BILLTESKA

Sermon on Proper 8B ~ Jairus’s daughter
and the ever-present poor
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost ~ July 2, 2006
Holy Trinity & St. Anskar

Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor on your land.
+ In the Name of God the holy and Undivided Trinity.

Was it a miracle? It is usually counted as a resurrection, but Jesus said quite plainly that it was not: “The child is not dead but sleeping. And they laughed at Him.” Whatever it was, it was private: an act of mercy toward the distraught family, and an example for the select, inner circle of the Apostles. It was, I suppose, another display of the sovereignty of God over death, but it was not intended for public consumption. “He strictly ordered them that no one should know this.” Jesus was not there to compel submission to His divine Identity, but to heal and deliver, and to give the example to us.

Do what you can, as I have done, to relieve suffering and grief and need. You may not be able to raise the dead, but don’t be too sure about your limitations. You can always do something, and you may be able to do a good deal more than you think. Don’t listen to those who say there is nothing to be done. “Do not fear, only believe,” that is, “trust in the Lord,” as the Psalm says. And don’t “be afraid of any evil rumors.” In other words, trust that there is something you can do, and you must do it. It is your duty as a Christian.

It is also the duty of your society and the state you construct to serve it. In this week of our national holiday, the lectionary calls our attention to the fact that any society that fails in solicitude toward the needy incurs guilt and the judgment of God. If it is true of God’s own chosen Israel, it is surely true of us: “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor on your land”……or else!

Those who care more about their own apostate ideology that the clear word of Holy Writ are sometimes heard to say “that’s a commandment about individual charity, not social policy.” And they are right. But, as usual, such people refuse to look at the social context in which God issued that commandment. The society of the Deuteronomic commandment already had a law that forgave all debts and freed all indentured servants every seven years. That is the allusion earlier in the passage:

Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought, thinking, "The seventh year, the year of remission, is near," and therefore view your needy neighbor with hostility and give nothing….

The commandment about individual generosity is to be careful not to withhold a loan even if next year it will be forgiven by law, and you can kiss goodbye to your money! It is still your duty before God:

...your neighbor might cry to the LORD against you, and you would incur guilt. Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake.

Don’t take God’s blessing for granted; it is contingent upon your generosity, your ungrudging open-handedness. The opposite is sin, which incurs guilt. It will destroy those who persist in it, and societies that adopt it as policy and build it into their structures will likewise perish. Important to bear in mind this week.

For we are in the grip of people whose only god is their own power. The alien in the land is to be exploited – made into a guestworker to labor at sub-standard pay, which natives will not do – or even to be enslaved, with no rights at all, as in our Marianas Territory, where their slave-labor produces goods labelled Made In America. And our native poor are to be abandoned – left to their own devices, like the little comatose girl of the today’s Gospel. And those who object, those who would help, “they laugh unto scorn.” Yes. When it comes to social intervention in poverty at home (never mind abroad), most of us Americans are like the people causing the commotion in Jairus’s house, weeping and wailing loudly, but laughing bitterly when anyone suggests there is something to do about it. We are sorry that there are poor people, sorry that there is suffering and grief, but that’s just the way it is. It’s a fact of nature. She’s dead and you can’t expect us to do anything to change that. Anyone Who says otherwise is ridiculous. “And they laughed at Him.”

This mentality, so widespread in our country, even has the effrontery to quote today’s prophecy in support of the exact opposite of its meaning: “there will never cease to be some in need on the earth”, you see. It’s a law of God. But the rest of the sentence is omitted: “I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’ ” In other words, don’t throw up your hands and say “there’s nothing to be done: she’s dead,” but do what you can, like the One you call your Savior and Lord did. Dismiss the hard-hearted, faithless scoffers. Kick them out of the house and get to work tending to the afflicted.

“Open your hand to the poor and needy”. Before you can open your hand you must open your heart. The pessimism about changing anything, the pessimism that laughs at Jesus, is a form of hard-heartedness. And hard-heartedness is hell. The hard-hearted are put out of the house. Hard-heartedness is a kind of spiritual cancer, which ends up not only laughing at Jesus, but driving nails into His hands and then mocking Him on the Cross. Today, our own government has just about reached this last degree of hard-heartedness. The President claims the right (the RIGHT, God help us!) to do anything at all in the name of National Security. If you don’t think this is an idol like Moloch, demanding the sacrifice of children consider Ron Suskind’s new book about the “war on terror”, The One Percent Doctrine. As NPR reported last week it contains an account of the CIA interrogation of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of 911. After torturing him with unsatisfactory results, his American interrogators finally threatened to harm his little children. That is the depravity of the damned. It is the inevitable end of hard-heartedness. Leaving aside the fact that it doesn’t even work (the terrorist looked his American torturers in the eye and said “then my children will go to a better place with God”), it turns our society into what the terrorists say we are: the Great Satan, the enemy of God and the human race.

Unchecked, the hard-heartedness that refuses to give a buck to a beggar ends up torturing children and calling it “right”. The only hope is to open our hearts and our hands, not even for the sake of the poor, primarily, but for our own souls.

Lord God Almighty, in whose Name the founders of this country won liberty for themselves and for us, and lit the torch of freedom for nations then unborn: Grant that we and all the people of this land may have grace to maintain our liberties in righteousness and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.