Allen M. Junek
Year B: Proper 18
The 15th Sunday after Pentecost
The Episcopal Church of St. Thomas the Apostle, Dallas, TX
5 September 2021
In the name of our loving, liberating, and life-giving God: + Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Do not rob the poor nor crush the afflicted for God pleads their cause and lays waste the lives of those who plunder them.”
So says the Book of Proverbs, traditionally said to have been written by none other than Solomon, both son of David and king of Israel, and counted the wisest among men.
God pleads the cause of the poor.
God favors the poor.
The poor are precious to God.
Does God play favorites?
Isn’t God supposed to be the God of everyone?
Isn’t ours the God of all people?
From today’s passage, Proverbs also acknowledges that, “The rich and the poor have this in common: God is the maker of them all.” So whether rich or poor, we are all children of God, all siblings, members of the one human family, and God loves each of us.
But, God also loves justice and equity. And humans, we know, are not always–or even often–just and equitable. How do we hold these two things in tension with one another: God’s love of all people and God’s love of equity?
In 1968 and 1979, in the towns of Medellin, Colombia and Puebla, Mexico, a group of Latin American bishops gathered in the wake of the Second Vatican Council to assess what implications the Council would have upon the Catholic people of Latin America.
Despite conservative and progressive factions among the bishops, neither party could deny the gross social and economic inequalities of the Latin American states. Eventually, they articulated something that has been effectively recognized and adopted by the global Church, namely, God’s preferential option for the poor.
Now, God’s preferential option for the poor does not mean that God does not love the rich–only that God particularly cares about the plight of the poor and bids the rich, in particular, to repent of wealth’s corruption.
The Epistle of James, Brother of Our Lord, was indispensable to the Latin American project. Besides death and taxes, if anything is certain, it is the wealthy being a consistent object of critique in James’ letter since the quest for wealth results in the fraying of social bonds and the exploitation of the poor.
Last week, James reminded us that, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows [the poorest of the poor] in their distress” (1:27); and by the same token, today he tells us that, “God [has] chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom” (2:5). And because it is probably intentionally omitted from the lectionary…just two chapters later, James offers the most scathing critique of the wealthy in perhaps all of scripture: “Come now, you rich people,” he writes, “weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire,” (5:1-3).
(Whew. The word of the Lord. One can see why this might make Episcopalians squirm. Someone should really tell Jeff, Elon, Mark, and Bill what God has to think of their bank accounts.)
Apparently, among the Christians James was writing to, there was the practice of keeping the poor in their place. You see, when the community gathered to proclaim the Word of God and celebrate the Eucharistic feast, the rich were given seats of honor and status, while the poor had to stand in the back, or worse, sit at their feet.
This propensity for favoring the rich over and above the poor has been repeated throughout our long, winding history.
In the Medieval Period, the poor played an important role in the economy of salvation. To give to the poor was to give to the Lord Christ, it was thought. Rapid urbanization, famine, and war, however, led to an increase of vagrants and “beggars” in the streets, and Christians soon began to distinguish between the worthy and the unworthy poor. Sound familiar?
By the sixteenth century, the reformers began to teach an ethic of hard work and self-reliance. Perhaps some of us have heard of the “Protestant work ethic,” which was an ethos of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. It wasn’t long before the poor were viewed as lazy and unworthy of people’s charity or government welfare. If the previous example didn’t sound familiar, I hope this one does.
Of course, the Plague didn’t help the plight of the poor as it ravaged their communities. The poor were feared, and thought to be agents of contagious disease and moral decay. And before long, some regions made it unlawful for someone to beg for coins. By the way, you heard of Austin’s Proposition B, right? Which, on May 1st of this year, made it a criminal offense for anyone to sit, lie down, or beg for money in public areas. There is nothing new under the sun, it would seem.
Speaking of our days, especially in these United States, we do not have a good track record when it comes to the poor. We have embraced a preferential option for the rich, against the poor.
In 2017, we cut taxes for those who have more.
In 2020 we cut food stamps for those who have less.
Now in Texas, in 2021, we place undue restrictions upon women–especially poor women–when it comes to their healthcare decisions.
Okay, before you think this preacher is grasping at straws, hear me out.
As of this past Wednesday, it is now illegal for a woman to terminate a pregnancy after about the sixth week–which is before many women are even aware they’re pregnant. There are no exceptions for assault, and the law deputizes private citizens to sue anyone who performs, receives, or aids these procedures. I say “these procedures” because I hope none of us are so misinformed to think that such procedures are going away–they’ll just go unground, becoming much less safe and sterile, just like before.
I suppose we can all add “bounty hunter” to our resumes, since we are each one accusation away from a $10,000 paycheck.
These new restrictions pose insurmountable obstacles especially for teens, undocumented women and women of color, and–you guessed it–the poor.
Hear me when I say that there is room at this Table for a diversity of thoughts and practices, and that’s one of the beautiful things about it–that God does not ask for, nor want, cookie-cutter Christian. What is not up for debate however, is the status of the poor around this Table, and this is something James in today’s second lesson seeks to drive home.
In a few moments, when we come to this altar and discern the Body of Christ, I invite you also to discern the poor in our midst and be not afraid to ask why they are poor in the first place. If by some mystery we are to believe Christ when he says, “This is my Body,” then how can we not also be compelled to believe women when they insist that, “These are our bodies,” too.
You see, for James, it did not matter how piously each person took Sacrament if they ignored the dispossessed and the disinherited in their midst.
“Listen my beloved siblings,” he says, “Has God not chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that God has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor.” Have we dishonored the poor? “Is it not the rich [the lawmakers?] who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court?” (James 2:5-6)
I wonder, how many of our sisters and daughters will be drug into court in the coming weeks and months?
And dear people of God, hear me when I say that it is not the women of Highland or University Park that will be the ones drug to court. They will not be the ones disproportionately affected by these laws. It will be the women of South Dallas–of Oak Cliff and Pleasant Grove.
Yet even still, due to Wednesday’s events, are not all women in this state poorer? Has not the world become just a little (or a lot) less safe for our daughters? Our grandaughters?
And so, I adjure you this day is to be angry.
Let the fires of justice be kindled within you, and do not let the enormity of the task absolve you of the will and prerogative to make it right.
Take not your eyes from that country, that country in which equity is fact and where each of us–indeed all of us–will be so filled with goodness that we gleam like mirrors in the light of the Sun. Despite the ways of men, for that is what it is, may we be so foolish to not only hope for such a land, but to believe in the promise–his promise–that such a place hastens quickly.
For as the psalmist has written and moments ago each of us sung, “The scepter of the wicked shall not hold sway over the land allotted to the just.”
I leave you this morning with the words of Fr. Jon Sobrino, Salvadorian Jesuit priest and one of those Latin American liberation theologians that we spoke of earlier. He writes, “On the day of judgement, the peoples of the Third World will judge the peoples of the First World.” Put another way, the women of South Dallas–the women of Texas–will judge the legislators down in Austin. Fr. Sobrino continues, “To put this in theological language: The Son of Man, still present today in the poor, will preside on the last day through the poor.”
And so, may we rightly discern the poor in our midst, and pray they forgive us. Only then will we have the gladsome experience of living in communion with God, the God of the poor. May it be so.
