Sermon for Sunday, June 11, 2023 || Proper 5A || Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

I’d like to talk this morning about the concept of dignity. “Dignity” is one of those words I’ve often spoken when talking about really important things, but it’s also one of those words that I used for years without taking the time to understand it. I knew the concept of “dignity” was good for us to apply to ourselves and our fellow humans. I knew the Baptismal Covenant invites us to promise, with God’s help, to “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.” I knew that I have dignity and you have dignity and the person holding the cardboard sign at the traffic light near Wal-Mart has dignity. I knew that dignity had something to do with everyone being a beloved child of God.

But that was as far as my thinking took me until this week. I’ve been listening through a college lecture series on the history of Ukraine, which Yale Professor Timothy Snyder gave last fall. One of the last classes of the series taught about the occupation of the Maidan in 2013-2014. The Maidan is the enormous main square in the center of downtown Kyiv, the capital city of Ukraine. Over the course of the winter, thousands upon thousands of students and their supporters camped out in the Maidan to protest the repressive rule of then Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. Over several months, the protesters endured freezing cold conditions and brutal violence from the regime, which culminated in a massacre of protesters in February 2014, which in turn led to the end of the Yanukovych presidency. 

What made the Maidan witness so incredible, beyond the endurance and courage of the protestors, was how they created a new society in microcosm within the square itself. Everyone pitched it to keep the square clean, protect one another, encourage each other, and stand fast for far longer than any outside the square predicted they would. They put into practice in a small way the vision of their country that they wished to see writ large. They practiced recognizing each other’s dignity and making choices that honored that dignity within the small-scale society they created in the Maidan. One protestor commented that the ground was so clean you could eat off it.

The class on the Maidan revolution was given by guest lecturer Associate Professor of History Marci Shore. As she spoke about the Maidan she brought into focus the concept of dignity. She paraphrased the philosopher Immanuel Kant, and I’m going to say this twice so we all hear it. Kant said, “Whatever can be exchanged for something of equivalent value has a price. Whatever is beyond price and bears of no equivalent has dignity.” “Whatever can be exchanged for something of equivalent value has a price. Whatever is beyond price and bears of no equivalent has dignity. Human beings are distinguished in that we possess dignity. We do not have a price, we possess dignity.”

This line of thinking leads to Kant’s categorical imperative and the basis of his moral philosophy: “Always treat a human being as an ends and never as a means, always as a subject and never an object.” “Always treat a human being as an ends and never as a means, always as a subject and never an object.”

On the Maidan, the Ukrainian protestors treated one another with dignity. And that witness to honoring dignity indicted the oppressive regime as much as any sign or shouted slogan.

In a capitalist society like ours, we have trouble with the concept of dignity because the market puts a price on everything, including labor. This causes us to link someone’s labor output to their worth. The more the market will pay you for your labor, the more the society values you. Conversely, if you are unable for whatever reason to sell your labor, the society will value you less. And so capitalist society puts a price on human beings instead of respecting their dignity. This is doubly true in our country because of the history of human enslavement. Slavers literally bought and sold people, and whole economic markets sprang up to support this evil system. The only way slavers (including plenty of clergy) could justify slavery from a moral standpoint was to completely objectify those who were enslaved, replacing their inherent dignity with a negotiated price. Racism, as a modern reality, came into existence to reinforce the stripping of dignity from entire groups of people by recategorizing them as less than human.

These are some of the historical and modern forces that conspire to keep us from living in a world where our laws, systems, and priorities respect the dignity of all people. We can confront these forces in two ways: collectively by supporting policies that make our world more equitable, peaceful, and just; and individually by practicing seeing people for who they are and not what they can produce; as subjects, not objects; as ends in themselves and not means to our comfort.

This is precisely how Jesus interacts with people throughout the Gospel. In today’s passage, he encounters many people whom those in power have cast off. He calls Matthew the tax collector to be one of his disciples and goes to eat at his house. This scandalizes the Pharisees because the tax collectors were known Roman collaborators and many were corrupt as well, overcharging and then skimming off the top. Jesus eats with these and other uncategorized “sinners.” He doesn’t dismiss them because of their standing. Jesus welcomes them to him, honors their dignity, and through this honoring brings them back into right relationship with God.

In the next story, Jesus honors the dignity of the woman who has been bleeding for twelve years. Outcast from the religious life of her society, the woman comes up behind Jesus and touches the fringe of his cloak, believing this will heal her. When she does this, Jesus is on his way to help one of the leaders of the synagogue, a bigwig in town. But Jesus stops when he senses the woman’s presence. And this line is the important one here: “Jesus turned, and seeing her he said…”

Jesus turns to the woman and sees her, this woman whose circumstances have made her all but invisible to her society. Jesus sees her. He sees her story, her sadness, her trials, her faith, her dignity. And she is made well.

We participate in God’s mission of healing and reconciliation by respecting the dignity of other people in both personal encounters and collective action. We treat others not as objects to be consumed but as subjects to be honored. We treat others not as means to our own ends but as ends in themselves. The people on the Maidan respected dignity and helped transform Ukraine into a people who have stood together against an aggressor state for far longer than anyone thought possible. Jesus respected dignity in all his interactions as he called people into right relationship with God. And as we live into our Baptismal promises, we pray, with God’s help, to respect the dignity of all people.