was here about a year ago,just after Easter last year, and
got to share in worship withyou then and back again, and
it's truly a pleasure to be heretoday.
So I want to start by tellingyou about a dog.
Her name was Polly and she wasour guest for the weekend.
So over the span of about fouryears or so my family and I
(00:23):
provided foster care for a localanimal shelter here in the area
and every Sunday afternoonafter church we would pick up a
dog and sometimes two or three,depending on the need and take
care of them for a couple dayswhile the shelter was closed for
their sort of weekend on Mondayand Tuesday, and then bring
them back to the shelter onWednesday, hoping that they
(00:43):
would get their forever homevery soon.
So Polly was one of about 150dogs who stayed with us over
that period of time Not all atonce, but over the course of
several years and she stands outfor a couple reasons in my
memory.
First, she was just kind of afunny-looking mixed-breed dog.
First she was just kind of afunny-looking mixed-breed dog,
(01:06):
just unusual in appearance.
But more importantly and moreapparently she had a rough life
before being rescued.
Many of these foster dogs thatwe welcomed into our home were
shy or standoffish, especiallyaround me, as being the only
adult male in the house.
Many of them didn't like me forthat, but this was much more
(01:29):
pronounced in Polly's case.
She was downright afraid of meand even though we didn't know
what had happened in Polly'spast, there was obviously a pair
of unnamed antagonists in herstory neglect and abuse.
I don't even want to imaginewhat Polly had been through, but
(01:49):
her behavior made it clear thatsomething had happened.
She avoided me and would seekcomfort with my wife or
daughters whenever I was in theroom.
Now my day job is as an Englishteacher and I tend to often see
(02:10):
life as stories filled withprotagonists and antagonists,
and today I want to talk aboutsome of those unnamed
antagonists.
We see several of them reartheir ugly heads in our gospel
reading from Matthew 25.
In these verses, jesus speaksof those who are hungry and
thirsty, those who are naked orsick, those who are lonely or in
prison.
We know what these people looklike and can probably empathize
(02:32):
with their situation, but howoften do we stop and consider
how they got to be in that state.
Why are they hungry or thirstyor naked or sick, lonely or in
prison?
It could be the results oftheir own actions or poor
decisions.
They could have brought this onthemselves, but we also need to
consider the unnamedantagonists, things like
(03:03):
systemic poverty, xenophobia,corruption, to name a few.
One of the kind of sucky thingsthat I've learned about being an
adult and learned about life isthat you can do everything
right.
You can play by the rules andstill get screwed over in the
end.
You can have a good paying job.
You can make wise financialdecisions.
What happens when the financialsystem that you trusted with
(03:24):
your retirement makes some verypoor or maybe even illegal
decisions and you loseeverything?
I'm reminded of the housingmarket crash back in 08 and the
great recession that followed.
At the time, I was doing okay,we were getting by, but I saw
that the generation ahead of me,the boomers of my parents'
(03:45):
generation, watched their lifesavings literally disappear
overnight, and then I saw themillennials coming up behind me,
graduating college and such,with all kinds of student loans
and debt, getting screwed out oftheir dream jobs that simply
vanished.
The cause of both of these wasthe same unnamed antagonist
(04:07):
systemic greed and corruption, asystem that saw an opportunity
to get rich quick regardless ofthe real-world consequences for
real people.
Recently I finished reading abook by Dr Jamar Tisby called
the Color of Compromise, inwhich he documents the white
American church's complicity insystemic racism over the last
(04:29):
four centuries.
What made this book especiallydifficult to read was the fact
that it wasn't just about thosepeople over there in the distant
past doing some horrible thingsto black people in this country
, but he tells the story of myhistory and my traditions as a
follower of Jesus, and it's notjust a long history of
(04:52):
individual racist persons, but acenturies-old system, an
unnamed antagonist of racism,that has taken the lives and
livelihoods of countless blackAmericans.
One moment in that book that Imost remember is at the very
beginning, in the introductionhe talks about.
Dr Tisby talks about visiting acolonial museum in Virginia,
(05:15):
and one display he talks aboutwas the text of a commonwealth
law from the colonial era that Idon't know what to do with that
.
The unnamed antagonists ofunfettered greed and systemic
(05:43):
racism somehow convinced thesewhite men of colonial government
that this was a right and justlaw.
Now I know many of you arereading Matt Rawls' commentary
on Les Mis and hopefully you allare enjoying that.
I was appreciative of PastorDarren giving me a copy and
allowing me to read that as well.
And in chapter 3, rawls drawsour attention to perhaps one of
(06:05):
the most influential charactersin the entire novel and musical.
Not Jean Valjean or Javert, andnot even the bishop who
forgives Valjean's crimes.
Rawls names the unnamedantagonist of this epic novel
poverty.
And nowhere do we see this morepronounced than the story of
Fantine.
(06:26):
In Hugo's novels we get muchmore of Fantine's backstory than
in the musical.
Hugo lets us see her lifebefore she falls into poverty,
and I think this only heightensthe tragedy of her story.
But in the musical we firstmeet Fantine when she's already
working in Valjean's factory,trying desperately to support
(06:47):
her daughter Cosette.
Like many tragic literarycharacters and even real-life
individuals, fantine is theembodiment of the saying no good
deed goes unpunished.
Fantine is trying to doeverything right.
She trusts Thénardier and hiswife to care for Cosette,
because she knows she cannotcare for Cosette herself.
(07:10):
Unfortunately, the Thénardiersare scoundrels who keep Fantine
in poverty by extorting moneyfrom her.
Fantine's also a model employeeuntil it's found out that she's
an unwed mother, which resultsin her being dismissed from her
job.
Putting her own well-being andhappiness aside, she goes to
(07:30):
desperate measures to pay forher daughter's care.
She first sells her hair andeven her teeth, and then finally
her own body in prostitution.
This is all summed up in thefinal verse of Fantine's song.
I Dreamed a Dream which we'llbe hearing later.
I had a dream.
My life would be somethingdifferent from this hell I'm
living, so different now thanwhat it seemed.
(07:52):
Now life has killed the dream Idream.
Fantine's story can best besummed up in the familiar words
from the Robert Burns poem thebest laid schemes of mice and
men often go awry.
In that poem, burns laments thefact that all this mouse's hard
work in creating its home comesto nothing when the farmer
(08:14):
plows through the field.
This reality goes against manyof the ideals that we're taught
to hold on to.
We're taught that all you needis a dream and a good work ethic
to be successful.
We're led to believe that whena person falls into poverty it's
due to some moral failing orperhaps their own laziness.
(08:35):
We've been taught to conflatematerial success with moral
virtue and personal piety.
But I think Fantine's story arcillustrates some of the
fallacies in that thinking.
She's truly a victim of asystem that punishes poverty
regardless of personal virtue ordetermination.
And, more importantly, shegives a face and a name to the
(08:58):
poor, much like these unnamedantagonists of poverty or racism
or corruption.
Much like these unnamedantagonists of poverty or racism
or corruption.
Too often we depersonify groupsof people into abstraction
no-transcript.
It's easier and lessuncomfortable to keep them
(09:18):
nameless in their arm's length,but Fantine insists that we
resist that urge.
Fantine insists that we knowher name.
Let me give you another examplefrom my 9-to-5 job.
As I said, I'm a high schoolEnglish teacher and if I had a
dollar for every time I heardthe term achievement gap, I
(09:40):
probably could have retired fouror five years ago.
If you're unfamiliar with theterm, it's pretty
self-explanatory, but it refersto the gap in various
achievement markers between theso-called high-achieving
students and the low-achievingstudents, and this is usually
measured through things like astudent's GPA, standardized test
scores, access to honors oradvanced classes, college
(10:02):
acceptance rates and things likethat.
But not surprisingly, those oneither side of this achievement
gap are also separated by othermarkers like race, ethnicity,
socioeconomics and evengeography.
The high-achieving studentstend to be from middle and
upper-class white families wholive in good neighborhoods.
The high-achieving studentstend to be from middle and
(10:22):
upper-class white families wholive in good neighborhoods,
while low-achieving studentstend to come from lower and
middle-class black and brownfamilies who live in bad
neighborhoods.
But we in education have verylittle control over these
outside factors.
We can only control what goeson in the classroom even then,
not even that.
So we have meetings andworkshops and we collaborate
(10:43):
with our colleagues to developthese instructional strategies
to help close that gap in testscores and GPA and things like
that, and it doesn't take anoverpaid educational consultant
to tell you that there's only somuch that these strategies can
do to bring about real changeand actually close that
achievement gap.
(11:04):
One thing that's oftenoverlooked is that there are too
many outside factors that arenot accounted for in all that
data.
A student's score on astandardized test can be
affected by so many things thatthe student's actual reading
other than sorry, that student'sactual reading ability or math
skills.
The student may have gotteninto a fight with their
(11:26):
boyfriend or girlfriend thenight before.
They may not have had anutritious breakfast before
school.
They may have been up all nightor up late the night before
babysitting a younger siblingwhile their parents work late,
or the student might just be areally bad test taker.
The point is that the datadoesn't tell the entire story.
There are far too many unnamedantagonists.
(11:48):
Another problem is that weoften lose sight of the
individual students who might bestruggling.
We see all the numbers andpercentages and color-coded
graphs and charts, but we don'tsee the fantines, so to speak.
The names and faces of thoseindividual students get lost in
the data.
(12:09):
I want to tell you about one ofthose students.
I'll refer to him as Jay.
Jay is a freshman in one of myEnglish classes.
His test scores said that he isreading below grade level and
was placed in our school'sreading intervention program.
And while it may be true thathis reading is below grade level
, there's so much more to Jaythan those test scores point out
(12:32):
.
They don't show the fact thathe's just a stereotypical
14-year-old boy with ADHD andprocessing difficulties.
They don't say anything abouthim being a growing young man,
full of energy and hormones andliterally always hungry, always
asking for snacks or askingfriends for an apple or granola
bar or something.
(12:52):
And they don't show theemotional trauma that he's
experienced at home or theaccompanying anxiety and
depression that he deals with ona daily basis.
But it would be so easy, basedon test scores and missing
assignments and classroombehavior, just to write him off
as one of those kids.
But that doesn't take intoaccount the unnamed antagonists
(13:15):
in Jay's life.
Like Fantine, jay is in manyways at the mercy of unnamed
antagonists of trauma, learningdisabilities and anxiety.
So what do we do as Jesusfollowers here in the Coneo
Valley in 2025?
What do we do with all this?
(13:35):
First, I think we need to makean effort to recognize the name.
Recognize and name the unnamedantagonists in our own story and
in the stories of those weencounter.
We need to recognize that, likeFantine or Polly, the foster
dog, or Jay, sometimes, those weencounter are no match for the
(13:56):
antagonists they face, whetherit's poverty, racism, corruption
and greed, physical andemotional trauma.
Second, we need to become morecomfortable speaking the names
of those in the clutches ofthese unnamed antagonists.
In our gospel reading, jesusspeaks of the hungry, the
thirsty, the sick, the naked andthe imprisoned.
(14:18):
But we need to turn that around.
And it's not just a neglectedand abused rescue dog.
It's Polly.
It's not just an unwed motherworking the assembly line.
It's Fantine.
It's not just a freshman boywith low reading scores it's Jay
.
It's much more difficult todehumanize someone when we know
(14:43):
and speak their name, when wesee them through the eyes of God
.
But simply knowing their namesis not always enough.
If we're to live into the wordsof Jesus and feed the hungry
and clothe the naked and visitthe imprisoned, then we need to
spend time with them.
We need to build relationshipswith them.
In another book I recently read, called the Anti-Greed Gospel,
(15:06):
dr Malcolm Foley says that Jesusis not calling us merely to
community service or to meregenerosity, but into solidarity
with those who are on themargins.
We're to follow the example ofJesus himself, who entered into
solidarity with us when heclothed himself in human flesh.
We see the early church livingthis out in the book of Acts
(15:29):
with this repeated phrase theyhad everything in common and no
one was in need.
Going back to Polly as we closethings up, when Polly was
staying at our house, like Isaid, she wanted nothing to do
with me.
She often cowered in the corneror hid behind someone else when
I entered the room and it kindof drove me crazy.
(15:50):
I love dogs and having onestand off like that just kind of
drove me crazy.
So I was determined to get herto like me somehow, or at least
tolerate my presence in the room, so that first night she was
with us, I just sat on theliving room floor while we
watched TV, just sat and waited,doing my best to ignore her,
(16:12):
and slowly but surely she kindof inched her way over until I
could reach over and give her anice little gentle pat on the
head.
And I think that's what Jesusis asking us to do here.
We don't need to, and sometimeswe simply can't swoop in and
solve the other person'sproblems, but we can sit with
them, we can be a non-anxiouspresence in their midst.
(16:35):
That shines the love of Jesus,because as Victor Hugo said, and
it's said over there, to loveanother person is to see the
face of God.
Pastor Darren (16:45):
Amen, I appreciate Ryan here.
I thought I would take just ahalf a minute to set up our solo
for today.
I dreamed a dream.
You'll remember that Fantinewas somebody who had made some
choices early on, romanticallytogether with a man, getting
pregnant with her and then hisfamily not letting him be with
(17:09):
her.
But she's got that resolve,she's got that commitment to get
it done and slowly life weighsheavier and heavier to the point
that she's sitting there livinga life in prostitution, having
lost her hair, having lost herteeth.
This song is the moment of hercoming to that heavy and
(17:32):
horrible realization that lifeisn't going to allow for that.
For that dream, for her.
Tracy Van Fleet (17:43):
There was a time when men were kind, when
their voices were soft and theirwords inviting, and there was a
time when love was blind andthe world was a song and the
song was exciting.
And there was a time when itall went wrong.
(18:09):
I dreamed a dream in days goneby, when hope was high and life
(18:34):
worth living.
I dreamed that love would neverdie.
I dreamed that God would beforgiving.
Then I was young and unafraidand dreams were made and used
(19:03):
and wasted.
There was no ransom to be paid,no song unsung, no wine
untasted.
But the timeides come at night,with their voices soft as
(19:32):
thunder, as they tear your hopeapart, as they turn your dream
to shame.
He slept a summer by my side.
(20:06):
He filled my days with endlesswonder, he took my childhood in
his stride, but he was gone whenautumn came.
(20:26):
And still I dreamed he'd cometo me, that we would live the
years together.
We would live the yearstogether.
(20:47):
But there are dreams thatcannot be, and there are storms
we cannot weather.
I had a dream.
I had a dream.
(21:11):
My life would be so differentfrom this hell I'm living.
So different now from what itseemed.
Now life has killed the dream Idreamed.
(21:33):
Thank you,
It's wonderful to be with you all again.
I was here about a year ago,just after Easter last year, and
got to share in worship withyou then and back again, and
it's truly a pleasure to be heretoday.
So I want to start by tellingyou about a dog.
Her name was Polly and she wasour guest for the weekend.
So over the span of about fouryears or so my family and I
(00:23):
provided foster care for a localanimal shelter here in the area
and every Sunday afternoonafter church we would pick up a
dog and sometimes two or three,depending on the need and take
care of them for a couple dayswhile the shelter was closed for
their sort of weekend on Mondayand Tuesday, and then bring
them back to the shelter onWednesday, hoping that they
(00:43):
would get their forever homevery soon.
So Polly was one of about 150dogs who stayed with us over
that period of time Not all atonce, but over the course of
several years and she stands outfor a couple reasons in my
memory.
First, she was just kind of afunny-looking mixed-breed dog.
First she was just kind of afunny-looking mixed-breed dog,
(01:06):
just unusual in appearance.
But more importantly and moreapparently she had a rough life
before being rescued.
Many of these foster dogs thatwe welcomed into our home were
shy or standoffish, especiallyaround me, as being the only
adult male in the house.
Many of them didn't like me forthat, but this was much more
(01:29):
pronounced in Polly's case.
She was downright afraid of meand even though we didn't know
what had happened in Polly'spast, there was obviously a pair
of unnamed antagonists in herstory neglect and abuse.
I don't even want to imaginewhat Polly had been through, but
(01:49):
her behavior made it clear thatsomething had happened.
She avoided me and would seekcomfort with my wife or
daughters whenever I was in theroom.
Now my day job is as an Englishteacher and I tend to often see
(02:10):
life as stories filled withprotagonists and antagonists,
and today I want to talk aboutsome of those unnamed
antagonists.
We see several of them reartheir ugly heads in our gospel
reading from Matthew 25.
In these verses, jesus speaksof those who are hungry and
thirsty, those who are naked orsick, those who are lonely or in
prison.
We know what these people looklike and can probably empathize
(02:32):
with their situation, but howoften do we stop and consider
how they got to be in that state.
Why are they hungry or thirstyor naked or sick, lonely or in
prison?
It could be the results oftheir own actions or poor
decisions.
They could have brought this onthemselves, but we also need to
consider the unnamedantagonists, things like
(03:03):
systemic poverty, xenophobia,corruption, to name a few.
One of the kind of sucky thingsthat I've learned about being an
adult and learned about life isthat you can do everything
right.
You can play by the rules andstill get screwed over in the
end.
You can have a good paying job.
You can make wise financialdecisions.
What happens when the financialsystem that you trusted with
(03:24):
your retirement makes some verypoor or maybe even illegal
decisions and you loseeverything?
I'm reminded of the housingmarket crash back in 08 and the
great recession that followed.
At the time, I was doing okay,we were getting by, but I saw
that the generation ahead of me,the boomers of my parents'
(03:45):
generation, watched their lifesavings literally disappear
overnight, and then I saw themillennials coming up behind me,
graduating college and such,with all kinds of student loans
and debt, getting screwed out oftheir dream jobs that simply
vanished.
The cause of both of these wasthe same unnamed antagonist
(04:07):
systemic greed and corruption, asystem that saw an opportunity
to get rich quick regardless ofthe real-world consequences for
real people.
Recently I finished reading abook by Dr Jamar Tisby called
the Color of Compromise, inwhich he documents the white
American church's complicity insystemic racism over the last
(04:29):
four centuries.
What made this book especiallydifficult to read was the fact
that it wasn't just about thosepeople over there in the distant
past doing some horrible thingsto black people in this country
, but he tells the story of myhistory and my traditions as a
follower of Jesus, and it's notjust a long history of
(04:52):
individual racist persons, but acenturies-old system, an
unnamed antagonist of racism,that has taken the lives and
livelihoods of countless blackAmericans.
One moment in that book that Imost remember is at the very
beginning, in the introductionhe talks about.
Dr Tisby talks about visiting acolonial museum in Virginia,
(05:15):
and one display he talks aboutwas the text of a commonwealth
law from the colonial era that Idon't know what to do with that
.
The unnamed antagonists ofunfettered greed and systemic
(05:43):
racism somehow convinced thesewhite men of colonial government
that this was a right and justlaw.
Now I know many of you arereading Matt Rawls' commentary
on Les Mis and hopefully you allare enjoying that.
I was appreciative of PastorDarren giving me a copy and
allowing me to read that as well.
And in chapter 3, rawls drawsour attention to perhaps one of
(06:05):
the most influential charactersin the entire novel and musical.
Not Jean Valjean or Javert, andnot even the bishop who
forgives Valjean's crimes.
Rawls names the unnamedantagonist of this epic novel
poverty.
And nowhere do we see this morepronounced than the story of
Fantine.
(06:26):
In Hugo's novels we get muchmore of Fantine's backstory than
in the musical.
Hugo lets us see her lifebefore she falls into poverty,
and I think this only heightensthe tragedy of her story.
But in the musical we firstmeet Fantine when she's already
working in Valjean's factory,trying desperately to support
(06:47):
her daughter Cosette.
Like many tragic literarycharacters and even real-life
individuals, fantine is theembodiment of the saying no good
deed goes unpunished.
Fantine is trying to doeverything right.
She trusts Thénardier and hiswife to care for Cosette,
because she knows she cannotcare for Cosette herself.
(07:10):
Unfortunately, the Thénardiersare scoundrels who keep Fantine
in poverty by extorting moneyfrom her.
Fantine's also a model employeeuntil it's found out that she's
an unwed mother, which resultsin her being dismissed from her
job.
Putting her own well-being andhappiness aside, she goes to
(07:30):
desperate measures to pay forher daughter's care.
She first sells her hair andeven her teeth, and then finally
her own body in prostitution.
This is all summed up in thefinal verse of Fantine's song.
I Dreamed a Dream which we'llbe hearing later.
I had a dream.
My life would be somethingdifferent from this hell I'm
living, so different now thanwhat it seemed.
(07:52):
Now life has killed the dream Idream.
Fantine's story can best besummed up in the familiar words
from the Robert Burns poem thebest laid schemes of mice and
men often go awry.
In that poem, burns laments thefact that all this mouse's hard
work in creating its home comesto nothing when the farmer
(08:14):
plows through the field.
This reality goes against manyof the ideals that we're taught
to hold on to.
We're taught that all you needis a dream and a good work ethic
to be successful.
We're led to believe that whena person falls into poverty it's
due to some moral failing orperhaps their own laziness.
(08:35):
We've been taught to conflatematerial success with moral
virtue and personal piety.
But I think Fantine's story arcillustrates some of the
fallacies in that thinking.
She's truly a victim of asystem that punishes poverty
regardless of personal virtue ordetermination.
And, more importantly, shegives a face and a name to the
(08:58):
poor, much like these unnamedantagonists of poverty or racism
or corruption.
Much like these unnamedantagonists of poverty or racism
or corruption.
Too often we depersonify groupsof people into abstraction
no-transcript.
It's easier and lessuncomfortable to keep them
(09:18):
nameless in their arm's length,but Fantine insists that we
resist that urge.
Fantine insists that we knowher name.
Let me give you another examplefrom my 9-to-5 job.
As I said, I'm a high schoolEnglish teacher and if I had a
dollar for every time I heardthe term achievement gap, I
(09:40):
probably could have retired fouror five years ago.
If you're unfamiliar with theterm, it's pretty
self-explanatory, but it refersto the gap in various
achievement markers between theso-called high-achieving
students and the low-achievingstudents, and this is usually
measured through things like astudent's GPA, standardized test
scores, access to honors oradvanced classes, college
(10:02):
acceptance rates and things likethat.
But not surprisingly, those oneither side of this achievement
gap are also separated by othermarkers like race, ethnicity,
socioeconomics and evengeography.
The high-achieving studentstend to be from middle and
upper-class white families wholive in good neighborhoods.
The high-achieving studentstend to be from middle and
(10:22):
upper-class white families wholive in good neighborhoods,
while low-achieving studentstend to come from lower and
middle-class black and brownfamilies who live in bad
neighborhoods.
But we in education have verylittle control over these
outside factors.
We can only control what goeson in the classroom even then,
not even that.
So we have meetings andworkshops and we collaborate
(10:43):
with our colleagues to developthese instructional strategies
to help close that gap in testscores and GPA and things like
that, and it doesn't take anoverpaid educational consultant
to tell you that there's only somuch that these strategies can
do to bring about real changeand actually close that
achievement gap.
(11:04):
One thing that's oftenoverlooked is that there are too
many outside factors that arenot accounted for in all that
data.
A student's score on astandardized test can be
affected by so many things thatthe student's actual reading
other than sorry, that student'sactual reading ability or math
skills.
The student may have gotteninto a fight with their
(11:26):
boyfriend or girlfriend thenight before.
They may not have had anutritious breakfast before
school.
They may have been up all nightor up late the night before
babysitting a younger siblingwhile their parents work late,
or the student might just be areally bad test taker.
The point is that the datadoesn't tell the entire story.
There are far too many unnamedantagonists.
(11:48):
Another problem is that weoften lose sight of the
individual students who might bestruggling.
We see all the numbers andpercentages and color-coded
graphs and charts, but we don'tsee the fantines, so to speak.
The names and faces of thoseindividual students get lost in
the data.
(12:09):
I want to tell you about one ofthose students.
I'll refer to him as Jay.
Jay is a freshman in one of myEnglish classes.
His test scores said that he isreading below grade level and
was placed in our school'sreading intervention program.
And while it may be true thathis reading is below grade level
, there's so much more to Jaythan those test scores point out
(12:32):
.
They don't show the fact thathe's just a stereotypical
14-year-old boy with ADHD andprocessing difficulties.
They don't say anything abouthim being a growing young man,
full of energy and hormones andliterally always hungry, always
asking for snacks or askingfriends for an apple or granola
bar or something.
(12:52):
And they don't show theemotional trauma that he's
experienced at home or theaccompanying anxiety and
depression that he deals with ona daily basis.
But it would be so easy, basedon test scores and missing
assignments and classroombehavior, just to write him off
as one of those kids.
But that doesn't take intoaccount the unnamed antagonists
(13:15):
in Jay's life.
Like Fantine, jay is in manyways at the mercy of unnamed
antagonists of trauma, learningdisabilities and anxiety.
So what do we do as Jesusfollowers here in the Coneo
Valley in 2025?
What do we do with all this?
(13:35):
First, I think we need to makean effort to recognize the name.
Recognize and name the unnamedantagonists in our own story and
in the stories of those weencounter.
We need to recognize that, likeFantine or Polly, the foster
dog, or Jay, sometimes, those weencounter are no match for the
(13:56):
antagonists they face, whetherit's poverty, racism, corruption
and greed, physical andemotional trauma.
Second, we need to become morecomfortable speaking the names
of those in the clutches ofthese unnamed antagonists.
In our gospel reading, jesusspeaks of the hungry, the
thirsty, the sick, the naked andthe imprisoned.
(14:18):
But we need to turn that around.
And it's not just a neglectedand abused rescue dog.
It's Polly.
It's not just an unwed motherworking the assembly line.
It's Fantine.
It's not just a freshman boywith low reading scores it's Jay
.
It's much more difficult todehumanize someone when we know
(14:43):
and speak their name, when wesee them through the eyes of God
.
But simply knowing their namesis not always enough.
If we're to live into the wordsof Jesus and feed the hungry
and clothe the naked and visitthe imprisoned, then we need to
spend time with them.
We need to build relationshipswith them.
In another book I recently read, called the Anti-Greed Gospel,
(15:06):
dr Malcolm Foley says that Jesusis not calling us merely to
community service or to meregenerosity, but into solidarity
with those who are on themargins.
We're to follow the example ofJesus himself, who entered into
solidarity with us when heclothed himself in human flesh.
We see the early church livingthis out in the book of Acts
(15:29):
with this repeated phrase theyhad everything in common and no
one was in need.
Going back to Polly as we closethings up, when Polly was
staying at our house, like Isaid, she wanted nothing to do
with me.
She often cowered in the corneror hid behind someone else when
I entered the room and it kindof drove me crazy.
(15:50):
I love dogs and having onestand off like that just kind of
drove me crazy.
So I was determined to get herto like me somehow, or at least
tolerate my presence in the room, so that first night she was
with us, I just sat on theliving room floor while we
watched TV, just sat and waited,doing my best to ignore her,
(16:12):
and slowly but surely she kindof inched her way over until I
could reach over and give her anice little gentle pat on the
head.
And I think that's what Jesusis asking us to do here.
We don't need to, and sometimeswe simply can't swoop in and
solve the other person'sproblems, but we can sit with
them, we can be a non-anxiouspresence in their midst.
(16:35):
That shines the love of Jesus,because as Victor Hugo said, and
it's said over there, to loveanother person is to see the
face of God.
Pastor Darren (16:45):
Amen, I appreciate Ryan here.
I thought I would take just ahalf a minute to set up our solo
for today.
I dreamed a dream.
You'll remember that Fantinewas somebody who had made some
choices early on, romanticallytogether with a man, getting
pregnant with her and then hisfamily not letting him be with
(17:09):
her.
But she's got that resolve,she's got that commitment to get
it done and slowly life weighsheavier and heavier to the point
that she's sitting there livinga life in prostitution, having
lost her hair, having lost herteeth.
This song is the moment of hercoming to that heavy and
(17:32):
horrible realization that lifeisn't going to allow for that.
For that dream, for her.
Tracy Van Fleet (17:43):
There was a time when men were kind, when
their voices were soft and theirwords inviting, and there was a
time when love was blind andthe world was a song and the
song was exciting.
And there was a time when itall went wrong.
(18:09):
I dreamed a dream in days goneby, when hope was high and life
(18:34):
worth living.
I dreamed that love would neverdie.
I dreamed that God would beforgiving.
Then I was young and unafraidand dreams were made and used
(19:03):
and wasted.
There was no ransom to be paid,no song unsung, no wine
untasted.
But the timeides come at night,with their voices soft as
(19:32):
thunder, as they tear your hopeapart, as they turn your dream
to shame.
He slept a summer by my side.
(20:06):
He filled my days with endlesswonder, he took my childhood in
his stride, but he was gone whenautumn came.
(20:26):
And still I dreamed he'd cometo me, that we would live the
years together.
We would live the yearstogether.
(20:47):
But there are dreams thatcannot be, and there are storms
we cannot weather.
I had a dream.
I had a dream.
(21:11):
My life would be so differentfrom this hell I'm living.
So different now from what itseemed.
Now life has killed the dream Idreamed.
(21:33):
Thank you,
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