Advocates of Goodness

Sermon manuscript for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists

For Sabbath, November 16, 2013

You have heard it said, “Love your neighbor. Hate your enemy.”

But I say, “Love your enemies. Bless the people who curse you. Do good to the people who hate you. Pray for the people who treat you with contempt.

When you do this you are acting as true children of your Father in Heaven. Because he makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the good. God sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

If you love the people who love you, what's special about that? Even pedophiles do that. If you show respect to people in your own group, that's hardly noteworthy. Even drug dealers do that.

I'm calling you to be a perfect reflection of your Heavenly Father. I'm calling you to act like God.

Matthew 5:43-48

One question I like to ask people is: What good is church?

In the 1700s Quaker Christians advocated for the mentally ill. At that time, the mentally ill were treated like criminals. They were thrown into prisons where the horrific conditions were likely to exacerbate their illness. Quakers awakened the conscience of society and led eventually to more humane treatment of the mentally ill.

It was the Clapham Christians and William Wilberforce who led the decades long march toward the abolition of the slave trade in Great Britain—a humanitarian advance that eventually crossed the Atlantic to “freedom-loving” America.

Of course, many Christians opposed liberating the slaves. They were blinded by thousands of years of tradition. They were seduced by the arguments of those who warned of dire economic consequences if moral considerations were allowed to interfere with the “natural” working of the business machine.

In spite of this confusion among Christians, it was the daring moral vision of radical Christians that awakened the conscience of England and led first to the abolition of the slave trade then to the outlawing of slavery itself.

Christians changed the world by awakening the conscious of their society.

What is the purpose of the church? To be an advocate for goodness. To speak up. To speak out for goodness. For fairness and equity. To challenge entrenched privileges that damage people and weaken society.

A few weeks ago, on Youth Sabbath our young preachers, Lissi, Emily and Andrew challenged us to take seriously Jesus' daunting moral challenge.

It is not enough for us to be nice people—to practice conventional manners. We have a higher calling. Recent events here in our area highlight the need for us as a church to renew our commitment to the radical moral vision highlighted by Jesus' words: Love your enemies. Mimic your Father in Heaven who sends his sun and rain on every kind of person. Learn from God to see every human as worthy. The Christian vision rejects the notion that CEOs are more valuable as persons than line workers. The workers who make airplanes deserve protection in their old age every bit as much as the CEO.

“For decades Boeing has given its line workers a decent retirement benefit. It pays out about $90 a month for every year worked at the company, so that someone with 30 years of service would get $2,700 a month when they’re done at age 65. Add Social Security to that and you’ve cobbled together a comfortable but hardly posh old age for sheet-metal workers, riveters and others who build the nation’s planes.”

But something rotten is going on.

Jim McNerny, the CEO of Boeing, is working to get rid of the corporation's pensions for workers.

I'm sure he would justify this action as necessary to ensure the profitability of the corporation. But here where clear moral vision is needed. McNerny, the man leading the charge to eliminate pensions for workers, has 6.3 million dollars in his own company-funded pension account. If he retired now, he would receive a pension of $265,575 per month. Yes, that's right. McNerny, the man who is working to eliminate pensions of $2700 for workers has in place a pension for himself from Boeing of $265,575. The pension of an ordinary worker at Boeing is a measly one percent of McNery's pension.

McNerny's blindness to moral values is demonstrated further in his vigorous advocacy of cutting the benefits workers would receive from Social Security. Maybe he could make a more credible argument for frugality in the social security system if he paid into like his workers do. But nearly all of his income is exempt from social security taxes. So he is advocating cutting benefits paid out from a program that costs him relatively speaking, nothing.

I use the word “blindness” very deliberately. McNerny is so far insulated from the reality of life for working people, he has no idea of the trauma his plans will inflict on ordinary people.

The church needs to be public in our rebuke of the idea that major players in our society should make decisions exclusively on the basis of share-holder value. Obviously, companies have to be profitable or they will cease to hire workers, cease to contribute to the economic well-being of the country. But the well-being of workers ought to considered right along side the well-being of share holders and directors.

If a company must reduce the benefits it pays to workers, it ought to reduce the salary and benefits of its upper management by at least the same percentage. CEO McNerny should be regarded as a failure if he must eliminate pensions for his workers in order to secure the profitability of his company.

Another item from current news—the battle over the minimum wage. I do not know if raising the minimum wage is the wisest way to provide meaningful opportunities for people at the bottom of the economic ladder. What I do know—with moral certainty—is that our wealthy society must find some way to broaden the distribution of the immense wealth that is ours.

When we can pay people $10 an hour to take care of our children so that we can go to the office and make $1000 an hour trading stock, something is wrong. Is trading stock really a hundred times more worthy than the nurture of children? When we pay our teachers $25 an hour to educate people who are going to make ten to a hundred times that much running our hospitals and our government and our corporations, something is wrong. The system is broken. Our moral vision has become warped.

The church cannot limit its ministry to offering consolation to the withering middle class and providing an occasional bit of emergency financial assistance here and there. Yes, offering consolation is a noble thing to do. And providing emergency assistance is essential to our calling. Yes. But that is not enough.

We are a moral community. We ought to be way in advance of society in cultivating a moral vision. We are not here to bless those with privilege and power. We are here to ask hard questions about how that privilege and power is used.

What has Jim McNerny done to increase the share of wealth the Boeing workers receive? What has he done to distribute the power and privilege that tends to concentrate in the upper echelons of corporations and societies?

What has McNerny done to increase the educational opportunities for the children of the people who work in Boeing cafeterias? What is McNerny doing to raise the lower standard of living that is characteristic of South Carolina? It is immoral for someone with his influence to set up a major plant and hire almost 7000 people and do nothing to improve the schools, do nothing to improve access to health care. Given the magnitude of the impact of corporations on their communities, they have a moral obligation to consider the impact of their work on the overall quality in that place.

It's easy to pick on a public figure like Jim McNerny. It's important that we move on from asking questions about him, about people “out there,” to asking what are we doing in our own world to advocate goodness.

If you are a student, what are you doing to catalyze goodness among your classmates? Does your presence prompt people to be more sensitive to people on the edge of groups? Do you inspire other students to take learning and mastering content more seriously? Are you and your friends talking about what you might do to mend the world, to bring about broader justice?

In your work place, what is your moral impact? Among your neighbors? Do you help others see the value in all people?

The church needs to reclaim the wisdom of Jesus—the radical humane vision that sees all people as worthy. God sends his rain on the just and unjust. On the smart and the mentally challenged. On the beautiful and the homely.

I am not arguing that Jesus gives us a business plan. I am arguing that our business plans need to be informed by more than numbers. Business is a human activity. To be fully human is to have a lively conscience. When we make decisions without reference to a sensitive moral vision are acting subhuman.

God calls us to something better.

God calls us to see clearly, to see people with the eyes of heaven.

Karin shared with me a story about the work of World Vision in the neighborhood of Cochabamba, Bolivia. The average annual income in the area is $450. The land produces very meager crops so many of the men leave seeking better opportunities. Sometimes they send money home. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they return to their families. Sometimes they vanish without a trace, leaving a wife and kids to eke out a hardscrabble existence.

Cinda was one of those abandoned women. She had a plot of ground, but she could grow only one variety of potato and her harvests were meager for lack of water.

World Vision helped to being the community together to build an irrigation dam. Now Cinda grows several varieties. She has reliable, ample harvests. She has enough sell. With her profits she has been able to buy two llamas, some sheep and a pig. Her life has been transformed because a group of people inspired by the vision of heaven regarded poor peasants in Cochabamba, Bolivia as worthy of investment.

Whether we are looking at people in the mountains of Bolivia or the lowlands of Puget Sound, Jesus challenges us to look beyond the status conferred by economic advantage, religious rectitude, social prominence, beauty, intelligence or academic credentials. Jesus challenges us to rise higher than social convention. Jesus challenges us to see with the eyes of heaven and to partner with God in seeing that all people participate richly in the blessings that are ours.