Do you make your bed in the morning? It seems futile. You’re just going to mess up the bed covers overnight. Why bother?
How about meteorologists? They do a weather forecast, and the next day they just have to do another one.
The old forecast is obsolete.
And washing dishes. My mom used to sing
“I’m forever doing dishes. Dirty dishes in the sink.”
Why do we waste time washing dishes that will just get dirty again?
Okay, may the dirty dishes are too far.
Let’s go to God in prayer.
God of wisdom, may the words that I speak, and the ways they are received by each of our hearts and minds, to help us to continue to grow into the people, and the church, that you have dreamed us to be.
Amen.
Today’s Gospel reading gets abused.
I’ve heard it said that
“You always have the poor with you”
means there is nothing we can do about poverty: it’s an unresolveable problem.
There are a lot of things one can support with half of a single verse from the Bible, and not all of them are good.
There are a lot of things that will always be. That doesn’t mean we should ignore them.
- There will always be dangerous and damaging storms.
- There will always be diseases.
- There will always be crime.
- There will always be war.
Should we respond in the manner of Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Newman?
What? Me Worry?
But Jesus doesn’t just say “you will always have the poor with you.” He also says “you do not always have me.”
In other words, one need does not exclude the other.
It’s distressing to hear people suggest that Jesus is speaking of the futility of helping the poor when we read other places where Jesus says
33 Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
- Luke 12:33-34, NRSVue
And Jesus didn’t invent this phrase. He’s quoting the Hebrew scripture that reads
7 “If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community
in any of your towns within the land that the Lord your God is giving you,
do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor.
8 You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be. 9 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; your neighbor might cry to the Lord against you, and you would incur guilt.
10 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. 11 Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you,
‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’
Deuteronomy 15:7-11, NRSVue
So no, we don’t just get to throw up our hands and say “it’s impossible.”
Even if we know some problems will always be, it doesn’t mean that our response must stay the same.
Let’s talk about how we deal with diseases.
Tuberculosis has been around for 9,000 years, and some evidence it has been around for 500,000 years.
Cures have included pills of copper sulfate, creosote and morphine, inhaling the vapors of turpentine, hemlock or tar, and other practices that didn’t actually cure anything.
Doctors prescribed bed rest and good diets.
There were sanitariums where people were quarantined so the disease did not spread as quickly.
There was light therapy, shining bright light on skin lesions.
And then there were antibiotics. There was a new way to treat the disease that would kill the bacterium.
And after that, an inoculation that would teach our immune systems to fight the bacterium.
Tuberculosis is still around. But we have new ways to address it.
Humanity is better off because we can prevent many people from contracting the illness, reduce the threat of widespread contagion, and cure many of the people of the illness
We will always have challenges, but we can have new solutions to deal with them. We don’t have to keep systems in place that were right for the time, but are obsolete now. As our reading from the Prophet Isaiah says
18 Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old.
19 I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?
– Isaiah 43:18-19, NRSVue
That prophecy was to the people of Israel in captivity in Babylon, but it may resonate with people in any time and place. The ways things have always been is not the way things always have to be.
So what would we give to change things?
Would we give up our economic well-being to punish immigrants?
Would we give up our freedom of speech to appease the powerful?
Would we use the needs of the poor to push for the sale of a perfume so we could skim a little money off the top for ourselves?
Would we give up some of our time to protest injustice?
Would we give some time and energy to consider the people and the propositions we vote for?
Would we give some of our treasure not only to help those in need directly but to change systems to be more equitable?
If you joined us yesterday morning for our sign-making session, you saw some scripture on paper tapped up on the walls. They’re still in the social hall today, so look for them if you missed them yesterday. Most of them are prophetic scripture from the Bible, and one quotation from the Babylonian Talmud. They are there to remind us that we are to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.
But today I want to challenge us to recognize that change is possible,
as we read from Isaiah,
18 Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old.
19 I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
– Isaiah 43:18-19, NRSVue
We have a God of change.
Let us also be a people of change.
Amen.
* Scripture quotations marked NRSVue are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. https://www.friendshippress.org/pages/about-the-nrsvue
* Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James version of the Bible.
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