Bonhoeffer put it:

If we want to understand God’s goodness in God’s gifts, then we must think of them as a responsibility we bear for our brothers and sisters. Let none say: God has blessed us with money and possessions, and then live as if they and their God were alone in the world. For the time will come when they realize that they have been worshipping the idols of their good fortune and selfishness. Possessions are not God’s blessing and goodness, but the opportunities of service which God entrusts to us....

I was thinking of Bonhoeffer when I listened to the President’s State of the Union address on Tuesday … and to the Democratic response that followed … and my feeling was that Bonhoeffer would have been disappointed – more likely appalled – by both. Disappointed, too, by any number of minor speeches over recent days from candidates and office holders who are laying out their agendas for the nation and for our state. There might have been, to be honest, any number of reasons for the disappointment, but the one that struck me most was the fact that in all of those speeches, in all that rhetoric, with all of those chances for true leadership, no one made it their business to overtly, passionately, and primarily champion the poor, the vulnerable, the oppressed, the forgotten. There were fine and stirring messages for the middle class and – from some quarters at least – some promising words for the wealthy – and perhaps the implicit though questionable suggestion that what is good for the well-to-do will be good for all – but no one – no one in my hearing at least, Republican, Democrat, Independent – was saying: "Here is my first priority. Here is the great test of our nation’s character. We are going to marshall the ingenuity, the generosity, the sense of justice, and the will of the American people to end poverty in the next ten years, to ensure that no one goes to sleep hungry, or without decent housing, or without adequate health care. The fact that we tried this before and fell short does not reduce by one whit the importance of the goal but only gives us new information on which to build. Therefore, we will sacrifice, we will be disciplined, we will innovate, and we will overcome partisanship in this great endeavor. And, at the same time, in concert with other nations in the world, we will adopt similar goals for the entire globe. We will not be deterred. For our security, for our children’s sake, for the cause of justice, there is no higher calling. We dare not fail. We will succeed."

There’s a simple reason, of course, why that speech rarely, if ever, gets given. It’s because poor people don’t swing elections. David Brooks, in a recent editorial in the New York Times, suggesting that liberals sometimes inflate the numbers of those in need, proudly stated that "only 19 percent of males and 27 percent of females are poor or working poor" in this country today. Only? Only?? Only one quarter of our brothers and sisters, struggling with basic needs? It is a sad day when tragedy masquerades as success, and the people applaud.

Who, then, will be the voice for that one quarter of our population who daily live with stresses that might break many of us in this room if we had to deal with them? If we cannot expect politicians to do it, and if we acknowledge that the poor themselves vote less and are less organized than most groups, then who? The truth is that Christians – poor and wealthy Christians together, acting both individually and through their churches – can do this, and many are doing it. And here is a good surprise. Advocacy for the poor may be emerging as the common ground that evangelicals and liberals have been seeking in recent years. We may not agree on the virgin birth or the atonement, but we can agree that hungry children are an assault on the dignity of God. We may clash over ecclesiastical polity or other social issues, but we can come together around policies that provide decent shelter for every person. In fact, bringing their usual fervor to everything they do, some evangelicals are outdoing traditional liberal Christians in seeking economic justice. And some are paying a price for their stands. Ask Governor Bob Riley of Alabama, a Republican and conservative Christian, who, out of his Christian faith, came to the conclusion that his state needed a new, fairer, tax policy and then took a drubbing on the issue, especially from his own political base. When it comes to government policies that perpetually benefit the rich and burden the poor – and we seem awash in these recently – Dietrich Bonhoeffer stands as a loving but challenging witness against us if we remain silent.

We will never know how history might have been different had the churches of Germany, and not just a few individual Christians, stood together and denounced the evils of National Socialism in the early 1930’s. We will never know. But it is the evils of economic injustice that are before us now. If the church has no charter to add its voice to the voice of the poor, what charter can it claim? What meaning can our faith have, if it does not speak to the condition of Lazarus, who languishes just outside our door? But we do have a charter … and our faith does have meaning. In scripture and in tradition, in the history of this congregation and in our own hearts, our calling is clear. The ear of God is tuned to our response; the heart of God aches for our answer.

Amen.

From a

A sermon preached at
Plymouth Congregational Church
Nicollet Avenue, Minneapolis

February 5, 2006

the Rev. James Gertmenian