Peace be with you on this 2nd Sunday of Lent. My name is Danny Bradfield, my pronouns are he/him/his, and I’m pastor of Bixby Knolls Christian Church.
Welcome, friends. I’m so glad you’re here. Your presence via Facebook Live is a blessing to me and to others who have joined us.
The psalmist says that God is worthy of being praised and glorified... because God does not despise the affliction of the afflicted; God does not ignore the suffering of those who suffer; but God hears the cries of those who cry out to God.
This past week, we as a nation cried out - many of us, to God - as we mourned and marked the tragic milestone of half a million deaths in the United States due to COVID-19.
That’s more deaths due to COVID-19 in the United States than in any other country.
We mourn the fact that that death toll didn’t need to be so high.
Our leaders have, for many years, considered short-term economic gain to be more important and more of a priority than long-term stability and wellness. We as a country have placed greater importance on things like the stock market and jobs numbers than in the general welfare and wellbeing of the people and of the planet.
In COVID-19, we see the results of this. Our shortsightedness left us unprepared and under-equipped.
In COVID-19, we see the injustice of a nation that has considered - and continues to consider - Black lives, Brown lives, Asian lives and indigenous lives to be worth less than white lives. COVID infection rates are higher among people of color, as are death rates.
In COVID-19, we also see the economic injustice, as poor Americans are more likely to be infected or to have died from COVID than wealthy Americans.
Now that people are starting to be vaccinated, a majority of those being vaccinated are wealthy white Americans - vaccine distribution is slower in poor neighborhoods, and in Black and Brown neighborhoods.
People of color and poor people of all races are being disproportionately affected because they are the ones more likely to continue working in high-risk occupations. Janitors in hospitals. Employees in long-term care facilities. Frontline workers in grocery stores and fast-food restaurants. Jobs that don’t allow you to work from home, but which are considered essential to society and to those who work them.
People working low-wage jobs often have to work two jobs just to make ends meet. Our federal minimum wage is not enough to pay for food, rent, transportation, child care, health care … so two or sometimes even three jobs are needed.
This is not a way of living that is conducive to healthy individuals or a healthy society. Which is why many, including the Poor People’s Campaign which is co-chaired by William Barber, are putting pressure on our leaders to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Because the suffering and the affliction has gone on too long.
Some say wait; won’t raising the minimum wage force employers to cut jobs? Yes, some jobs may be cut. But here’s why that’s OK… With a living wage, many will no longer need to work 2 or 3 jobs to make ends meet. Just one full-time job will be enough. Most of the jobs cut will be the 2nd or 3rd jobs of people who would be more than happy to give up those jobs if just one full-time job paid enough for them to afford life’s basic necessities.
It’s not about the jobs numbers. It’s about creating a better life for poor people in the United States.
Some ask, “How is any of this a concern of the church? The church should be concerned with spiritual matters; the church is about getting people “saved.”
Well. First of all, wherever we read in the Bible that Jesus saved people, the Greek word is sozo, which means salvation, but it ties salvation into being made well, being healed, being restored to wholeness.
In other words, the salvation of Jesus is the salvation of one’s heart, soul, mind, and body. You cannot separate spiritual salvation from physical, corporeal, real-world salvation. It’s salvation of the heart, soul, mind, and body.
Second, we see throughout scripture God’s real concern for the physical suffering of God’s people, and God’s desire that the people live earthly lives of contentment and satisfaction; lives in which every person has their own fig tree and eats of its fruit.
In today’s psalm, the psalmist says that “the poor shall eat and be satisfied.” God wants God’s people to be satisfied!
This echoes what the prophet Isaiah wrote. In Isaiah 55, it says: “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?”
It is God’s desire that every person have wine and milk and bread - enough to be satisfied. And this ability to buy wine and milk and bread and be satisfied should not depend on whether one is rich or poor.
Yet someone working a low wage job, earning minimum wage, is not getting satisfied with wine and milk and bread. They’re struggling. They’re suffering. They need a fair, living wage.
Employers say they can’t afford to raise wages, but that’s not true. Kroger - the company that owns Ralphs - has earned record profits this past year - record profits! - but Kroger is so against raising worker pay that they are choosing to close two stores in Long Beach rather than pay the workers what they deserve.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Costco is one company that treats its employees well, and still makes a profit. On Thursday Costco announced that it was raising its minimum pay from $15 an hour to $16 an hour… and they still manage to keep their prices low. It can be done. Workers can be treated fairly, if the will to do so is present.
Do you know: there are over 2,000 verses in the Bible that express God’s intentions for how we treat workers and the poor… Over 2,000 verses!
Verses like 1 Timothy 5:18 and Luke 10:7, which both say that “workers deserve their pay.” Verses like Proverbs 14:31 which says “Those who exploit the poor anger their maker, while those who are kind to the poor honor God.”
We need to confront the companies and the policies and the politicians who act against the poor. Again, some will criticize Christians who engage in activities like this. They’ll say the church should feed the poor, but not get into politics.
But as Helder Camara, a 20th century Brazilian Catholic Archbishop, famously said: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., received similar criticism. In his last sermon, he said: “It’s fine to talk about milk and honey over yonder, but people need bread down here.”
In the final months of his life, King was preaching and fighting for a living wage, for a basic universal income; he was fighting for low-income workers - essential workers - as he organized the original Poor People’s Campaign.
Because he knew that God is not satisfied when God’s people are not satisfied. He knew that God is not pleased when the poor are made to suffer. He knew that the witness of scripture demands that people of faith use their power to right the economic wrongs of society.
Some of you have heard me say this before - I’m going to repeat myself, but only because scripture repeats itself so much on this issue...
Economic injustice, and unfair treatment of the poor, is the whole reason why God called all those prophets - Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, Micah, and all the rest - to call the people’s leaders back to a fair and just economic system.
These prophets - the ones I just mentioned, along with Amos and Jonah - did their work in the 8th century before Christ, a time of great economic inequality, when the rich were super rich, and the poor were destitute.
After these prophets did their work, there was a period of about 60 years of relative economic equality, and there are no biblical writings from this period. The poor were being treated fairly - justly - so apparently, God didn’t feel that prophets were necessary. Prophets weren’t needed, because the poor were being treated fairly.
But then we come to another period of economic inequality, and this time God called Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Obadiah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, to speak out against this injustice.
After them, there was another period - about 40 years this time - of relative economic equality; and again, in this period, God called no prophets.
But then once again, the rich and powerful started hoarding wealth and leaving the poor behind, so this time God called Haggai, Zechariah, Joel, and Malachi to prophesy against the nations and demand justice.
When you plot it all out like that and look at the big picture, at how God’s prophets were only active during times in which the rich were exploiting the poor for their own gain, you see just how important it is to God that we create an economic system that doesn’t leave the poor out.
And if that’s the kind of economic system God calls us to create - the kind of world God calls us to create - then we who live in 2021 clearly have our work cut out for us.
Now, in our own time, the prophets are speaking out, calling us to confront injustice, to care for the poor, to establish equality, and equity, in our economic system...
...so that the afflicted will be seen and will find comfort; and the poor will eat and be satisfied; and the weak will be made strong, and the broken will be made whole.
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