Randy Richardville: Injustice of modern-day lepers is what makes us unclean

Monroe County Community College President Dr. Kojo Quartey recently authored an article in The Monroe News accentuating some of the positive attributes of Monroe County, Michigan’s “cornerstone.”

He encouraged those of us who live here to proclaim constantly and consistently the positives of our community. Kojo’s message is one of hope in the acknowledged presence of unnamed challenges and is an appropriate and welcome message from one of our local leaders.

Pastor Heather Boone subsequently wrote about the many miracles that God has performed at Oaks of Righteousness yet touched on some of the challenges that the people of Orchard East face every day. The surrounding neighborhood is the poorest census tract in Monroe County; there is a plague of substance abuse and mental health issues abound.

Pastor Boone and her team of overworked and underpaid workers toil in the fields of hopelessness. Her heart figuratively bleeds, and she literally weeps with the modern-day lepers of our community. She doesn’t consider them unclean; injustice is what makes us unclean.

The challenges that both Dr. Quartey and Pastor Boone reference are deep, egregious and aggravated inactions toward our most vulnerable, oppressed, and marginalized people. I believe we, as a community, need to look beyond mere awareness and/or acknowledgement of challenges unnamed. For a time, such as this, we must bring uncomfortable topics into our public conversation.

“It may well be that we will have to repent…for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and wait...’’ (Martin Luther King, 1966).

The Hebrew word, “yachal" means to trust, tarry, expect, be patient, remain in anticipation. The word is used 38 times in the Old Testament and is often translated into “wait” or “hope.” However, the truest meaning of the word is only as deep as the suffering that coexists with it. In other words, unless the cancer of our own neglect is completely removed, it continues to spread and apathy is the resulting condition.

I believe there exists a centripetal missional calling that draws people to see God’s presence in the sick, tired, mentally ill and homeless of our world. In addition to sending missionaries to far away places, we are being called to see the atrocities in our own backyards.  We are way too comfortable sweeping these modern-day lepers to the outskirts of our city walls, sending them some alms, and maybe giving them some old clothes. Does our duty to God’s hurting people end there? Is this enough?

The term “lament” is experientially unknown to most of us in Monroe County. Lamentation comes from the deepest place of empathetic sorrow and is often expressed in groanings and tears.  The prophets of the Old Testament lamented. Jesus lamented. Today, Pastor Heather Boone and her followers at Oaks of Righteousness/ Oaks Village lament; why is that?

Lamentation is borne from the deepest places in one’s being and always elicits repentance, “a decision that results in a change of mind, which in turn leads to a change of purpose and action.” I have studied missional communities both globally and nationally over the past few years and have seen the realities of life for our brothers and sisters in poverty. The picture is not pretty.

Jesus is the ultimate prophet, and He wept over Jerusalem just before He overturned the tables of the moneychangers in God’s temple (Luke 19:41-48). Jesus always offers a place of grace and mercy to God’s people before judgment.

Racism, prejudice, neglect, avoidance and willful ignorance are among our challenges here in Michigan’s cornerstone county. Jesus wept because the people “did not know the time of their visitation” (Luke 19:44). The people of Monroe County are being called to, “Come now and let us reason together…” (Isaiah 1:18).

Come, see the face of Jesus, the Suffering Servant, in the faces of the “unclean” in our community. God’s people deserve more than our leftovers; bring Him the first fruits of our harvests.  He requires nothing less; it is time to act, but action begins with conversation, not words alone.

Randy Richardville is the Vice Chairman of the Monroe County Board of Commissioners, representing District 5. He can be reached at rrichardvilledist5@gmail.com.