September 23, 2012 Proper 20
Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor
James 3:13 - 4:2
13Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. 14But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. 15Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. 16For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. 17But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. 18And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.
4Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? 2You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts.
On Friday morning television crews were out filming images of people sleeping on the streets in sleeping bags. Some were in small clusters around camp stoves and tents. But these were not homeless people. We don't allow homeless people to sleep on the sidewalks.... Even when they are hiding from plain view, our local police force will arrest or evict them, confiscate their belongings and discard them and even take their pets to the animal shelter where they will likely be put down.
No, the people sleeping on the sidewalks this week were in line to buy the new iPhone 5..... a product with differences so subtle from the last version of the iPhone that most of us would be at pains to meaningfully say what they are. Still, the irony present in the fact that you cannot sleep on the streets if you have no home and nowhere else to go but you can sleep on the streets if you do own a home but you intend to buy something and if that doesn't tell you something of the degree to which capitalism has become America's real religion then, my friends, you are not paying attention.
I don't say that to be hyper-critical of techno-nerds. I actually have an iPhone 4 myself which I purchased when they added the Siri communication feature, only to discover that I can't communicate with Siri any better than I have been able to communicate with any of the women I've dated over the past two decades.
And I would even say that I need to put some distance between myself and a lot of my very liberal, tree hugging, anti-consumerism friends. If we all just stop buying things and learn to live very simply on much less then the economy grinds to a halt and the poor suffer even more. A lot of the hardship we are experiencing across the country right now is a direct result in the slowdown of the economy that has cut production and retail jobs, cut state sales tax income, forcing reductions in school and road budgets and layoffs among police and fire fighters.
Excessive greed and consumerism is part of what caused this economic melt down but the other end of the spectrum has its own monsters. No matter what else you might want to say about the "dot.com bubble" of the 1990's, the hyper stimulated market was directly responsible for an increase in employment and income and under those circumstances a lot of wonderful things happen that should make both liberals and conservatives happy..... the crime rate went down.... Violent crime by more than 50%.... even the abortion rate went down by 50% because women who feel that they can raise a child are much more likely not to terminate a pregnancy.
Unemployment went down, the numbers of teen pregnancies, single parent births went down and giving to global charities reached all time highs.
A liberal progressive who really wants to see an alleviation of suffering and a raising of the standard of living of the poor needs to take a sober look at the reality of what a bull market can do if all of the profits are not being skimmed off into the pockets of the now infamous 1%.
But, of course, the answer to the poverty issues that plague us today is not nearly so simple as telling people to go buy more, consume more, own more. The sobering reality is that if we want to give more people a living wage and a decent standard of living then we are going to have consume less but pay a lot more for it..... and that does not translate well to the marketplace. You will never see a grocery store chain called "Pay More Get Less."
Although, truth be told, that is what our local Farmers' Markets really are. Buying produce at one of our local Farmers' Markets is good for the environment; it is good for your health, it's good for the local economy but you are going to pay an awful lot for apples and onions.
You can take comfort in knowing that one of our favorite local musicians, Dallas Jones, who also is an farmer, will not have his infant children out in the field digging up potatoes or cracking open pecans by candle light in the basement at night. If you buy local produce you will have to pay American wages to people who work under acceptable first world conditions and then you find out why food at Walmart is so much cheaper.
If you buy food at Chick-fil-A you know that you are getting a little hate and prejudice with your fried chicken.
If you buy produce at Sams and Walmart, which most of us do, then you can know that someone is being abused on the other side of that transaction. If you are a person of conscience, then certainly you want to work to alleviate suffering and to make the market place more fair, more just, and, if you are a heard hearted greedy capitalist, you at least want to make profits the right size to make market growth sustainable.... During the dot.com bubble, no one was calling President Clinton a communist, were they?
In our scripture lesson from James today, James is making the eternally true observation that greed leads to conflict, even to murder. No matter what the spin put on international warfare, it is almost never about religion, humanitarian aid, liberation or spreading democracy.... There are times when it is but when you hear hoof beats you think "horses" and not "zebras." Most wars are about economics, about the market, about profit and power.
James says that the warfare is within us.... We want something and we do not have it and so we will murder to get it.... If not literally, then essentially. Most of us would be ashamed to wear the shoes on our feet if we saw the conditions in which they were made. We live with a clear conscience because of what we do not see, what we do not know, but when we refuse to see or become informed, then, in fact, we already know that we will wear the shoes either way. And that is the point at which spirituality enters the marketplace of both ideas and shoe shopping.
At the heart of Buddhist teaching is what is called the Four Nobel Truths. It is always dangerous to try to sum up any religious teaching too simply but if you will give me permission to give you a short hand version of the four truths:
The first is that life is full of suffering, dissatisfaction and dis-ease.
The second is that our suffering, dissatisfaction and lack of contentment comes from our unrealized desires.
The third is that the end of this discomfort comes from letting go of all desire.
The fourth point has to do with following what is called the "eight fold path" which consists of consists of: Right Understanding, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.
Really explaining that 4th point would require that you take my course in eastern religious thought..... the tuition for that course at Drury University is $2,400, which gets us back to the whole point about greed, consumerism and camping out in front of the Apple store to get a version of Siri that actually understands me.
The first three points are a bit easier. When your friend tells you that they are going to Hawaii for two weeks, is your first thought that you are really happy for your friend that they are going to get to have such a nice vacation or is your first thought jealousy? You see, letting go of desire, being able to have a balanced approach to life goes to the heart of the problem between the first world and the third world.
Would I be willing to get by on three pairs of shoes rather than fifteen pairs of shoes if the people who make my shoes got to eat every day and live in a house that has a floor? If you cannot answer "yes" to that question then you need to keep coming to church every week until you can.
Finding the right balance to our consumerism that gives others a chance to have a decent life is a spiritual issue. When we can get our appetites under control then a lot of life factors start to change..... marriages will last longer, children will be better cared for, there will be fewer wars, fewer people who need to sleep on the streets and more people interested in signing up for my college classes..... and that, as Martha Stewart says, would be a good thing.
