I’m a big fan of Sister Wendy Beckett and her art history appreciation TV show. With Sister Wendy’s help and as a well-traveled museum addict, I have seen a surprising number of the world’s great masterpieces. Apart from portraiture of the day, when I consider the depiction of women in art history, sadly I recall women hunched over gleaning in the field, exhausted women ironing clothes, women being exploited and victimized, women being raped. Surely some of these works have already jumped to mind.

Sadly, today’s visual images of women are not limited to those of the swaggering and confident Fifth Avenue business woman or the chic runway model, but of mothers standing before microphones pleading for the safe return of their children, of Palestinian mothers sobbing on bloody sidewalk streets, and of starving women and children as the eternal refugees on the back roads of the Third World. Women often seem to be the expendable collateral damage in the devastation wrought by our societies. To this very day, women and children are still sold into slavery in countries like Sudan. The attempts by international humanitarian groups to participate in slave redemption programs (buying the freedom of these slaves) has only served to create a lucrative market for more slaves. The year is 2002.

Women have been a primary focus in our congregation’s outreach this past year as we have supported the efforts of Haven Hills domestic violence sanctuaries, the Valley Trauma Center’s Rape Crisis programs, the CROP Walk and Stand with Africa, Habitat for Humanity, and the Breast Cancer Walk. Every week we lift up the work of the Lutheran World Relief with our Crafty Quilters and every other week we support the wonderful and diverse efforts of Lutheran Social Services from the food bank and transitional housing to job training. Efforts to address workfare, (there is no more welfare), the reauthorization of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) have highlighted the challenges of women who are required to work 30+ hours while caring for children and going to school with no help toward child care, transportation or living wages. In January 2003, an estimated 43,000 families will be dropped forever from the workfare rolls in LA County. Recently our worshippers heard of the plight of primarily female workers at local Skilled Nursing Facilities who are underpaid, overworked and at risk for violence from County patients who are supposed to be in lock-down facilities, not sharing beds down the hall from Grandma. The imminent closure of the majority of our County healthcare clinics bodes a waking nightmare in healthcare for thousands of families. We are not blind to the suffering of women and children that goes on in our communities. We have heard the cries of those who fell through the tattered "safety net". It can be overwhelming and depressing, but we must not lose heart.

One of the challenges in the social services community is that we are often called upon to provide "the bandages" to the victims of injustice in our society and each year we seem to need to acquire more bandages with less money. Our efforts however, require us to then to use the legitimacy of our voice to be advocates in stopping and preventing these injuries in the first place. We need to challenge the priorities that allow government spending for the poor ($16 billion) to be dwarfed by expenditures for the military. As a nation, we’ve just increased our defense spending by $34 billion to $335 billion dollars; that increase alone being more than China spends on its entire military in a single year. (Granted, all of our poor folk will be equally well-protected; tragically indigent, but secure; hungry, but safe from terror).

In the coming weeks before Christmas you will see hundreds of images of the Mother and Child from greeting cards to TV Christmas promotions. May those images of nurture and succor compel us in our efforts toward peacemaking and justice in our own communities and around the world. May we pray for peace for all mothers and all children around this globe as we focus on the Christ Child laughing and playing in the safety of Mary’s arms. Holding that faith be active in love, Luther reminds us that God speaks to us through this comforting image of mother and child. I thank God for each of you as we listen together for continued guidance in every encounter of mother and child.