A Poor Excuse

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September 6, 2015

Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23

¹A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches,

and favor is better than silver or gold.

²The rich and the poor have this in common:

the LORD is the maker of them all.

⁸Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity,

and the rod of anger will fail.

⁹Those who are generous are blessed,

for they share their bread with the poor.

²²Do not rob the poor because they are poor,

or crush the afflicted at the gate;

²³for the LORD pleads their cause

and despoils of life those who despoil them.

James 2:1-10, 14-17

¹My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? ²For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, ³and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, "Have a seat here, please," while to the one who is poor you say, "Stand there," or, "Sit at my feet," ⁴have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? ⁵Listen, 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? ⁶But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? ⁷Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?

⁸You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." ⁹But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. ¹⁰For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.

¹⁴What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? ¹⁵If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, ¹⁶and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? ¹⁷So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

Sermon: “A Poor Excuse”

A few days ago, I came home from work and engaged in that greatest of intellectual endeavors of our time: I played on Facebook.  I enjoyed the pug pictures, the encouraging sayings, the food friends have shared.  The allure of Facebook is most certainly its mindlessness – it puts you into a sort of time-vortex trance, where your brain gets to meditate on the mundane for a little while. 

But not on that day.  On that day, I saw something deeply disturbing.  You probably know what image I speak of before I even mention it.  A friend shared a picture of a Syrian child, a refugee fleeing civil war and ISIS, washed ashore in Turkey from a boat that sank.  This little boy was three-year-old Aylan, who drowned along with his five-year-old brother Galip and their mother, Rihan. Their father, Abdullah Kurdi, survived. Abdullah had been kidnapped and tortured by the Islamic state or some other jihadist group during the siege of Kobane. He was desperate to get his family out of Syria, and when a Canadian visa was denied, their only option was a precarious journey by boat to the Greek island of Kos.  As you know, they didn’t make it.  It doesn’t take much imagination to believe that Abdullah’s suffering now at the loss of his entire family is the worst torture anyone could ever endure.

Their story is the story of so many others.  The UN Refugee Agency estimates that more than 2,500 refugees, many of them fleeing civil war in Syria, have died or gone missing this year while crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

But that is so far away.  Is it our problem that 4 million human beings have fled Syria?  If we simply look at it politically, on the surface, it looks like it’s not our problem.  After all, the U.S. has only taken in around 1,000 Syrian refugees.  But we people of faith are not guided by politics.  We are guided by the Word of God.  And that Word tells us this:

²The rich and the poor have this in common:

the LORD is the maker of them all.

⁸Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity,

and the rod of anger will fail.

⁹Those who are generous are blessed,

for they share their bread with the poor.

²²Do not rob the poor because they are poor,

or crush the afflicted at the gate;

²³for the LORD pleads their cause

and despoils of life those who despoil them.

It also tells us this:

¹My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? ²For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, ³and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes, while to the one who is poor you say, "Stand there," or, "Sit at my feet," ⁴have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? ⁵Listen, 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? ⁶But you have dishonored the poor.

¹⁵If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, ¹⁶and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? ¹⁷So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

An important aspect of our Presbyterian tradition is the open acknowledgment that sin is real.  It’s why we confess our sin each time we gather in worship.  It’s why we celebrate God’s grace so joyfully.  We have all sinned.  We have all sinned.

When we tell the story of the people of Syria suffering, do we, I wonder leave out our own responsibility for our sisters and brothers there?  We quickly name the sin of ISIS and extremism and tyranny – and sometimes name ourselves as Christians as the victims.  But what about the sin of children washing up on shores?  What about the sin of good people doing nothing?  Or perhaps naming it even more uncomfortably, what about the sin of seeing such troubling images on Facebook and thinking they disturb us too much, and going back to our mindless trance instead?  We have sinned.

For we do not share our bread with the poor when that looks like welcoming those who are Middle Eastern into our homeland.  Like Proverbs so wisely names, we sometimes rob the poor because they are poor, depriving them of their dignity and humanity by making excuses for why they deserve what they get.  Perhaps we do this because of our national post-traumatic stress from 9/11 that tells us to fear first.  That is a real horror we experienced as a country, one we will never fully recover from.  But we can’t let that fear stop us from doing the work of God in this world.

Scripture makes it clear where God is at work in the world: The LORD pleads the cause of the poor and the stranger.  God is the Maker of us all.  Which means, we have a responsibility for one another, a higher calling of humanity.

It is a beautiful thing when people live up to this higher calling.  We’ve seen it in recent days in Germany, where thousands of refugees have been welcomed.  While awaiting papers allowing for them to stay, many of them have been on the move for a year or more, with young children in tow.

One such child is 5-year-old Hasan.  I watched video of this little boy, one of the lucky ones, running among the Soup and Sandwich Brigade, a group of volunteers feeding refugees each day.  He ran to from tray to tray, hoping for soup and some bread.  On his fourth try he was successful, proudly carrying his own bowl of soup and a little loaf of bread.  He promptly brought them to his mother.

Many Germans have opened their homes to Syrian refugees, including Philip Bushna and his family.  When asked why he did this, he gave the most nerdy, wonderful answer ever.  He quoted Yoda from Star Wars, saying, “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.”  These Germans know very well the dangers of racial intolerance and hatred, and are determined to take a different path this time.

Which path will we take?  It’s essential that we pray for Christians being attacked on a daily basis by ISIS in Syria.  But it’s just as essential that we pray for Muslim refugees, like Hasan, who shared bread and soup with his mother. 

Like Abdullah, who lost his entire family.  And it’s essential that, as James reminds us, we put those prayers into action, that we translate our faith into works that make a difference. 

This might look like signing a petition online, getting involved with the welcome of refugees through U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, or calling upon our politicians to provide the opportunity for migrants to build a better life here.

It might look like giving money to Save the Children, who gives food, hygiene items and diapers to migrant families, or to the Migrant Offshore Aid Station providing safe boats for refugees, or to the Red Cross in Europe.

It might look like volunteering with Church World Service to welcome refugees to North Carolina, setting up an apartment for them before they arrive, providing transportation, mentoring and English help.

It might look like being a church that refuses to demonize migrants, whether they be from the Middle East or Latin America or elsewhere, and not using their poverty as an excuse for their plight. 

God told the people of Israel, “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner or stranger, for remember you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”  Jesus put it another way, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

We were all strangers once.  Being a migrant isn’t just the history of our family, though it is of course that, it is the history of our faith.   God made a covenant with poor refugees once, and then extended that covenant to us all in Jesus Christ.   The LORD is the Maker of us all.   Let’s never forget that.  Let’s never forget them.  Amen.