Social Justice & Economic Rights¹

As we continue to experience the Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. Giver of Life and Love, you care for all your children. Help us to care for all your children, so that we may bring your life and love to the whole world. If these words are not Your Word, may they be forgotten and come to naught. But if they be Thy Word, may they adhere to our hearts, forever transforming us from glory into glory, into the creatures you would have us be, Thou who art our Rock and Redeemer, Amen.

I am beginning another sermon series. But this one is a little unlike some others I’ve preached to you in the past in this manner, I’m not preaching them consecutively. I’m preaching one today, one in late May, one in July, one in August, one in October, and a last one late November. I’m using a great new book as a resource, and that is what the series has in common. The book is called Credo and is collected thoughts and quotes from William Sloane Coffin, at one time the chaplain at Yale, he served as senior minister at Riverside Church, but may be best known as Rev. Sloan in the Doonesbury comic strip. They may at times feel like Prophetic sermons, and so be it. I preach them because I agree with the statement in the book, found on page 50. “Not to take sides is effectively to weigh in on the side of the stronger.”²

So, we look today at the topic of Social Justice and Economic Rights. Hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in Isaiah. Listen to God’s word for you today. Isaiah 3.12b-15. The Grass withers, the Flower falls, but the Word of the Lord endures forever…Thanks be to God. And now hear The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in Micah. Micah 6.6-8. The Word of the Lord…Thanks be to God.

It was our last semester, most of us. And knowing that regular preaching was coming up, many of us sat down in the room for the guest professor of the semester to teach Prophetic preaching. He sat on a stool, looked us over, and his first words to us, for the whole semester went something like this. “You’ve got to preach in the tension, got to understand the tension that we all live with, and when you preach, be a modern day prophet. We live in the world, and that requires us to do certain things. But our citizenship is in heaven, in the kingdom of God, so we are required to speak that word. Which is to say, I am against the stock market. I think it makes the rich richer, makes the poor poorer. I think it takes things that have no value, mainly perception of value, and gives it value. But, I’m 60 this year, looking to retirement. And all of my retirement fund is in the stock market. Everyone you preach to lives in the same kind of tension, and the point is not to get them to take their money out of the market, but to make them aware of the problems.”

I too have some retirement in a 403b, which is the non-profit way to do a 401k, in the market. And all of it is in supposed ethical companies. Because of Dr. Eugene Lowry, guest professor my last semester.

So, I preach to you today about the economy and social justice, not because I want you to go out tomorrow and boycott Wall Street, or the Economy, or anything really, but because I want you to see with opened eyes.

“When we are intent of being, rather than on having, we are happier. And when we are intent on being, we don’t take away from other people’s being – in fact, we enhance it. But when we are intent on having, we create have-nots – and invariably lie about the connection.”³ Compassion and justice are not merely choices, they are companions. If we have compassion for our brothers and sisters, for the children of God around the world, we must work for justice, including Economic justice.

In his book, Coffin writes this. “It is ironic to think of the number of people in this country who pray for the poor and needy on Sunday and spend the rest of the week complaining that the government is doing something about them.”⁴ Helping people, however it is done, by whomever it is done, and by whatever cost it takes, is the Biblical mandate. And there are far too many people for whom poverty, homelessness, and indignity are the day to day experience. Our Creator has given us, all of us, life, and we have seen fit to let some people suffer such things so that we might have the quote better life. But is life really better that way?

It’s the economy, beloved, that needs our attention. The need is pronounced, and desperate, for us to change what we think the economy is. Society and the ways of the world will tell us that the economy is the way we get by in life, get our needs met, make sure to provide for ourselves and our loved ones. That is the economy of wealth, of even shared wealth when done well. We need to move from the economy of wealth to the economy of grace. If we take opportunities to act with grace, we will find true riches indeed. Yeah, this means we will need to change the economy, and our attitude toward it, but we need to start somewhere.

I know the defensive tendency that can crop up so naturally as the human reaction, especially those of us in church. ‘This economy talk is really about the world, isn’t really our domain. This kind of sermon should be preached to the government officials, and those who are in charge of this kind of thing. After all, Jesus was not into the issue of the economy or money.’ Nothing could be further from the truth. The Gospels show a Jesus who talks more about money than sexual issues, including homosexuality. Jesus talked more about money than he did about heaven or hell. Jesus talked more about money than he did about prayer. The only thing Jesus talked in the gospels about more than money is the Kingdom of God. The money and the economy is exactly the kind of thing that we should talk about, exactly the kind of thing that we should be evangelistic about.

In the grand scheme of things, as humans, “We all belong one to another. That’s the way God made us. Christ died to keep us that way. Our sin is only and always that we put asunder what God has joined together.”⁵ If I had one wish for the churches and for Christians, especially in America, and it would magically come true, it would be this: that they would come to see the difference between charity and justice. Charity is a matter of personal attributes. Justice is a matter of public policy. Charity seeks to alleviate the effects of injustice; justice seeks to eliminate the causes of it. Charity gives bread to the hungry; justice addresses the systemic causes of people going without food. Charity is good, and we need to be about it. But Charity in no way affects the status quo, while justice leads inevitably to political confrontation. “Especially I would hope that Christians would see that the compassion that moved the Good Samaritan to act charitably – that same compassion prompted biblical prophets to confront injustice, to speak truth to power, as did Jesus, who, though more than a prophet, was certainly nothing less.”⁶

Walter Brueggeman is known for this quotation. “Justice is to sort out what belongs to whom, and to return it to them.” If it all belongs to God, as I asserted about a month ago, then Justice re-describes the world. And to do justice as God does justice is to intervene in the social order, as did Moses in Pharoah’s court when he insisted upon freedom for the Hebrew slaves; as did Nathan in David’s court when he protested the king’s horrible action against Uriah the Hittite; as did Elijah when he thundered against Ahab and Jezebel for having done in Naboth in order to take his land.⁷ “The Biblical understanding of justice derives from a generous God who liberated people from oppression and gave them a land flowing with milk and honey. Having been blessed by such a beneficent God, the people were to respond in kind – welcoming, protecting, and aiding the poor, widows, orphans and resident aliens.”⁸

“Were our government for the people, we would have the best education in the world, universal health insurance, a decent way of financing elections, and a massive commitment to sources of clean energy.”⁹ Separation of church and state is a sound doctrine as long as it points to organizational separation. You are never called to separate your call as a child of God from your politics. Our faith should certainly inform our common life, not just our personal, more private lives.¹⁰

In January, I preached about the Protestant tradition and the Presbyterian Church. Now, as much as ever, the world needs a prophetic voice, calling from the wilderness, helping create awareness, and not letting the machine of the economy to continue to crush some so that others may over-flouish.

This isn’t comfortable stuff here beloved, I know that. It isn’t any more comfortable for you to hear than it is for me to say. But it is the kind of radical message for which the prophets were known, and for which Jesus himself was quite fond. It is the message that we need to take to the world. There is a disconnect when we work for charity, but continue to be silent when we see the injustice of the economy. If we go to the Co-op and help sort donations, and distribute food, and even help people get jobs, but don’t work for justice, then we are fighting against ourselves, and losing. If we build Habitat Houses, but continue to live silently as the economy eats up those for whom we build, have we helped? If we send folks to Kentucky for a week, but don’t speak up for the economic rights for all citizens of our country and our world, we are using band-aids to cover the problem. Sure we need to do those things, but we also need to work for economic justice at the same time.

I leave you with this encouragement, and thought for hope. “‘(One) who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord.’ Isn’t that a wonderful thought? If we voluntarily give of our surplus, and if we fight for justice, we are helping the poor, yes, but more than that: we are helping the Creator of heaven and earth; we are helping God with a loan! ‘(One) who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord.’ And I leave it to your experience and imagination to surmise what the repayment of that loan might be, for ‘eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of (humans), the things which God hath prepared for them that love (God).’”¹¹ Amen.