|
|
“Journey to Justice: Economics”
Luke 16:19-31
A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley
I suppose in a sermon with the words
economics and justice in it, you might assume I would be quoting statistics
about how economically unequal we are in this country and state. The problem is, where do you start and where
do you end?
I could talk about the folly of our increasingly regressive tax
system.
I could talk about the way we are losing the opportunities for health
care for all of us.
I could quote statistics about how our actual income has gone down from
the past thrirty years while the wealth of our nation has gone up.
I could talk about who gains and who loses in the war on terror.
How about the economics of elections and who is beholden to whom when
an election is won?
How about the struggle to make ends meet for a lot of us?
What about the struggles of people who are homeless and the fact that
there is again little or no money available for opening up additional shelter
space, let alone affordable housing?
We don’t need statistics to tell us that the economy is messed up.
When we can’t find a job or insurance, when we can’t pay our bills, we
get stuck.
All of us know plenty about economics.
It consumes us. It becomes the
focal point of our lives, where we spend our energy, it becomes our god. Think of the oxymoron that the statement on
our money is “In God we trust”. What
these notes say is, in the US Treasury we trust. This is not a religious symbol. It’s an idolatrous symbol. It’s a symptom of our disease—our dependence
upon this demi-god who offers no ultimate security.
I think what we say more accurately, is “We trust THIS god.”
If we were to say in God we trust, might we be doing something about
economic justice? Might we have some
different priorities as a people?
Traditionally, today’s scripture has been used to lift up the holiness
of the poor. We realize that we are not
poor, so we convince ourselves that we could never be that holy because of all
of our stuff. What this scripture really
is is an indictment on uncaring richness.
This is a theme we find a lot in Luke.
It is in Luke where Mary sings about the mighty being taken down from
their thrones, the hungry being filled with good things and rich being sent
away empty.
Luke is where Zaccheaus repents of his robbery. Unlike our present government, he begins his
own no new taxes policy and redistributes his wealth not to the rich but to the
poor whom he has robbed.
It is Luke who tells the story of the Good Samaritan who pays the
hospital bill of the abused foreigner who was ignored by the good religious
folk.
In Luke, Jesus tells the rich young ruler is to sell all he has and
give the poor first and then come and
follow him. The implication is that he
could not really follow Jesus until he god rid of the other god in his
life.
In Luke, Jesus says, “Blessed are you who are poor for yours is the
kingdom of heaven, but woe to you who are rich for you have received your
consolation.
Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled and woe to
you who are full now for you will be hungry…”
And in Luke a few verses before today’s scripture, we have the section
that says “You cannot serve two masters.
You need to make your choice. Do
you worship God or do you worship wealth?
To illustrate this concept, Jesus tells the story of the rich man and
Lazarus. Tradition calls the rich man
Dives—that’s Latin for “Rich Man”. Dives
wore fine clothes and ate sumptuously at every meal. The way Dives is described, he is a real fat
cat. An aristocrat with a great house
and conspicuous consumption was his modus operendi.
Meanwhile, poor Lazarus was waiting at his gate for whatever scraps of
food there might have been. Lazarus was
never allowed in the gate. His sores
made him unclean and his condition meant that he was close to death.
We can imagine that Dives at least ignored the man. Maybe he even lobbied for or enacted policies
that kept him poor and bleeding from sores.
Lazarus was treated like an animal and he may well have acted like an
animal.
The story goes that when they both died, they got their just
reward. Lazarus ended up in Abraham’s
bosom and Dives ended up in torment.
From the story, we don’t know if Lazarus was righteous in life. We do know that Dives have wealth and had
kept Lazarus on the other side of the gate.
Realize that Dives isn’t in hell in this story. The concept of hell was actually a later
Christian development. Dives was in Hades
which, according to Bill Herzog, was a place of torment where you had the
opportunity to repent of your transgressions in life. But Dives doesn’t repent. In fact, he exposes the length and breadth of
his ignorance of what it is to be faithful.
This is where it gets interesting.
Dives recognizes Lazarus. He even
knows his name. And yet, he never gave
him anything. Even in Hades he doesn’t
recognize Lazarus’ humanity. He assumes
that Lazarus is Abraham’s servant.
Dives asks Abraham to order Lazarus to give him something to cool his
hot tongue. Dives never gave Lazarus
anything in life and yet he expects Lazarus to serve him in death. But there is a chasm, not unlike the gate to
his earthly mansion that held Lazarus at bay.
This chasm is literal and figurative.
Poor Dives doesn’t get it. He
calls Abraham ‘father’ but doesn’t recognize Lazarus as his brother. Dives is simply confused and never repents.
Dives then beseeches Abraham to let him warn his own brothers. He still doesn’t get it that if Abraham is
his “father”, then Lazarus must be his “brother.” Abraham tells him that they have had their
warning. It’s called the Torah and the
Prophets—the Bible. They have had all
the warning they need.
I wonder what would happen if all those moralizers who trumpet their
public piety took seriously the economic teachings of the gospels. What if those who resemble Dives realized
what they were doing to the Lazarus’s of the world? What if they also realized what they were
doing to themselves?
Maybe Lazarus would not be ignored.
Maybe people would have more opportunities for good paying jobs.
Maybe people would be treated like human beings instead of like
commodities.
But that would mean that our god would need to change. We would have to pay attention to God and not
the god of money which seduces us into thinking that Lazarus has only himself
to blame. Today’s scripture says that
Dives has only himself to blame for his plight.
Hear this: Dives isn’t in torment because he was rich. He is in torment because he doesn’t
care. Tony Compolo preached many times a
sermon that included the phrase that went something like this:
“Two thirds of the world is starving while we sit in relative luxury as
a nation and most of you don’t give a damn.
And the worst part of it is that you are more concerned that I said
“damn” from the pulpit than the fact that two thirds of the world is starving.”
There is a chasm in our world and it is growing by leaps and
bounds. It ridicules or appropriates
justice to serve its own means. It is
the gap between not only the rich and the poor but between the uncaring and the
poor. This me-firstism is what Jesus was
speaking against. It flies in the face
of any possibility of equity or justice in the world.
As John McCutcheon sings, “The economy has only one rule, more. The economy lies. It tells us it is about freedom. But the economy is about dependence but not
on land, or animals, or neighbors or weather, but on machinery and fuel and
credit.” (from a song called “It’s the
Economy, Stupid”)
But there are some who see something else. Millionaires like Bono, Bill Gates and others
tell us that rich people and countries have a moral responsibility to give aid
to developing and poorer countries. I
can’t help but think that the best way to fight terrorism is to be the generous
country that looks out for the needs of the poor of the world instead of
robbing them of their diamonds, and their seeds and their oil and their crops
to feed our own over-consumption.
Maybe if we took our morality to a new level and ask the questions
about why we are not caring about our brothers and sisters, then we might avoid
Dives’ fate. That’s what Jesus
wants. He wants us to recognize the
Lazaruses out there. They have something
to teach us, not about their lives so much as about our lives and how we are
intertwined and interconnected. Until we
can see Lazarus as a brother, we will continue to be at war with ourselves and
with our world.
Just who is Lazarus?
Lazarus might be the bum on the street.
Or the crazy person smelling up our hallways.
Or the Iraqi or Afghani child hit by collateral damage in our bombing
campaigns.
Lazarus is a person with AIDS here and across the world.
Lazarus is a Somali activist,
A migrant worker
A prisoner at
An addict
A teenage mother
A pregnant youth
A person suffering from the demons of depression and despondency
A farmer in
A mother in
A person in an abusive relationship
All of these people are Lazarus.
Our work, as followers of Jesus is to remember that God loves all of
them. And maybe our concentration on
another idolatrous god called mammon is keeping us from recognizing them as a
sister or brother.
We don’t even begin to be on the journey to economic justice until we
see Lazarus as our brother. When we do
that, then there no longer is a stranger at the gate. There no longer is a hopeless chasm. There no longer is an immobile sense of
me-first-ism. For we have connected with
the true God. And when we do that, our
creative energies are unleashed and as we ask the right questions, we start
finding the right answers. The idea of
opening up a homeless shelter in this church came when we recognized the
strangers who had made their homes at the gates of our church were our brothers
and sisters.
Let me close with portions of a poem by Wendell Berry: “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”
Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
Vacation with pay. Want more
Of everything ready-made. Be
afraid
To know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
Any more. Your mind will be
punched in a card
And shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
They will call you. When they
want you
To die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
That won’t compute. Love the
Lord.
Love the world. Work for
nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
The flag. Hope to live in that
free
Republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
Understand. Praise ignorance,
for what man
Has not encountered he has not yet destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant
sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
That you did not plant,
That you will not live to harvest
Say that the leaves are harvested
When they have rotted into mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such
returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
That will build into trees
Every thousand years…
Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be
joyful
Though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
For power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
A woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
Of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your
head
In her lap. Swear allegiance
To what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
Can predict the motions of your minds,
Lose it. Leave it as a sign
To mark a false trail, the way
You didn’t go. Be like the fox
Who makes more tracks than necessary,
Some in the wrong direction.
Practice Resurrection.