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Imagine being a single parent who works as a nursing assistant at a hospital. You love your job, though your wages are only $9.50 per hour. The hospital gives you health insurance for yourself, but not your two children. Health insurance for your children would cost $200 more per month—which you can’t afford. The worst thing about your job is your schedule. You never know ahead of time what shift you will be working, which makes it impossible to coordinate after-school care for your children.

One of my seminary teachers once said that if you can’t think of anything original to preach, you should tell Bible stories—they have enough power to turn people’s hearts toward God. This may not work with every text, but it certainly works with the drama and wisdom of the story of Naboth and the story of the woman who washes Jesus’ feet with her tears.

Next to Martin Luther King Jr., César Chávez was the most important Christian social activist in recent American history. His commitment to nonviolence lent moral credibility to his leadership of the farmworkers movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Since Chávez was a Catholic, Marco Prouty asks: What was the connection between the Catholic bishops and the social-justice aspirations of Mexican-Americans during the civil rights era?