Easy Pickings

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

Rev. Dr. David Williams; 09.06.15

Scripture Lesson:  Proverbs 22:1-2; 8-9; 22-23;  James 2:1-17

Listen to Sermon Audio Here:

I have never really known what it means to be poor.  I just haven’t.  Oh, sure, there’ve been times that I’ve been low on cash, like that time back in college where--having quit my part-time job to focus on my studies, and having chipped in on the keg a few too many times--I realized that I had left myself exactly $95 dollars to get me through the next month and a half of my life.  My parents were away in West Africa, where phone contact was spotty at best and the mail took two months and email didn’t exist yet.  Plus, I wasn’t particularly eager to say to my parents, hey, um, send me money, because I’m an idiot.  

That transfer of funds would come when it came.

I lived on three and half bucks a day for nearly a month, subsisting on ramen and half-cans of tuna.  A couple weeks in, I got myself a job washing dishes in a little Indian restaurant, and I made it through.  That doesn’t even begin to count as “poverty.”  That was just “me being stupid.”

And there was that other time, when I’d taken a part time job at a lovely little church so my wife could pursue her career, only she got canned in a corporate re-organization, and suddenly the only stable income we had was half of the minimum salary for pastors.

Even then, we had ample savings and family and connections.  We were never poor.  We never struggled, unless ditching cable counts as struggling.  It doesn’t.  We were never really at risk.

But for so many folks, poverty is a trap.  Once you’ve fallen into that pit, clambering your way out is the next thing to impossible, as hard as climbing out of the sarlacc after you’ve been shoved in by one of Jabba the Hutt’s henchmen.

It’s not just that life is harder when you have less power, not just that it’s difficult to get things.  It’s that the deck is actively stacked against those with fewer resources, as systems and structures that reward the rich are turned actively against those with less.

If you’ve never read Barbara Ehrenreich’s brilliant, thought-provoking classic “Nickel and Dimed,” it’s worth your time.  It describes her efforts to live the life of the American working class, the folks who struggle to cobble together a living in a post-manufacturing, service-work economy.  At every turn, life is harder.  If a family member gets sick, and both parents are working two jobs and barely getting by with minimal benefits, something’s got to give.  If your old car breaks down, but there are no savings to pay for the repair because day-to-day expenses are too high, the path is debt...and that debt costs you so very much more.

That has always been the case.  Those at the bottom of the economic food-chain have always struggled.  They’ve been easy pickings for the hucksters and the con men and the predators, because when you’re desperate and have no real choices, there are always folks out there willing to take advantage.

Back when I was working my first few jobs, I got a paycheck.  That, increasingly, is not the case. There are payment cards, now, for those folks who are paid minimum wage by the hour.  Not paychecks, but debit cards, which companies offer up as a convenience to employers.  It’s cheaper and faster than cutting checks every month, and so of course businesses go for it.  Only those costs are now passed down to the employees, who now pay fees every time they make a withdrawal, and every time they use that card.  “We’re just providing a convenient service,” say the companies who are skimming money from the folks at the bottom, filling in for the check-cashing businesses that used to prey on folks at the bottom back when I was a kid.

In the great state of Maryland, what that’s looked like these past few years are Structured Settlement companies, who hunt down mentally and physically disabled folks who are living on meager monthly settlement payments, and convince them to sign over those payments for a chunk of cash right now.  They pay pennies on the dollar, and leave their victims destitute.  “We’re just providing a service,” they say.  “It’s not our fault if they take advantage of our service.”

In the great state of Virginia, what that looks like are the Title Lenders that have now popped up on every corner of every community.  These businesses offer cash loans to people who are desperate and who have neither good credit or other assets.  They charge interest at between 300 and 400 percent annually, with the average borrower paying a buck forty to borrow a dollar.  And if you don’t pay ‘em back, you lose your car, which means you can’t get to your job.  “We’re just providing a service,” they say.  “It’s not our fault if they take advantage of our service.”

It is into that reality that today’s little selection of Proverbs speaks this day, a brief sequence of snippets from the Wisdom tradition that presents a potent perspective on how God views those who are on the margins economically.  It is into that same reality that James the brother of Jesus speaks, fiercely, about how we fail to understand our Christian responsibility for those who struggle.

It’s an interesting selection, because it highlights an often overlooked truth about the Biblical Wisdom literature.  Wisdom, or so it tends to get spun in seminary, is not your go-to place for talking about our responsibilities towards one another as we live in community.

For that, we’re generally told to turn to the prophets, to folks like Isaiah and Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Amos and Micah, for whom the oppression of the poor is a big deal.  Being prophetic generally means challenging the brokenness of the social order, standing up and challenging the ways that human beings violate God’s demand that we treat one another with compassion.

Wisdom, on the other hand, tends not to be about challenging the social order, but about maintaining it.  It teaches how to get along, how to avoid causing trouble or bringing shame on yourself.

But when you get right down to it, wisdom writings are just as concerned about how the poor, and the disenfranchised are treated.  Wealth is not the goal, and power is not the goal.  Living an honorable life in balance with the world around you is the goal.  A stable, balanced, and viable society is the goal of Wisdom, in which we live together humbly and respectfully.

Which is why in both the passages from Proverbs and the passages from James today, there is a direct challenge to the imbalances that come from wealth and power.  The long and short of both has to do with the practice of showing favoritism to the wealthy over the poor, where those with power benefit not just from their wealth, but from a willingness on the part of those around them to treat them with more deference, more respect, and just generally like they’re somehow better persons.

That was the way of the ancient world, where wealth and social connections were almost the same thing.

Now, of course, it’s completely different.  Ahem.

In both Proverbs and James, the message to those who have material goods and those who favor wealth is clear: this does not matter to God at all.  It is not how the Creator of the Universe views we creatures, and if we are bold enough to claim that we’re illuminated by the Spirit of the Living God, it can’t be how we view others, either.

This is hard for us to process, hard for us to push through our minds, because it is the way that pretty much every human society ever has organized itself.  Which is why, frankly, every human society ever has failed.  When those with power take from those who struggle, eventually, it is all struggle.  When power makes things unbalanced, societies teeter, and things go south, badly.

Classical wisdom says: be humble, be prudent, be honorable.  Christian wisdom goes deeper: be humble, be prudent, be honorable, and let compassion for all guide your every action.

When we are tempted to blame others for their failings, or to justify those who take advantage of others, Wisdom asks: is that attitude humble?  Is that spirit honorable?  And Christ, who is at the heart of Wisdom, asks: is that my Spirit?  Does it guide you to do what I have asked of you?

In everything we do, that needs to be our guide.  Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN.