Sermon Archive

Tuesday is the day for us here in New York to vote in primaries, and I’m glad to say that our church building will be serving as a polling place. Tuesday is also the day when a crucial vote will be taken in the state of Alabama on an all-important tax-reform referendum.

And I’m willing to wager that, on this particular Sunday in that conservative state in at least 60% of all the pulpits, the sermon topic is something like mine, “Politics, or Religion?” And that’s not because of the religious/political issue in Alabama that’s probably the first one to spring into our minds—Judge Roy Moore’s “Ten Commandments” statue, which has gotten so much press coverage. No, all of today’s pulpit-talk about politics is being driven there by the decision of that state’s conservative Republican governor, Bob Riley, to take the Bible seriously and to try to restructure that state’s unjust tax code. For that code calls for Alabamians earning less than $13,000 per year to pay 11% of their income in state and local taxes, but for those earning more than a quarter of a million dollars per year to pay just 4%. 11% for the poorest. 4% for the richest. And that tax code also calls for the timber corporations that own 71% of the state’s land to pay just 2% of its property taxes. Governor Riley has come to believe that that’s “immoral” and that an unjust tax code like that must be changed. Thus, Tuesday’s vote!

Governor Riley has been greatly influenced in his political conversion by a paper written by a United Methodist professor of tax law at the University of Alabama law school. Her name is Susan Pace Hamill, and she was led to write that paper by her jolting, life-transforming encounter with biblical values while she was on sabbatical at the evangelical Southern Baptist divinity school of Samford University in Birmingham. There she would often discuss with her really quite conservative New Testament professor the readings in the biblical text that were challenging her, and it was he who urged her to write her Master’s thesis on what she was discovering. So at his insistence the topic of her thesis became: “An Argument for Tax Reform Based on Judeo-Christian Ethics.”

When turned in, Hamill’s thesis was brought to the attention of Governor Riley, who is a devout Christian, a Southern Baptist. He read it, and was persuaded by it. He then worked with the Democratic majority in the legislature to pass a tax-code amendment to the state constitution. But now, to be implemented, that constitutional change has to be endorsed by the citizens of Alabama in the referendum.

This remarkable stand by Riley, a staunchly conservative Republican—this stand by him on behalf of tax justice for the poor has gained the support of most of the religious denominations in Alabama, including the local Presbyterian leadership. However, it has not gained the support of the Alabama chapter of the so-called “Christian” Coalition. This local chapter continues in thrall to its privilege and self-interest, so it is working to defeat this change, which is so clearly in accord with the Bible’s firm command, as is recognized even by the Christian Coalition’s national leadership.

I can only hope that all of the pulpits wrestling with political issues this Sunday are following the lectionary of scripture texts we use. For today’s lessons from Proverbs and James speak quite directly to God’s command that we are to establish justice for the poor. Wrestling with these texts today would make it difficult for any preacher with integrity to oppose the proposed amendment.

So, Proverbs. In the walled cities of ancient Israel, judges meted out justice while sitting in the open space of the city’s gate. Today’s First Lesson uses that image of the gate of justice and then imagines God to be present there, advocating powerfully for the poor who have been wronged. Now, the Old Testament book of Proverbs is otherwise known for its rather cool rationalism, but this particular text offers us quite a hot imperative: “Do not rob the poor … or crush the afflicted at the gate, for the LORD pleads their cause …" (22:22–23). Well, one couldn’t ask for a clearer injunction against using the legitimate structures of law, such as tax codes, for oppressing the poor. Furthermore, our lesson enjoins our practice of a positive virtue, sharing our bread with the poor (22:9)—that is, our metaphoric “bread,” our possessions and our money, including even our tax payments.

Well, that’s Proverbs, reflecting on what is in fact a central concern found throughout the whole of the Old Testament—namely, God’s concern for the well-being of the poor.

And when one turns to the New Testament, one finds there that no fewer than 1 out of every 16 verses are focused on the issue of poverty and/or wealth. So it is not at all surprising to find tucked away in even such an unfamous book as James a gem of God’s wisdom like this: “You do well if you really fulfill [this] royal law …, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.… If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? …[F]aith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” (2:8–9, 15–17) Which is to say that charitable feelings unaccompanied by deeds of justice are of no good! For Christian faith is totally incompatible with the injustice of favoring the rich. Acting out preference for the rich over the poor betrays God’s law of love. Truly to believe in “our glorious Lord Jesus Christ” (2:1) is to work for a transformed world, in which our commonplace social values have been turned upside-down, in which even the tax-codes are used for leveling the playing field between the poor and the rich.

Now, a principal means that most of us have for making local, state, and federal policies “just” is the act of voting our Christian convictions whenever there is an election. And this work of regularly voting is one of the works that we’re called to, if, in the spirit of James, we would fulfill our faith and bring it to life through deeds.

Interestingly, it was just last June that a national poll conducted by the Pew Research Center and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life asked Americans this question: “When you vote in an election, how often do you find yourself using your religious beliefs to help you decide how to vote—frequently, occasionally, only once in a while, or hardly ever?”

I myself would have responded, “Frequently.” But I find, to my dismay, that among white American mainline Protestants like me (whom I’ll call WAMPs)—that among us I’m in a distinct minority. According to this poll, only 10% of us WAMPs, when voting, turn to our religious beliefs for guidance “frequently,” and only another 14% even turn to our religious beliefs “occasionally.” That means that when WAMPs are voting, 3 out of every 4 of us white Presbyterians are consulting our religious beliefs “only once in a while” or “hardly ever.” 3 out of 4. I find that appalling!

Fortunately, Black Protestants do considerably better than that! When voting, fully 31% of you are guided by your religious beliefs “frequently,” and another 20% are guided by them at least “occasionally.” That’s a majority of you. So praise the Lord for African-American Protestants! And may the rest of us come soon to follow your example!

Dear people of faith, I urge us all, to wake up! For as James teaches, a faith that is unaccompanied by the political work of justice is dead! So the question to be asked is not, “Is voting a matter for politics, or religion?” No, the question to be asked is “When voting, which value will we have shape our politics— the secular value of favoring the rich, or the biblical value of establishing well-being for the poor?”

Well, the figure I cited earlier, 1 verse out of every 16 in all the New Testament, should tell us that one of the religious values that must shape our politics is God’s concern for the well-being of the poor.

Tuesday’s referendum in Alabama seeks to revise its tax code in order both to alleviate an unjust tax burden on the poor and to preserve essential educational and social services in the face of a projected $700-million budget deficit. Reflecting on Alabama’s upcoming vote, an op-ed piece in The New York Times last June 10th (Late Edition [East Coast], p. A28) asked the question, “What Would Jesus Do?” and it offered this answer, “Sock It to Alabama’s Corporate Landowners.” I love it! Leave it to the thoroughly secular Times to discern and state so pointedly what our Christian values truly are! But sad to say, all the signs are that come Tuesday the proposed tax-reform will be defeated by the voters, and the very poorest in Alabama will continue to be deprived of justice and greater well-being.

Well, on the national scene, what are we followers of Jesus to do about a Congress and a President that have excluded the 7 million families with the lowest incomes in the nation from the tax-credit checks that have been sent out to American parents this summer?

And what are we to do about a Congress and a President whose solution to desperately rising unemployment (yes, yet another 93,000 jobs were lost just in August!)—whose solution to joblessness is to cut the taxes of the wealthiest among us rather than to use those taxes to build roads and schools and to provide health care for the uninsured, all of which would immediately create many new jobs?

What are we to do about a Congress and a President that tolerate collapsing schools, and shrinking social programs, and soaring tuitions at state and community colleges while spending plenty of money to prosecute an ill-conceived war and its aftermath?

What are we to do about an administration that once promised to “leave no child behind” but is now managing to leave behind virtually every poor child in the nation?

What are we to do about a Congress and a President that force millions of seniors to choose whether to use their limited income for needed drugs that are exorbitantly priced or to use that income to pay their rent and buy some food—while all the while that Congress and President continue gleefully to accept huge campaign contributions from the manufacturers of those high-priced drugs? What are we to do?

Well, an answer to these questions that springs immediately to my lips is, “Come on, American Christians! Let’s take our values with us into the voting booth, and, in 2004, let’s elect a new Congress and a new President!”

Well that’s my reply, which I actually consider to be mild-mannered! But listen to some much harsher words of judgment from the pen of Eugene Peterson, a conservative, evangelical Christian pastor whose paraphrase of the Bible, called The Message, has sold millions of copies. Peterson’s paraphrase of the words spoken by God to ancient Israel through the prophets includes this reading: “Doom to you who legislate evil, who make laws that make victims—laws that make misery for the poor, that rob my destitute people of dignity, exploiting defenseless widows, taking advantage of homeless children.” (Quoted by Jim Wallis, in Sojourners, Sept.- Oct., 2003, p. 8.) Doom to you! Strong words indeed. But clearly the authors of Proverbs and James would agree with those words.

Friends in Christ, let us heed the words spoken on behalf of the poor by Proverbs and James, by the prophets of ancient Israel, and by Jesus himself. And let us heed that closing warning in today’s Second Lesson, that a faith which is unaccompanied by works of justice is truly dead!

Voting—is it politics, or religion? Well actually, it’s both!

So, friends in Christ, let us bring with us to the polling place, each and every time we step inside to vote, our Christian beliefs and values!