Lent
3 February 28,
2016
“Life in a Capricious
Universe”
Luke
13:1-9
13At
that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose
blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2He asked them,
“Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse
sinners than all other Galileans? 3No, I tell you; but unless
you repent, you will all perish as they did. 4Or those eighteen
who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they
were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5No,
I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”
A sermon takes place in time. This is,
this sermon is happening on Sunday morning, February 28th, 2016, the
day after the democratic primary in South Carolina. And I want to take just a
minute to talk about South Carolina . . . one of the two states outside of
Missouri where I can be caught preaching fairly regularly.
The population of South Carolina is more
than one fourth black, nearly twice the national average. Most black voters in
South Carolina vote democratic in a strongly Republican state, so, South
Carolina gives the black community an uncommon megaphone for expressing their political
perspective because they will make up at least half of the registered voters in
this primary.
The African American population in the
United States has a lot to say to this nation and to our government. Our policy
from the 1990’s of mass incarceration has mostly taken a toll on the black
community, destroying black families, and challenging the already bad
employment numbers among black men by saddling them with criminal records for
the rest of their lives.
Most of these criminal arrests and records
stem from non-violent drug offenses ginned up by racially specific
stop-and-frisk programs, and three strikes and you’re out policies.
This has, of course, been made much worse
by irrational sentencing related to categories of drugs giving lesser sentences
for drugs common in white communities than for drugs common in black
communities. And, you have to look at the judicial system itself, since
reinstituting the death penalty and almost always using on poor black convicts
who were found guilty of crimes against white people.
And the dwindling white majority in South
Carolina recognizes that the voice of the African American community in their
state will soon not only be a majority in their state but their power will
begin to have a national impact on the course of politics and so, for the past
five years, they have been fighting federal voter guidelines to enact one of
the most absurdly strict voter-suppression acts, requiring a government issued
photo ID to vote.
They say, of course, that this is to prevent
voter fraud though they have virtually no examples of voter fraud in South
Carolina. The fraud is on the part of Gov. Nikki Haley who signed this law
because she knows that this will keep tens of thousands of poor blacks from
voting.
After the sacrifices made during the civil
rights movement, after the violence we have all been lately reminded of on the
Edmund Pettis Bridge as hundreds of brave African Americans risked their lives
to fight for the right to vote, you would think that such voter suppression
would be unconscionable but once done, again, you would think that it would
motivate every eligible black voter, in angry defiance, to show up at the
polls.
I get that voter turn out was at record
numbers in 2008. I was among those who were thrilled beyond words at the
prospects of the United States electing its first black president. And though
he has not been nearly as progressive in office as I had hoped that he would
be, I am still so in awe of what a good man he is, what a loving man, what a great
father, husband, role model he is. Heck, this guy even sings well!
He has faced unprecedented opposition from
the House and the Senate and has been the brunt of racial prejudice in ways
that I thought had been buried in the 19th century. But the election
of Barack Obama, twice, did not herald the end of racism in America but has, in
fact, revealed how much work we have yet to do.
The good paying manufacturing jobs in our
city centers from WWII to the boom in the car industry, created the black
middle class, which, in turn, gave America its educated, hopeful leaders of the
Civil Rights movement. As manufacturing jobs in our urban centers fell apart,
so has the black middle class and, it seems, has also dramatically reduced the
number of easily identifiable leaders in the black community.
It has taken me a while to get to this
point but here is what I am driving at. The plight of black Americans in the
United States is bleak in ways that has not been for generations. There are few
times when we need more to see an organized, strong, and unavoidable cry from
black communities for economic, racial, and social justice. And yet, voter turn
out in yesterday’s primary was very small.
The circumstances of this election year
finally turned and handed the microphone to the black community in South
Carolina, and, it would seem, they were not interested in saying much.
Men should always be cautious when saying
anything about women’s issues and white people should be very circumspect about
giving any appearance of criticism of issues within the black community, and
straight people need to careful about commenting on gay issues. All that being
said, I must politely, cautiously, carefully and with sincere circumspection
say to black voters in South Carolina, “what is wrong with you?”
Regardless of which candidate they voted
for, and I realize that my favorite candidate was set up for a “yuuuuge” loss
in South Carolina, but still! I have always accepted that Bernie Sanders’
candidacy was more about making a moral point than it was about winning but you
can’t say it has been ineffective. I have noticed that ever since I have had a
Bernie sign in my yard that the Jehovah’s Witnesses assiduously avoid ringing
my doorbell and you cannot say that is meaningless.
It is not up to the victims of
discrimination to change the institutions of prejudice in our nation. Gay
liberation involves changing the way that straight people think. Female
empowerment involves partnering between men and women to create a level playing
field. And racism requires cooperation between majority and minority
populations to fix the inequities that have perpetuated mass incarceration of
black people, kept African Americans out of the professions, and made them the
biggest losers in every economic recession.
But folks, the reason why we had the
banner created when we started this church, this motto from Elie Wiesel,
defines our core ideology…. Thou shalt not stand idly by. What I would say to
minority voters everywhere is just this, you cannot afford to sit this one out.
Well, really, I would say to voters of all stripes, you cannot afford to sit
this one out. Just look at how sitting out votes has turned out in the past.
As I said in the beginning, a sermon
happens at a point in time. South Carolina’s democratic primary was yesterday.
The Oscars are tonight. Now, I will confess that I have never watched the
Oscars. I like the movies that I like and I am not much impressed with the
opinions of Oscar voters. Beyond that, I have never much cared to spend an
evening watching multi-millionaires give golden statues to other
multi-millionaires, the shape of which even suggests a certain Freudian comment
on the whole enterprise.
However, I may watch tonight just to see
how the Oscar’s black host will deal with the fact that this is the second year
in a row that this prestigious awards ceremony has entirely ignored the amazing
wealth of talent and artistry present in America’s black population. Because
somebody has got to say something…somebody has got to put up a visible and
audible protest to the reality of racism in America.
And now I must entreat you, kind
listeners, to stop thinking about the shape of the Oscar statue and return to
our conversation in the present moment. I need to beg your attention for just a
few more minutes to consider a crucial philosophical issue raised by our
scripture reading this morning from the thirteenth chapter of Luke.
In this brief pericope, Jesus is
addressing a false religious assumption that plagues us as much today as it did
his peer group two thousand years ago. And that is the often repeated belief
that everything happens for a reason… or more pointedly, that everything
happens because God is in charge and whatever happens is God’s will.
It is not just modern philosophers,
ethicists, and theologians who are calling BS on that belief, even Jesus did.
He references recent events in his day, when a tower fell in Jerusalem and
killed eighteen people. Evidently, the popular response to that was not simply
poor engineering or the capriciousness of natural events but rather, there were
those who wanted to reassure themselves with the classic religious out that all
things work together for good for those who love God. That no matter how tragic
it may look in our eyes, that God has a plan and that it is a good plan.
It is tempting, sometimes, to credit a
divine hand at times of crisis. When I was young, the congregation where my
family were active members built a new and very modern church. To trump the
Baptists, we built the tallest steeple in town. It was made of three massive
steel girders that reached 250 feet into the air, topped with a steel cross,
all of which glowed in the morning sun every day over my home town.
One spring a tornado passed right over the
church and though it left the building unmolested, it twisted those steel
girders and bent the structure over so that the cross was inverted and looked
like a giant heavenly finger pointing down at the church, right over the
pulpit.
The process of building that tower had
taken months but they got it disassembled and removed in short order, to be
replaced years later with a much more modest edifice of less than half the
former size.
I am tempted to interpret that with no
small amount of divine contempt but the fact is, it was just an event of
nature. Nature follows iron clad laws of physics but no single event is a
divine message to a wayward people.
The melting of polar ice caps, the rise of
our sea levels, are predictable events but they are not simply the capriciousness
of the universe. These things happen, not for a divine reason, but because of
the indifference, greed, and ignorance of people.
Things don’t happen because God is playing
dice with the cosmos. The poverty of the black urban centers of our cities is
not God’s will, it is the result of NAFTA, CAFTA, and will be made worse by the
Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement…. All of which amounts to reverse socialism,
transferring the wealth of our nation from the poor and middle class into the
hands of the super rich and it happens only because we accept a second or third
class status in our own world… staying home on election days, failing to
organize, accepting anti-union propaganda as inevitable truths.
Traditional religion is a tool used to
keep the poor in poverty, the powerless unempowered, it pits poor whites
against poor blacks, and leads heterosexuals to blame homosexuals for their
personal failures. All of which is a pack of lies that cannot stand up to a
moment of honest inquiry.
Real spirituality, honest religion, is a
response to the chaos of nature and the evil of human greed that refuses to
play the role of being victims, that works, sacrifices, organizes, marches, and
speaks prophetically to create justice, to right the wrongs of our society, to
defend our planet’s ability to sustain life, and at every turn attempts reduce
human suffering in favor of a more fair and loving world.
And that is not just the witness of Jesus,
Moses, Muhammad, Zoraster, and Buddha… that is not just Gandhi, Romero, King,
Dorothy Day, and Mother Theresa. This is not just my opinion. In your heart,
you already know that I am right and none of us get a pass to sit this one out.
