Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

Today’s Gospel lesson is just one of many places in the Gospels where Jesus tells his followers that following his Way is all about servanthood. He says, I didn’t come to be served, but to serve others. He says, Love your neighbor as you love yourself. He says, When you care for the sick, the hungry, the naked, the prisoner, it is as if you are caring for me. He says, I have washed your feet as an example to you, that you should serve each other humbly as I have served you. And he says, Whoever wants to be the greatest and the first, must be least and last, and be the servant of all.

He must have been so fed up with them! He’s just been talking about what’s ahead for him, about the road of suffering he must walk. He knows that speaking out against the unjust and cruel political, economic, and religious status quo is going to get him killed. He is bracing himself for it, and trying to prepare his friends. And they are missing the point so, so profoundly. He’s talking about vulnerability and solidarity and sacrifice and they’re arguing amongst themselves about who’s the BEST disciple.  When he asks them what they’re talking about, there’s this … silence. I know that silence. A child might say, “I don’t want to tell you.” So he schools them – again.

In the way of Christ, greatness is found in servanthood, in loving action in response to the needs of another.

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? That’s how our church states this aspect of the Way of Jesus, in our baptismal covenant, the set of five questions outlining the life of faith – faithfulness in worship and study, repentance when we fall away, sharing God’s good news, serving and loving our neighbors, and working for a more just and peaceful world.  We join in these vows every time we celebrate a baptism, and we renew them several times every year. Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?  – and the people say: I will, with God’s help!…. 

Back at the beginning of the month, all Episcopal churches were invited – called, really – to a Sunday of confession, repentance, and commitment to end racism. We were called into this observance – along with other churches and denominations – as a sign of solidarity and support for the African Methodist Episcopal Church nationwide, following the racially-motivated murder of nine people at a prayer meeting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston on June 7; and also as a sign of our shared commitment, as a denomination, to confronting racism in our society, our institutions, and ourselves.

Our Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, and the Chair of the House of Deputies, Gay Jennings, wrote a joint letter to the Episcopal Church, in which they write, “‘The Church understands and affirms that the call to pray and act for racial reconciliation is integral to our witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to our living into the demands of our Baptismal Covenant’ [quoting Resolution C019 of the 78th General Convention]…. Racial reconciliation through prayer, teaching, engagement and action is a top priority of the Episcopal Church in the [years ahead].”

Right now, some of you – I won’t guess the percentage are thinking, Oh, no, another racism sermon. Maybe because you think we shouldn’t really be talking about this in church, maybe because you feel like we’ve done enough talking and it’s time to move on to some action. I probably wouldn’t have chosen this topic for this Sunday, this season, on my own. I already postponed it for two weeks; we were asked to observe this Sunday of prayer and repentance on Sunday the 6th. I wanted to get into the new season together; I wanted to find a Gospel lesson that reinforces this call to costly love of neighbor; I wanted to find something fresh to say.

I’ve preached before about why racism is a sin. I think you’ve heard that before, even if you haven’t been around St. Dunstan’s for long. And I’ve preached before about why racism is an urgent issue here in Madison. I think you’ve heard that before, even if you haven’t been around St. Dunstan’s for long.

If you’re waiting for the sermon in which I offer the one neat trick that will eliminate unsightly racism forever,  well, it’s not gonna happen today. Racism is embedded in our institutions and economy, our media and culture, our minds and souls in ways that will take a couple of generations of hard, persistent, broad-based work to undo. I am just informed enough to know how hard this really is, and just faithful enough to believe we’ve got to try anyway. May God empower and encourage us.

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? Seek and serve…  What makes it hard for us to find Christ in our neighbors, so that we’re moved to respond with loving service?

A big piece of my perspective on anti-racism work comes from my parents. We’re all shaped by our first families. For me, in particular, that includes the fact that my father is a social psychologist. He’s a scientist who studies the way humans think about difference. The ways we form ingroups and outgroups – the ways we stereotype and judge others – all that stuff. I’m not an expert by any means; I’m just related to one. But I can tell you that if you’d like a deeper understanding of the roots and dynamics of racism, the field of social psychology is one  fruitful path to follow.

Social psychologists tell us that there are a lot of ways in which the structures and habits of our brains contribute to the persistence of racism. I want to introduce you to one of them: the Fundamental Attribution Error. The Fundamental Attribution Error is our habit of explaining our own behavior by looking at the situation, and explaining other people’s behavior as a result of the kind of person they are.

One writer explains it this way: “When we see someone doing something, we tend to think it relates to their personality rather than the situation the person might be in.” That article is called “Why we don’t give each other a break” – the answer? The Fundamental Attribution Error. Here’s what it looks like in practice. You snap at your child and you think, Phew, that wasn’t my best parenting moment, but I’m under so much stress right now. You might feel guilty, but you give yourself a break. Or if it’s a friend, you might do the same: I know his mom is sick right now; he’s stretched pretty thin. But when you see a stranger snap at her child, you think, What a terrible parent.

AND, if there are stereotypes in the mix as well – if that mom snapping at her child belongs to a group about which you carry some preexisting judgments – then you might go farther. You might go from, What a terrible parent, to, They just don’t care about their children. Why do they have so many kids, anyway? My neighborhood school is full of them, and it’s a real problem for the teachers, because they’re so disruptive.

But what if, what if that mom is not so different from you? What if she’s stretched thin because of job- or family-related stress? What if this is her worst parenting moment of the week? Or what if her circumstances are such that she is stretched that thin all the time? What if your heart, instead of closing in judgment,

could open with compassion? …

The Fundamental Attribution Error, that habit of our lazy brains to go for the simplest explanation, makes it harder for us to see Christ in our neighbor. It literally makes it difficult for me to love my neighbor as myself, because I think about self and neighbor differently. It makes us quick to judge, slow to reflect, empathize, understand. And when it’s compounded by stereotypes – when we have learned, willingly or unwillingly, that such and such a group of people is lazy, dirty, violent, dishonest, incompetent –  then our capacity to recognize God in another person is even more limited. We can’t see the divinity of our neighbor, God’s presence in them, if we can’t even fully see their humanity.

I want to tell you a little bit about one of our neighbors. I’ve changed her name, but I do have her permission to share a little bit of her story. Let’s call her Francine. Francine is an African-American woman in her forties. I’ve known Francine for about six months. I met her when she came to the door of the church, with her husband James, looking for some assistance. They needed help with the room fees for the cheap hotel where they were staying.

While I was talking to the hotel manager, Francine looked around the church a little. She found some of the information pages for our conversations on racism, and I think knowing that we had some awareness of those issues opened her up to telling me her story.  We’ve talked a number of times, over the past months. I’ve helped with hotel room charges, when I can, and sometimes when I can’t. We’ve wept and prayed together. And I’ve listened.

Francine and James had moved to Madison from Milwaukee the previous summer. They’ve now been here well over a year. They have two older sons who’ve graduated from college – Francine is really proud of that; she says, My kids didn’t go to jail; they went to college! They have a daughter who’s a college freshman this year. She wants to get her masters’ degree and be a forensic scientist. And their youngest daughter is starting sixth grade.

Francine has worked as a CNA and wants to go back to school. James is a skilled construction worker. He finds work easily, because he’s good. He’s also veteran. They came to Madison because they were hoping for a better life for their kids. They knew what the opportunities and limitations were in Milwaukee, and they thought they could do better. Better neighborhoods, better schools, a better future for their daughters.

With both Francine and James working, plus his veteran’s benefits, they should be able to afford a decent apartment in a safe neighborhood here. They should be able to live a stable life, and build towards that hopeful future for their family.

But here’s the thing. Madison has a housing crisis. Our occupancy rate is incredibly high, thanks to Epic, the university, and other factors. That means it’s a seller’s market for landlords and property managers.  They can be as demanding and as choosy as they like. And they don’t really have to tell you why they say No. They can just say No. Because you don’t look like the kind of tenant they want.

But they won’t say No right away. They’ll let you fill out an application, first. Did you know that you have to pay a fee to apply for an apartment? $20, $25, $30 per adult. One place Francine had to argue with them not to count her 18-year-old daughter as a third adult, so they’d have to pay another $20.

Francine and James have been seeking housing in Madison for fifteen months. And by seeking I don’t mean making a couple of calls a week. I mean pounding the pavement. Calling every possible lead from Craigslist or the paper. Driving around the city, looking for “For Rent” signs. Filling out application after application. Paying hundreds, thousands of dollars in fees. Meeting with property managers, week after week. Keeping in touch with case managers and counselors. Getting the funds and the references set up, only to get another No. Disrupting James’ work schedule and wages, because landlords have to meet him too.

All of this while living in a hotel room, for $70 a night. Almost twice what their rent would be, if they could get into an apartment.

Sure, they could go to the family homeless shelter in town. But they don’t want to. They tried it out. Francine says it was dirty, unsafe, and divides the family. What would you do?

Sure, they could probably find an apartment in the city’s poorest neighborhoods. Their case worker keeps pointing them there. Francine says they were offered one last week. But the place had been trashed by the previous tenants, and there’s no reason to think those landlords will fix anything. Francine and James don’t want to live in poorly-maintained low-rent housing. They can afford a better apartment, in a nicer location, and that’s what they want. What would you do?

The bottom line is, they shouldn’t have to settle. They have work. They have income – though if they could get into housing, it would do a heck of a lot to stabilize their financial situation. They have the support and advocacy of the Veteran’s Affairs folks, earned by James’s service to his country. Francine says, “It’s not like we don’t have means. We HAVE means.” But landlords in Madison have lots of applicants to choose from. And it’s easy NOT to choose a poor black family.

When I realized that I wanted to talk about Francine today, I had forgotten that our Old Testament lesson today is the wonderful description of the Resourceful Woman, from the Book of Proverbs. She’s the ideal wife and mother, working hard for the wellbeing of her family. Always busy, always striving for a safe and prosperous future for her children. It’s like cruel mirror for Francine’s story. That’s just what she is, what she does; and yet, her family is not prospering.

Francine believes, and James believes, that a big part of the reason for all those No answers is racism.

What do those landlords see when they look at Francine? … They see a black woman. She doesn’t have very polished speech. Her clothing and hair aren’t at their best; she looks poor. She gets upset easily, emotional.  She’s demanding – she wants to know, are you going to give my family a chance?

The Fundamental Attribution Error means that people read Francine and make assumptions about who and what she is. When in fact she’s in a situation – a long, grinding, heart-wrenching, exhausting situation – in which any of us would struggle. If I were going through what Francine is going through, I’d be unkempt.

I’d be demanding. I’d be emotional. I’d be roaring my frustration, rage, and grief to the world about a system that won’t let me house my kids.

We have a stereotype, a template, of the Poor Black Family. In the stereotype, there’s no father in the picture. The kids have different daddies. There’s a criminal record or two in the family. Nobody’s pursuing higher education. Nobody’s working a skilled job.  It is easy for the landlords looking at Francine and James to see them through that lens, and assume that’s who they are.

Now listen: I want those landlords, I want all of us, to have a lot more compassion towards families that DO match that profile. I’m not saying it’s OK to shut them out either.

But that’s NOT who Francine and James are. And they still can’t catch a break.

I don’t know how to be a servant to Francine and her family. I don’t have an apartment for them, or a solution. Sometimes I can pay for a night at the hotel from my discretionary fund, thanks to the generosity of this parish; sometimes I can’t.  But at least I see her. I see her dignity and her desperation. And I care. I think that matters to her, even when I have nothing to offer but my prayers.

When I talked to Francine this week to ask if it was OK to tell some of her story, she updated me on their ongoing, disheartening search. She wept. And she wondered, again, why the system seems to want her family – her family, which is ready to make it, to be OK, to get ahead! – why the system keeps seeming to push them down and out. She said, “Why would the world want that? I’ve got a real insight into the world now…”

I’ve got a real insight into the world now…

The Fundamental Attribution Error is fascinating and powerful to understand.

You might find that knowing this about yourself – about how your brain works, left to its own devices – helps you think twice and be more understanding of your annoying co-worker, your surly check-out clerk, your unreliable dogsitter.

It’s my hope that knowing this about ourselves might help us think past our received stereotypes and judgments about our neighbors living in poverty, and especially our poor neighbors of color.

What if we take on the discipline of trying to assume that everyone else’s actions and choices are strongly influenced by their situation and circumstances, just like our own? Then I might think about those circumstances, and how it would feel, and what choices I might make, were I standing in those shoes.

Recognizing her circumstances, hearing her story, I might be more prepared to recognize my neighbor’s humanity. To see her as a sister, to see myself in her.

And recognizing her humanity, I might be able to catch a glimpse of her divinity. Of Christ’s image reflected in her face. Of Christ’s heartbreak and outrage in her tears.

He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

This Sunday’s Bible readings may be found here. 

Happy Lammas!

What is Lammastide? No, it doesn’t have anything to do with those funny long-necked animals you sometimes see hanging out with the sheep or goats in a field by the side of the road…

Lammas is an ancient harvest festival that became a church festival in our mother church, the Church of England. The word means “loaf mass.” It was originally held at the time of year when the first grain ripened enough to be made into fresh loaves of bread, at the end of the summer.

At Lammastide, the people of God offer the first fruits of the growing season to God with thanks for the harvest. It’s a practice grounded in the Hebrew Bible, and followed in various forms by peoples around the world who name the Divine in many different ways. When the harvest comes in, you give some of it back to God. You don’t take it for granted. Nature is uncertain. Life is uncertain. But here we all are again. Thanks be to God.

When you start poking around the Bible to see what it says about bread, you run pretty quickly into the connection between bread and justice – by way of the obvious connection between bread and hunger. Just as surely and persistently as Scripture calls God’s people to offer bread to God, as a sign of thanksgiving; so just as surely and persistently does Scripture call God’s people to share bread with the hungry. Our lesson from Proverbs today puts it plainly: Those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor.

In fact, there’s a strain of thought in the Hebrew Bible that giving to others is actually another way to give to God, in addition to making offerings at the Temple. Maybe even a better way. That idea appears both the books of the Law, laying out God’s ways for God’s people, and in the Prophetic books, in which the prophets call God’s people back to those ways.  It’s even in the Psalms – In Psalm 50, God asks, Do you think I eat the food you offer? If I were hungry, I have all Creation with which to feed myself. Make your offering to me by living justly.

And then there’s James, with his rather pointed counsel to treat people fairly, and never to dishonor or persecute the poor. It’s hard to imagine a more fitting text for Labor Day Weekend, if we hold in mind the origin and intentions of that holiday. Beyond the school supply sales, beyond the last weekend for summer travel,  Labor Day began as a holiday to honor the historic achievements of the Labor movement in its heyday, in advocating for and protecting working people and especially the working poor. Like pushing for the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a limited work week with time for rest and leisure; for minimum wage and overtime laws; for the Occupational Safety and Health Act, better known as OSHA, which holds employers responsible for their workers’ safety; for helping to establish employer-based health insurance; pushing for the Family and Medical Leave Act, which protects your job if you have to take time off for a medical or family situation; and helping to end child labor.

People of good faith hold varying views on the labor movement today, but I am very glad to live in a country in which these policies and protections for working people are the law the land, and I’m grateful to those who worked and fought to make them so.

The Bible didn’t envision a democratic society, in which the people can organize to shape the laws that govern their lives. But those who have done that work, in our nation and others, have plenty of Scriptures they can quote – including the letter of James.  Jerry Folk, a Lutheran pastor and scholar who teaches at Edgewood College, has this to say about the witness of James:

“James and many other biblical authors believe that all workers have a God-given right to a just wage, safe and humane working conditions, and time for life with their families and friends; [and] that they have a God-given right to a life of dignity with some measure of comfort and security.”

My first thought on reading that sentence was, Wow, that’s pretty radical; surely he’s putting words in the Bible’s mouth. Then I started thinking about and looking up all the passages in the Bible – especially in the Torah, in the Prophets, the Gospels and, yes, James – that deal with justice, work, rest, human wellbeing, and with the obligations of the wealthy, and of the community as a whole, towards the poor.

And I realized, Nope, Professor Folk is not stretching a point. The Bible, our sacred text, really says that workers should be paid fairly, enough that they don’t go hungry and can care for their families; that work should not become bondage; that workers should have dignity; that everyone is entitled to time for rest; and that those unable to work should be cared for by the community. That is the Bible’s witness about God’s intentions for human society and economy.

James seems to be addressing these matters in a situation in which some Christian communities are treating the rich and the poor differently. There’s an ancient tradition that James may actually be the brother of Jesus – and, honestly, it could be true. There’s a lot here that sounds close to Jesus’ own teachings.

James warns those who are trying to follow Jesus that they must not shame the poor or treat them as less important than the wealthy. He reminds them that God sides with the poor, when the interests of the rich and the poor are at odds:

“Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? Yet you have dishonored the poor… If you show favoritism in this way, you commit sin.” His words echo the Book of Proverbs:  “The LORD pleads the cause [of the poor] and will take from those who take from the poor.”

And James offers these words, which challenge and convict me every time (2:14 – 17):

“What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not live out that faith in action? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not respond to their needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, not shown in action, is dead.”

In last week’s lesson, the first chapter of James, he writes,  “Be doers of the Word of God, not just hearers.”

What good is your faith if you don’t live it out in action?  What’s the use of your good wishes for those who don’t have enough, those who live with want and worry as constant companions, if you don’t act to improve their circumstances?  Those are questions that haunt my days, my years. It puts me mind of a famous quotation from C.S. Lewis that makes the rounds of the Internet from time to time: “If you want a religion to make you really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity…”

We live in a time of massive and increasing economic inequality in America. By some measures, our country has the greatest income inequality in the developed world. And when we look at wealth instead of income, the disparities are even greater. An article in Scientific American earlier this year reported that the top 20% of US households own more than 84% of the wealth of our country, and the bottom 40% of households own just 0.3%.

To some extent, we Americans tolerate this stark inequality because we believe that anyone who works hard can make good. And some do, of course. But we sharply underestimate the barriers and overestimate our society’s capacity for social and economic mobility. Mobility is measurable, just like income and wealth, and America has less, not more, social mobility than other developed nations. 

That’s a really brief snapshot of a huge, messy issue. Google “economic inequality America” to learn more than you want to know.

Massive and increasing economic inequality in America is a fact. How to understand it, and solve it, are issues on which smart and good-hearted people can hold differing views. One way or another, it is already one of the central themes of the year’s political debates.

But while the answers are complex, I believe the question for people of faith is pretty simple:  How do we live as God’s people in the face of these realities?  In the face of a social and economic order that is, from God’s point of view, disordered?

If indeed we accept the Bible as our witness to God’s plans and purposes for humanity, then we have to face the fact that God has told us again and again that the wellbeing of the poor matters. That having people in grinding poverty, hungry, struggling, vulnerable, hopeless, is NOT OK WITH GOD. And we have to come back to James’s words, those words that cling like a burr: what good is your faith if you’re not acting on it?

Just as surely and persistently as Scripture calls God’s people to offer bread to God as a sign of thanksgiving; so just as surely and persistently does Scripture call God’s people to share bread with the hungry.

Our parish is already generous with our charity. But the scope of inequality and need in our nation is such that charity isn’t going to solve it. I’m pretty sure those in our congregation who are most deeply involved with the charitable ministries of our city, like MOM and IHN, would agree. Charity can feed a family for a day or week, but most of the time it can’t prevent the hungry days from rolling around again.

The Biblical call to sharing and generosity is about more than charity. It’s about how we order our common life. Consider an example from the Old Testament, from Leviticus, the Book of the Law of God that tells God’s people the Jews how to live in God’s ways of holiness, mercy and justice. One of the laws of Leviticus is the law of gleaning – an appropriate topic for a harvest festival.

In a nutshell, gleaning means that landowners – the wealthy elite, in that context – weren’t supposed to take everything when they harvested their fields, orchards and vineyards. They were supposed to leave the edges and corners unharvested. Then those without land or work could come and gather from those edges and corners, to feed their families.

The Theology of Work Commentary says, “We might [see] gleaning as an expression of compassion…, but according to Leviticus, allowing others to glean… is the fruit of holiness. We do it because God says, “I am the Lord your God” (Lev. 19:10). This highlights the distinction between charity and gleaning. In charity, people voluntarily give to others who are in need. This is a good and noble thing to do, but it is not what Leviticus is talking about. Gleaning is a process in which landowners have an obligation to provide poor and marginalized people access to the means of production… and to work it themselves.  Unlike charity, it does not depend on the generosity of landowners. In this sense, it was much more like a tax than a charitable contribution. Also unlike charity, it was not given to the poor…  Through gleaning, the poor earned their living the same way as the landowners did, by working the fields with their own labors. It was simply a command that everyone had a right to access the means of provision created by God.”

The Commentary goes on to note, as I have, that our Biblical models don’t provide easy solutions for our circumstances:   “Certainly Leviticus does not contain a system ready-made for today’s economies.” There aren’t straightforward answers in Scripture to today’s socioeonomic dilemmas, and I won’t pretend that there are.

The people of the Bible didn’t live in a democracy, so we have to do our own work discerning how to participate in civic life as people of faith, and what it looks like to work towards God’s justice in a secular society.

The people of the Bible didn’t live with advanced capitalism. Exploitation of the poor by the rich was a clear and unvarnished reality in those times and places. It’s messier now, with questions about how a business’s profits relate to the wellbeing of its employees, or which poor people we should prioritize in a global economy, and many other complexities and ambiguities.

The people of the Bible lived in a world of rich and poor, starkly defined. Most of us here are more or less middle-class. We know that we are privileged, rich by global standards. But we also don’t feel wealthy or powerful enough to make much difference in the status quo. When the Bible talks about rich and poor, we often don’t know where to find ourselves in those stories and teachings.

In the face of all those questions and uncertainties, here is what we can hold onto, as concrete and crusty as a loaf of good bread. What we do with what we have, matters. What is ours, isn’t really ours in an absolute sense. Whether we were born into it or worked hard for it or a little of both, it comes to us as a resource for our own flourishing, yes, but also for the flourishing of others, and of the whole cosmos. (Did you know that word, cosmos, which means the system, the great big encompassing dynamic whole, that’s the word that’s translated “world” in the New Testament? As in, God sent his Son into the system, not to condemn the system, but that through Him the system might be saved?… That’s a whole nother sermon.)

I’m not just talking money here; we have all kinds of assets, resources, privileges. For example, I suspect that I am comparatively more wealthy in education and institutional position than I am in financial resources. That means that when I’m passionate about something, I may be able to advance it further by committing time and skill than by committing money. You know what your resources, your assets are.

What we do with what we have is one of the themes of our fall season. It’s not a liturgical season, though if it were I suppose green would be the appropriate color! But it’s the season of harvest, so deep deep in the rhythms of the year, it’s a time when we think about bounty, about offering, thanking, giving, sharing. It’s a season when the winter’s hardships loom, so our hearts and minds turn to the needs of those who may go hungry and cold in the months ahead. It’s the final quarter of the fiscal year and time to plan for the next one, so organizations and institutions are soliciting commitments and setting budgets.

In October we’ll have three weeks in a row with invitations to engage with the needs of the wider community – Backpack Snack Packs, Bread for the World’s Offering of Letters, and CROP Walk – we’re calling it the Hunger Weeks. And of course, right after that, we’ll kick off our parish pledge drive, our shared conversation about your choices to use some of your resources to support this church, and about how this church should use its resource to support God’s mission.

What we do with what we have, matters. We often don’t know how best to use our resources to forward God’s dream of an economy of human dignity and wellbeing. But maybe that’s one of the things that church is for.

Maybe it’s through our common prayer, through reading and talking about Scripture together, through shared learning and service, and through our conversations with one another – the kind where we see things the same way but push each other to go deeper, and the kind where we see things differently but discover our underlying shared hopes and fears – Maybe it’s through all that, the substance of our life together as a community of faith, that we’ll find the way to be doers of the Word of God, and not just hearers.