Liberation

We need each other to be the people of God.  Here’s where it’s the hardest.  Our society fragments us, individualizes us, separates us.  It rewards a few and punishes a few.  But to enter the abundant and good land God has promised us, we as a church must unite...we must be deeply involved in one another’s life, we must break the bonds that separate us in our own little houses, our own little rooms, our own little jobs, our own private thoughts and practices.  We need each other.  I can’t imagine what freedom from greed, freedom from brickmaking, freedom from fear looks like unless I see it in you.  When you model the life of Christ, I can grasp it, try it out.  When you open your home to others, I want to open my home.  When you share generously with the needy, it makes me want to open my wallet too. 

    It was some time before I knew Robert’s name.  He and his wife used to come to Hopwood to ask for help on Sunday morning, usually during Sunday School.  It seemed to me like they were classic “users,” they figured out that people wouldn’t want to spend too much time with their problems, what with classes going on and whatnot.  Robert would sit out in their beat up old car, engine idling.  He sent his skinny, backward wife in to do the dirty work.  Go get a few bucks and we’re out of here.  I felt sorry for her, and I was sure I didn’t like him.  Then one day I went out to the car and started talking to him, and I was surprised by what I found.  I discovered he was a gentle, caring man.  I found that they both carried on despite crippling illnessess and disabilities.  I discovered that Robert was ashamed to come in...ashamed of his clothes, ashamed at having to beg, ashamed to be seen in such a fine place as this, by such fine people as us.  We started to visit; I began praying with them, and they would pray for me.  Sometimes they stayed for a service.  I began visiting them when they were in the hospital.  One day in the hospital, a nurse came in and asked:  “Are you his case worker?”   
    “No,” I said, I’m...well, Robert is my friend.  We’re  friends.”
    He talked about that day for years.  “I still remember,” he would say, “how you told that nurse that we was friends.  It’s not the money...you’re my friend.”  That doesn’t mean that friends don’t sometimes drive you crazy...but Robert is teaching me not to define people by their problems. 

    Bryant Myers points out that there is a type of poverty that can be described as a “deficit of things.”  This kind of poverty is evident when a person doesn’t enough to eat, enough to wear, enough to send kids to school.  But let’s not limit our understanding to economic deficit.  Let’s not make this just a money issue.  For there are many forms of poverty.
    Many of us suffer from the poverty of broken relationships.  How many of us are dirt poor when it comes to healthy relationships?  How many of us are broken, lonely, suffering from cracks and tears in friendships and family ties?  You can have all the money you need, but still be an impoverished beggar when it comes to loving friendships.
    Myers also points out that there is also the poverty of misused power. 

    This morning we light the first candle of Advent.  Isn’t it strange that the brightest season of light begins in darkness with the lighting of a single candle?  I don’t know about you, but I could use some light, for the darkness is deep.  Killing and famine and division and pain have their hands on our throats.  Uncertainty and gloom surround our own violent involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Concern over the health and livability of our earthly home is worrisome.  Dark clouds of anxiety and doubt shadow our families and relationships, making it hard to see your hand in front of your face.  And here’s another strange thing...the readings for this first Sunday of Advent, this first Sunday of the Christian Church’s year begin with news of apocalypse...signs in the heavens, raging seas, troubled nations, fearful people.  Bring on the light!

    Stacey Simpson was seven years old when she first encountered this account of Jesus and the rich young man that we have just heard read.  Stacey was in her room, reading the gospels under the covers of her bed.  She was so shocked and alarmed that she slammed shut her Bible, leaped out of bed, ran straight into her sleeping mother’s room and woke up her mother, whispering, “Mom!  Jesus said rich people won’t get into heaven!”
    Her mother opened one eye and said, “We’re not rich.  Go back to bed.”
    “But I knew better,” said Stacey.  “I knew I had all I needed plus plenty more..."

Today we approach the very “political” book of Exodus.  To shed light on the political nature of this account, let’s hear first from Jamaican theologian and folksinger, Bob Marley:

Me don’ understand politics, me don’ understand big words like “democratic socialism.”  What me say is what de Bible say, but because people don’ read de Bible no more, dey think me talk politics.  Ha!  It’s de Bible what have it written and it strong, it powerful.

    This week our minds and TV sets have been tuned to storms and destruction.  The waters are slowly draining out of the city that was New Orleans and the surrounding area around Biloxi, and a long, painful process is underway to discover what the waters have revealed.  Soldiers are collecting bodies, and in far too many places, the falling waters reveal only empty slabs and shattered homes.  Columnist Eugene Robinson says the receding waters have revealed something else– the face of the poor.   "To be poor in America was to be invisible, but not after this week, not after those images of the bedraggled masses at the Superdome, convention center and airport.”  This week the floodwaters revealed the uncomfortable fact, though we may not want to see it, that it’s still much more preferable to be white, and solvent, and connected than it is to be black and poor and living in substandard housing in the city.   "We have now seen what is under the rock in America," said a carpenter in Washington DC.  There is a nearly invisible underclass of people who have been hidden under that rock, largely forgotten but made visible by the rising water.
    What else have the waters revealed?