September 6, 2009 Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost and
Labor Day Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Psalm 146; James 2:1-9, 12-13; Mark 7:24-37
No partiality. A ninety-year-old native Vermonter said to me once, “My
wife is even-tempered. Always mad.”
No partiality. In the Frank Capra movie from the 1940s, It’s a Wonderful
Life, the richest man in town, the cruel Mr. Potter reviews applications for draft
exemptions during World War II, saying, “1-A, 1-A, 1-A, 1-A…” sending
everyone alike into the war, regardless of their hardship or disability.
The scriptures say that God shows no partiality. Whether that is good news
or bad news depends on what kind of God we have.
If the God we imagine is a God of harsh judgment, a God that demands
perfection, if our God’s “no partiality” is like the wife who is always mad or the
merciless Potter sending everyone to war, then that is bad news, because we will
probably create a loveless world that mirrors that God.
But if the God we imagine is the God of the 146th Psalm “who executes
justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry, who lifts up those who are
bowed down, who watches over the stranger and upholds the orphan and the
widow,” then that is good news, because it will probably move us to be generous-
hearted ourselves. We will create a world that mirrors that loving God.
The movie It’s a Wonderful Life shows the difference between the world
created by Potter’s heartless form of “no partiality” and the world created by the
impartial mercy of another character, George Bailey. Potter’s economic policies
widen the gap between the classes, forcing the poor to stay poor and to live in
hardship and squalor. The town created by Potter is a selfish place full of
suspicion and meanness.
George Bailey and his Building and Loan give poor people a chance to buy
a home and start a business. The town created by George Bailey is a neighborly
place where people care about one another. The streets are friendly, the poorer
neighborhoods are well tended, and hopefulness characterizes the town because
even as people struggle, they can count on a culture of support.
The dark, dismal shanties of the sinking poor in Pottersville versus the neat,
bright little houses of the rising poor in Bailey Park: back in the years after World
War II people could see two forces vying to shape American society. They could
see that the Potter types were gaining disproportionate power and influence, and
that the George Bailey, small town, mom and pop, looking-out-for-the-little-guy
mentality was in danger of being crushed.
Now, half a century later, we can look back and see who won. Last month
Edith Rasell preached from this pulpit. She is a good friend of Nancy Hughes
from the national United Church of Christ’s Justice and Witness Ministries. Her
sermon gave a portrait of America that we need to hear on this Labor Day when
we have the chance to influence health care legislation. Here is how she describes
the America we live in today:
“Among children of low-income parents…fewer than one out of five will
rise above the middle of the income spectrum…. One-quarter of all jobs pay
poverty-level wages…. And things are getting worse…. Over the past 30 years
among the bottom 90% of households…. average income rose just 2%…. At the
same time…among the top 1% of households…. average income rose 238%….
Fully 30% of families have inadequate income.”
Rasell concludes, “There is something deeply wrong with this situation.
We live in an extremely rich society but one that also appears to be mean, stingy
and…uncaring.”
In other words, Potter has won. The George Baileys of America are by no
means extinct, as we well know, but we now live in Pottersville. There is no
longer the hope of a wonderful life for huge numbers of people. The struggle that
was taking place in America after World War II has turned decisively in the
direction of the domination of the rich over the poor in a way that is mean, stingy
and uncaring.
The change has happened gradually and only relatively recently so we may
think things are still the way they were; and it is easy to ignore the change if we
ourselves live in relative comfort. But Christ calls us out of ignorance and out of
apathy and out of comfort into confrontation with the truth. Christ calls us to
change the way things are and move them toward the ideals of God’s realm.
As James says, favoritism to the rich is not God’s way. God has chosen the
poor, he says, but you have dishonored the poor. James says that the law to love
our neighbor as our self does not leave any room for partiality. He says,
“Judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy
triumphs over judgment.”
To us, the gospel story today is shocking because it shows Jesus being
judgmental rather than merciful to a Gentile woman who comes to him begging
for healing for her daughter. But to the Jewish followers of Jesus, it would have
been shocking because he repents in the end and does extend mercy to her.
Gentiles were impure, women were an underclass that a teacher like Jesus would
be expected to ignore, and Jesus was only saying what his culture put in his mouth
when he said, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s
food and throw it to the little dog.”
It is important to note what makes him change his mind from that position.
It is not that the Gentile repents or converts. She does not win by faith. She says,
“Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” And Jesus says, “For
saying that, you may go—your daughter is healed.”
The woman argues that there is no partiality in the household where
everyone including the little dog is allowed to have its food, and she appeals to
Jesus to be that merciful and just. Jesus is won over by her argument. He reaches
across the boundary established by his society and extends his health care
coverage to those left out by birth. Once again, Jesus breaks down barriers in
order to include as equal those excluded and oppressed. He was always doing this.
He talked about the wedding feast where outcasts and poor people were
invited as guests.
He talked about the workers who came to the field at different times of the
work day, yet even those who came only for the last hour received equal pay.
He talked about the master who forgave a slave a huge debt, but when the
slave turned around and failed to forgive another slave, then he lost the
forgiveness of his master.
The mercy and love of God do not go just to those who deserve them. The
only qualification necessary for mercy and love is a person’s need of them. But to
stay in the sacred way of that grace it takes something more. It takes paying
forward to others the gifts we have received. To dwell in mercy requires that we
then extend mercy.
How to apply the ethical teaching of Christ to the health care debate could
not be much clearer. Nor could the need. I heard Marian Wright Edelman of the
Children’s Defense Fund tell of a child whose single, uninsured mother could not
afford to take him to the dentist when he had a toothache. The boy died of the
infection that spread from that tooth that the slightest amount of health care
coverage could have prevented. Would Jesus tolerate even one such story? And
yet eighteen thousand people die like that child every year because of a lack of
health insurance—that’s two people every hour. Our society has forty-seven
million people without health insurance and twenty-five million more with
inadequate coverage, adding up to a quarter of all Americans. The poor and
people who are not white suffer the most. It is clear what Jesus would do.
What is murky is how to translate Christ’s ethic into legislation. Politics is
the art of compromise, but is this a time for compromise? And if so, what can be
compromised without violating the laws of love and the golden rule that Jesus
gave us as absolutes?
These are questions we need to answer. A special congregational meeting
will be held two weeks from today, on Sunday the 20th, after coffee hour, where
we will discuss endorsing a health care reform resolution proposed by Jim Hughes
that you will be receiving this week. We have to decide where we stand.
The first thing we need to figure out is what the clearest translation of
Christ’s principles would look like in legislation. The United Church of Christ as
a denomination believes it would be the single-payer model, basically extending
Medicare to people of all ages. This is the solution favored by 59% of American
physicians. It is the simplest and fairest and most logical solution. But the powers
that be in Washington have so far not considered it as a realistic option because of
the opposition to it by vocal members of the Republican Party. Former Vermont
Governor and physician Howard Dean is arguing that this is no time to be thinking
of compromise—that we should pass a bill that would do the right thing in the
right way. Is that the position we as a congregation should take, insisting on a
single-payer plan? Or should we endorse certain principles like universal and
equal coverage, affordability and freedom of choice, and insist that whatever
compromise gets worked out, it should include these attributes?
We need to decide where to stand in relation to Christ’s ideal on the one
hand and political expediency on the other; but even more important than the exact
location of our stand is that we be boldly visible with it. We have an opportunity
now to shift America a notch away from being a mean, stingy and uncaring
society, and though we may be only one small voice, there is no telling what
impact we may have.
Martha Sullivan is a good example. She attended a health care rally in
Denver. She was trying to attach a sign that read “Single Payer,” to a chain-link
fence when a reporter approached her and asked her why she was there. She said
that her denomination, the United Church of Christ, has urged its members to
support health care for all. She said, “I think people who have Christian beliefs
should stand up and say, ‘This is what Jesus would have wanted.’” Martha
Sullivan was just one voice, but she was quoted on the front page of the New York
Times this week. Today her one voice is inspiring congregations across the
country to speak out more boldly.
Even if we had no hope of success, though, the most important reason to act
is that it is the right thing to do. Jesus did not want to help that Gentile woman,
but her need presented an irrefutable argument. There is no partiality in the love
and mercy of God. We cannot show partiality in our love and mercy and still be
following Christ. If we want to be in the sacred way, then when we hear need
asking for our help, regardless of whether we think we will do any good, we need
to do what we can.
Let us pray in silence…
Sermon 09/06/2009