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"Not only are the poor sinners (like all people), says Raymond Fung, "they are the most often sinned against." We all know the scripture, "for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." However, there is a tendency in our culture these days to focus especially on the sins of the poor. It is easy to lay all the blame for poverty at the feet of the poor. Indeed, the poor have been blamed not only for their own poverty but also for our national indebtedness, and for violent crime to name just a few ills. So we hear the scriptures being twisted until they come out sounding something like this: "for the poor have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," and "that’s why they’re poor. They got what they deserved. If they would just get to work, stop having babies, and stop being so lazy, they wouldn’t have to be so poor. There is some truth to the sentiment that personal responsibility is important. Poor choices and sinful actions do contribute to poverty and a host of other social ills. But I think Raymond Fung is onto an equally important truth that we must understand about poverty. The poor are not the only sinners. All people are sinners, according to the scripture, and the poor are the ones most often sinned against. This is the truth that we will be focusing on today. In the book of Exodus we see a glaring example of political and social sin against a poor people. A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. This new king did not have any personal relationships with the Hebrew people. This kind of social segregation always breeds suspicion and fear. The king is no exception: "They are too many and too mighty," he fears. So the king began a program of blatant, racist oppression. He enslaved the Hebrew people and as his fears grew, he increased the oppression, making their lives bitter with hard service. He levied unfair production quotas against the Hebrews. This did not relieve his fears so the king orders the Hebrew midwives to kill all the male children born to the people. This was a brutal but systematic program of forced population control. While all seems gloomy, there is a sign of hope at this point in the story, the first of many. We see next in the story a grass-roots, feminist faith-based protest movement emerging. The midwives have had enough of the king's brutality and so they decide to break this unjust law. The scripture says, "the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live." When Pharaoh questioned them, they made up an ingenious fib declaring that the Hebrew women were so vigorous they had their babies before the midwives could arrive on the scene. In verses 20 to 21, we see that the Lord God was pleased with the civil disobedience of these women and rewarded them with families of their own. Not about to be beaten by a bunch of midwives, Pharaoh tightened up the enforcement of his population control program by commanding all the people to throw all the male children of the Hebrews into the Nile River. The men were probably saying, "I told you so, now look what you’ve gotten us into." That’s the end of chapter one. Things are not looking good. Now we’re ready for chapter two, where we meet baby Moses and his mom. Ray Bakke writes, "It was almost another conversion experience for me when I studied and began to reflect seriously on Moses and his mom... I observed that God’s liberation of Israel and the great exodus movement began with poor, urban women who broke the law by having illegal babies." The law was perfectly legal but genocidal and totally unjust. Their resistance to the law was an act of civil disobedience. Moses’ mother had a baby that she couldn’t raise, a common problem among the poor. Her husband was unable to solve the problem. So listen to this. This is amazing. She made a little boat, floated her kid down the Nile, got him rescued and managed to work out an arrangement in which she was paid to raise him. She beat the system! Bakke concludes, "later I was to pastor many public aid or welfare mothers. Oh, how I admired them, watching them raise their kids on limited funds and food stamps in tough situations, often taking abuse, yet surviving and bringing their children as an offering to the Lord at my church. Moses’ mom became my patron saint for welfare moms." Well, this patron saint of welfare moms raised a great kid. Later in the book of Exodus, we hear the Lord speaking to Moses, now a grown man, "I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them..." The Lord God took up the cause of the poor Hebrew slaves in Egypt. The Lord could care less about the fact that the laws of Egypt may have been perfectly legal. Legality is no excuse for injustice. Waldron Scott (Bring Forth Justice p. 150) has pointed out that the concern of the Lord God with the sins against the poor becomes even clearer when we look at the Lord’s attitude toward the Hebrew people over the long run. "When Israel was oppressed God took her side, but when the leaders of Israel became affluent and subsequently oppressive (a fairly common experience in world history; the oppressed become the oppressors when their fortunes are reversed), when the leaders of Israel began to sin against the poor, God turned against them." Hear the words of the prophet Isaiah: The Lord enters into judgment with the elders and princes of his people; It is you who have devoured the vineyard, the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
Pharaoh was an evil man. But the Hebrews, when they were free also oppressed their own poor. Since all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, the institutions and structures of power that we build in our society inevitably reflect our shared fallen state. To the extent that they are flawed they perpetuate patterns of sin, often against the poor. These sins against the poor may be very subtle but still very destructive. Ronald Sider in his book, Rich Christians in An Age of Hunger (p. 132-133), shares an example of how sinful patterns can be built into our institutions. In the early 1950s Northeast High School in Philadelphia was famous for its superb academic standards and its brilliant, long-standing athletic triumphs. The second oldest school in the city, Northeast had excellent teachers and a great tradition. And it was almost entirely white. Then in the mid-fifties, the neighborhood began to change and white families fled in droves to the Greater Northeast, a new all-white section of Philadelphia. Quite naturally, a new high school became necessary in this newly developing area. When the new school building was completed in 1957, the new school took along the name, Northeast High School. The inner city school was re-named Edison High. The new school took all the academic and athletic trophies and awards, school colors and songs, powerful alumni and all the money in the treasury. Worse yet, all the teachers were given the opportunity to transfer to the new school and two-thirds of them did. The African-American students who now attended Edison High had an old, rapidly deteriorating building and frequent substitute teachers. Nor did the intervening years bring better teachers or adequate teaching materials. The academic record since 1957 has been terrible. In fact, Edison High has only one claim to uniqueness. It has one national record. Hear this. More students from Edison High died in the Vietnam War than from any other high school in the entire United States. That was its only national record. Its only claim to uniqueness. Do you see in this example how sinful people created sinful institutions that sinned against the poor? Do you see in this example the truth of Raymond Fung’s statement, that the poor are the most often sinned against? Who was responsible for this sin? The politicians? The school board? The parents? The silent church? The privileged white students at the new school? Who was guilty? Many would deny any responsibility. That’s typical for this kind of sin. No one claims responsibility but still people continue to get hurt. Students receive an inferior education. A disproportionate number of the poor die in war. The refusal to accept responsibility does not diminish the suffering from this kind of sin. Indeed, it seems clear that the prophets will not allow us to claim that no one is responsible. The scriptures hold the whole people responsible and condemn this kind of sin in the strongest language. "I hate, I despise your feasts," declares the Lord God through the prophet Amos. Nowhere else in scripture are these two strong words of rejection put together. I hate. I despise... take away from me the noise of your songs. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream. If I had been preaching in a Black church this morning, I would have heard shouts of "yes" and "amen" at the end of that scripture. Perhaps they understand better than most of us the righteous indignation of God. The Lord God is greatly concerned about justice, about fairness, about how a community, a nation treats its poor. This is not a small matter. So it is tragic, as Ron Sider continues to point out, that many in the church shy away from dealing with these kinds of institutional, structural sins, that is sin that is built into the very fabric of how our institutions and governments operate. Many rightly recognize that this is where the demonic most effectively operates in our society. As we saw in the story of Moses, this kind of sin is usually perfectly legal. Slavery, for example, was perfectly legal. Apartheid in South Africa was perfectly legal. It is perfectly legal in our country for people and institutions with money to have more power and influence than the people who are poor. The poor do not have an equal voice in our country and it is perfectly legal. But it is easy in the church to focus solely on individual sins and to ignore the larger sins in society. The prophet Amos hears the Lord expressing grave concern about both kinds of sin declaring, "For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment; because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes, they trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and turn aside the way of the afflicted; a man and his father go in to the same maiden, so that my holy name is profaned... (Amos 2:6-8) This passage is fascinating because in the same breath, the Lord condemns on an equal basis both individual and social sins. In almost the same breath, the prophet hears the Lord condemning the treatment of the poor, selling them into slavery for debts as insignificant as the value of a pair of shoes as well as the sexual abuse of a woman. Ron Sider brought the message of this scripture home to me by saying, "God, however, has shown that robbing one’s workers of a fair wage is just as sinful as robbing a bank. Voting for a racist because he is a racist is just as sinful as sleeping with your neighbor’s wife! Silent participation in a company that pollutes the environment and thus imposes heavy costs on others is just as wrong as destroying one’s own lungs with tobacco." The church can be tempted to focus on our personal piety and on individual sins while ignoring the social sins. This scripture and others like it, correct this one-sidedness. Tex Sample tells a wonderful story in which a very good, straight-laced woman began to see that individual sins, while offensive and wrong, are not the whole story when it comes to caring for the poor. The woman’s name was Ella. She was a pillar in a church much like ours. There were a lot of what Tex calls "hard living people" who lived in the community around the church. The pastor had been working hard to build a relationship with a gang of tough street kids. One of them was called Big Mart, short for Marshall. The kids liked the preacher. They had decided that maybe the preacher was ok. Ella was on her way into the church, and the pastor was sitting in his office, when the explosive beginning to the story happens. The pastor hears a loud argument outside. Then he hears Big Mart calling someone something that I would be embarrassed to repeat in front of my best friend much less here in the pulpit. The pastor had about enough time to think, "oh great," when Ella came storming into his office. "Did you hear what that young man called me out there?" "Yes." Whew was she mad. "Well, what are you going to do about it?" she asked. "That’s a good question, Ella," the pastor said, "a really good question. But the real question is what are you going to do about it." That stopped her momentarily, and a bit exasperated she said, "I guess I want you to go out there and throw him out." "Ella," the pastor said, "I’ve been working for six weeks to get him in here. You want me to throw him out the first day he comes around?" The pastor was thinking fast. He just couldn’t do that. He says, "Ella, let me tell you this story; it’s a true story, and then I want you to go home and think about it. Don’t say anything right now. Just hear the story, then go home and think about it." Well, she waited. "When Big Mart was a little boy, his dad came home one night in a rage and began to beat up Big Mart’s mother. He became so furious and so violent that he brought the children into the room, closed the door and forced them to watch while he killed her... I’ll spare you the gory details. When Big Mart couldn’t stand it anymore he broke for the door and got out, but when he reached the top of the stairs, his father threw his mother’s body after him. It knocked him down the stairs. That’s Big Mart. He’s the guy you met out there, the guy who... uh... called you that name. Ella didn’t say a word. She just turned and walked out the door. The pastor thought to himself, "I’m in trouble." She was back in twenty minutes. The pastor was worried. He had wanted her to think about it longer than that. But she walked over to his desk and just looked at him. "Well," the pastor finally asked not really wanting to know what he expected to hear. She said, "I guess I am going to have to learn how to get cussed out." The pastor declares that the ministry of that church began right there, right then. If Ella could be so angry for simply being cussed out. Imagine the rage that must exist inside Big Mart because of the sins committed against him and his mother. In this experience, the woman came to understand the horror of those sins committed against this tough street kid. That didn’t excuse, for one minute, the way he treated her. But it helped her see that she needed to let him in, into her life, into the church. It helped her see that she needed to let him cuss, and then maybe some day he would even be able to cry. There is hope in the cry. Our scripture says that Lord God heard the cry of the people and remembered them. In our scripture, we see that the Lord God was able to work through the resistance and civil disobedience of some poor women to being forth a deliverer for the people. That deliverer eventually led them out of slavery and to the edge of the promised land. Brothers and sisters, our struggle with and for the poor is a holy calling for it is God’s calling and God’s eternal concern. So let us embrace the calling to work for justice on behalf of the poor and to understand the cry of the oppressed. Let it become our cry until that day when justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream. |
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