Sermon for November 11, 2018

The Way of Giving and Receiving

How many of us can remember a November when we haven’t shared in a food drive, or helped serve dinners for those struggling with homelessness, or invited a lonely neighbor over for dinner? How many of us have given money for food or assembled food baskets for those in need? For most of us, this I the time of year when we remember our responsibility to those who live at the edges of society. It says a lot about our character as people of faith that we have an impulse to share with those whose needs are greater than our own; that we share with those who so often feel forgotten.

It is a season of great generosity. But is it also a time of justice? Let’s turn to the example of Jesus to look for some answers. This is from Mark 12:38ff.

Jesus taught: “Beware of these teachers of religious law! For they like to parade around in flowing robes and receive respectful greetings as they walk in the marketplaces.  And how they love the seats of honor in the synagogues and the head table at banquets. Yet they shamelessly cheat widows out of their property and then pretend to be pious by making long prayers in public. Because of this, they will be more severely punished.”

Let’s stop there for a moment. Notice how Jesus describes the Scribes. A Scribe’s primary occupation was writing out copies of the Jewish Scriptures and teaching people about the details of following Jewish religious law. In Mark’s gospel, Jesus makes the point repeatedly that the Scribes, these leaders and law experts, expect privilege and status. Jesus wants those who follow his Way to be last and “servants of all.” But the Scribes use religion as a veil for economic opportunism. Let’s see how this scene plays out.

Jesus sat down near the collection box in the Temple and watched as the crowds dropped in their money. Many rich people put in large amounts. Then a poor widow came and dropped in two small coins. Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has given more than all the others who are making contributions. For they gave a tiny part of their surplus, but she, poor as she is, has given everything she had to live on.”

I was always taught that Jesus wants his followers to see the contrast between the religious hypocrisy of the scribes and the genuine piety of the poor woman. The interpretation comes straight from John Calvin, granddaddy of our Reformed tradition. Calvin says the poor should not hesitate to express their devotion to God cheerfully out of their slender means, “for if they consecrate themselves, their offering, which appears to be mean and worthless” is not insignificant to God. According to Calvin, God wants self-denial, and the poor are the prime example. He wrote that around the year 1560. It is part of a long tradition in Christianity. Our exemplars embrace poverty, give their last pennies away to find happiness, boast of sufferings, and befriend suffering in order to find peace.

But here’s the thing: I don’t think Jesus holds the poor widow’s ultimate financial sacrifice up as a model for self-denial. Let’s rethink this.

The Way of Jesus has taken him and his followers to Jerusalem. They may feel a little out of step with the hustle and bustle of urban life. Think about how it feels to visit New York City on a crowded day during the holidays. For me it’s amazing and scary all at the same time. The full array of humanity is there to see: rich and poor, greedy and generous, with religion and commercialism mixed into one onslaught for the senses. Imagine it’s the same in Jerusalem. Swarms of people are there, rich and poor, powerful and powerless. Jesus makes his way to the Temple treasury. The Temple has 13 trumpet-shaped chests along the walls of a space called The Court of Women. Worshippers toss their financial offerings into these chests. Some of the donors are rich people who give from their abundance. But Jesus singles out one woman. We know two things about her. She is poor, and she is a widow. In Jewish law, she is a member of a protected class. Hebrew Scripture clearly calls people to care for widows because they have no support net (Deut. 14.29). Jewish faith understands God’s creation has enough for everyone to flourish. If there is poverty, it’s because some have filled their pockets first. So, instead of being a recipient of Temple funds, the poor widow donates two little coins. She gives all that is left of her whole life.

Jesus says, “She just gave everything she had to live on! She gives from her destitution!” His words are not praise, but a lament for the disgusting injustice that creates the condition for this scene. He watches a woman give her last coins to support the oppressors who keep her in poverty. She helps finance the system designed to keep her poor. Jesus does not admire the poor widow’s generous spirit of self-denial. Jesus is horrified by a religion-supported economic system that creates classes of haves and have-nots. Instead of protecting widows, the Scribes exploit them in order to feed their self-important status. For Jesus, the Temple becomes a symbol of that which preys upon and then devours the resources of the poor. And Jesus objects.

We see the equivalent of the poor widow in our communities. We have lots of cultural stereotypes that go with the word “poor.” One stereotype is poor people are lazy, unintelligent, inarticulate, and overly emotional. Another stereotype is poor people spend money on frivolous things. If poor people just gave up on cigarettes, lottery tickets, and IPhones, they would pop up into the middle class. Have you ever wondered where these stereotypes come from?

The poor are not some lump of people at the bottom of society who are just there as the underclass, permanently outside the mainstream of American life. In today’s American life, the poor are working people. Poverty happens to working-class Americans. In America, we are not just divided by economic status. Economic status is all tied up with social status. I hear a lot about how we are living in a divided nation politically. But politics is all tied up with social status, too. America’s class system is the elephant in the room of our schools, our justice system, our county council meetings, and yes, class is the elephant in the room of our churches. So let’s talk about it.

Martin Luther King Jr. identified three elements working together to cause oppression in America. Each element works separately but in tandem with the other two to create a storm of lost opportunity for millions of Americans. The first element is racism. Racism puts white American men in control of a system that has keeps non-whites, and especially women of color, out of positions of power and opportunities for advancement.

The second part of the triangle of oppression is classism. As he peeled back the layers of American oppression, Dr. King realized racism was not operating alone. How could it be that people of the racially dominant group could be oppressed with a power equal to that of racism? For instance, poverty is not just a problem for African-Americans living in blighted inner cities. We know part of Trump’s rise to power came from expectant, working-class, rural, white, Coal and Rust Belt voters living in poverty. They believed the promise that their jobs and their prosperity would return. A poor white person has a parallel struggle to a poor person of color regardless of white privilege. But, the white working class continues to sink into deep poverty and the white middle class continues to disappear. The oppression and resentment of poorer white Americans is real. How can that be? And how can be that people of color can reach the highest levels in business, education, and government, despite their ethnic and cultural background? King linked it to classism -- the belief that people from certain social or economic classes are superior to others.

Let’s stop here to reflect on how race and class are related. Most of the American lower class is white. Most of the American prison population is white. White privilege does not always overcome classism. However, a lower-class white person still has more opportunities handed to them than a fellow lower-class black person simply on the basis of skin color. The working-class white person may still feel superior and resent non-white groups including black and brown immigrants and Muslims. It is a divide-and-conquer tactic used by those in power to turn marginalized groups against each other to protect the upper class.

The third part of the triangle is poverty. If poverty alone were alleviated, if each person truly had enough food, wealth, healthcare, and a good job, it would ease the oppression caused by racism and classism. But it would not end that oppression. Dr. King said, “In the final analysis, the rich must not ignore the poor because both rich and poor are tied in a single garment of destiny. All life is interrelated, and all [people] are interdependent. The agony of the poor diminishes the rich, and the salvation of the poor enlarges the rich. We are inevitably our brothers'[and sister’s] keeper because of the interrelated structure of reality.”

As I said earlier, I think most Americans are generous people. We want to help. We want to heal. But how do we achieve and maintain equality and embrace diversity? The idea of offering charity for the poor is part of who we are. Charity is an attractive quality. But Generosity is not enough. Charity is not justice. The way for the poor to have a better life is for them to have more power. We stand for generosity with justice. Generosity with justice means we aren’t just charitable toward the poor. Charity can be given in a way that’s deeply hurtful and in the long run counterproductive. Generosity with justice means we offer help that says, "Let’s work together, let’s stand together, in ways that make us fully and equally powerful as we seek to fulfill our common interests and individual needs.” Where inequity exists, we will not accept the widely-held perspective that blames the victims. Generosity with justice allows us to feel the pain of these oppressive and unbalanced social, religious, and economic systems, regardless of our privileged or unprivileged position.

Our generous outreach at this time of year is awesome. It’s good to share our food those who are hungry. It’s even better when we share food and fix that causes of hunger. We feed the hungry and work to make food available to all. We offer a drink to the thirsty, and make sure that water everyone has the right to clean, abundant water. We clothe the naked and remember that only when the necessities of life are met, only then have we all experienced what it means to be fully human. We work for the dawning of a new world in which the powers of domination and inequity are toppled, where the poor are not asked to subsidize their own oppression, where power and equality are restored to the dispossessed. This is the true Way of Giving and Receiving. We dream it. We pray for it. We breathe it. We live it.

 

Sources:

“Classism and Economic Injustice,” http://www.uucr. org/sermons/classismandeconomic.html

Ched Myers, Binding the Strongman, pp.318-323.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize Speech,  http://evergreenuu. org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=CMZGEPaRv9o%3D&tabid=192

“Don’t be charitable to the poor...” http://thewitness. org/archive/oct2001/zweiginterview.html

“Deep Interrelatedness and Transformation,” http://www.classism. org/human-arising

"Thanksgiving 2011” http://spsmw. org/2011/11/16/thanksgiving-2011/

Richard W. Swanson, Provoking the Gospel of Mark.

https://www.therutgersreview.  com/2018/02/10/classism-americas-overlooked-problem

The Politics of Jesús: A Hispanic Political Theology By Miguel A. De La Torre