Texts: Amos 8: 4-7; Luke 16: 10-13
Last Thursday, the House of Representatives
“narrowly approved a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s food stamp
program . . . that would slash about $39
billion in funding over the next decade, cut aid to about 4 million Americans
in the next few years, and shift the burden of providing aid to some of the
nation’s poor to state governments” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/09/19/house-approves-gop-plan-to-slash-food-stamp-funding/).
I
appreciate how complex and persistent is the problem of poverty. I understand
that Americans, who are allergic to raising taxes, are simultaneously
challenged to reduce poverty and the national debt. I understand that welfare fraud exists and a
few dishonest people inevitably manage to exploit any system designed to help
those who cannot help themselves. Some,
therefore, believe that cuts to SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program, are justified. But surely we all see the great gulf growing between
the rich and poor. Meanwhile, we
continue to prioritize the funding of our war machine and we continue to
privilege the privileged.
So
in times like these I keep hearing the voice of the outraged prophet Amos
booming across the centuries and demanding that our national and state leaders
care about the poor: “Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to
ruin the poor of the land,” warned the prophet Amos in the 8th
century BCE. “Hear this, you that
trample on the needy and bring ruin to the poor of the land,” warns Amos
still. “Hear this, you legislators, who
play politics with the lives of the poor.”
“Hear this, you complacent church goers who think someone else is
responsible for our political and economic systems.”
Hear
this: Poverty cannot be addressed by
charity alone. Poverty and other social
ills require entire systems to be rearranged.
In Amos’s day, for instance, an unfair tax system was enriching the rich
while driving the poor into deeper poverty.
In our day, regressive tax laws likewise intensify inequities. That is
why we as a faith community need to consider that our response to poverty is
not merely a matter of donating to charities or helping out neighbors who have
fallen on hard times. While the Bible certainly
encourages alms giving, the Bible also presents examples of prophets who speak to
those in authority about correcting unjust social and economic systems.
Amos
spoke to the rulers of his day. You and
I can address those in power today: by
voting, contacting our legislators, writing letters to editors, demonstrating
peacefully, organizing groups to do likewise.
Our charitable dollars can go only so far and can sometimes simply shore
up unfair systems by placing Band-Aids on problems that require major
surgery.
Charity
is often about making me feel that I’m a good person rather than making someone
else feel empowered and whole.
Maybe
you’ve known someone like a woman I’ll call Amanda. Amanda is a middle-aged professional living
in an elite neighborhood. For twenty
years she has employed another woman to clean her home twice a week. For twenty years Amanda has donated bags of
good, used clothing to the woman who meticulously cleans her house. Sometimes
she offers her house cleaner used appliances when Amanda upgrades hers. Amanda has always provided lunch for her
“cleaning lady” on the days the house cleaner is working, and has remembered her
employee at Christmas with a turkey or ham because she suspects the house cleaner’s
family barely scrapes by. Once when her
house cleaner was hospitalized for a serious surgery, Amanda visited her in the
hospital and brought a huge basket of fruit and flowers. But Amanda also is proud of the fact that she
negotiated exceptionally low wages for her house cleaner. Whenever the house cleaner has asked for a
raise, Amanda has usually convinced her to remain in her employ without a pay
increase. Amanda is pleased that she has
only had to raise her housekeeper’s hourly wages twice in 20 years. At the same time, Amanda is quite pleased
with herself for always behaving so charitably toward her house cleaner.
One
potential problem with the charity of individuals and groups is that it often allows
those in more powerful positions to feel better about themselves without having
to change the fundamental inequities.
Charity is not always motivated by selfishness or tainted by
smugness—but sometimes it is.
When
I used to engage my college students in service-learning projects in the
community, I was secretly pleased when they wrote in their journals about
people they’d served who did not express gratitude. Those experiences gave my students the
opportunity to recognize they’d expected their efforts would be appreciated and
praised. This realization helped them acknowledge that maybe one reason they
wanted to serve others was to make themselves feel good, perhaps even
superior. Ironically, my students could
realize they had in fact learned something important about themselves from those they were serving
and thus had themselves been on the receiving end in what was thereafter a more
mutual relationship.
Real
service in the name of justice equalizes relationships. Service in the name of
charity is done to or for others, but service in the name of justice is done
WITH others. Charity, therefore, can
deepen the divides, can be imposed onto those in need, can discount the wisdom
of the one being served, can let the giver just walk away from the problem. Justice is the only ground on which authentic mutual
relationships can be built.
Justice
trumps charity for other reasons.
According to William Sloan Coffin, “Charity is a matter of personal
attributes; justice, a matter of public policy.” No matter how generously
individuals contribute to charities, they cannot give enough to correct an
unjust system. Charity can change an
individual’s short-term situation, not a long-term or a wide-spread
injustice. In fact, charity can
sometimes make an injustice more entrenched.
Regressive tax laws, inhumane immigration laws, unfair marriage laws
will keep on disempowering some people
and enriching or favoring others—until the laws, the systems themselves,
change.
Another
important reason to work for justice is also quite practical. Again, as William
Sloan Coffin explained, “Charity seeks to alleviate the effects of injustice;
justice seeks to eliminate the causes.”
A
well-known story illustrates this point well:
Once
upon a time there was a town that was built just beyond the bend of a large
river. One day some of the children from the town were playing beside the river
when they noticed three bodies floating in the water. They ran for help and the townsfolk quickly
pulled the bodies out of the river.
One
body was dead so they buried it. One was
alive, but quite ill, so they put that person into the hospital. The third turned out to be a healthy child,
whom they then placed with a family who cared for it and who took it to school.
From
that day on, every day a number of bodies came floating down the river and,
every day, the good people of the town would pull them out and tend to
them—taking the sick to hospitals, placing children with families, and burying
those who were dead.
This
went on for years. Each day brought its
own quota of bodies, and the townsfolk came not only to expect a number of
bodies each day but also worked at developing more elaborate systems for
picking them out of the river and tending to them. Some of the townsfolk became quite generous
in tending to these bodies and a few extraordinary ones even gave up their jobs
so that they could attend to this concern full-time. And the town itself felt a certain healthy
pride in its generosity.
However,
during all these years and despite all that generosity, nobody thought to go up
the river, beyond the bend that hid from their sight what was above them, and
find out why, daily, those bodies came floating down the river. (Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing--suggested by Lella Lowe).
Doesn’t
it make more sense to prevent the problem rather than correct it after it has
developed? That’s why education, for
instance, is considered such an important tactic for the work of justice.
Can
you think of societal ills other than poverty that might be prevented with
excellent public education?
Responses
from the congregation:
·
Better
physical and mental health
· Care for the environment
·
Reduction of
crime
Other
than providing quality public education, what are some other means of creating a just society?
Responses
from the congregation:
·
Offering the
public access to good nutrition, prenatal care, health care, mental health care
·
Caring for
our environment
·
Providing
good employment opportunities
·
Improving
public infrastructures
·
Creating fair
and affordable housing
· Teaching peacemaking
in our homes, communities, and world
William
Sloan Coffin said, “Had I but one wish
for the churches of America, I think it would be that they come to see the
difference between charity and justice."
Do WE see the difference between charity and
justice? (We make this distinction in our "Principles for Serving Others" that can be found on our website: http://opentableucc.org/our_principles_28.html.) This Tuesday we
will participate in feeding and hosting overnight several families who currently are
without housing. Is our work with Family
Promise an act of charity or justice?
Congregation discusses reasons to name Family Promise as an organization doing justice.
Of
course, charity is necessary at times as a stop-gap measure. An act of
extraordinary charity might even change the entire course of one person’s life
and therefore the many lives that person later affects. Charity is usually a gracious giving of one’s
self.
But
churches are sometimes reluctant to organize for social justice--partly because
these efforts sound so political. And
they are. But they need not be
partisan. Righting economic and social
wrongs involves systemic change, and that requires socio-political action.
We
as a new church are supporting several causes of justice but may eventually
identify one or a few causes of justice that will become especially dear to
us.
Let’s
name some of the justice efforts we’re already supporting:
·
Immigration
reform
·
Soul of Somanya
· Justice efforts through the United Church of Christ
·
Befriending
a refugee family
·
Environmental
activism
·
LGBTQ
rights through the We DO Campaign and others
·
Peacemaking
In
2 weeks we will contribute to a special offering our denomination collects to
fund projects of justice created by our own UCC churches and
organizations. This offering, called
Neighbors in Need, gives churches just like ours the seed money to begin
projects that can address injustices and thus go “up river” to the root causes. These projects emphasize justice over charity. Let’s continue to pray about unmet needs in our
city so that we can then envision a way we are uniquely suited to address injustice.
In time we may identify or create a ministry especially well suited to our gifts and calling. This idea will bubble
up from among us. And this project will change us, will galvanize us into
action, will draw others to us in the work of social justice, and will deepen
us all spiritually through our mutual endeavor and the inner reflection and deepening spirituality it will
provoke.
In
the meantime, we are even now in this moment being changed as we take time, on Sundays like this, to withdraw
from the getting and spending game in order to remember that we "cannot serve
both God and wealth," as Jesus put it.
Wealth can be a means, not an end; a way to serve God; not the
thing we devote our lives to. Here we set aside time that is not dedicated to acquiring things, or making money, or
getting caught up in an economic system that will eventually chew us up and
spit us out. We need moments each week to recognize we are more than consumers, more than workers. We are spiritual beings made to love God, to
love the created world, and to love one another. That is our highest vocation.
PRAYER: God of the poor, come to our poverty—a
poverty that might be material or spiritual.
Enrich our lives with a diverse and loving community that refuses to
believe that harmful systems can’t be changed. Amen
