Proper 20 September 25,
2016 Community Christian Church
Roger Ray, pastor “The Gulf
Between What Is Legal and What Is Right”
Amos 8:4-7 4Hear
this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the
land, 5saying, “When will the new moon be over so that we may
sell grain; and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make
the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false
balances, 6buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair
of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.” 7The Lord has
sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.
The
right for same sex couples to marry is coming slowly to Mexico, in much the
same way that it did in the United States. Right now it is only legal in Mexico
City and a couple of larger states but President Enrique Peña Nieto, who has made it very clear
that they will not be paying for no stinking wall…. Has recommended a
nationwide measure to legalize same sex marriage throughout the country.
Mexico
may not be all that Catholic anymore but the Catholic church is still very
strong there. Last Saturday there was a huge demonstration by the Frente
Nacional (Spanish for "National Front") in Celaya… 11,000 people were marching down
the street, carrying anti-gay banners and shouting slogans. Then this 12-year-old
boy, stepped out into the street and stretched out his arms to stop them. The
media has reasonably avoided using his name but they did publish a quote from
him. When asked why he did this, he
said, “I have an uncle that is gay, and I don’t like people hating him.”
It
has only been a week but this little boy has already been compared to the
iconic image of the “tank man” who 27 years ago, stepped out in front of
Chinese tanks rolling into Tiananmen Square or Ieshia L. Evans, the 35 year old
nurse and single mother who stood up to riot police earlier this year in Baton
Rouge.
In
the early 1960’s, when Martin Luther King, Jr. was being arrested and jailed on
a regular basis, my mother was willing to dismiss the whole of the Civil Rights
movement for that reason alone. In her universe, good people obeyed the law,
bad people broke the law. There was no way in her evangelical Methodist world
view to allow for a righteous person to break an unjust law…. Though that is
exactly what King said that we must do.
Today
is one of those increasingly rare days when we began with a reading from the
Bible… we read this famous text from the prophet Amos who decried how the
people just went along with culture… they went along with the market place.
Amos was irritated by the fact that people were increasingly aggitated about
having to not do business and make money on the Sabbath… they were itching to
open their shops and, according to Amos, get back to cheating people.
Let
me rescue a bit of that language… when he accused the merchants of “making the ephah small and the shekel great”
he was saying that they made the measuring cup that they used to sell grain
smaller but demanded a large shekel in payment. If you didn’t know it, the
reason why our larger coins have ridges on the edges was to prevent people from
shaving precious metals off from the edges.
When coins were actually made of silver or gold, people might fudge a
bit and shave off a little of the metal and save it. Amos says that these guys were shorting the
customer on the product but demanding the full weight of the coin.
But
that is how the market works, in one way or another. The proposed trade
agreement that is in the news these days, the TPP – the Trans Pacific
Partnership – has been criticized because it favors corporations over labor… it
is a trade agreement largely believed to actually accelerate the growing gulf
between the rich and the poor. President Obama favors it, Hillary Clinton
helped to write it and said that it was the gold standard of trade deals until
Bernie put some pressure on her about it. Tim Kaine favored it until he was
chosen to run with Hillary.
I
don’t often place bets on politics but I would wager a large shekel that the
TPP will be renamed and passed right
after the fall election. The power of the corporations is behind it and all
elected officials ultimately work for corporations.
On
a recent Public Television interview of Green Party Candidate, Jill Stein, Dr.
Stein spoke at length about the problems with the TPP. If you watch PBS and
didn’t hear it, that is because PBS edits out anything that anyone says that is
critical of the TPP. You don’t hear it being often mentioned on commercial TV
but in the USA, corporations have even gained editorial control of Public TV.
I
don’t expect much out of CNN these days but last week Wolf Blitzer was
interviewing my second least favorite senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul. Paul
was reasonably arguing that we need to stop providing weapons to Saudi Arabia
since they are using our weapons to kill people in Yemen. Wolf asked him, “But
if we do that it will cut our military budget and people would lose jobs in
America who build these weapons.” Paul could do little more than just stare at
Blitzer who finally continued asking, “So job losses in America are not a
concern to you?”
You
see how the culture, the market, gets into a flow and people cannot seem to
even question the ethics of it. Wolf Blitzer has supposedly been a journalist
for years, but there was no way to get even a glimmer of a challenge to the
marketplace through his skull, even when you are talking about arming a regime
that is killing innocent civilians.
Here
in our own state, people have been subjected to an increasingly militarized
police force that met protestors in Ferguson, MO with literal armored military
trucks with assault rifle wielding officers on top, pointing his weapon at
peaceful protesters… trying to provoke them. And no officer was charged with a
crime.
My
mother would look at Iesha Evans and assume the absolute worst when she saw her
being handcuffed by those riot police. The Catholic Church thought they were on
the moral high ground when they got 11,000 people marching down a street
claiming to be pro-family when they were really just anti-gay, and this one
12-year-old boy stepped out and said to this powerful church, what Iesha said
to the police, what the “tank man” in China said to his government, what Martin
Luther King, Jr. said to the Birmingham police, that a moral person has an
obligation to resist an immoral law.
The
first sin in the presence of oppression is to accept being oppressed. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “If you will
stand up straight, no one can ride on your back.”
You
can hate on slave owners all day long, but while wanting to own a slave is the
first sin of slavery, being willing to be enslaved is certainly the second sin.
I
personally know some of the multi-millionaires who own many of the local fast
food restaurants that pay their workers poverty wages. I have served on boards
with them and sat at church dinners with them. One goes to the Christian Church
in Republic, another is active in the Jewish synagogue, another goes to
Ridgecrest Baptist, another goes to First and Calvary Presbyterian… these are
people who do not feel any conflict about being very wealthy people who attend
Jewish and Christian worship and then abuse their employees who are making them
rich.
What
they are doing is legal. It isn’t moral, it isn’t right, it isn’t justifiable,
but they don’t know that because no one tells them… no one they listen to. And
yes, I have told them. But who has not told them in any organized, public, and
credible way is the mass of employees they are using up.
I
understand that they are afraid of losing the sorry jobs that they do have.
They don’t want to get their hours cut. They hope for some promotion that might
ease the suffering of their poverty…. Crumbs from the table of the very
wealthy. But I have to tell you, the rich will do what is legal until you
insist that they do what is right.
All
of my life I have heard the truism repeated, “Possession is 9/10 of the law.”
No one ever seems to stop and ask, “Who wrote those laws?”
We
have a ridiculous tax code that allows very wealthy people to pay almost
nothing in taxes… as Warren Buffett has frequently said, his secretary pays a
much higher effective tax rate than he does. That is, if you earn a salary from
working at a job, you are taxed at a rate that is nearly twice of what a person
earning their income from invested wealth pays. Why are you punished for
working? Why is the income of the working poor more at risk than the income of
the investment class?
Well,
who do you think wrote the laws? There are no lobbyists on Capitol Hill
representing workers at McDonalds or Panera. There are, however, three
lobbyists for every single elected official in Washington representing the
pharmaceutical industry. Those who make huge campaign contributions during an
election year are buying access to the government…. So they donate to both
Republicans and Democrats…they don’t really care which side wins because both
sides will end up working for them.
So
who does advocate for the oppressed? What made it iconic was that the “tank
man” in Tiananmen Square was an unknown. He was just some guy who had been
grocery shopping… he was still holding his grocery bags in his hands when he
stepped out in front of those tanks. We never found out who he was. He was just
some guy, armed with a conscience who was willing to stand up to power and
injustice.
It
took several days for the media to find out who Iesha Evans was… she wasn’t a
pastor, a politician, or a community organizer. She is a single mom, a nurse,
and she was attending her first ever demonstration but she saw how the state
was abusing their power and she courageously stepped out into the street.
And,
as happens in many cases, she was arrested… it looked like the state and the
police won if you only took it for that moment…. But her courage caused a
dramatic shift in public opinion and public tolerance of overly militarized
policing in Baton Rouge.
This
little 12-year-old boy in Mexico who stepped out into the street and stopped a
procession of 11,000 self-righteous Catholics didn’t get to stay in the street.
He was pulled away and the march continued. But, you know what, gay people are
going to get their civil rights in Mexico… not because the Catholic Church is
going to do the right thing because we both know that they are not, but Mexico
will do the right thing because of the courage of this little boy and people
like him who just won’t let the state hate the uncles, sisters, and neighbors
they love.
We
need to be able to recognize a prophet when we see one. The prophets who shake
us out of our complacency, the ones who embarrass us because they stepped out
in front of the tank, in front of the riot police, in front of a whole bigoted
church, while we were just watching from the sidelines… We need to be able to
recognize our prophets, and follow them off of the curb and into the streets.
Martin
Luther King, Jr. said, “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it
must be demanded by the oppressed.”
A
couple of years ago we tried to hold a demonstration in front of a local
McDonalds to take a stand with fast food workers demanding $15 an hour. After
weeks of preparation, not a single fast food worker joined us in the
demonstration.
There
were about a dozen church folk carrying signs in front of the store and within
five minutes there were 8 patrol cars and a paddy wagon in the lot, ready to
arrested and carry us away if we slowed down their drive through service. Don’t forget that day. The government in our
community and in cities across America, serve the profit interests of
corporations, not the people.
You
couldn’t get eight police cars at one time on the north side of Springfield for
any kind child abuse, domestic violence, assault, or burglary… you couldn’t get
8 police cars to converge on the same place in five minutes if they were giving
away free donuts… but threaten to slow down the service of Egg McMuffins and
they are there! Don’t let what that means slip by you.
