Let us pray:

We have come into your presence, Lord, to celebrate, and to learn to better represent you to the world. Please send your Spirit to guide us. Amen.

Some of you have read my “Forward, March: Right — Left.” It is my response to a number of friends who have asked why and how I changed from a right-wing, black-and-white Christian to a left-wing, radical, ecumenical social activist.

The short answer is, of course, “I was converted.” The long answer is what that document records. It begins with this story: From 1949-53, I was a student at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary, then in Washington. In our debating class, Dean Charles Weniger assigned a debate on Truman’s national health insurance proposal. I was active in the Young Republicans of America, on the Public Relations Committee. I worked at a hospital, where I had many friends who were physicians. I knew Truman’s plan was socialized medicine, anti-American, against all the principles of this country. So I volunteered to debate against it.

Just before the final bell, Dr. Weniger said, “O yes, I need to add one more thing to the assignment: Those who volunteered to debate in favor, will debate against, and vice versa!” I was furious. However, I did want a good grade.
So during the following few weeks I studied diligently. On the day of the debate I debated in favor of Truman’s proposal — and I was in favor, have been in favor ever since. Being forced to study both sides of an issue is a hard way to pry open a closed mind! Altho I didn’t realize it at the time, it was probably the first giant step in my conversion process, my change from “right” to “left”!

Since 45 years I have ministered in the inner city of Detroit, 15 years as associate minister of Cass Methodist Church, then as a police chaplain, now as the proud minister of a mission team that takes food, clothing and toiletries down there regularly. So all those years of ministry to people in poverty, most of whom have little or no health care, and serious consideration of God’s Word, have determined my comments today.

Relating to those poor people in the inner city is enough to outrage anyone.

The twin scandals we confront today are (1) the pervasive lack of health care, and (2) prevalence of poverty. Perhaps we should add a third scandal —apathy! Because few if any of us here today lack health care, and few if any of us here today live in poverty, we tend to shrug our shoulders with a mild, “That’s too bad.”

If you and I had no health care coverage, we would feel the stress. If you and I lived in poverty we would see it as an issue.
Ever Hilary Clinton’s proposal for universal access to health care crashed and burned in the Republican congress, it has been a political axiom that only incremental changes are feasible.
When we have a crisis in the transportation or communication, we expect our leaders to do something — now! (As in today’s airline situation) Incremental changes are not acceptable. If a computer virus were to hit the nation, we would demand a solution, immediately. But since it is primarily the poor who face the problem of health care, we are sorry for them, but after all, change takes time!

In this election year, health care should be a question for the candidates. As we consider health and healing, I remind you that the number one issue on the Master’s agenda was healing.

Obviously, the care of the body is an important religious issue, an issue of social gospel relevance.

The problems that led to the quest for universal health care for Harry Truman’s administration in the early 50s, and again for Hilary Clinton’s cause in the early 90s, remain with us. And I declare that as Christians we dare not shrug our shoulders.

Is it really all that serious? Well, at least 49 million Americans are without health care coverage. Millions of children have no health care coverage. Would you consider it a problem if you had no coverage?
Would you be concerned if your children or your grandchildren had no health care available? Think seriously about that.

Americans spend about twice as much per capita on health care as Canada or Western Europe. And yet the outcomes are poorer if we judge by infant mortality and life expectancy. Now, is that a scandal, or is that a scandal?

You surely know that in this land of the free, home of opportunity, where all are created equal, the poorer you are, the sicker you are. And if you are not white, you are sicker still! I invite you to an evening in Cass Corridor, where I can show you many indigent drug addicts and alcoholics — and “de-institutionalized” mentally ill — who live and die on the streets.

You surely must know that social workers, childcare providers and public health providers are the least well-paid of the professionals in their field. Praise God there are many to whom service (read: ministry) is more important than easy living. Of course, the high turnover and burnout rates are a significant problem.

There simply aren’t many Albert Schweitzers or Mother Teresas who can maintain idealism and commitment in the face of public cynicism and apathy. They never asked their patients whether they had insurance. They never asked whether their patients were worthy. Most of the sick and crippled Jesus healed were down-and-outers.
The scandalous absence of health-care is made absolutely obscene by the government’s obsession with tax cuts. The wealthy who benefit by the multi-million dollar tav breaks don’t need to worry about health care. They can afford it. And we in America do have the most efficient and effective medical facilities in the world. I am a beneficiary of that technology, and I praise God for it. But that means little to those who can’t afford it.

So health care is a scandal. Another scandal is poverty. Here in this wonderful country, there are millions of Americans living in poverty. One child in six lives below the poverty line.

The official poverty level for a family of four is $16,500, and there is talk of raising that to $19,500. Even at that higher figure 50 million Americans live in poverty.

Let me repeat a story I may have told you before: Andrew Young, one of the major figures in the Civil Rights movement, friend of Martin Luther King, former mayor of Atlanta, former United States ambassador to the United Nations, is a United Church of Christ minister. When he was a student at Howard University, he was confused about what he wanted to do with his life.

His parents wanted him to get a good education, but he was thinking about dropping out of college. He was a lifeguard in a local swimming pool. One day he pulled a young man out of the water.
He discovered the man was on drugs. When the fellow “came to” he looked at Young and said, “Do you remember me? You and I were sent out of school together when we were in the 3rd grade.” That was in New Orleans in the 1930s.

Young did remember. He had gone to a telephone and called his mother, who came right down, took him home, paddled him, talked to the teacher, and the next day he was back in school.

The other fellow’s mother was a domestic, working for $1 a day plus carfare. She could not come down. He dropped out of school and into jail. His life had been one of poverty, drugs, jails.

When Young told the man he was thinking of leaving school . . . well, here’s the way he tells it: “For an hour and a half I was in a counseling session. That 3rd grade dropout was just as intelligent as I, and a whole lot more mature. He insisted that I stay in school and make something of myself. He opened my eyes to what my parents had tried to tell me.”

You know that Andrew Young has been a blessing to this country, an important part of our national psyche, a wonderful role model for black kids — and for me! He says there is “no excuse for the islands of poverty in the sea of abundance.”

We do, in fact, live in a sea of abundance. We need to lobby and work for more equitable distribution of that abundance.

The obscene salaries of business executives, sports figures and actors, while millions live in poverty, is absolutely anti-American, unChristian, indefensible. It is a scandal.

The Internal Revenue Service (Don’t you like calling them a “service”?) has been tracking the after-tax incomes of the wealthiest 1% and the bottom 90% since 1986. In 1986 the top 1% averaged 12 times more income than the bottom 90%. In 1997 the top 1% averaged 22 times more than the bottom 90%! I don’t have recent statistics, but you know the gap is even more now.

A Criminologist, Steven Spritzer, divides the poor into two categories: “social dynamite” and “social junk.” Social dynamite are those who threaten to explode — angry young people who form protest movements and gangs.

Social junk are the marginalized, the mentally ill, the poor souls who sleep on the street, who push shopping carts around town. They have been beaten down until they have given up. Our Better Business Bureau try to keep these people out of sight. They give Detroit a bad name, especially to conventioneers and casino visitors!

Maybe we need to listen to our Old Testament reading: “I will put you on trial. I will speak against those who oppress widows and orphans, or who deprive the foreigners living among you of justice, for these people do not fear me, I am the Lord, and I do not change. That is why you descendants of Jacob are not already completely destroyed.”
(Malachi 3:5,6)
And that, dear saints, is not this fanatical preacher talking. That is the Lord God Almighty!

No wonder Jesus looked at the Holy City and cried. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones God’s messengers! How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me.” (Matthew 23:37)

The society in which Jesus lived was apparently unequal, as is ours. Egalitarianism was the cry of the prophets of old, of Jesus, and must be the cry of prophetic preaching today.

There are thousands of families who are losing their homes. Politicians who boast of the “end of welfare as we know it” somehow don’t seem to see the “welfare-independent” mothers who work long hours without adequate childcare, whose children still go to bed hungry.

Billionaires Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and George Soros were quoted in the New York Times that phasing out the estate tax “enriches the heirs of America’s millionaires and billionaires, while hurting families who struggle to make ends meet.”

Dear saints, I am not a politician. I don’t know how the candidates stand on these issues, but before the election I intend to find out. Amos and Jeremiah and Isaiah . . . yes, and Jesus, made abundantly clear, we are called to take good news to the poor, which is more than shallow, empty words and a pat on the back.
James wrote: “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?” (James 2:15,16)

We are called to work for justice, which is more than shaking our heads at the callous indifference of society. We are to shout aloud, to protest against injustice and inequity and indifference.

Praise God for Judy and the rest of you who provide food and other necessities for Detroit’s inner-city poor. And for those who support them with money and time and talent, those of you who make up the packets and prepare food and wrap gifts. You are doing the work of the Lord. You are ministers in the most literal sense of that word.

And praise God for those who pray and who write letters to your law-makers. And praise God for you who support various charities, who bring food items and money to be taken to the Christus Victor Food Pantry and to the Salvation Army, who work for and in the 17 charities we presently support.

We remember that the greatest scandal of all was the Incarnation, when God, the ultimate agape-love, became a poor wandering peasant, a human being like you and me. He saw the indifference of the elite and called them “You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?” (Matthew 23:33)
If we believe in the Man of Sorrows, we will see his image in the shrinking form on a nursing home bed, in the obnoxious odor of a foul-mouthed drunk wandering the streets, in the empty stomach at a first-grade desk, in the family of six who live in a one-room filthy flat on the income of one.

God is a Spirit. But in Jesus, God laid aside omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnichronic Presence, came here to live as a man, a poor man, then taught us by word and example how to relate to this unjust world.

Why do I stand up here again and sing the same old song? Why do I harp on those things you already know? Why do I once again paint the gloomy picture of an ugly society, an unjust world?

Because there is a world gone awry. There is a society askew. There are human beings — made in the image of God, if you please — who need us, who need more than a handout. There is a society that needs changing.

As we think about Health and Welfare, I urge you to redouble your efforts, to pray about these crises, to renew your commitment to help those in need, and to do what we can do to change the system.

Let us pray . . .

“Lord Jesus Christ, you are the light of the world. Fill our minds with your truth; fill our hearts with your love.”* For all your gifts, we thank you in the name of Jesus, who taught us to pray:

* paraphrase of a 3rd century prayer

The genius of Niebuhr was his remarkable capacity to understand the human situation in the light of profound biblical and theological insights. He believed that a religious person must be involved in politics to achieve what the Hebrew prophets called for — justice.

He considered the 8th century BC prophet Amos to be the first theologian. Amos was precise in his message. “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.” (Amos 5:24)

Niebuhr told June Bingham, author of Courage to Change (which I recommend to all ministers), he should probably have used another title for his book, Moral Man and Immoral Society, namely Immoral Man and Even More Immoral Society!

The issues we discussed today demand action if we are to be faithful Christians. Dante said, “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crises, maintain their neutrality.”

Since this was preached and published last March, both the health care issue and the poverty situation have got much worse. The administration has indeed got the tax bill passed, which will significantly reward the millionaires. Most of the rest of us will get along, but the poorest people, both in our country and around the world, are suffering indescribably.

For example, the United Nations Human Development Program found (1999) that “global inequalities in income and living standards have reached grotesque proportions.” The income gap between the richest fifth of the world’s nations and the poorest fifth (measured by national income per head) increased from 30-to-one in 1960 to 74-to-one in 1997. Now we’re going to make it even worse!

So what can you and I do about it? Probably not a lot. But unless we become educated about the problems, we can do absolutely nothing. We owe our children and their children a better future than we are leaving them. Please study the issues, then get involved — write letters, vote . . .