The Worth of a Person, Part 2

Continued from Part 1, the previous post.

Ephesians 1:3-14

During Black History Month, it is important to realize there is another way that the question of what a person is worth lurks just beyond our attention everyday.  That is in the modern-day revival of slavery.  Often nowadays it is called human trafficking.  Observers tell us that large international criminal organizations now operate with their eye on the market and on their bottom line.  They follow the same logic of legal multinational corporations.  They don’t really care what they buy, sell, and trade, so long as they are making the highest profit available.  The move is away from specializing in a certain illegal product, such as drugs.  Drug cartels now also trade weapons or human beings, whatever the market is asking for.

What is a trafficked human being worth?  In South Asia, a desperately poor family may sell a child for slave labor for as little as $150.  Across the globe, some sources say the average price of a slave is around $400, but others say even less.  The average income to be made by the use of slave labor is above $10,000 per year, so the profit motive is powerful.  In the selling of sex, a teenage girl or young woman may cost a buyer $1900, but the same girl or woman may make that slave owner profits of $2400 a month.  Bought for a pittance, the modern slave fills the pockets of manufacturers, agriculturalists, and pimps.  In Africa, child slaves work the cocoa plantations of Ghana, the poor work in sweatshops making clothes in Lesotho, and throughout Central Africa children are kidnapped and forced to become soldiers.  In Asia, manufacturers contract with U.S. corporations to make clothes, electronics, and household goods in China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and many other lands, staffing their sweatshop factories with wage-slaves working under hazardous conditions.  In Latin America, companies enslave workers for mines and large agricultural plantations.  Haitian children are sold and exported to the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere to be household slaves.  And all sorts of slavery exist just beyond our notice in the very land where we live.  But if the productivity declines from injury, illness, or exhaustion, their lives may be worth little or nothing to those who have used and abused them.  Murdering a troublesome slave may at times be a cost of business, since a replacement is so cheap.  Trading in human flesh, making commerce and commodity of someone’s daughter or son, someone’s mother or father, someone’s brother or sister, trading God’s beloved child for a handful of silver—this evil flies in the face of a loving God.  Whether it brings us cheap chocolate bars, cheap tomatoes, cheap shirts and pants, or in the back allies or penthouses, cheap sex with disposable people, such commerce makes God sick, angry, and sad.

What is the worth of a person?  We are living in a time when the worth of most people is diminishing steadily in the eyes of the powerful, the violent, and the unscrupulous.  These are harsh words.  They are hard to say, and hard to hear.  They are the words of despair, the words of death.  But they are not the only words I came by to say to you today.

The Letter to the Ephesians also has some things to say to us about what a person is worth.  We already realize that what someone thinks about the worth of a person may depend on how closely connected the people are.  Remote, invisible sick people may not seem worth a few extra dollars in taxes, but one’s mom or dad, brother or sister, wife, daughter or son may be of immeasurable worth.  A person’s bias and prejudice may lead one to assign low value to the lives of some people.  A slave trader may reduce a human being down to hard cash and potential profits.  But Paul tells the Ephesians a few things about what they are worth in this opening chapter.

First, in verse four he tells them that God considers them worth choosing.  God has chosen us.  God did not need to create the world.  God did not need to populate the Earth with human beings.  God could have looked upon humanity and rejected us for all our failings.  But verse 4 says God chose us.  Choosing us means God has drawn us near.  God wants to be with us.  God wants to share fellowship with us.  God has loved us with an everlasting love.  Being chosen by God entails God’s blessing us with all that heaven has to offer.  The goodness of God is poured out for us.  What is a person worth?  We are worth enough to God that God chose us.

God chose us for a purpose.  God did not choose us to wallow in the mud of our sinfulness.  God did not choose us to remain stagnant and settle for mediocrity, to let our shortcomings take root and grow up like weeds.  No, it says that God chose us to be holy and blameless.  God chose us in Christ.  He saw in Christ what all of us are destined to become.  Our true natures, united to the New Adam, Jesus Christ, are to be set aside for God’s purpose.  We are to turn away from sinning and live as Jesus lived, blameless before God.  And above all, our lives are to be awash with love.  Our way of being in the world is to be a loving way.  Love one another, as I have loved you, said Jesus.  Love God and love your neighbor.  That is our purpose.  That is why God chose us.  God saw in us the value, the worth, that could make that loving way happen.  In God’s scales, we are worth our weight in love.

Going on to verse 5 it says that God judged us to be worth adoption.  Having gone astray, having turned to our own way, living like orphans in the world, God came to give us a family, a home, and a heritage.  God did not merely want us as a trophy or a curiosity on a knick-knack shelf.  God adopted us to sit at the dinner table together.  We are in the family.  God took on responsibility for us.  No longer strays, left to scrounge out a life, now we have a home in God. 

At home with God, we have some responsibilities assigned.  We need to carry our load, but it says God has given us abundant grace to do so.  We need to maintain the family reputation, and we look to Jesus to know how to live up to God’s expectations for us.  We ought to live with gratitude, praising God for the unmerited gifts bestowed on us.  We don’t have to keep on wandering.  We don’t have to wonder where our provision will come from.  God is our provider.  He looked at us and saw people worth adopting.  Now forevermore we are in God’s family.

Finally, according to verse 7, God looked upon us in all of our sins, and evaluated our worth.  God judged us to be worth redeeming, even at a cost.  The cost was God’s willing entry into our condition, taking on human form and flesh.  God came into the world as a baby.  This Jesus grew to be a leader among the Israelites, offering hope to all who were marginalized and oppressed.  The longer Jesus persisted in standing up for justice, the more he put himself in danger.  But he continued to the end because he saw worth in us.

When the world could no longer put up with Jesus’ challenges, the political powers banded together to arrest and execute him.  People who knew him conspired to sell him to the powerful for forty pieces of silver.  This good and loving man, sent from God, very God of very God, was beaten, humiliated, marched to a place of death, pierced and hung from a cross.  There, his life ebbed away.  The blood that had coursed through his body giving life to his cells and strength for his work, poured out because of his faithfulness to his mission.  God found us worth redeeming through the blood of Jesus Christ.  Ephesians explains that Jesus’ sacrificial death came to signify the forgiveness of our sins, for even as he hung there on the cross he had prayed forgiveness for his murderers.  What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss to bear the dreadful curse for my soul?  Oh, sometimes is causes me to tremble.  The letter says God has emptied out his riches of grace and lavished them upon us.

You might give a check to your grandson on his birthday.  You might buy a fancy dress for your granddaughter at Easter.  But what about all those scraggly kids out in the street who don’t seem to know their heads from a hole in the ground?  That’s who we were, and God opened up the treasures of heaven and gave us all more than we can handle.  The redeeming work of Christ has revised our assessment.  Whatever it seemed we were worth in the eyes of the world, God had declared us worthy of grace upon grace.  We share an inheritance with Christ.  We are blessed beyond measure.

Knowing how God assesses our worth, we cannot merely stand by and let the world treat people like they are a dime a dozen.  Having been chosen, adopted, and redeemed by God, we have a responsibility to stand up for the worth of our brothers and sisters, be they the sick, factory workers, or modern slaves.  We need to look around our neighborhood, our schools, and our workplaces to see people according to the worth that God has endowed them with.  Love as God loves, and draw all God’s children into the family. 

I’m not going to go into detail about what to do about health care for all, about supporting oppressed workers, and about taking on the scourge of human trafficking.  Maybe that’s not fair, you say, now that I’ve stirred you up about it.  The Lott Carey Convention is working against human trafficking.  Rev. Barber and Durham CAN are leading efforts to improve jobs and health care.  Getting into the details will have to wait for another opportunity.

But the gospel message I want to bring to you today is that God has judged you worthy, and doing so has embraced you with a love that is boundless and steadfast.  Live in that love.  Sit down at God’s table.  Run around the house like you belong there, because you are one of the family.  Rest assured that God has judged you worthy of the ultimate sacrifice, the redeeming work of Jesus who went all the way to the cross.

If you have not yet realized that God has measured your worth and chosen you, adopted you, and redeemed you, we invite you today to hear and accept God’s calling to you to become part of the family.  Accept the saving work of Christ and follow Jesus today into a new way of life.

Others of you may have let yourself forget that God loves you with an everlasting love.  There is no need to wander in the wilderness any longer.  Let today be a day of returning to the embrace of the one who has adopted you into the family.  Renew your commitment to live as God has called you, holy and blameless before him in love. 

Perhaps you live in Durham but have not united with a church.  Mount Level is striving to be a faithful community of God’s people, a branch of God’s family, here in this city.  If the Spirit is urging you to unite with us in our mission to serve God, then don’t wait any longer.  Follow the Spirit’s leading and become part of this fellowship today.

The Worth of a Person, Part 1

Originally preached at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church, Durham, NC, February 24, 2013

Ephesians 1:3-14

Just this week the news reported that North Carolina now has the harshest policy for helping the unemployed.  A couple hundred dollars a week for twelve weeks is all that the state is willing to do to help hardworking people hold on while they try to find a job.  Cutting back on money that would all flow directly back into the economy makes little sense.  And as you have heard me say before, penalizing people who lost their jobs because of the immoral, criminal acts of others who destroyed the economy goes against any notions of justice.  It raises a question in our minds about how people value the lives of other people.

What if a stranger were to approach you in this room of people and point out someone, then ask you, “How much does he cost?” or “What is his price?”  Certainly it is not a question you are used to hearing.  After the initial shock, it would probably be an offensive question.  Buying and selling Africans and their descendents remains close at hand in cultural memory in this land.

       Moreover, it seems to our sensibilities a misguided question, a question that transgresses our categories of reasoning.  We are well-schooled in markets and commerce, but not everything is appropriate to a market.  For us, talking about costs or prices is a category mistake when assigned to people.

       On the other hand, if we take the question out of this hypothetical situation and ask it differently, if we change the context around, if we do some critical analysis of events in our world, we might uncover ways in which this kind of question is being asked every day.

       For instance, the debate about making sure everyone has access to good health care is one way of asking what is the worth of a person.  Both of the major political parties are unwilling to support the most efficient way to provide health care, a single-payer plan for universal health care, because they know that funding it would entail changing how we put money into the health care system.  Instead of paying premiums to private companies, the money would flow through a single system by means of taxes. 

Ooooh, that dirty word taxes gets people all stirred up.  When someone starts talking about taxes these days, people start feeling like they are getting their pockets picked.  Don’t bother to explain that most be able to save money by using a single-payer system rather than making their own private payments to for-profit insurance companies or so-called non-profit companies knee-deep in cash that looks to anyone else like big profits.  Somehow the idea of taxes to make sure that no one goes without health care gets people upset.  Apparently, many people think that a whole lot of sick people out here just aren’t worth the money it would take for them to see a doctor or get medication.  

I recognize that many people in Durham, and here in Mt. Level, work in the medical profession.  I am not trying to make you out to be the devils in this story.  What I am talking about are vast structures, powerful systems that enfold patients and medical professionals both.  Strong and powerful interests and lobbies are more concerned about controlling the clinics and machinery of health care than making sure there is justice in how these resources get used.  Controlling the scanners and beds is worth more to them than the people whom those assets can help.  So the perspective of both political parties and the rich donors to whom they listen seems to be that a person is not worth the taxes it would take to provide universal health care.

       Any of you who have been through a difficult illness and watched the bills come in would know that health care currently calls for no small amount of money.   After my beloved Everly spent over a month in the hospital last year, we started seeing stacks of bills from hospitals, clinics, doctors, and labs, and quite a few of them ran as high as five figures before the decimal point.  In the face of winning or losing the battle for Everly’s life, I think you understand that all of those bills together don’t even approach the value of her life.  On the other hand, if we did not have the insurance we have, one or more of those bills might have brought our finances to ruin.  Thanks to God’s provision, I don’t have to stand here and beg for help.  We’ve managed to keep up with our bills because we are blessed with jobs that have insurance coverage.  For the millions of other people without health insurance now, an operation or a hospital stay may be all it takes for them to go broke, to lose their homes, or to fall into endless debt.  They may rightly conclude that their lives, their futures, have been sold out from under them. 

       A news story stirred in my guts late last summer and pushed me toward asking today’s question, “What is a person worth?”.  It is a story out of South Africa.  It’s a complicated story about the economic unrest in a land where masses are unemployed and the gap between rich and poor is vast.  But it is also a story that echoes back to the harsh days of apartheid when mineworkers were fuel and fodder for a violent, industrial machine.  At the largest platinum mine in the world, workers began to strike for better pay.  They make between $450 and $650 a month, which is a wage many other unemployed workers would love to have.  You and I know it would be a struggle to live on that amount.  A new, independent union is asking for $1200 a month.  It’s a big raise they want.  None of us would be surprised that the management does not want to give the raise.  As the stakes began to rise, people on all sides of the disagreement began to escalate.  Management threatened mass firings.  Workers threatened larger and longer strikes.  No doubt some people on either side showed some poor judgment and provocative behavior.  But what happened last summer harkened back to the struggles of organized laborers in South Africa under apartheid, of auto workers demanding better conditions and wages Detroit, of millworkers trying to gain recognition and justice in Gastonia, and people standing up for their worth in so many places.  Armed police were ready for action.  The conflict heated up.  And in a few moments, 34 more mineworkers lay dead.  During a week of unrest and violence some police had also lost their lives. 

Why were people dying?  The mining company was falling behind the goals their management had set for production.  Every day they did not run their mines at full capacity, they lost profits for their shareholders.  Police, also paid a worker’s wage, were brought in to risk their lives for the company’s production goals, and in the process the mineworkers’ lives were also put at risk.  Police and miners died for the sake of trying to get the mines back up to production.  Mining production was traded for the lives of forty-plus miners and police officers.  Killing workers seems thrifty when for every job there are hundreds more applicants who would work for less.  The struggle for jobs in South Africa is so great that competing unions get pitted against one another in these mining struggles, leading to misdirected violence between groups of the disenfranchised.  Death on the front lines of union organizing is not so remote in US history, either.  Is South Africa’s tragedy reminding us of the path that the current world economy is taking us down?  Will US employers soon be willing to trade the lives of their workers for profits in the same way?

In Mississippi, at the same time that these events were unfolding in South Africa, autoworkers at the Nissan plant were laying the groundwork to start a union.  Management threatened to close the plant if they unionize.  Although the same Nissan company operates with union contracts in many of its plants in other countries, they tell their employees in Mississippi that their lives are worth just so much.  If it means the hard work of their Mississippi workers would cost them a few cents more, then they would rather shut down their plant and stop making all those cars and all that money.  They would rather go find other desperate and beaten down people who won’t cost them so much, who aren’t worth much.  With automobile companies raking in the profits, an experienced, loyal worker is still not worth enough to have the company sit down at the table and arrive at an agreement fair to all parties. 

The Mississippi and South Africa stories remind me of a pair of texts in Isaiah.  Chapter 58 echoes chapter 1.  The prophet proclaims that God is not happy with the show he is seeing, a showiness of piety and outward worship.  The wealthy, who are putting on the show, are complaining that they have fasted but God did not give them what they wanted.  Isaiah speaks in the words of these unfaithful oppressors when he says, “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”  Then he gives them God's reply,

Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers.
Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
and to strike with a wicked fist.
Such fasting as you do today
will not make your voice heard on high.

            Oppressing workers, treating them violently—this was how the wealthy employers of Isaiah’s day were behaving. But we remember also from the first chapter of Isaiah that God offered a path to resolution of their sins for these people abusing their brothers and sisters. The KJV says, “Come, let us reason together.” The NRSV puts it more bluntly, “Come, let’s argue it out.” Sitting at the table, working out a path of mutual interest is what God would have us do. A solution to oppression is one that will be mutually agreeable to all parties and in accordance with the justice of God. Without it, all the dancing and shouting and fasting and praising turns out to be bad acting that makes God sick and angry with looking at us. God made us all, every one of us, because of love. God loves every person. God counts each one of us as good, as valuable, as worth being heard, being cared for, and being able to share in the bounty of this world. Reasoning that through in a way to be fair to everyone is what God expects. A person is worth that kind of effort.

"The Worth of a Person" is continued in Part 2, the next post.