Who Are We Now?

Luke 24: 13-32

Video link to the sermon at Community of Hope UCC.

There’s a problem with the story of these two folks on the road to Emmaus.

They seemed to know where they were going. It seems as though they lived in Emmaus.

 

They were grieving the death of Jesus.  They had no idea what the future held. But they were heading toward this place called Emmaus. They knew where they were going. But we don’t.

 

That’s the problem. Some 2,000 years later, we have no idea where this place called Emmaus was. There are a half dozen places in Israel today that folks say might have once been the village of Emmaus, but nobody knows for sure. 

 

That’s sort of a metaphor we can use for our own lives. These two had  just been thrown into a state of confusion and disappointment and fear. They knew the road. But they did not really know where they were going.

 

They told the stranger on the road about Jesus. “We had hoped he would be the one,” they said. He was “a prophet mighty in deed and word before God.” And now hate had killed him and with it, their hopes had been dashed.

 

Have you ever felt that way?

There has been a pandemic that has thrown all of our lives into turmoil over the last two years. We are watching a brutal war raging in Ukraine. We are painfully aware of the racial disparities in our society. 

 

We are witnesses to the hatred that pervades our politics at the moment. On this Earth Day weekend, we are painfully aware that we are not moving fast enough to ameliorate the causes of climate change. 

 

We are wandering along a road and we do not have a clear picture of where we are going. We are not even sure of who we are now.

Closer to home, I know Community of Hope UCC is going through a period of discernment, looking for your way to an uncertain place like Emmaus, defining who you are now and who you will be in the future.

 

What a perfect Sunday, then, to dive into this story.

 

It is a story 

of walking together through grief and uncertainty, 

of letting the stories of our sacred scriptures serve as a guide along the way, 

of extending hospitality even in hard moments, 

of sharing a meal and seeing Jesus in the breaking of the bread. 

And here’s an added bonus: the word Emmaus means “warm springs” – it’s a place of comfort and healing.

 

Have you ever come across people who look lost, sad, full of anxiety? 

 

Jacqui Lewis, pastor of Middle Collegiate Church in New York City, tells this story in her new book Fierce Love of the night at the hospital in a strange city in Canada. She and her husband had been in a car crash and he was hospitalized with injuries. She was not allowed to  stay at the hospital with him overnight and had no place to go. The terror of the accident and the anguish over his injury as well as the uncertainty about where she could spend the night left her crying in the hospital hallway.

Then, out of seemingly nowhere, a woman wearing a lightweight black coat over a flowered dress walked over to her. She asked if Jacqui was OK. She listened to Jacqui’s story of the accident, of her agony at feeling so alone right then. 

 

Jacqui writes, “She was so present to me, listening closely, making space for my pain. When I finished speaking, she hugged me, and I remember thinking I was ruining her coat with my tears.”

Then the woman asked Jacqui how she could help. She crossed all the barriers that might have been between them. 

 

In Jacqui’s words: “I was a stranger, not a Canadian but an African American stranger in a strange land. I must have been a sight to behold. Tall, skinny, wearing a large afro, likely with little pieces of glass in it. Small cuts on my face, jeans dirty from sitting on the gravel on the side of the road, Paul’s blood on my denim jacket.”

The woman got Jacqui some food, took her to a motel, paid for her room, took her to the insurance company the next morning.

 

On that road to Emmaus, Jesus came across two people – I like to think a man and a woman, although only one of them – the man – is mentioned by name. They were downcast. They were talking about the horrible death they had seen Jesus die in Jerusalem and then the confusing message they had heard that morning about Jesus rising from the dead. They did not know what to believe, what to think, what to do. 

 

And Jesus walked with them. He asked them what they were talking about, what was underneath their sadness and fears. 

That’s the first thing: Walking together in hard times.

 

Then he offered them a new way to think about what happened, giving them a fresh look at the stories in the Hebrew scriptures they surely already new.

 

That’s the second thing: Reinterpreting the story in a way to help make some sense out of the chaos around them.

 

Then they took a step forward as well. “Stay with us,” they said, “because it is almost evening and the day is nearly over.”  They did not take Jesus to a motel like Jacqui’s helper did, but they did extend the kind of hospitality that brought the bond between Jesus and them even closer.

 

That’s the third thing: Offering hospitality to help heal the separations in our midst.

 

And then there was the meal.

Of course there was a meal. So often in the stories of Jesus, there is a meal.

 

There’s the meal on the hillside – that grand picnic – when bread and fish get passed through the crowd and all are fed.

 

There’s dinner with people you might not expect to be at the table with Jesus -  with Simon the Pharisee, with Zacchaeus the tax collector. There’s dinner with his friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus. 

 

There’s that last dinner with his closest followers the night before he died – you know, the one where he broke bread and passed it around and told them to remember him. In one of the stories after the Resurrection, he is cooking fish on the shore and there is bread to share with his apostles.

 

This night in Emmaus, however, we don’t know what else might have been on the menu. But we do know that there was bread.

 

Before we get to the bread, though, let’s pause for a moment for an interesting contrast. Do you remember the story Jesus told about the rich man Lazarus (not the same Lazarus who was Jesus’ friend who died and then whom Jesus brought back to life)? This also from the Gospel according to Luke (16: 19-31). 

 

Lazarus ate sumptuous meals at his table, but would not let the impoverished man at the gate even get scraps from the rich man’s table. Ultimately, both men died. The impoverished man went to be with Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, and the rich man landed in Hades, a place of torment. What if Lazarus had shared the food on his table with the poor man? What if he had invited the man to the table? Would the story have ended differently?

So here we are at this home in Emmaus, three people gathered around a table. Jesus had walked with the strangers and given them a new way to think about the disorientation of their lives. The couple had invited the stranger who walked with them to have dinner with them. 

 

Up to this point, the couple had no idea who they were with. It was just a stranger they met on the road. They could not see clearly who this was. 

 

Then the rhythm at the table got very familiar.

Jesus took bread.

He blessed it.

He broke it.

He gave it to them.

 

They ate together and then then their eyes were opened, writes Luke.  And in an instant, Jesus was gone.

 

They had been comforted by someone who took their grief seriously. Their hearts had burned as they learned a new way to understand the scriptures. They had recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread.

 

Their energy was restored and they went right back out onto the road to Jerusalem and they found Jesus’ other followers there, all sharing the news that Jesus had overcome death, overcome hate, overcome evil.

 

For me, this story contains some of those central ideas of how we can be followers of Jesus.

We can walk with those who are suffering.

We can help people find meaning by drawing on the stories that guide our community.

We can welcome strangers into our midst.

 

We can let the love of Jesus emerge as we break bread together.

 

Yes, these last few years have been hard. They have been hard on so many different levels. The things that can disorient us are still present today. It’s like we are on the road to Emmaus – a place we hope exists but can seem pretty elusive.

 

People have walked this road before. They have shown us the way. Let’s head out into our lives today, in the days ahead, knowing that we can walk this road in a spirit of hope, with some grains of faith, with the assurance of God’s love as we rejoice not only in the good news of the Resurrection, but in the good news that touches our lives and that we then share with others.

 

There’s a song we often sing at communion time – “Let Us Break Bread Together.” But there’s another song that reminds us that in the breaking of the bread, we get glimpses of Jesus, we get to experience God’s love. It's called “Be Known to Us in Breaking Bread.” 

 

Be known to us in breaking bread, but do not then depart;
O Savior stay with us and spread your table in our heart.

Here share with us in love divine, your body and your blood;

That living bread, that heavenly wine, be our immortal food.

Dinner Guests

Sermon from April 3, 2022 at Community of Hope UCC in Madison WI

Isaiah 43:16-21; John 12:1-8

Welcome to our meal!

Let’s say my name is Lazarus. We are here with my sisters, Martha and Mary. You know them. Martha is the busy one. Mary is the one who likes to listen and learn.

 

We are very honored to have our friend Jesus with us today. He often stops by when he is in the area of Bethany, that village just two miles east of Jerusalem. And he is the reason I am here with you. I had died – yes, I know this is hard to understand – but then Jesus came and brought me back to life! 

 

For many people, that was amazing. But for the religious leaders in Jerusalem, that just reinforced their worry that if they did not do something about this Jesus fellow getting a following among the ordinary people, then Rome would crack down on Israel. 

 

Caiaphas, the high priest, told them, “It is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed.” So that was when they decided to have Jesus killed – decided because he restored life to me. 

It turns out, they also wanted to kill me, since they saw my restored life as the reason so many Jews were becoming followers of Jesus.

 

Anyway, back to our meal together. Yes, there was fear lingering in the background. We all knew that Jesus was a marked man at this point. But we were just glad to have him and some of his friends with us.

 

One of those friends was named Judas. Perhaps you have heard of him. He ultimately would cast his lot with those who wanted Jesus killed. By this point, he was more than a little on edge.

I’d like to invite you to join us for this meal. You could come as yourself – you’ll have a chance to actually do that later this morning in this place. Or you could imagine you are one of the people in this story.

++++++++++++

 

Well, thank you, Lazarus, for getting us into the moment. 

 

There are so many rich themes in this short story. And at the end, it will link back to that brief reading we heard from the prophet Isaiah.  

 

There is the story of what happened at the meal and what that might mean for us. 

 

There is the story of Judas and his … shall we say perhaps…his concern for the poor. 

 

There is the question of whether we can celebrate when there is injustice and sadness around us. 

 

And then we might ask, how can we live out the best of this story?

One of the things that we know about Jesus is that he liked to eat. He ate with many different kinds of folks – folks that others would be reluctant to hang out with, folks that sometimes were his opponents.

 

This meal, with some of his closest friends – and with the one who would betray him – has some amazingly close links to the Passover meal Jesus would be having the next week. 

 

In the Gospel according to John, he uses the Greek word diepnon for dinner only two times – once for this meal and once for the Last Supper.  

The central moment in this story is when Mary takes this very expensive perfume – nard – and anoints Jesus’ feet and then wipes his feet with her hair.  There’s a lot to unpack from that one act.

First of all, it was the job of a slave to tend to a visitor’s dusty and tired feet, not one of the hosts of the meal. And women did not let down their hair – well-kept hair was a sign of a woman’s dignity. 

Yet here is Mary, breaking all the rules to show her appreciation and love for Jesus. It was a lavish, intimate, sensual moment.

 

This foreshadowed what Jesus would do at the Last Supper. The Gospel according to John describes the scene this way: Jesus took off his outer robe, tied a towel around himself and began to wash his followers’ feet, drying them with the towel. 

 

He told them, “If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” 

 

Mary had set the example of service to others. Then Jesus carried that forward. 

 

Now the story moves on to Judas. 

Why was Judas with Jesus for this meal anyway? We don’t know, although we do know that Jesus never shied away from breaking bread with people who might be skeptical of him.

 

And when Jesus was washing the feet of his followers at that Passover meal, he washed Judas’ feet along with all the others. It was not until later that he confronted Judas about his plan to betray Jesus. And then Judas’ supposed care for the poor came up again.

 

After Mary does her extravagant act of anointing Jesus’ feet, using nard that would be worth a whole year’s wages, Judas asked why the perfume was not sold and the money given to the poor. John suspects Judas’ motives, suggesting he was a thief, but Jesus defends Mary and then says two puzzling things.

One is that she might keep some of the nard for the day of his burial. Remember, the specter of Jesus’ execution hung over this meal. She was in effect anointing him before his death even though that would normally happen after someone died.

 

But the bigger puzzle is around these words of Jesus: “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

Does that mean we are not supposed to care about the poor? That they should take care of themselves, maybe pull themselves up by their bootstraps?

 

Nope. No way.

 

This is really an allusion to the book of Deuteronomy in the Torah. Chapter 15 gives instructions for the forgiveness of all debts every seventh year. It was an ancient way to close the wealth gap. And it acknowledges that ending poverty is not easy, even with that system of generous economic forgiveness. 

 

So Deuteronomy adds these words: “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’ ”

In terms we tend to use these days, the Jewish tradition that Jesus was familiar with called for both justice and charity.

 

But in this story, Jesus also recognizes that even in the midst of threats, fears, injustice, worry, there can still be time to celebrate. Let me take a brief detour to a contemporary story about this. 

 

Scott Girard in a reporter for the Cap Times. Six years ago, his brother died after a long battle with cancer. That day of March 20, 2016, he had walked with his family as they escorted his brother’s body out of Hospice. 

 

That evening, he and his family were watching the Badger men’s basketball team in the playoffs. The game was tied and time was running out when Brian Koenig hit a three-point shot at the buzzer, sending the Badgers to the Sweet Sixteen.

 

Scott wrote about that moment a year later: “I ran across the living room — having already been standing in nervousness at the moment, of course — to hug-tackle my sister on the couch in celebration before returning to the other couch to do the same to my girlfriend.

After the frenzy of about 15 seconds, I sat back down on the couch and a feeling of guilt swept over me.”

He thought about his brother’s death only hours before. He asked: “How could I have even been smiling on this day, I thought, let alone jumping for joy and cheering?”

 

And he concluded with the lesson he drew over time from that moment: “There is never anything wrong with joy, even in the darkest moments. It’s probably more important than ever in those times to find a reason to smile, if only briefly.”

 

That sounded to me like what Jesus was telling Judas – and perhaps the rest of us. Yes, care for those in need. There will always be those in need. But also celebrate those moments when God’s presence is there in a smile or a laugh or a hug – or in expensive perfume being poured on your aching feet.

 

Then there’s Judas at the Last Supper.

At that Passover meal, when Jesus confronted Judas about the impending betrayal, he told him quietly, “Do quickly what you are going to do.” The rest did not understand what he had said and some thought Jesus had told Judas to go out and give something to the poor. Funny how that comes around again.

 

What, then, might we take from this meal we have been sharing with Lazarus and Martha and Mary and Jesus and Judas – and maybe others?

Remember the questions about Mary anointing Jesus’ feet, drying them with her hair, then Jesus washing the feet of his followers? They did not stand on their status. They took a step down to raise the status of another.

 

How do we live out this call to service, growing out of our commitment to be followers of Jesus? How do we do that in ways that might diminish rather than elevate our own status?

 

One of the things I have learned in the past few years is how those of us who have some degree of privilege in our lives, some status in our community, some comfort in our position in society need to be willing to step back a bit, to listen to the people who are on the margins, to not just give them a place at the table – be it a dinner table or a boardroom table – but to create space for them to set the table, to lead the planning. 

 

The technical term for that, I believe, is being an ally. 

 

It sounds simple. It’s not. We all have a lot of experience and knowledge and resources we’d like to bring to bear. And those all matter. So does humility. So does being willing to get down on our knees, to let down our hair, to hold the towel.

 

Another takeaway for me is that message of seeking both charity and justice as we approach the economic disparities in our society. 

 

Jesus was not proclaiming that poverty is a permanent state of being. He was drawing on that rich Jewish tradition of jubilee – of forgiving debts, of giving up a bit of what we think is rightfully ours – in order to have a more equitable society. That’s part of our challenge. And then we still need to reach out to those in need.

 

Let’s loop back to that first reading from Isaiah. The Jewish people are nearing the end of their time in exile in Babylon. Through Isaiah, God tells them not to get stuck considering the things of old because God is about to do a new thing.

 

That’s part of what was happening at that dinner. Judas was clinging to the things of the past. Mary saw what new things God was doing through Jesus, new things that involved both life and death but that were filled with rivers in the desert, with a way through the wilderness.

 

Wherever we are in our lives right now, wherever we see the world in the midst of all the hard things around us, ultimately our story is a story of hope, that God will be doing new things through what each of us do.

The (hopeful) barren fig tree

Texts: Isaiah 55: 1-9; Luke 13: 1-9

Sermon at Congregational United Church of Christ in Mineral Point, Wis.

 

The Jewish prophet Isaiah invites us to come to the water, to listen that we might live.

The Jewish rabbi we call Jesus tells a story about a fig tree in desperate need of water and other nourishment to live.

 

And what about us? What does the story of the barren fig tree have to say to us? 

 

Fig trees are probably not our biggest concern these days. 
There’s the lingering pandemic. 
There’s inflation – especially if you need to put gas in your car. 
There’s that war in Ukraine.

 

And then there’s our own nagging sense that sometimes we are like the fig tree – not quite thriving, maybe taking up space where we have no use. 

 

Let’s see if we can make some sense out of these stories that people have grappled with across the centuries. Let’s see if they can offer us hope in the midst of our pretty tumultuous world.

 

The easy one is the reading from Isaiah. The Jewish people have been in exile, forced away from their homeland by a conquering army. You might think of them like the more than three million Ukrainians who have fled from their nation in the last few weeks. 

Isaiah tells his people – and the people of our day – “You’ll summon nations you’ve never heard of, and nations who’ve never heard of you will come running to you because of me, your God, who has honored you.”

God is with you, even in your troubles, Isaiah says. People will arrive to help. So come to the waters, take the bread and wine and milk being offered to you, seek the Lord.

 

OK – I can understand all that. 

But then along comes Jesus talking about Galileans being murdered, workers being killed in an accident, a fig tree not producing any figs – and then leaving us all in suspense about whether the fig tree will live or die.

 

That’s harder to understand. But I think in the midst of it all, there is a message of hope for each one of us. 

 

It’s not just that God will give us another chance like the owner of the vineyard did for the tree. It’s that we have value to God on our good days and on our bad days. 

 

It’s that for all the troubles around us – whether in the world or in our own lives – there’s always a chance for growth. 

 

There’s the message that we are worthy and that God loves us, just as God loved the people in exile in Isaiah’s time, just as God loves the refugees in our time, just as God loves each one of us here this morning.

 

That story that Jesus tells at the beginning of the Gospel reading is a bit grisly: “Some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.”

 

What was that about?

We don’t know for sure. That story appears nowhere else in the Bible or in any ancient histories. It suggests that the Romans attacked some Jews from the northern area called Galilee – Jesus’ home area – in the Temple while they were there to offer sacrifices and their blood flowed right into what they were offering as sacrifices. 

 

It’s a vivid, horrific image of the brutality of Rome – not unlike the vivid, horrific images we are seeing right now out of Ukraine and that we have seen from so many other lands over the years – from Iraq, from Rwanda, from Yemen, from Syria, from Ethiopia, from Vietnam. 

 

Then there is the tower that collapsed, killing the workers. The common wisdom was that people who died in these situations must have been sinners who God was punishing. 

 

No way, says Jesus. Each one of us has shortcomings in our lives. God does not strike us down for those. Maybe the tower collapsed because of careless oversight by those who wanted it built. Industrial accidents are not just a new phenomenon.

 

But then we get to the fig tree.

 

Why a fig tree?

Well, it was an extraordinarily common tree in Jesus’ time, in this land of Israel. It was one of the first plants cultivated by humans, shaping the world of agriculture nearly 1,000 years before the planting of things like wheat and rye.

 

It makes other appearances in the Bible. 

In the beautiful love poem known as the Song of Songs, the man says to the woman, “The green fig forms on the fig tree, the vines in blossom give off fragrance. Arise, my darling, my fair one, come away!”

 

The prophet Micah wrote: “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.”

 

So you can see why there were high expectations for the fig tree in Jesus’ story. And yet, it was barren. There was no fruit. It was taking up valuable space in the owner’s vineyard. Clearly, the wisest thing to do would be to cut it down.

 

“Wait!” says the gardener. “Give it another year.”

But this is not just a wait-and-see proposition. The gardener says he will tend the tree, mulch it, put manure around it.

 

Here’s the thing. Fig trees do well in dry climates. That’s because they have roots that go deep in search of water. When they are thirsty, they need that water that Isaiah was writing about. They need the nutrients that come from rich manure. If you drive through Wisconsin farmland, you know the richness of that manure.

 

And then Jesus leaves us wondering. What happened? Did the fig tree bear fruit? Did it fail again? Did the owner order it cut down – this time for real?

How would you write the end of this story?

How would you like your own story to go?

Let’s think first of the barren fig tree representing all those barren spots in our world, those places that lack love and care, those places where swords have not been put down, but where rockets have replaced swords, where children are killed while sheltering in a theater, where apartments are bombed, where soldiers and tanks do battle with one another, creating their own rivers of blood as people sacrifice their lives.

 

Let’s think of the barren fig tree as the emptiness families feel when a loved one is maimed or killed in the workplace, where not enough care was given to safety, where carelessness led to tragedy.

 

Let’s think of the barren fig tree as that part of our lives where we did not live up to our own expectations, to the expectations of others, to the expectations of God.

 

It’s not hard to be tempted to give up on all of those situations. How could anything good come out of this? Maybe we should just give up on the prospects of peace, on the  prospects of justice in the workplace, on the prospects of our own worth.

 

Enter the gardener.

 

Let’s do a fast-forward here. I know we are in Lent. We are only half way to Easter. But remember this story from Easter morning. 

Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb where Jesus was buried and in the Gospel according to John, we find her encountering someone she assumes is the gardener. It turns out, the “gardener” is Jesus.

 

So in this parable from the Gospel according to Luke, it is the gardener who offers the path forward for the fig tree, for those caught in barren circumstances, for each of us, actually,

 

What can we do to nurture each other’s lives? 

 

What nutrients can we provide to bring life in the midst of hopelessness?

On its own, the tree probably would not bear fruit. It would be disposed of.

 

But with help, the tree has hope.

With each other, we have hope.

Maybe it begins with recognizing that even in those moments when we feel worthless like the barren fig tree, in God’s sight, we have value, we have potential.

 

Maybe it begins with recognizing that in all those barren places in our world – in those war zones, in those places trapped by exploitation, in those places where climate change seems to be creating more barrenness than we thought possible – in all those places, when we join together, we can bring hope, we can bring life.

 

Right now I am reading a book called Fierce Love by Jacqui Lewis that focuses on how we first need to love ourselves, then love those we are in relationship with and then love our world.  Remember those words from the Hebrew scriptures that Jesus made a hallmark of his teaching? “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jacqui Lewis draws on a quote from that great font of theological wisdom – actress Lucille Ball of I Love Lucy fame. “Love yourself first and everything else falls in line.”

Jacqui Lewis calls loving ourselves “the fuel in the tank of our souls.” It’s what enables us to love others and to make the world a better place.  And we need others to help us fill our tanks, others who like the gardener with the fig tree will let us know that we are seen and we are known and we are loved. And then we need to do that for those around us.

 

Come to the water!

 

Come and nourish yourself with bread and wine!

 

Listen so that you may live!

And with that life, savor your value, knowing that just like that fig tree, that you have value beyond anything you may do, that there is hope that can always blossom forth, even when we least expect it.

 

For that, we can say Thanks be to God!

For that, we can say Amen!

Wisconsin Newspaper Association Hall of Fame speech

There is an introductory video linked here, followed by Katy Culver's introduction of me and then my speech. 

(This is linked out of the longer video of the whole ceremony. A story about the whole evening is here.)

Thanks to Katy Culver for nominating me.

Thanks to Paul Fanlund – editor and publisher of the Cap Times and Cap Times associate editor John Nichols  - one of the best hires I ever made - for supporting my nomination.

Thanks to my best beloved, Ellen Reuter. She grew up with The Capital Times in her home, cheered me on, put up with the Barneveld tornado in 1984 blowing me out of our apartment for the last month of her pregnancy with son Michael. She thought she was marrying Clark Kent and she wound up being a minister’s wife.

 

And thanks to the WNA for adding me not only in a distinguished roster of Wisconsin journalists – including Elliott Maraniss, the man who hired me – and Dave Zweifel – who was my immediate boss throughout my career - but also including me with the class of 2021.

When I told friend I would be inducted into the Hall of Fame, he asked me If this meant my rookie card would increase in value.   

Not sure a press card ever has a lot of value, but here it is – my rookie card from The Daily Cardinal in 1971/72. Fifty years ago, I never would have imagined I’d be standing here tonight joining some of Wisconsin’s stellar journalists in this place. 

 

I had a sort of awkward beginning in my first year at the Cap Times. Yes, I got to cover Paul Soglin’s first election as mayor. But later in the year, in November, Elliott took me along to interview Gov. Pat Lucey on 10^th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination. 

 

Lucey had been very close to the Kennedy’s and he told some good stories. I dutifully recorded them on my tape recorder and then discovered, to my horror back in the newsroom, that the tape sounded like I had just interviewed Donald Duck. Fortunately, I also had taken notes and quickly constructed a story – with lots of paraphrases.

All of us have gone through lots of technological change over the past half-century. When I was in journalism school, I had a chance to learn how to use one of the first cathode ray tube word processors. That prepared me for stating to use them in 1975 at the Cap Times. (By the way, Katy, I also learned lots of other things in J-school as well.)

Twenty years later in 1995, I helped create this new thing called a web site for the Cap Times. I was so proud of that, this became my personalized license plate – TCT CYBR.          

 

I am someone who is really comfortable doing things online, but I still love holding a newspaper in my hands. 

 

One of the things I took great pleasure in at the Cap Times is going back to the press room and watching the press start up, increasing it pace like a space launch.

 

And then once, I got to have that classic moment of saying “stop the presses.” It was on March 30 1981 when President Reagan was shot. I was the city editor at the time and our final edition has just gone to press and the presses had just started rolling when the news came in. I asked Dave Zweifel, who was then managing editor, if we should stop the press.  He said yes, so I picked up the phone, called the press room, and said, “Stop the presses, The president has just been shot.”

 

One other press room story – just a secret among us here. It was fun to go to the lower level of the press and ride on the skateboard-like carts for the rolls of newsprint.

 

As you well know, there is more to this business than technology and fun with the presses. We are in an era when we get labeled “Enemies of the people.” So sometimes I wear this tee-shirt with pride: “Journalism matters - #nottheenemy.”         

   

Last month, the Nobel Peace Prize went to two journalists – one from Russia the other from the Philippines. This is the first time a journalist has been so honored since 1935 and only the third time in the history of the Nobel prizes.

 

One of those winners is the amazing Maria Ressa from the Philippines. She said this to TIME magazine in October when they interviewed her after the prize was announced:

 

“It is a battle for facts. And we’re at the front line, and it has gotten far more dangerous than it has been in the past. I think that also shows the role of the journalists in fixing this and fixing the mess that we’re in right now… Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. How can you have democracy without that? This is the fabric that holds us together.”

 

That’s one of the biggest challenges all of us in the world of journalism face right now. But it is not the only one. 

 

You all know the economic perils in the news business. You know about  the basic skepticism of many readers over the years, in part because of the way politicians sow the seeds of that distrust, but also in part because we can fall short of what we hope to be. One of the strengths of good journalism, though, is that when we fall short, we publicly correct our mistakes.

 

But let me offer a few thoughts on why I have hope in the future of journalism as it evolves to meet the challenges of a new era.

Let’s start with a documentary that was on PBS Wisconsin this past Monday. It was called simply Storm Lake and it was about the community newspaper in that northwest Iowa community. It received recognition when the editor, Art Cullen, won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 2017. While its editorials are powerful – something I surely appreciate – it also is a window into life in the community while, as Maria Ressa says, getting at the facts that lead to the truth that leads to trust and the undergirding of democracy.

We see that here tonight in the work over the decades of the Edgerton Reporter, where Harland and Helen Everson spent decades providing a voice and a watchdog for their community – a role their daughter Diane maintains so well to this day. And while I did not know Bill Hale and his work in southwest Wisconsin, he surely stands in that tradition as well.

 

There are newspapers all across the nation that are finding ways to meet the challenges of our times. 

 

And one of those big challenges is dealing with the increasing racial and ethnic diversity of our nation and coming to terms with both the good and the bad of our past. 

I am so glad to be in this class of honorees with J. Anthony Josey. You’ll hear more about him in a few minutes, but the fact that in 1916 – the year before The Capital Times was founded – he helped start Madison’s first black-run newspaper is so impressive. That he sustained it along with the one he started in Milwaukee for a quarter of a century is an amazing story.

 

I am proud that the early editions of the Cap Times recognized his important role in our community, that the Cap Times did not shy away from taking on the Ku Klux Klan here in the 1920s, and that it stood with the Civil Rights efforts of the 1950s and 1960s and that today it has put special emphasis on covering the diverse communities and hard issues of racial justice in Madison. 

And I am glad that during my three decades at the Cap Times, I had a chance to continue that tradition of seeking racial justice in our community and, in fits and starts, trying to improve our coverage of that growing diversity in the Madison area.

But of course it was in fits and starts.

 

There was the time I was writing in the spring of 1981 about a local march responding to the murder of 20 Black children in Atlanta. I ended quoted someone I described as “Bowling Green, president of the Madison NAACP.”      

When Bolling Smith called me the next day, he was not amused by my error – or by my ignorance of the leadership of the local black community. So then there was one of those public corrections of an error.

 

I learned not only about double checking names, but also about the need to spend more time in the Black community getting to know people.

And then on October 3, 1995, I learned how out of touch I was with some of the undercurrents of feeling among Black residents in our community and our nation. That was the day O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Like most white folks, I was shocked at the verdict.

 

But when the verdict was announced on the TV in our newsroom, one of our copy-editors, a stellar Black journalist named Linda Lockhart, stood up, raised her arms and cheered. I was stunned. And then I began to ask why our perceptions were so different.

 

It seems to me that is a vital characteristic of what journalism needs to do today – to seek out why people’s perspectives are so different. That does not mean ignoring facts or challenging deliberate attempts to mislead the public. But it does mean delving into the ways people’s views of the world are shaped and using the power we have to help provide places where in constructive ways, people can see across the barriers that separate us.

 

There are other signs of hope I see for our profession. I have had a chance to get to know some of the students working with the Center for Journalism Ethics and am continually impressed by the passion and dedication they bring to their work. And the Center for Journalism Ethics itself is helping journalists all across the nation grapple with some the tough dilemmas in our world today.

 

I am hearted by some of the new models for local journalism that emerged. There is the creativity of the Cap Times in adapting over the last decade by becoming primarily a digital news source and then bringing the community together in variety of ways to explore current issues. 

There are newspapers in Little Rock, Arkansas and Chattanooga, Tenn. that are giving subscribers iPads – and training on how to use them – to replace the printed paper during the week. The Salt Lake City Tribune has switched to a non-profit status. The Philadelphia Inquirer, like the Cap Times, is owned by a foundation.

 

And speaking of the Inquirer, here’s another sign of hope for me. My daughter, Julia, just started working for them as their lead newsroom data analyst. Her husband, Justin Myers, is a data editor for the Associated Press. They are both on the leading edge of one of the ways journalism is changing by delving into how data can enhance stories and engage readers. 

 

Given my dual status as journalist and preacher, I’d like to end with the recent words of one of the world’s current great spiritual leaders – Pope Francis. 

 

Just last week, he was honoring two long-time journalists who had covered the Vatican across several decades. Now, like all public figures, Pope Francis had faced harsh news coverage at time. Would that others might have this attitude:

 

“I also thank you for what you tell us about what goes wrong in the Church, for helping us not to sweep it under the carpet, and for the voice you have given to the victims of abuse: thank you for this.”

 

But his words I’d like to leave you with are about what he called our mission as journalists to work “so that the evil in the world may be healed.”  Our mission, he said, “is to explain the world, to make it less obscure, to make those who live in it less afraid of it and look at others with greater awareness, and also with more confidence.”

 

I am so honored and grateful to be part of a group this evening – and part of a roster of previous Hall of Famers – who have done the work of listening, investigating and reporting to make our communities better places for all.

Thank you so very much.