When Justice Rolls Down Like Water: A Sermon on Economic Justice

Sometimes, what I need to read for a sermon seems to magically fall into my lap. A few weeks ago, as I was beginning to think about this service on economic justice, Betty King gave me a thin book by William Sloane Coffin called My Heart is a Little to the Left, Essays on Public Morality. Coffin was the activist, anti-war chaplain at Yale for years, mentor to one of my mentors, Scotty McLennan.

Coffin defines spirituality as “living the ordinary life extraordinarily well.” He spells out three points of a spiritual trinity which help him try to do this. First, wonder. “Pure beauty, benediction: you are all I gathered/From a life that was bitter and confused,/ In which I learned about evil, my own and not my own./ Wonder kept dazzling me, and I recall only wonder.” (Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz)

Second, anger. “When the powerful do as they will and the poor suffer as they must,” writes Coffin, “it’s easy to become bitter. In fact, it’s comforting to be bitter. But it’s not creative, bitterness being such a diminishing emotion. Far more productive is anger, which, if focused, is spiritual nourishment …I stress anger because the country as a whole is despiritualized by moral lassitude. Having gotten used to genocidal weapons, are we now going to get used to starving children?”

Third, love. “Make love your aim,” he says quoting Saint Paul. Too many religious people make faith their aim. Coffin speaks to the Christian right, as a committed Christian himself, speaking up for a Christianity which makes love its aim, not in personal morality, but in communal politics. The kind of inclusive collective love that insists on justice for the poor, the children, the forgotten of America. “We Americans have so much, and we’re asking of ourselves so little,” says Coffin. “What we are downsizing more than anything else are the demands of biblical justice.”

Biblical justice. Betty King sent me to William Sloane Coffin, and he, in turn, sent me back to the prophets. Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Micah. I settled finally on Amos, because in contrast to other prophets who wrote from times of exile or political despair, Amos wrote from a society of affluence like ours. He was a sheepherder or rancher who wrote from the Northern Kingdom around 750 BC. Political fortunes were secure, and the economy was roaring.

“Alas for those who are at ease in Zion, and for those who feel secure on Mount Samaria, the notables of the first of the nations. Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock…who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp, who drink wine from bowls. and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph! Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile, and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away.”
With this sharp list of seven verbs that punch, those who lie, lounge, eat, sing, drink, anoint, Amos indicts these leaders who do not grieve over their society. The revelry of the loungers. William Sloan Coffin took me back to Amos and some of the harshest, most passionate words uttered in Hebrew scripture.

Amos was a prophet, and prophets were first and foremost messengers from God. They had something to say about the society in which they lived, but it was God’s words they were bringing, not merely their own opinion. God did not come to Amos in a “still small voice” as God came to the prophet Elijah. Listen to the first words in the book of Amos: “The Lord roars from Zion…the pastures of the shepherds wither, and the grass on Mount Carmel turns brown.” God comes to Amos as a lion, a ravaging, roaring beast. There is power and anger at what is going on in this prosperous society.

We, too, are living in a boom. The last decade of economic growth has made the top sector richer and left many behind. As Chuck Collins spoke of today, the gap between rich and poor is only growing. In the past l0 years, average worker pay inched up from $22,000 to $29,000, while CEO pay rose by 536%. Bill Gates and two other moguls have a net worth of $156 billion. Three men have wealth that is more than the GNP of the 43 poorest nations combined. Twenty-one percent of American children live in poverty. Can you imagine in your mind’s eye a kind of prison of schools and neighborhoods that is almost impossible to climb out of ?

I have a five year old girl whose eyes shine, who looks on life as a gift, and runs toward it, arms outstretched. Purely by luck of the draw, there is a child two, four, seven towns over who was born into other circumstances and destined for other experiences. What will her eyes look like by the time she’s five? The New York Times Magazine article last week about life outside of school for poor children spells out in devastating detail what we know already by the sinking inside our own hearts.

Economic justice. I wrote this sermon with newspaper headlines swimming before my eyes. Jubilant announcements of mergers between corporate giants, the article on the “Living Page” about kitchens that cost $200,000 and more. “Why not go for your dreams?” the designer asks breathily, detailing one more countertop, lighting option, luxury stove.

I wrote this sermon remembering my dad who talked about coming of age in the Roaring Twenties. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote: “…the Jazz Age was in flower…A whole race going hedonistic, deciding on pleasure…It was borrowed time anyhow- the whole upper tenth of a nation living with the insouciance of grand ducs and the casualness of chorus girls.”

I wrote this remembering a circle of people on the Boston Common, standing there with some of you on a cold day a week before Christmas. It was an outside worship service with the homeless. My children’s eyes growing wide at the people in sneakers and ripped coats who talked loudly, interrupted the minister, and sometimes sounded crazy .

The priest, Debbie Little, in her bright blue jacket, preaching in the middle of all the commotion, the gospel story about the angel who comes to Mary. What if God were here, she said, pointing to the middle of the circle. What could be more ludicrous, this odd mishmash of people, huddled together, in the cold, with great clouds of pigeons flapping up all around. What if God came to us, wherever we are, in our darkness, in our joy, the way the angel came to Mary. Could we show up for the appointment, could we say, “Here I am,” the way Mary did. The priest is asking people who have no place to lay their head, she is asking us who came in from the suburbs. And, we are all listening, hard.

Debbie Little who was, as she says “siphoned out” of her other life, a comfortable life that she loved, with an office, expense account, cell phone. She loved that life, but, after eight years of hearing God’s call, trying to ignore it, finally, she couldn’t ignore it. She’s ordained now, a priest on the streets, listening to words about the holy, about God, from people who sleep on benches, and, as she tells it, she “couldn’t be happier.”

“The lion has roared,” says Amos, “who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken: who can but prophesy?” Can we imagine together how frightening it might be to prophesy, how frightening it could feel to be in the middle of a comfortable life, like Debbie Little, maybe like you or me, and feel called out of it, to do something a little different or begin to ask questions or say things that are not nice or comfortable any more? “The lion has roared,” God has spoken, who can but prophesy?

The question comes about a week after the Boston Common, we are driving in the car, the question from the back seat, “Mommy, why are there poor people?” I listen to these voices and to the voice of an eight year old who has been singing a song about Martin Luther King all week, a song she learned in music class. Two years ago, she discovered Dr. King for the first time, this man who talked about fairness, he seemed to delight her in some deep place in her being. Now she looks up at me, pausing for a minute as she brushes her teeth, her face suddenly wide and still, “But his dream didn’t work mommy, his dream is broken, it is over.” What I fumble to say to her, knowing this moment will stick in my mind.

We are living in a boom, which includes some in and leaves a lot out. And today, by virtue of the fact we have brought our bodies and mind to this place, this Unitarian Universalist meeting house, we are called back to words from our spiritual tradition. We are searching perhaps for something to anchor or guide us. We bump up against words from Amos: “I hate, I despise your festivals and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.”

These words, our opening words today, come from Chapter 5, the centerpiece of the Book of Amos. Famous words quoted by Dr. King and many others. Amos is living at a time when the temples are crowded: people flock to worship, then rush home to their money-making. He will have no truck with this religion as usual, crowded and busy and hollow. In worship, no authentic communion with the Holy One. Out of worship, people ignoring what is all around them.

“Take away from me the noise of your songs
I will not listen to the melody of your harps
But let justice roll down like waters
and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”
I am listening to the voice of the ancient prophet Amos and the modern-day prophet Coffin, to the newspaper headlines, to the voices of my dad and my children. And, I am remembering the voices of some of you. You come and speak with me, sometimes, about your lives. You speak of family or work. Your tell me stories of loss or illness or hope. You speak of many things, but, sometimes, you speak of your dreams, your desire to be of use. Your personal purpose. What I’d call your ministry.

As a community, we ask these questions too. What are we called to do or be? Since I have come here, you have spoken of your yearning towards social justice. There are so many individual projects you are doing here already. You tutor kindergartners and mentor children in the city. You help teenagers with computers and design playgrounds. You teach in prison, serve meals, work on anti-racism. You do so many things outside of church.

But today I’m asking, what are we called to be together? What is the deep desire put inside this community, poured into our hearts, by what I’ll call the Spirit of God. The Breath of Life, the Spirit of Love. What dream is being called into voice from amongst us, so that first we give it shape in words and then go and build it with our hearts and hands?

In the spirit of an old-fashioned barn raising or quilting party, when, at the end of the day, there was a barn raised up. There was a quilt pieced and sewn together by loving hands. What will be our barn? What will be our quilt?

In this country where money comes first, and power and success, where the economic divide widens every day, how will we- as a faith community- respond? Where will we put our stake in the ground? How will we turn our attention to the “least of these?” Not in a power-over way, not in a benevolent way, but in a partnership-with kind of way?

We need your help with this, Gary and I. Tell us your visions and dreams. Let us know if you’d be willing to help.

But let justice roll down like water…If the energy of our collective yearnings were harnessed together, might it look like something mighty and churning and rolling through the midst of us?

In ten or twenty years, when our children speak about this place,“When I was a kid, we went to First Parish in Concord, and I remember we did…” what, together? What will they remember of what we stood for? How we stood together in this particular society?

Their memories depend on what we do now together. And three towns over, or in East St. Louis, North Camden, Lowell or Roxbury, there is a five year old girl who is watching, too.