God's Politics

Today Northern & Central Louisiana Interfaith conducted a press conference in solidarity with our sister organizations in Baton Rouge and Dallas. I made the opening statement. Here's what I said:

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Luke chapter 4 tells the story of Jesus going to his hometown of Nazareth, where he goes to the synagogue as was his custom. He is given a scroll, and he chooses to read the following:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.

After reading these words, Jesus hands back the scroll and says to the people, Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Those of you familiar with the Hebrew scripture know that Jesus is quoting Isaiah, one of the great prophets of Israel, who is preaching the Word of God to God’s people.

Those of you familiar with the Christian scripture know that this event, recorded in Luke chapter 4, signals the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry on earth.

As this story illustrates, the call to stand with those who are poor and oppressed links Jewish and Christian traditions.

Today, in this year of election politics, I propose that in this passage, Jesus is laying out God’s platform and claiming it for himself. He is saying, this is God’s  mission, and I am here to fulfill that mission. It is a political mission in any age.

Today our economic system is creating inequality at the fastest rate in recent history. The gap between the wealthiest in our society and those huddled at the bottom… has nearly tripled in the last 30 years. (Wealth Inequality in America by politizane; on YouTube; based on research at Harvard)

Millions of Americans work, and work hard, often at 2 or more jobs, and still barely make ends meet. They are one major car repair, or one major medical bill, away from homelessness or the clutches of the predatory lenders. (ALICE, a study by United Way)

And the income gap is worse in Louisiana than in most of the country. Many are forced into an alternative economy. 

Alton Sterling was trying to feed his family selling CDs in a parking lot.

To stand in solidarity with those who are poor and oppressed, to seek to open the eyes of those who are blind to inequality and injustice is unavoidably political. It requires us to leave the comfort and familiarity of home and neighborhood, and join hands across lines of race, religion, and socio-economic status that traditionally divide.

In the words of a praise song we sing in my religious tradition, it requires us to get out of our stained glass boat and walk on the water... without worrying about getting our feet wet or how, exactly, we’re going to get to the other side.

We, the people of God, are called to do just that. And we are called to do it as peacemakers, without falling captive to the fear and violence that plagues our society. We must not be divided by the polarizing forces in our politics and in our media.

And we must bring forth real solutions. One of those is to move people out of unemployment and under-employment, out of minimum wage jobs, into jobs that will support their families.

Northern & Central Louisiana Interfaith was one of the founding forces of a workforce intermediary called NOVA – New Opportunities Vision Achievement. NOVA helps people get the training they need, then matches them with employers who offer living wage jobs with a career path and benefits.

More than 80% of those who enter NOVA’s program, finish it and are placed in such jobs. NOVA graduates contribute approximately $8 million annually to the Ouachita Parish economy.

NOVA has already expanded from Ouachita parish into the Delta. We need comparable programs here in Shreveport, in Baton Rouge and throughout Louisiana. We need to use dollars recovered from Industrial Tax Exemptions by Gov. Edwards’ recent order to expand workforce development.

Today Interfaith, Together Baton Rouge and our sister organization in Dallas stand in solidarity and invite people of good will to work with us to free our State from the oppression of poverty, to free us all from the prison of racial distrust and fear, and to bring about the year of the Lord’s favor.

We refuse to be divided.

Felling Goliaths

I was recently called upon to do the faith-basis talk for an assembly of Together Louisiana to meet with Gov. John Bell Edwards. Here's what I said.

Reading from First Samuel, Chapter 17:

⁴⁸When the Philistine drew nearer to meet David, David ran quickly towards the battle line to meet the Philistine. ⁴⁹David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, slung it, and struck the Philistine on his forehead; the stone sank into his forehead, and he fell face down on the ground. ⁵⁰So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone.

That’s the punch line of a story we know well. We know that the Philistine in question was a giant of a man named Goliath. Hebrew scripture goes to great lengths to show us what a giant he was, giving not only his height, but also the weight of his armor and the heft of his spear. We know also that the Isrealites were afraid of Goliath, and that a stand-off between the armies had been going on for some days.

Then comes David, a boy on a humble errand, delivering bread and cheese to his brothers in the ranks. But he hears Goliath curse the Israelites and their God, and he presents himself to Saul to go against the giant. He tries on Saul’s armor, but casts it aside, choosing instead his staff and sling and five smooth stones for his weapons. And one of those stones finds its mark in a chink in the armor of the giant.

Brothers and sisters, many Goliaths roam the State of Louisiana today, Goliaths like a regressive tax structure that takes from poor folks and gives to the well off. Like hundreds of thousands of people who have been denied access to health care in the name of politics, and others who are losing access to health care by the starvation and death of the health care facilities they depend on.

Goliaths like a growing class of working poor due to the stagnant, poverty-level wages they are paid for the very necessary and back-breaking work they do.

Against these Goliaths, we sometimes feel like the underdog. We don’t have the millions of, say, a payday lending industry to hire a bunch of lobbyists to fight our battles for us!

But the bias of all of Holy Scripture is with the underdog! To go against the giants, we must choose our stones carefully. We must know where the chinks in the armor of the Goliaths are! We must be quick on our feet, and our timing must be right.

Here’s another image for you. Leonard Cohen is a Jewish Canadian song-writer and singer, and if you have heard his most popular songs, you know that he knows his Hebrew Scripture.

One of those songs is called “Anthem,” and the chorus goes like this:

Ring the bell that still can ring. 

Forget your perfect offering. 

There’s a crack in everything. 

That’s how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen also knew his U.S. American poets well. In fact, it was Ralph Waldo Emerson who first said, There’s a crack in everything… that God has made.

Brothers and sisters, we are in the business of finding cracks in the facades of power, and chinks in the armor of the politics and policies that hurt families.

We are in the business of prying open those cracks and shining the light of day on the mechanisms of unilateral power, so the people can see and understand how to affect the process. We cast our smooth stone and bring down the wall that separates people from the decision-making process.

A few years ago, our former governor devised a plan—a tax swap plan. The idea was to eliminate income tax, a tax that asks those who have much to contribute a portion of that to the common good. And the income tax was to be replaced with new sales tax—a tax that asks middle- and low-income people to do more out of the less and little they have.

And the clergy of this state came together across the lines of race and denomination and economic status to confront the plan. It was to us a moral issue, but our moral outrage was not enough!

So we looked for a crack, a chink in the armor of the plan, and we found it in the harm the plan would do—not just to our people—but to small businesses as well. And we used that to enable the Louisiana Association of Business & Industry to stand with us against the plan.

It was the perfect small, smooth stone that felled a Goliath of a plan.

Today is a new day in Louisiana. That’s both good news and bad news. The good news is that we have a new Governor who will meet with us! The bad news is we now have precisely what we stopped in its tracks a few years ago: We have a new penny of sales tax.

I will leave explaining the details of how that happened to those who come after me on the program. For the moment, I want to share with you a moment in our first meeting with Gov. John Bel Edwards.

The Governor was explaining his regret over the new sales tax. Indeed, he told us that he, as a devout Roman Catholic, would have to go to confession before he could properly celebrate Easter.

And at that moment, Rev. Wesley, who was chairing the meeting, gently reminded the Gov. that we had remained silent as the new sales tax was passed. The Gov. thanked us for our silence, and I believe that in that moment, a tentative plan for another half penny of new sales tax.. DIED a timely death.

We are here today, brothers and sisters, to develop our strategy to challenge today’s Goliaths. We must find the chink in the armor of our current tax structure, which is at the moment, moving towards being more regressive. We must select our small, smooth stones carefully, consider timing and look for opportunity.

As God is our witness, we will fell the giants that stand between us and justice!

My book!

Two of the sermons in this book reference one of the many "treasures” strewn about my house, specifically a little brown rock about the size of a meatball. It’s kind of lumpy and hard and drab. It’s chipped and cracked. But it has a heart-shaped hole in the side.

I have come to see this little treasure as a symbol of the human-God relationship. We too are small, lumpy, often hard-headed, stiff-necked, and wounded by the inevitable challenges and suffering of human life. In comparison to God, more like a little brown rock.

But we do have a God-shaped hole in the side of our tiny, frightened, wounded and often hard human hearts. Nothing can fill that hole except God. God put it there with great love and tenderness to help us know whose we are. 

And that's Incarnation and that’s what makes it possible for us to love God and our neighbor as ourselves, to care for others—even those we don’t like or who frighten us, to reach for God and to find God, right here on earth, in each other and in creation and in the very ordinariness of our lives.

I think you’ll find that theme running in the background of many of these sermons.

Buy it here!