AMOS 6:1-7

PSALM 146

1 TIMOTHY 6:11-19

LUKE 16:19-31

Sermon – 9/30/01

Life after September 11, Part III: The New Normal

You could call this sermon “Life after September 11, Part III: The New Normal.”

So here we go: today’s Scriptures jolt us into considering the well-being of the whole world – including people near at hand and far away – and our role, as members of a still prosperous and powerful society, in a world in which most people have neither power nor prosperity. Not only that, but most people in the world live in environments where they may easily become victims of sudden, disastrous calamities – some of them induced by their own governments on them. Many nations are terrorized by various kinds of terrorists. In the days after September 11, many Anglican Archbishops from around the world e-mailed our Presiding Bishop to say, “We know what you’re going through.” And most of those bishops did not contact Bishop Griswold from air-conditioned offices located in countries with unemployment as low as ours is. No indeed.

Many Christians consider the needs of the world not through the lenses of their faith but only through the lenses of a political ideology – with unsatisfactory results.

There is an old joke which goes: “Liberals love humanity; it’s people they can’t stand.”… And with conservatives, it’s the opposite.” Either ideology can lead to a sort of “split personality” behavior, a sort of schizophrenia unrecognized because it is “normal” for perhaps a majority of people and so is assumed to be normal, both in the sense of behavior that’s expected and behavior that is considered “healthy”.

Let me give two examples of politicians acting as “conservatives” or “liberals” in this sense. Former President Gerald Ford, it was said, was a kind man who would literally give you the shirt off his back if you

needed it – and then he would go into the White House and veto a bill to provide more Food Stamps for people. This is loving people and ignoring humanity.

Congressional liberals, on the other hand, passed all kinds of noble legislation to protect the rights of workers – except for the people who worked for them, who were specifically exempted.

I’ve known both people like Gerry Ford and people like those Congressional liberals – indeed before Seminary I worked for a “liberal” who was all for respecting and improving the lot of low-income people – except for the ones who worked for him.

There is a cure for both kinds of split personality behavior, the love people/ignore humanity kind and the love humanity/ignore people kind. The cure is the Christian faith and looking at the world primarily through the lenses of faith. Real Christians learn they don’t get to choose between caring about people and caring about humanity: we are commanded to care about both.

Today’s Scriptures are not subtle in shouting this message. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus tells a story about a rich man who totally ignores the plight of a destitute man who lived literally right outside the gate of the rich man. The story says nothing about the moral rectitude of either individual except that the rich man ignored his poor neighbor, so we don’t know if this was a noble, honest poor man and a tricky, sleazy wealthy man – or the other way around, or anything else. Jesus’ point is: it doesn’t matter. Poor people need and deserve help because they are poor; they don’t have to be extraordinarily virtuous as well. Indeed, it is extra hard to be extraordinarily virtuous when faced with grinding poverty.

And for all we know, the rich man might have been running benefit cocktail parties for famine relief in Ethiopia. If so, Jesus’ point is, that also would be not enough to excuse his ignoring the needs of someone right next to him.

The immediate juxtaposition of real wealth and real poverty does not happen as much in this country, but it is common enough in Third World countries, where the extremes of wealth and poverty are often more than they are in America. But that does not excuse us, for there are poor people close at hand, even in this, the state with the highest per capita income in America.

So we are called to love people and do something about the needs of those near at hand, through Food Banks, Elijah’s Promise Soup Kitchen, the Women’s Shelter, the Ozanam Family Shelter, the Men’s Shelter in the wintertime, the Salvation Army, Interfaith Ministries of Hope and any other means we can use to make a thoughtful, responsible and systematic response to those in need in this land of plenty. Even yesterday after her husband’s Memorial Service, Gillian Joseph thought to ask me to make sure leftover sandwiches got to those in need. If Lazarus is at the gate, feed him; let not the terrible fate of the clueless and careless rich man in today's Gospel befall any of us.

But that kind of immediate, local, tangible charity while essential, is not enough. The prophet Amos in today’s Old Testament reading calls us to look at the whole picture, at the total society. It was Amos’ challenge as a prophet to speak harsh words in a smooth time, a time of peace, power and prosperity for the northern Jewish nation, the Kingdom of Israel, in the 8^th Century B.C. The country was prosperous – but it was a narrow prosperity in which the wealthiest 10% of the country was doing very well, while many others were just getting by, while the poor were suffering. And the government was on the side of the rich and powerful.

Sound like anyplace you’ve ever heard of?

Amos denounced social injustice and a society which could tolerate, even glorify extravagant wealth for some and ruin for others. Ivory was an expensive luxury, imported from a thousand miles away in East Africa. Having an ivory comb was a statement in those days that you had more money than you knew how to spend; imagine, then, having an ivory bed as Amos describes!

For years scholars thought Amos was indulging in rhetorical hyperbole, that conspicuous consumption could not have gone to such lengths. Then archeologists discovered troves of ivory – in the ruins of what was left of Samaria, capital city of Israel, the country that did not listen to Amos but instead wallowed in injustice and excess for the rich, and thumbed its nose at God.

I have been to Samaria; there’s not much left. It was wiped out by the terrible swift sword of the Assyrian Empire in 721 B.C., which was interpreted by the faithful as God’s judgment upon a faithless nation dedicated to social injustice. All nations should take note.

I dare say most of us here would hardly think of ourselves as “rich” – but by worldwide standards, everyone in this parish is rich. The average income in this area is dozens of times that of people in many countries. Millions of people do not have drinkable water easily accessible to them, never mind indoor plumbing and electricity which most of us, it’s fair to say, take for granted.

And the extremes of wealth and poverty between nations are getting greater, not less, even as the American standard of living is supported more and more by low wage workers here and abroad. How much are the farm workers who pick much of our produce paid? How many have health insurance or regular schooling for their children beyond the basic level? How many of the food-service workers in the World Trade Center had employer-paid life insurance to help surviving family members? And how many people are working for 23 cents an hour in Honduras or El Salvador or Indonesia just so that I can go into Wal-Mart and buy clothing more cheaply?

Radical inequalities in the world bear testimony against the wealthy – and not just Americans, but Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Western Europe and Japan and all industrialized nations which are superb at creating wealth and progress but too slow to share it. And too often the worst enemies of Third World peoples are their own governments, too many of which loot and terrorize their own people. Help from free and prosperous countries needs to get to the people, not just to the governments; but we must not let often justifiable cynicism about corrupt or oppressive governments cause us to neglect those who suffer under their reign.

There is much to ponder today, but too much pondering can lead to thoughtful inactivity. The words of “The first Letter to Timothy” are sharp and clear: “As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that is really life.”

There are many ways to apply these words; let me enumerate three. First, coming up on October 21 is the annual CROP Walk for Church World Service, which offers an opportunity for exercise, fellowship – and raising money for anti-hunger programs both locally and all over the world, both meeting immediate needs and working for long-term self-sufficiency. See Tony Thompson to sign up or to pledge.

Second, coming up in just two weeks is the El Salvador luncheon and program led by our two teen-aged missioners, Kristin Pall and Catharine Moore. Sign up to come and hear about the people and the Church of El Salvador, our Central American neighbors who have little of what we can buy, but much which is priceless from the Lord.

Third, next month we will begin inviting people to make financial pledges for 2002 to our Church. We face the joyful and daunting task of paying the costs of our new building, now under construction – both the loans and operating costs. But I’d like us to raise our sights even higher than this wonderful spiritual home we are raising up right here. I’d like to challenge us also to budget enough to help Episcopal Relief and Development to build some family a new home in earthquake-torn El Salvador over the next three years.

Such a new home costs just $3,500. It won’t compare to the new homes around here, but it would be something.

Let us look at the needs of the world through the lenses of our faith, and remember that those near at hand and those all across the globe are our brothers and sisters, fellow members of God’s family. In times of need, family is supposed to help, and we are family to the whole world. If we can’t find need, our eyes must be closed. Let us love humanity and people, tackle the big issues and remember personal, practical care for those nearby. Let us reject the schizophrenia caused by narrow ideologies and embrace the holistic and holy approach of the faith, building bridges of understanding and structures of justice in our neighborhood and across the world.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church