Why I'm Not Mad at Colin Kaepernick

There is a modern form of religious fervor known as nationalism.  It is a doctrine which holds that the place of one's birth deserves one's ultimate loyalty and devotion.  The cardinal virtue called forth by nationalism is patriotism, displayed through emotionally charged commitment to love nation and its symbols.  The liturgical practice of nationalism involves postures of reverence and obeisance to symbols such as the national flag, enthusiastic singing of hymns and anthems to the nation, and recitation of creeds such as the pledge of allegiance.

While standard Americanized Christian theology has found it easy to merge devotion to God and Country, my own understanding of following Jesus can't help finding contrasting and conflicting visions of the proper loyalties and loves required by nationalism and Christian faith.  The assumption that the modern fiction of borders should create divisions of ontological hostility--meaning that it is right for me to love and support people on my side of a border and wrong of me to equally love and support people on the other side of a border--contradicts most of what the New Testament teaches.  Moreover, adopting a stance of suspicion, fear, and animosity toward those across the border, which much nationalistic religion seems to affirm, requires a Christian to disavow the very virtues that the Lord exhibited and taught.

While Jesus observed among his closest followers a kind of ethnocentrism that is akin to nationalism, he took numerous opportunities to challenge their prejudices.  When they would have preferred to walk around the territory of Samaria, Jesus walked straight through it.  While they would have avoided talking with a Samaritan woman, he was direct and friendly in acknowledging the common humanity they shared.  While they would have denied sharing the good news of Jesus' transformative ministry among neighboring peoples, Jesus lampooned their views by first refusing the request of the Syro-Phoenecian woman, then granting it with compassion and respect for her faith.  There are other examples from Jesus' life and words, but let these suffice to point toward a refusal on Jesus' part to let human-constructed ethnic and national boundaries determine who we should and should not love.

In the New Testament Epistle to the Ephesians, a crucial text further addresses the ways that human beings divide themselves into antagonistic groups.  Ephesians 2:11-22 draws the focus upon the divisions that exist between Jews and Gentiles.  The writer asserts that in the work of Christ, those "who were once far off have been brought near."  The made-up and hyped-up reasons that would keep groups apart have become nothing.  Jesus "is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us."  Whatever sorts of ethnic, linguistic, nationalistic barriers that human beings want to erect have been made irrelevant by the love of God in Jesus Christ.

The book of Ephesians is talking about ecclesiology, that is, about what the church is supposed to be.  When people become part of God's family, when they become part of one body, when they are joined together into the household of God, the other kinds of divisions take on a very different meaning.  They are no longer excuses for domination of some by others.  They cannot justify violent behavior; on the contrary, in Jesus' dying, he is, "putting to death that hostility."  They exist as the beautiful mosaic of divine blessing in the world:  not as reasons to resent and reject one another.

Thus, the church should not know boundaries.  If you are a brother or sister of mine, regardless of what political power wants to claim you within its borders, we are in the same church.  If you are my sister or brother, my duty is to care for you and seek your good.  Jesus has set out to "create in himself one humanity in place of the two, thus making peace."  A Christian church should know no nationalisms, no ethnocentrisms, no jingoisms.  When two modern nation-states enter into conflict and war, a faithful church would refuse to join that cause.  The loyalty of the church and its members should be transnational, because we are "no longer strangers and aliens," but one family.

A key difference between the demands of the calling of Christ and the demands of the calling to patriotic nationalism can be found in Jesus' own words in the Gospel of John 15:13.  "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends."  Jesus' understanding of love, demonstrated in his own resistance to the empire and its oppression toward the poor and outcast, was to continue his resistance until he was arrested, tried, tortured, and executed as an enemy of the state.  He laid down his life.  Along the way, people suggested he should take up the sword, but he refused.

Here is the difference.  Nationalism asks me to be willing to lay down my life, but first it asks me to be willing to kill other people.  Being willing to die for one's friends is not the same as being willing to kill for national interest.  The religion of nationalism calls for a full sacrifice of one's life and of one's conscience and character.  As a follower of the Prince of Peace, I must not submit to a wholly contradictory vision of the world in which I am expected to be a killer. 

So for decades I have not offered anthemic devotion to country by singing "The Star Spangled Banner."  Nor have I made an idolatrous pledge of allegiance to affirm my ultimate loyalty to the god of nation and war.  A song which glorifies the technology of war and the steadily operating machinery of death asks me to turn from the way of Jesus.

Colin Kaepernick's reasoning is not the same as what I have offered so far.  He is not addressing a conflicting pair of faiths as I have described and advocating what I am--conscientious objection to war.  He is not directly questioning devotion to country as a high ideal.  Kaepernick is protesting for the sake of the high ideals of country--he is expressing a longing for the ideals to become reality.  He is asking for a nation of high ideals, such as equal justice before the law, equal opportunity, and due process of law, to live up to those ideals.  On these matters, I agree with him.  To refuse ultimate loyalty to the nation and to reject the religion of nationalism does not mean that I also reject any good that might rise from the political community of humanity here in the United States.  The ideals of justice, of equality, and of fairness are ideals I also hold.  I appreciate the good that I receive from being a citizen of this nation, and I long for the goodness to overcome the many ways this nation has fallen short of its ideals.  

This particular song upheld as the national anthem was originally written with multiple stanzas.  In public events, people sing only the first stanza.  There is a third stanza which has stirred significant controversy as historians have studied it.  It speaks of vengeance against the enemies, particularly those who as "hirelings and slaves" have spread their "foul footstep's pollution" on the "land of the free and the home of the brave."  Frances Scott Key was a slaveholder, and while fighting in a previous battle at Bladenburg, his troops faced and were defeated by the British who were employing escaped slaves to join in the war with the promise of emancipation.  Some historians argue that Key held a special resentment and hatred toward these slaves fighting for their freedom, which he expresses in this stanza.  Other historians dispute that conclusion, and Key recorded no commentary on the meaning or context of these particular words.  It seems to me to be a compelling argument, and it adds another reason to question the practice of singing such a song with patriotic fervor.

Political dissent is at the core of what it takes for human beings to do better toward one another.  People must be able to articulate and challenge the failures of society to live up to its ideals.  The often unspoken, yet original sin of racism and white supremacy continues to bear fruit of bitterness in the United States.  Challenging the ways that social behaviors fall short of moral aspirations is the duty of those who have eyes to see and a voice to speak.  There was a time in our family's life when my beloved Everly asked me the question that must not be so different from the one Colin Kapernick heard echoing in his own conscience:  "How will we explain our inaction to our children when they ask us why these things have happened in our community?"  The only answer we could have given would be that we had failed our morality, failed our conscience, failed our God.  So we did what we knew we had to do.

I am pretty sure Colin does not think his kneeling is going to suddenly make injustice go away.  But if no one asks the hard questions, demands a hearing, and ultimately enacts resistance in public, there will be no chance of seeing change come.  No doubt, he realizes as other who risk to take a stand against the dominant ways that more people will misunderstand and be hurt than will be awakened and inspired.  There really isn't any easy way to confront systemic injustice.  People will get angry.  They will accuse you of the opposite of what you are trying to do.  But in the words of Nobel laureate Bob Dylan,

You may be a state trooper, you might be a young Turk.
You may be the head of some big TV network.
You may be rich or poor; you may be blind or lame.
You may be living in another country under another name.

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes you are.
You're gonna have to serve somebody.
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord,
But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

I pray for all of us that we can get clear on who it is we are going to serve.  As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.  Let me invite you to do the same.  I ain't mad with Colin Kaepernick. 
 

Reflecting on Liturgy

It's not an insight unique to me that baptists have depended on their hymnals to learn theology and formalize at least some parts of their worship liturgy.  Having said this dozens of times, or maybe it is hundreds, it occurred to me during worship today to do some reflections on our liturgical texts.  Moreover, after my last post, an expositional look at some poetic texts, literature professor Jane Childress gave me high marks for an excellent set of reading notes on the poems.  Having again experienced the thrill of making an "A" on a paper, I'm encouraged to do a bit more expositional note-taking in this post.

The first text of interest comes from a hymn I once knew by heart during my youth in Southern Baptist churches of Texas, "Jesus Saves!"  It has been so long since I've sung it, however, that I had to open the hymnal and read the lyrics in order to keep up.  Although I made it fairly well through the first stanza, "We have heard the joyful sound...," I was a bit more stumped by "Waft it on the rolling tide...."  And probably because third stanzas were for some strange reason considered anathema when I was growing up--"Let's sing the first, second, and last stanzas"-- I was completely lost on "Sing above the battle cry...."  The final stanza, beginning with, "Give the winds a mighty voice," was completely familiar again.

But it was in the third stanza that the liturgy rose up to overtake me.  Halfway through, the following three lines of text built toward the struggling place in my faith.

Shout it brightly through the gloom,
When the heart for mercy craves;
Sing in triumph o’er the tomb.

They "snuck up on me" because of their third-stanza unfamiliarity.  On the other hand, they were lyrics like I have sung many times before, echoing sentiments I would consider basic to my faith formation.   First, I was caught by the word "gloom," which describes where I find myself so often in this season of life.  I am one of the millions and billions of people who have lost a beloved one, my darling Everly, and find making sense of my life hard in the wake of her death.  Gloom is a good word for that mood.  So that first line alerted me that the liturgy was addressing my existential situation.

The next line dug in deeper.  Yes, that is what my heart craves:  mercy.  The overwhelming pain that appears repeatedly each day, even if only for a few seconds most times, can wear me down.  I know my problems are not so vast as the many people who live among constant violence, who lack for food and shelter, whose water is poisoning them.  Their situations are more deserving of the term gloom, their need for mercy, including mercy from people like me who prosper, is greater.  So I know that to have had Everly in my life for so many years is cause for thanks and praise.  Yet I cannot make the gloom and craving for mercy go away, for to have loved and lost, though better than not to have loved, is still a difficult road to walk.

Then in full force, the liturgy drove home its intent with language that we learn so early in our Christian training: that Jesus has won victory over death, that we need not fear death, that even the dying thief can rejoice to hear, "This day you will be with me in Paradise."  At that point I found myself encased in the liturgical moment.  My hope in God is one that can strengthen me to shout in the gloom, even when I contemplate the grave where Everly's remains are laid.  This tomb, this earthly symbol of her life, well-lived, well-loved, is not a final defeat.  There, where we mark the dates of her life sojourn's beginning and end, we also acknowledge the triumph of knowing God who is the author of life, who is greater than death.  So even through the tears, the thickness in the chest, the lump and tightening of the throat, there is a song of triumph to sing.  She lives in peace, and we await a reunion.

Perhaps this liturgical moment took on such momentum because of another text from last week.  As Naomi, Lydia, and I drove across the Southland toward North Carolina, we spent a good part of one day celebrating Everly's and our own love of Kate Campbell's music.  One song I had not spent much time listening to before that day is "Sorrowfree."

On the banks of the Alabama,
Autumn falls into spring,
And a day is always longer than it seems.
White camellias, winter blooms--
When summer comes I will think of you.

There will be a shining river
There for you and there for me.
There will be a sweet forever.
There we will meet, and we will sing,
Glory! Hallelujah!s.
Golden bells will ring.
There all will be forgiven
In that land called "Sorrowfree."

There are three more stanzas of this song, but I think its impact on me is focused in this stanza and refrain.  As I've written recently, I have been planting and thinking about flowers.  We planted wildflowers on Everly's gravesite, and more wildflowers and iris bulbs at our house in Salado.  I think often of the germination, the establishment of roots, and the eventual blooming of these flowers.  They seem to function in my consciousness as a parallel material operation to the hidden work of grieving. 

Grief work has been studied and analyzed, but it remains somewhat mysterious.  For those of us who are in the midst of it, we don't really know how to predict or comprehend how it emerges from our depths to stir us or shake us.  Since each member of our family has our own idiosyncracies, we regularly find ourselves at different places in grieving.  What may seem to me a good moment for conversation may only make David or Lydia or Naomi want to retreat to solitude.  Grief work is at least as much subterranean as public and visible.  And that's like the seeds and bulbs are now, in the ground.  So I think I am hoping and wondering what they will do, in part as a way of hoping and wondering what is happening to me.  What will I be, what will I find myself doing, in Spring and Summer, when flowers may, or may not, bloom?  Thus my thoughts turn often to the potential for germination and root growth in the ground, where I cannot see it happening.  When summer comes, I will think of you.

The refrain of Kate's song goes directly into my heart, again as a way of rehearsing what I have been taught from earliest faith.  I have preached about the River of Life, and received great appreciation for those words and testaments of hope.  I have known the stories, and they have formed me.  But now, I find myself fully embedded in this part of the narrative.  That river, along which strong trees grow, bearing leaves for the healing of the nations, is a river where I long to stand together with Everly.  It is a river for the nations, and it is for her and for me.  And this pain of separation will one day be gone in a sweet forever.

That hope is why I posted on Facebook last week that I was practicing my "Glory! Hallelujah!" so that when I get the chance I can sing it with Everly with all the gusto in me.  She will probably roll her eyes at my singing so loud.  I will enjoy seeing that again.  Naomi probably rolled her eyes a few times today with all the shouting "Glory!" that I was doing in church.  (By the way, trying to figure out how to punctuate Kate's line about singing glory hallelujahs remains a real puzzle to me--I settled on the weird placement of the plural s after an exclamation point.)

Dr. Turner preached from Ephesians 3:14-21 today, focusing on prayer for one another's strength, that we would be upheld by sharing our lives in the pattern of shared love and dance of the Trinity.  He took an aside at one point to say something very important, something to which Everly would have offered a loud "Amen!"  He said that we have to stop this thing of telling people to smile and be happy.  He said that the amount of smiling a person does may have nothing to do with being Christian.  There are hard times, struggles, and tribulations that we face that are not times for smiling.  In those times, we don't need knee-jerk reminders that things will get better.  We don't need to be chastised and exhorted to "cheer up."  We need to pray one another's strength in the Lord.  There are seasons for weeping, for seriousness, for facing the real effects of the rulers, authorities, powers, and principalities.  Hope does not dissipate or disappear in serious and solemn and challenging times.  And smiles will return in due season.  But it is no one's job to enforce smiling at church.

Finally, I want to mention another bit of our liturgy from a gospel anthem, "Order My Steps."  A line that has often been for me a "throw away" or "space holding" line took center stage as I listened and sang along.  In the refrain, the song says, "The world is ever-changing/But You are still the same."  The first part, that the world is ever-changing, had always been for me a simple acknowledgement of the flux, the flow, the vicissitudes, the emergent, the passage and fruition of the world.  But in this liturgical performance it spoke to the vast change in my life that losing Everly has been.  Yes, there have been many changes.  I have lived in Texas, California, North Carolina, and now in two states at once.  I was a child, and later I became a husband and father.  I was a novice, and I became Rev. Dr. 

There have been many changes, and up to now they seemed to drive onward toward a destiny I had glimpsed.  But this change was not in the plans.  This change was unthought, undesired, unimagined.  This change shook the foundations.  Can it be true that when the foundations are shaken, God remains faithful?  Such is the claim of today's liturgy.  The God who has ordered my steps can continue to do so.  I don't mean God planned Everly's death from cancer.  That is the absurd intrusion on the path of destiny, the as-yet-unfulfilled promise of welfare and not calamity, of a future and a hope.  But God held us through that struggle, guided our feet while we ran that race.  And today I reached once more for the hope that God will continue to order my steps.

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.

 

God's Will . . . Set Forth in Christ

This sermon was originally delivered on January 3, 2010, at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church.

God’s Will . . . Set Forth in Christ

Jeremiah 31:7-14

Ephesians 1:3-14

The letter to the Ephesians contains numerous passages beloved by the church. The first chapter from which we read today is one of those places where the richness of the gospel speaks with great power. It plumbs the depths of theology and presses toward the limits of our abilities to understand the mysteries of God’s goodness and love.

Some of the themes of these opening verses include the eternal existence and supreme exaltation of Christ, election and adoption of the children of God, the abundant and powerful grace of God, Jesus’ redeeming sacrifice, forgiveness, and the wisdom of God. And that is just the first eight verses. My, my! It staggers the mind to think of the immeasurable greatness of God’s grace to us. It’s glorious grace, yes glorious. The glory of God is known in the grace of God. Grace is the crowning glory of God revealed in Jesus Christ. It is glorious beyond measure. The riches of God’s grace cannot be measured. They cannot be valued. “Marvelous grace, infinite grace, grace that will pardon and cleanse . . . that is greater than all our sin.” Praise be unto the God of grace.

But I want to focus today on a few lines from Jeremiah [verses 11-14] and the second part of our passage from Ephesians [starting with the end of verse 8]. We’ll start with Ephesians, then look back to Jeremiah to see the visually rich description from Jeremiah’s day of what Ephesians has called the “mystery of God’s will . . . set forth in Christ.” Thus, we want to consider today God’s will set forth in Christ. Turn to your neighbor and say, “God’s will . . . set forth in Christ.”

When we talk about God’s will, it is good to take a moment to question what is going on in our lives and the world. There is a kind of false comfort we can get by assuming that whatever is going on around us and in our personal lives must be God’s will. This false comfort is very different from the true comfort we have in God when we seek to find what the Holy Spirit is doing and would have us do in whatever circumstance we may find ourselves. That true comfort comes in seeking God. It comes in the striving that discernment requires. It is very different from the false comfort that says whatever happened must be God’s will.

A few friends of mine, some of whom are former students of Dr. Turner, published a book a few years ago called God Is Not . . . . I use this book with my beginning theology students in order to point out that many things that are going on in the name of Christian faith are not a true understanding of the God of the Bible. They are more of an accommodation to the powers that be. My point is that everything that is happening is not the will of God.

I think I have a habit of saying this in many of my sermons, so it may sound familiar to you. But the reason I always seem to come back to this point is that in order to know the will of God we also need to be able to recognize what is not the will of God. Everything that President Bush did was not the will of God. Everything that President Obama is doing may not be the will of God. Every preacher that is on TV or the radio is not doing the will of God. Every big and booming church may not be in the will of God. Every small and struggling church may not be in the will of God. Everyone with a job is not doing the will of God. Everyone without a job may not be in the will of God.

If we are to know the will of God, we must know where to look for it. Every up and down of the economy is not the will of God. To press a specific point, I need to say that economic injustice—whatever form it takes, whatever economic system it occurs in, whatever country or government oversees it—is officially not the will of God. God does not will economic injustice.

The ways that the economic system went wrong in recent decades, the ways that the powerful and devious preyed on the weak and trusting, were not the will of God. If someone cheated you, or if you cheated someone, that was not the will of God. When a few people took all the profits, no matter whom they hurt in the process, they were going against the will of God. God is a God of justice who stands up to those who would oppress others. The prophet Isaiah spoke boldly to those who had grown wealthy at the expense of the poor in chapter 3:13-15.

The Lord rises to argue his case;

he stands to judge the peoples.

The Lord enters into judgment

with the elders and princes of his people:

“It is you who have devoured the vineyard;

the spoil of the poor is in your houses.

What do you mean by crushing my people,

by grinding the face of the poor?” says the Lord God of hosts.

I am returning again to the topic of the economy today, even though you have heard me preach on this subject recently. I return to it because we remain mired in the struggles brought on by greed, short-sightedness, possessiveness, carelessly wishful thinking, outrageous risks, disregard of the hard-working common folk, playing with other people’s money, living the high life, wasting precious resources while many remain sick and hungry, preying on the desperate, and a multitude of other sins. Many of us have had to stand before God in the past months to ask for help and forgiveness because of the ways that we have managed our economic resources. At other times, we have had to cry out to God because of the ways that other people’s actions and decisions have harmed our ability to make a living and pay our bills. People who follow Jesus and people who want nothing to do with Jesus have had to face up to the need to change their ways and do a better job managing their finances. This is real to us, and it is not going away easily.

I also return to the economy because God has placed it on our hearts here at Mt. Level. God ‘s Spirit has told you and me to dwell on this matter and speak the truth to one another and to the powerful. God’s Spirit is speaking through this people of God concerning how God would have us move forward in times like these.

Since the economic crisis continues to affect and shape us all, then it would seem that we ought to be seeking to know the will of God for this time and place. What is the mystery of God’s will set forth in Christ for our economic situations? Our first judgment from this text is that it does not give us specific information about mortgages, televisions and cable bills, phone service, food on a budget, new or used cars, credit cards, savings, overdraft fees, and such things. Those particular issues we are dealing with are not mentioned directly. But just because the letter to the Ephesians does not use the word “mortgage” or “overdraft fee,” does not mean that we should conclude that this text is irrelevant for our economic lives.

It would be a mistake to treat this text in Ephesians as if it were merely about invisible, immaterial, metaphysical matters. That would be to spiritualize Christ and ignore the incarnation of God into the everyday existence of humanity. The gospel text for today is from John 1. The Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood.

Certainly there is a metaphysical aspect of this passage from Ephesians. It uses the word “mystery” as well. But this does not mean that the message here is only some sort of lofty abstraction, nor that it must remain unknown to us. In fact, it explicitly says that God has made known to us this mystery. God’s will which would seem to be too complicated to figure out if we had to do so in our own power has been made known in Jesus. Another way to say that is that the mystery of God’s will is made known to us as Jesus. The first meaning of the will of God is Jesus. God’s grace, goodness, love, mercy, justice, power, wisdom, faithfulness, provision, purpose, everything which God is and is doing has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

It is the will of God that we be joined together in Christ. On communion Sunday, we are proclaiming and practicing that act of joining together. God’s will is that we would find that our purpose and meaning is known in Christ whose sacrifice and life we remember today. His ways must become our ways. His faith must be our faith. His love must be our love for one another. This might seem to great a task for us to accomplish, and that is true if we think we are to do it in our own power. But Ephesians tells us that God has done this work, gathering up all things in Christ, all things in heaven and on earth. Jesus Christ delivers to us our true inheritance, what God has intended for our lives to be from eternity. It is our destiny to live according to God’s will and purpose, as Jesus did.

When we have put our trust in Christ, and when we have set our hope on Christ, then we are joined with him in the redemption of our lives together. The messed-up, cockamamy way of living that people tried to figure out on our own can be laid aside and a new way of living can be taken up. As Ephesians says, we are marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit.

A mark is something to be seen. We mark things so we can identify them quickly. A mark may tell us what something is, what category it belongs in, whose it is, or what it is for. The mark of the Holy Spirit shows us to belong to God, to have the purpose of living the will of God. Now we might say that a mark put on something can get covered up with other stuff. Or a mark might get smeared. I’m not trying to say that the Holy Spirit’s seal is not effective. I’m only making a kind of allegorical, or figurative comment about how well we display the glory of God. Maybe we have put on a jacket and obscured the mark the Spirit has placed on us. A mark should be seen. If it can’t be seen, how does anyone know that it is there?

Ephesians says that we have the pledge of our inheritance. We don’t have the whole thing yet, but we do already have the mark. We are on our way to getting this inheritance. So we may not always do such a good job of letting this mark show the world God’s will. God is still working on us, but we are already set apart, marked, and categorized as being God’s own people. We now await the completion of God’s redemption, already assured by the work of Jesus Christ.

Now it might be possible to read this passage and think that it has little or nothing to do with our economic lives. But as I said earlier, that would be a mistake. The Bible is full of guidance and teaching about material possessions and money. It makes clear in very specific ways how we are to share what we have because God’s blessings come to us in order that we might bless others. So anytime we are talking about the will of God, we have to realize that God is all up in our financial affairs. God’s will doesn’t bypass our pocketbooks and bank accounts. God’s will doesn’t skip over our cars and furniture and computers. God’s will does not ignore our tithes and offering and sharing with our neighbors.

Ephesians says that all things are gathered up in Christ. That means we have to look to Christ to see how to arrange our finances and organize our economic living. Our earning and spending, our work and leisure, our owning and giving, should show the mark of the Holy Spirit. People ought to be able to recognize that we are dealing with our money and possessions in the way that Jesus showed and taught us. There is a personal and churchwide responsibility here to let God be glorified and praised for the way we handle our finances. Where is our hope? Is it in a pension fund? Is it in a big house or a prestigious car? Our hope must be set on Christ. Our redemption will not come from buying low and selling high. Our redemption comes from Christ’s work to make us God’s own people. When we are in economic harmony as God’s people, we are being redeemed.

Yes, this text pushes it farther than just me getting myself right. If the institutions and structures of economic life in the United States are not conformed to the calling that all is to be gathered up in Christ, that is no excuse for churches to set aside economic justice and say it is impossible. If no one else is paying a living wage, churches ought to be paying a living wage. If people do not have access to health care, God’s people ought to be making a way for access to health care. If banks and other financial institutions are creating conditions for perpetual indebtedness or debt sharecropping, churches ought to be sponsoring credit unions and other ways of financial sharing so that no one is in need. If the economists try to convince us that that we can trust an unseen hand to take care of everyone even if the wealthy and powerful are left to look out only for themselves, church people ought to be making their open hands visible as a witness to the ways of Jesus.

Just to add a little more confirmation to this interpretation of Ephesians, we should briefly take a look at Jeremiah 31. It is a text about redemption as well. It is about God’s gracious regathering of the people to be God’s children, God’s flock, a holy nation. In verse 12 Jeremiah gets specific about the goodness of the Lord: God’s goodness and grace is about grain, wine, oil, flocks and herds. It is like a watered garden. It is about plenty to eat for the priests and the people. It is about joy together, with dancing, making merry, joy, comfort, and gladness.

Jeremiah says “my people shall be satisfied with my bounty.” God will provide for the people, and the value of the material possessions is in the value of their shared lives. Young women dancing, old and young men having a good time—this is what is possible when we do not fixate our attention on acquiring and amassing wealth, hoarding possessions, collecting toy after toy, entertaining ourselves rather than enjoying one another. God’s purpose for economic life is that we might be joyful together. This can only be true in an economic system built on justice, mercy, and humility. Economic justice means that no one oppresses others or benefits from the suffering of others. Economic mercy means that we look out for one another and recognize that we all need a hand now and then. Economic humility means that we don’t think of ourselves in terms of our wealth as better than others because we know that whatever we have is given that we might bless others.

What is the will of God for us in this economic crisis? It is that we look out for one another, make a way when the world says no way, and join the struggle for economic justice. It is to set our hope in Christ, to believe the gospel that our redemption is by God’s grace and cannot be earned or bought for ourselves. It is to be marked by the Holy Spirit to show the world that we have been united in Christ to live a new and loving way as the people of God.

Today is the day for all of us to follow the will of God. For some of you, it may be that you have never believed the gospel, set your hope in Christ, or been united to Christ. If you are ready today to take a step down the path of following Jesus, then take up your destiny. God’s will is that we all be united in Christ and that our lives will offer praise to his glory. Come today to follow Jesus.

For some of you it may be that you have been wearing a jacket or sweatshirt to cover up the mark of the Holy Spirit on your life. You have repositioned your hope in your money or possessions rather than in the shared life of joyful love and care for one another. If you have let the anxiety or seduction of finances overwhelm your walk in Christ, then today is the day to renew your commitment to the will of God.

Perhaps you are not united to a church. It is a false gospel that says you can just be a loner Christian. Jesus calls us together to be God’s people. It’s right there in Ephesians 1:14. If the Holy Spirit is urging you to unite with this congregation, come today and enter into covenant with us to do the will of God.

God’s will has been set forth in Christ. Jesus Christ is the embodied image of the will of God. May we all be one with Christ, as the Holy Trinity is one in mutual love.