Does the Government Have an Obligation to "The Least of These"?: a response to Rush Limbaugh

A few days ago, during the visit of the Pope to the US, Rush Limbaugh asked a question on his show.  He said that he wasn't asking it rhetorically, that he really was curious and wanted to know.  I assume that the people who read through what must be a tremendous volume of correspondence will never pass this on to him, yet I'll send it to him nonetheless.  I thought I'd post my musing here, too.

Limbaugh's question was this, "Is there anywhere in the Bible where Jesus says that the government should help people?  Or does he say that individuals should help one another?"  I've heard other conservative pundits ask this same question and, obviously, their implication is the same -- that the moral argument of the government doing anything to address income inequality (and its related social consequences) is fundamentally misguided.  Jesus told people to help one another.  He didn't tell people to ask the government to do it.

I've heard this assertion put forward enough times that when Rush recently did as well I found myself really musing over it.  He's right, of course, as far as it goes and as far as I know.  I do not believe that Jesus is remember as every saying that it was the job of government to take care of the people.  But here's what else I know:

First, it seems obvious to me that we don't really know what Jesus said.  He didn't have a stenographer following him around.  Instead, people told one another what they remembered him as saying.  Those people told other people and the telling of the stories continued for a hundred years or so until people began to write them down.  Those writings, then, went through a myriad of translations -- not just among various languages but also through the eyes of people with different understandings and purposes.  What we have to look at today, then, is the heavily interpreted memory of people's memories of earlier people's remembrances of what Jesus said.  While I know that this is generally identified as liberal interpretation of Scripture, I also don't believe that Rush and the others are among those who believe the alternative theory that the New Testament texts were originally dictated by God for inerrant word, and that God has since guided the efforts of all of the many translators.

Second, even if you do subscribe to the idea that the Christian scriptures are not just "God-inspired" texts but "God-written" texts, you still can't claim to know everything that Jesus said.  After all, in the Gospel of John (21:25) it is written, "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written."  So ... did Jesus ever say that the government had a responsibility to care for its citizens?  We don't know, and never will, because, "Jesus did many other things as well."

Third, the question itself is flawed.  The government of Jesus' time was the local branch, if you will, of the occupying Roman government.  It was not the government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."  It was an occupying force that obliterated the governing structures of the Jewish people themselves.  When the Jews did have their own independent nation the Prophets did call the government to task for not taking care of the people -- especially the poor and the strangers among them.  And Jesus is remembered as revering the Prophets, and is remembered as chastising the closest thing the Jews had to their own government -- the Temple structure.  Remember his condemnation of the money changers, and the entire system that upheld the Temple hierarchy?  (If not, re-read Mark 11:15-19, Luke 19:45-48, and John 2:12-25)  Think of the many times he called the Pharisees and Scribes to account for not caring for the poor and the suffering -- these stories are not remembrances of his just talking to and about individuals, but of his critique of those who held power.  So, it is apparently possible to demonstrate that Jesus is remembered as saying that it was the responsibility of "the powers that be" to take care of its people.  But if you want to be strict in your interpretation and limit yourself to whether or not he spoke of the official government, the government of Rome, it is a false parallel to whether or not he would call our own government to account.

Fourth, there is not only the fact that the occupying Roman government is not an appropriate analog to our democratic government today, there is also a difference of scope.  Jesus lived his entire life in an area smaller than the state of Vermont.  It is one thing to expect the poor and the suffering to be cared for by individuals alone in such a small geographic area, but when we're talking about the entire United States?  Our problems are incredibly larger, more complex, and more intimately intertwined than could possibly be handled on a local lever alone.  The reasons people are hungry, and homeless, and in a myriad of other ways in need are national in scope.  Whatever Jesus is remembered as having said he said in and to his own people in his own time and place.  A community the size of the United States was never, could never have been, imagined.

Fifth, the closet followers of Jesus, those whose stories are told in the Book of Acts, organized their communities with care for one another a foundational principle.  It is written of them that,
  "all those who had believed were together and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need." (Acts 2:45).  Further, it is remembered that, "[T]he congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul; and not one of them claimed that anything belonging to him was his own, but all things were common property to them. ... there was not a needy person among them, for all who were owners of land or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales and lay them at the apostles' feet, and they would be distributed to each as any had need.…" (Acts 4:32 & 34)  Apparently this egalitarian, some might even say "socialist," approach so seriously that we have the story of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11) in which two of the community who decided to hold back some of their wealth for themselves were struck dead as a result.  If Rush and the others are really suggesting that we look to the teachings of Jesus to inform our social structures, this is the way those who are remembered as knowing him best organized themselves.  

Finally, after the conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 312 C.E., and the formation of what, by the 13th century would come to be called "the Holy Roman Empire," we did see a government that at least in name was rooted in Christian principles.  In a book called Germany and the Holy Roman Empire the author notes that there was imperial legislation in 1530, 1548, and 1577 that, "obliged all rulers to take care of their poor," and that, "even in times of crisis, measures that almost all governments had in place undoubtedly brought relief to many.  The deserving poor were neither demonized nor criminalized."  Did Jesus say, specifically, that governments should take care of the poor?  Not that I can tell if we're being strictly precise, but it does seem that those governments that claimed to be following his teachings and example felt that they should do so.

And that, I suppose, is the ultimate response I have to Limbaugh's question:  even if Jesus did not specifically say that governments had to take care of the poor; even if he did intend to limit his overwhelmingly undeniable and inescapable emphasis on mercy, compassion, and "the least of these;" even if we capitulate to all of that ... why not do it anyway?  What is the government?  Representatives of the people, and, for that matter, a just a group of people.  Why should they not feel the same obligations that individual people are supposed to have just because they have come together as "government."  (Specifically, to quote Lincoln again, a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people.)  Some may wonder if Jesus ever said that the government should be obliged to take care of its own poor and needy.  I'll just ask in return, "Did he ever say it shouldn't"?

Pax tecum,

RevWik

What Do We Offer?

I am finding myself almost daily learning something new about Pope Francis, and each new revelation is surprising and inspiring. 

When he carried his own bags and paid his own hotel bill after the Conclave, I took note.  When he eschewed the gaudiest robes and the special shoes and the fancy "bling" that goes with being Pope, I sat up a bit.  When he washed the feet of prisoners (including women), I found myself leaning forward.  And when he agreed to receive Tim Schmalz's controversial -- but to my mind powerfully evocative -- sculpture, "Jesus the Homeless," my smile shone in my eyes.

But when I heard that he has been known to sneak out at night to minister to the homeless?  I wasn't just impressed . . . I was moved.  Could it be, as a friend of mine asked, that we finally have a Christian as Pope?

As I say, I was moved.  I've written before about my encounters with some of the unhoused people I'd met while commuting in and out of Boston during my days at UUHQ.  And Charlottesville, like virtually everywhere else, has a homeless population, a few of whom I have gotten to know a bit.  And the church that I serve is part of the town's PACEM program that provides housing during the coldest months of the year, so working with the homeless and to end homelessness is one of our ministries already.  One to which I'm particularly drawn.

After hearing about Pope Francis I found myself thinking about how I spend my time.  Could I make a practice of going out to the Downtown Mall and spending some time there, getting to know the guys who pass their days there?  Could I make time to volunteer at the Haven?  And I started fantasizing about saying to them as we get to know each other, "You should come by our church some Sunday," and having TJMC become a community where homeless men and women and professors from UVa rub shoulders as members of the same family.

But then I thought, "would what we're doing here matter?"  Would the things we say and do on Sundays matter to people who don't have a roof over their heads and who don't know where their next meal is coming from?  I know that the "salvific message" of Unitarian Universalism would be relevant.  I believe that our core teaching -- which I sum up as "we are one human family, on one fragile planet, in one miraculous universe, bound by love" -- is life giving.  But would our Sunday assemblies?

I don't think so.  And I don't know what it would take for the folks who come for food on the first Friday, or our PACEM guests, to feel welcome and at home.  But I know I like the idea.

And for what it's worth, I think the Pope would like it too.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

New Beginnings

Finding Home (detail), mural by Josh Sarantitis,
photo by Danny Birchall, Creative Commons License

[This was originally delivered as a sermonic exploration on Sunday, January 20, at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church - Unitarian Universalist in Charlottesville, Virginia. 
If you would like, you can listen to the podcast.]

“New Beginnings” – that’s the title of this exploration.  And I’ll confess that I almost didn’t have a sermon for you this morning.  Oh, this was one of those weeks where I wrestled with the topic, danced with the topic, and just couldn’t find a handle, couldn’t get a grip.  I knew that whatever tack I took there’d be those of you who’d be disappointed, who’d wish I’d remembered to say something I left out, or who’d wish I’d said what I said differently.  And as I was writing, I was right there with you.

I’d promised, in the monthly bulletin, to tell you about efforts at moving beyond providing temporary, short-term housing for homeless persons – which some are beginning to see as, ironically, “enabling homelessness.”  People are now suggesting that a better plan is to get folks into some kind of stable housing as soon as is possible, rather than making them go through a series of steps to demonstrate their “worthiness,” because that stability is the best platform to build on.  It provides a “new beginning” rather than a temporary respite.

But try as I might to write that sermon it just wouldn’t work.  I sounded pedantic at best; at worst, hypocritical.  I’ll be honest, if you were to divide the world into doers and talkers I’d be a talker hands down.  I’d like to do more, I really would, but my default mode, and my real skills, are in the talking.

And I know that if I were to talk about these things I’d be talking to a room filled with doers.  I mean, seriously, Kip Newland, Lynn King, Elizabeth Breeden, Jen Larimer, Jill Mulligan, Edith Good, Achsah Carrier, Shirley Paul, other folks I’m sure I’ve forgotten, and other folks I don’t even know about . . . these people are up to their armpits in doing something about homelessness in Charlottesville.  They’re the ones to be talking about these things.  (And, in fact, they will be – in the coming months the Social Action Council and the Adult Faith Development Committee will be co-sponsoring a series of three workshops on homelessness that sound really incredible.  I strongly encourage you to keep your eyes open for the details as they’re announced so that you can participate.  I think that they’re going to be amazing.)

But I just couldn’t write a sermon that made it sound like I was one of those doers, because I’m not.  And when I thought about writing a sermon of facts and figures, I remembered that there is a fantastic info-graphic hanging on our Social Action bulletin board, just outside of the social hall and that that picture conveys more than a thousand of my words ever could.

So then I thought I could write a sermon that would encourage you to get involved.  Besides the fact that that’d be a case of a talker encouraging you all to be doers I banged into another problem.  We’re already doing a lot in this congregation.  I’ve already mentioned some of the folks who are kind of big-time players on this stage, but did you realize that when we take our turn to host a week of PACEM – People and Congregations Engaged in Ministry – that around 100 of us are involved in seeing that our guests our fed and sheltered?  That’s about a quarter of our formal members!  (And there’s a chance to be one of that number when we host PACEM early next month.)

On top of that, the TJMC IMPACT team is hoping we’ll have about 200 people at the big Nehemiah Action on April 29^th so that we can add our weight to the roughly two dozen other faith communities who this year are trying to find some collaborative solutions to homelessness in our area.  So that’s nearly half of our membership getting involved!

And I’m hoping that a whole lot of us are going to avail ourselves of the opportunity to be more fully and deeply educated about these issues through that Social Action/AFD program I mentioned a moment ago.  And I’d love to know that a goodly number of us take part in the annual “Point In Time” survey that aims to get a fix on just how many unhoused people there are in Charlottesville.  (And there’s information about the training for this effort in the insert to your Order of Service.)

All this to say that I couldn’t figure out a way to write a sermon that exhorted us to get more involved.  I’m sure we could – but I was at a loss.

And then I thought about Mike.  Mike was this wild guy I’d pass on the Boston Common when I was working at UUHQ, our Association’s headquarters near the State House in Boston.  Mike was about my age, or maybe even a little younger, and had been living on the street for a long, long time.  Everyone knew him.  He’d call out to just about every single person who passed him by.  (And since he sat right near the entrance to the T station that was a lot of people.)  He didn’t call out asking for money, usually.  He’d just tell you that you were “lookin’ good.”  Or he’d ask how you were doing.  Or tell you it was good to see you.  He’d shout out, “have a good day!”

Everyone knew Mike – the vendors, the cops, the commuters . . . and nearly everyone who worked at the UUA.  I didn’t usually carry cash on me, but I’d stop and talk with him most mornings.  Sit with him.  I found that beneath the perpetual gregariousness and generosity of spirit with which he greeted the passerbys there was also a weariness of soul that so many people passed him by.  I never learned his whole story, but there was some substance abuse and some unnamed mental illness.  He’d been in and out of shelters, in and out of treatment programs, in and out of the homes of friends and family, but the streets were really what he knew.  He knew which coffee shops would let you nurse a cup of coffee for a couple of hours when it was cold outside, and which ones wouldn’t.  He knew which movie theaters would let you stretch a single ticket into a triple bill when it was raining.  He knew when to be where to increase the likelihood of scraping together enough money to be able to make it through another day.  Another night.

I grew to really like Mike; to look forward to our encounters.  And when several weeks went by without seeing any sign of him I became genuinely worried – I feared discovering that he had been arrested or, worse, had died.  But like I said, everyone knew Mike and when I asked one of the Common’ cops he knew just who I was talking about and was able to assure me that Mike had moved out of downtown because he’d hooked up with a friend who had an apartment and was now spending his days closer to there.

During the three years that I commuted in to Boston from my home on Cape Cod I got to know a couple of other guys I’d pass on my walk to and from my office.  I don’t want to say “a couple of the other homeless guys I’d pass on my walk” because while it is true that none of them had a steady, stable home, to identify them first and foremost as “homeless” would be like talking about my non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma brother, or my bi-polar friend, or one of you talking about your overweight minister.  Labels may be convenient, but there is no person who can be neatly summed up with one.  We are all far more complex than that.

And that brings me to Shaggy.  His spot was in front of the Dunkin Donuts on the corner of Summer and Lincoln Streets.  Thin, scraggly hair, skin like leather, bad teeth . . . he could have been scary.  I bet he did scare some people.  But I came to know him to be one of the sweetest people I’d ever met.  He didn’t engage people the same way Mike did.  He’d just stand there, cup in hand, hoping that the people coming out of D & D’s might drop their change in. 

But as with Mike I usually didn’t have cash on hand.  But it never felt right to just pass Shaggy by.  So many people were already doing that.  So many people were already treating him as if he were invisible; as if he weren’t even really there.  And from somewhere in the recesses of my Presbyterian/Methodist upbringing came the phrase, “And whatever you do to the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you have done to me.”  And so I’d strike up a conversation.  I’d ask him how things were going, about changes that were going on then in the response of the Boston PD to panhandlers.  We’d talk about the weather and what that’d mean to someone whose entire belongings could fit in a single pack.  He explained to me how he used to try to engage people – he’d had a million stories, most of them lies, about why he needed some help at that moment.  But the dishonesty gnawed at him.  So he gave up the pretense.  This was his life.  He offered no excuses or explanations.  He’d engage with people who’d engage with him, just like most other people do.  Like I’ve said, I didn’t always carry cash, but I did remember to bring him new gloves when a cold spell was settling in.  And whenever I did have cash on me I made sure that I gave some to him.

A year or so previously Shaggy had found an Episcopal church with a real outreach to the unhoused, and he’d really begun to turn his life around.  He’d gotten off drugs and alcohol.  He’d begun going to Capital Hill to speak out about the issues of homelessness in Boston.  He’d begun doing some writing.  As I was getting ready to move from the Cape to . . . well . . . here, Shaggy’s number was finally called up and he was able to move in to an efficiency apartment.  A couple of weeks ago I heard a piece on homelessness on WBUR’s program “Here and Now” and I can’t tell you how incredible it was to hear that familiar voice – Shaggy was one of their guests!   He’s still in his apartment and, while it’s not always easy, he’s continuing to find solid footing.

A block or so up, between the Wendy’s and the CVS on Arch Street, I got to know John.  Brother John, I called him, because he was always praying for me or asking me to pray for him.  Somehow this felt right, this praying for each other, this mutual blessing we would share.  I came to learn that John had family, living not so far outside of town, but he said he made them really uncomfortable.  He never told me his diagnosis – or, maybe, diagnoses – but it was clear that his life had unraveled some time before and he had just never been able to knit the pieces back together.  He didn’t want to be a burden to his family, nor did he even want to inconvenience the other panhandlers on Summer Street who would sometimes fight him for the prime spots.  Brother John was one of the meek.  It was clear to me that he was more than just “a homeless person.”

And maybe that’s the hook for this sermon this morning.  Maybe this is another in my ongoing series that I’ve been preaching for nearly two decades now, the sermon that says “there is no us and them; there is only us.”

But let me tell you about Frank.  I came out of a meeting a couple of weeks back to be told that there was someone here who wanted to talk with the pastor.  (That usually clues me in that it’s not someone from our “flock.”  You guys hardly ever call me “pastor.”)  Frank is a tall man, and from other encounters with him here and in some of the other churches in the area I knew he could be belligerent.  Hostile.  Threatening.  But on this morning he was calm.  So we talked.

He told me that he’d made some mistakes in his life, spent some time incarcerated – “nothing I lose sleep over now,” he assured me – and had had problems with substance abuse.  His family had cut him loose, and he really didn’t have any other kind of support network.  He said he’d tried going to couple of churches, and the people had been real nice, until they learned that he’d spent some time in jail and was currently homeless.  Then they got cold real fast.  It became clear to him that he wasn’t welcome as he was.

And that’s when he said something that’s really struck me.  I think what he said can probably be interpreted in a couple of different ways, and I have to say that I agree with both of them.  After telling me how he’d felt the doors to these other churches close on him when they discovered what was really going on in his life, how he felt that as soon as people found out what his life was really like they instantly began looking down on him, he said, “I always kinda thought churches were supposed to be like hospitals.”

Now he might have meant that like a hospital he’d thought that churches had to take you in.  And I do think that there’s some truth to that.  If South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu is right that the church should be an “audio-visual aid” showing what the world should be like, then there is some truth to that. 

But I prefer to think that what he meant is that, like a hospital, a church is full of sick people.  This might sound surprising to a lot of you . . . shocking even.  And wrong.  I can imagine some of you thinking that that just isn’t right – looking around you right now you don’t any see “sick” people here.  But we are here.  In every pew, if we’d be honest with one another, and ourselves.  Who here isn’t – hasn’t been – wounded in some way?  Who here isn’t – in some way or other – even just a little bit – broken?

I’ve realized that my lifelong sermon was only partially right.  I’ve always said that there is no us and them, that there’s only us.  But in my wrestling this week I’ve come to realize that that still puts us – me – in the center of the circle and subsumes those “others” into “my” sphere.  There is no “them,” I’ve said, there is only “us.”  What I’ve realized this week is that there is no “us,” there is only “them.”

The deepest call of religion is not the recognition that “they” are “us” but the realization that “we” are “them.”  We all are wounded.  We all hunger and thirst.  We all know what it’s like to be lost, alone, alienated, homeless . . . if we’re honest with ourselves.

Yes, homelessness is an overwhelming issue; it’s a challenge with too many facets, too many interlocking pieces, an onion with too many layers.  What can you or I do to solve such a thing?

But we can address the separation.  We can address the exile.  We can address the walls within ourselves that serve to maintain the distinctions.  I came to discover that I’m not all that different from Frank, and Brother John, and Shaggy, and Mike.  Not that they’re not all that different from me but that I’m not all that different from them.  This realization makes all the difference.  And that, I suppose, is the “new beginning” I was searching for.

In Gassho,

RevWik

PS -- all through the preparation of this sermon the song "Just a Bum" by the incredible Greg Brown kept playing in my mind.  I kept trying to find a place to sing it, or at least to quote it, but I guess that's what a blog is for . . .

To the Least of These

I saw Shaggy this morning.  He's one of the four homeless men I pass regularly on my walk to the office in Boston whose name I've learned and who I've gotten to know a bit.  There's Michael, Jim, Shaggy, and Brother John.  I rarely carry cash so I don't often have any money for them, but I do stop and talk with them and try to give them what I can -- recognition and respect.  I've learned a lot from them about what it's like to live on the streets.

I've written previously ("Get A Job?  They've Got One Thanks.") about how frustrated I get when I hear people denegrate the poor, the jobless, the homeless by calling them "lazy," or "unmotivated," and telling them derisively to, "get a job."  I wrote,

"[W]hen I look through [the spiritual] lens I see people who remind me -- who remind us all -- that the world is far from fair. That those of us living comfortable lives do not represent the vast majority of people on the planet and that part of our comfort comes at the cost of their discomfort. They remind me that there is want and misery and pain and that, as Jesus himself is remembered as saying, "the poor shall always be with you." These people I pass each day put a human face on that proverb."

 Recently I've been reading about the life of St. Francis of Assisi, one of the great Christian saints.  He choose a life of extreme austerity, and made his living by begging for his daily food.  He made that the way of his Order.  Holy women and men in other traditions, as in the photo of Buddhist monks above, have also included this as part of their spiritual practice.

I understand that the intentional adoption of begging as a spiritual practice has two primary foci -- for the person who begs, it is a practice of humility and of trust.  I remind myself that I am not the be-all and end-all of things, and allow myself to be taken care of by others -- be at their mercy, in fact.  I remind myself that without the care of others I am nothing.  "We need one another" means, put in terms we hardly ever use in our culture, that I need you.

And for the person who gives, there is the benefit of allowing for the experience of generosity and freedom.  I could be afraid that whatever I give away is less that I will have for myself and, so, be tied to my possessions.  But when I give to one who begs I remind myself of my own innate freedom and allow my inherent generosity to blosson.

This seems so clear.  So obvious.  So beautiful, really.  Why, then, the disdain heaped upon those like my friends Shaggy, Michael, Jim, and Brother John?  It's not a new phenomena of our modern society, if that's what you're thinking.  As I said, I've been reading the biography of St. Francis, and he and his brothers were ridiculed and reviled because of their choice to become beggars.  They were considered madmen, and worse.  (In some of the stories the men say that it's because of the scorn that would be heaped upon them that they embraced such a life, but that's another story.)  Tomorrow I'll explore a possible explanation.

In Gassho,

RevWik