Friday, May 29, 2009

The Economy and the Church

I keep hearing about how bad the economy is. Unemployment is around 10%. Not quite as bad as the 25% of the Great Depression, but significant nonetheless. I’ve heard lots of people talk about the way that it is affecting them. I’ve heard Christians say that God can use this terrible situation for something good. I’ve heard people pray for the economy.

But I’m not convinced that Christians should be worried about the economy. I’m not convinced that the church has a stake in “fixing” it. And I’m not convinced that fixing it is in the interest of the common good of man either.

If anything, I suspect that what is happening is an opportunity God is giving to church to renew is practices of mercy and to be holy.

Unemployment is up, homelessness is up, evictions are climbing. But we ought not despair, for its not that there is not enough to go around. We still have plenty of food and plenty of beds for all these people. That is not the issue. The problem is not scarcity. The problem is the way that people act, the way that people decide to allocate resources in their control. Fixing a mechanism will not fix the problem. Let me say that again. We have all the goods we need.

The problem is greed, fear, selfishness, pride. The problem is sin. What else can explain that we have more than enough and yet so many go without?

And what this means is that everyone crying about the terrible state of things is really crying about themselves. The rich are crying about taking huge losses to their portfolios - losses will never really threaten their immediate needs. The middle class is crying because that house they thought would make them secure has been taken away from them.

Many are indignant that the economy is taking a toll on the poor. But why be indignant? We have everything we need. If there is crying to do, it is crying because our economy was so good to us. It let us believe that the best way to help everybody, the best way to serve the poor, was to be greedy. There is crying because it is looking less and less like that is going to work. It is looking less and less like any kind of
system is going to work. For we have more than enough.

But there is no way to give it to the poor, except to give it to the poor. We are crying because we can no longer be indignant about the poor without being hypocritical. For we can no longer support the system, since the system is broken. If we cry about the plight of the poor we are struck by the fact that we have some of that everything needed to help the poor, so not to give is tantamount to stealing. At the very least, it is hard to be indignant and well-off without being hypocritical.

Is your goal to end poverty? The simplest and quickest way to do that, requiring basically zero changes in infrastructure, would be to take a poor person into your home and feed them. One less homeless person. If everyone with the means to do so did that, we would wipe out poverty and homelessness. Period. And you don’t even have to take in complete strangers. Some might be strong enough or brave enough to do that. I am not yet. The homeless man living with me is my friend. I got to know him for two years before he moved in. And you’d be wrong to think that was because I didn’t trust him before then. It was more that he didn’t trust me. The rich are scared of the poor (why?) and the poor are scared of the rich (why?).

This simple solution gets down to the heart about arguments about performing the works of mercy. It is often objected that they are simply impractical for solving our society’s problems. They are a palliative, a bandaid. The real way to change the world is to get involved in politics, to write letters to congressmen, to vote the right candidates into office. To this the church should rightly reply in the first instance that it is not a club or a government whose job is to work on solving society’s problems. I joined the church whose mission is to follow Jesus, and he told me to perform the works of mercy and give up my possessions and so I do it. He told me to. That’s it. Even if its not efficient.

But then slowly it begins to dawn on me just how deeply practical and efficient the works of mercy are. They provide the remedy for societal ills not by reforming a bureaucratic system but by transforming people. They offer, right now, the most efficient way to end poverty. They say that the way that you help people is, well, by helping them. What we need is a revolution of the heart.

And this shows that it is not the works of mercy that are the palliative. The state and its institutions are the palliative.
They, no matter how reformed, are the morphine for the cancer. They, no matter how just, strike at the weed but leave the root. They, no matter how large or small, are inefficient.

And so I don’t think that I have a stake in the economy. It is, after all, really the state’s economy, and the economy’s state. But this is not because I just want to “let it burn” – although that might not be a bad idea. Rather, I don’t think that the state of the economy is a bad thing for the church because I don’t think the economy is the problem in the first place. The way that the changed economy shifts around materials in a different way just gives us a different view of the effects of sin.

The state of the economy gives the church a chance to be the church. To feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless.

--Colin Miller

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Beloved, let us love one another

The following is a sermon preached by Vicar Rhonda Lee, on the 5th Sunday of Easter, the 10th of May 2009. The text is 1 John 4:7-21.

God is love.

If John, the author of this morning’s epistle, were writing an academic paper, that would be his thesis statement.

John wants to be sure we understand his claim about God, so he states it twice: once negatively and once positively. “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love”; then, later on, “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”

In case we’re tempted to define love—and God—according to our own sentimental preconceptions, John makes it clear that his definition is rooted in divine revelation. “Love is from God,” he tells us, and he goes on to remind us of the bedrock Christian belief about divine love: “God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.”

Love that heals, nourishes, liberates; love that breathes new life into dead bodies and despairing souls; love that has nothing at all to do with the merits or charms of the beloved; love that never ends. That’s the kind of love God shows toward you and me, on the days when we feel lovable, and on the days we can hardly stand to look in the mirror.

“God is love” is good news, a nurturing message for those who need to know they’re valued, just to get through another day. It’s a direct challenge to the worldly powers that see only some people as worthy of love: the strong, the beautiful, those on the inside of whatever dividing lines they’ve drawn.

John’s words challenge the church too. “Beloved,” he reminds us gently, “since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.” If we had any illusions that living in Christian community was easier two thousand years ago than it is today, John’s warning shatters them: “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.”

If we’re honest, most of us can’t help wondering, “John, have you met my sister? My brother? Let me introduce you; once you see what I’m dealing with, you’ll cut me some theological slack.” But again, if we’re honest, we acknowledge that John lists no exceptions. He doesn’t say love your brother or sister except when they don’t, or won’t, listen to you; except when they bite their nails or snap their gum in public; except when they play that song we can not stand for the thousandth time; except when they’re just plain wrong. There are no loopholes.

Loving all our brothers and sisters, all the time, is a tall, in fact, impossible, order, if we think love is a matter of how we feel about someone, and if we think it’s something that happens by our own effort.

That’s not how love works. Love is a holy mystery, evidence of God moving among us, revealed in the way we treat each other. In John’s words, “if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” We know God does live in us, because, as John says, “he has given us of his Spirit.” We are temples of the Holy Spirit, through whom God’s love can work, transforming us into a beloved community over time, as we pray and share the sacraments, study the Scriptures together, and accompany each other through the joys and sorrows of our lives.

Many things can get in the way of love, but John singles out one force as love’s enemy, its polar opposite: fear. Love is the essence of God, and the highest virtue any Christian can practice; fear is a universal animal instinct that causes us to run away or lash out in self-protection. “There is no fear in love,” John states unequivocally, “but perfect love casts out fear….whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.”

As people who base our lives on the two great commandments to love God, and to love our neighbor as ourselves, we don’t like to think we live in fear. But John, a wise elder who addresses his readers as “little children,” knows that all of us have fears, many of which we don’t want to admit even to ourselves. None is more serious than our fear of God’s judgment. John knows that fear, and he reassures us. God has shown us his love in Jesus Christ so that, as John says, “we may have boldness on the day of judgment,” not fearing punishment. Since we know God loves us beyond anything we could have imagined, we can live as free people, in communities bound together by love.

To anyone who’s spent more than a day or two in the church, however, it’s all too obvious that love has not yet been perfected in us—in any of us. Each of us struggles with some fear: of being hurt, or hurting someone else; of not being heard, seen, valued; of being misunderstood, or being wrong; of not knowing the right answer when we’re supposed to be the expert; of letting others down, or being betrayed by those we’ve trusted.

Our fears can loom so large in our mind’s eye that they keep us from even picturing perfect love, much less embodying it. So what can we do?

John’s letter gives us the answer. Remember who God is—pure love—and who we are: children of God, and brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, who still lives through our beloved community. Pray for the grace to serve as vessels of divine love, and to pour it out upon each other, and upon the world outside our church walls. With God’s help, we will be emboldened to take the risks that come with truly opening ourselves to one another. As we draw closer to each other in love, it will become clearer and clearer that our endlessly compassionate God is alive among us, and our love will be this church’s testimony to the world about our faith.