“Pay Stub Panic”

Homily for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost       24 September 2017
The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Rector

"Are you envious because I am generous?”  Matthew 20:15b

Instant poll. The subject is “Real Estate.” Choose one of the following options:

Behind Door #1: You could live in a 4,000 square-foot house nestled among 6,000 square-foot homes.

Behind Door #2: You could live in a 3,000 square-foot house among 2,000 square-foot houses.

Reminder: You only have two choices: a 4,000 square-foot house or a 3,000 square foot house. You might prefer by far a 6,000 square-foot monster or a 2,000 square-footer, but the poll gives you only two choices. And the criterion for your selection is the home you prefer in relation to your neighbors’ houses.

So, given its size in relation to the neighbors’ homes, which house would you prefer? Door #1: The lone 4,000 square-footer among the 6,000 square-foot McMansions?

Or Door # 2: The 3,000 square-foot house in the neighborhood with 2,000 square-foot homes?

These were the parameters of a recent Cornell study designed to understand decision-making. The winner? Door #2: The 3,000 square-foot house among the more modest 2,000 square-footers. That’s because, for those polled, the 3,000 square-foot house had more relative value compared to its neighbors.

And why not the sizable 4,000 square-foot house nestled among McMansions? “Relative deprivation.” As a phenomenon, it reflects an observation made by Karl Marx. Now, I don’t often refer to Karl Marx in public, although a parishioner once called me a Marxist. On his way out the front door.

But I digress. Marx said that a house may be large or small, but as long as the neighboring houses are small, that’s probably satisfactory.

Complication: A neighbor builds a palace next door, and the house — whatever its size — shrinks in perception to a shed. And what do the house-owners, now shed-dwellers feel? Relative deprivation.

Relative deprivation. That’s the set-up for Jesus’ parable about sliding wages. Not!

To recap: A vineyard owner needs cheap labor. Sun-up, he trolls the outer fringes of what passes for the local first-century Home Depot parking lot to hire strapping go-getters eager for work. Then he returns periodically to tap more labor: 9, noon, 3PM and 5, with just about an hour to go before the day is shot and the pickings in the able-bodied department get pretty slim.

At pay-out time, it’s not “first in, first out.” Meaning: The boss makes the most-worked wait the longest and consequently forces them to see what everyone else — originally in line behind them — gets paid.

And what do these early-hires witness? The boss gives every single worker the same wage. Whether they’ve put in 12 hours or 1 hour, doesn’t matter. Whether you’re the pumping-iron first-hires or the scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel last-hires, doesn’t matter. Same compensation across the board: a full day’s wage.

The first-hires squawk “relative deprivation”! Or more like, “Boss, if you’re going to give those other guys ─ who are underemployed for a reason! ─ the same pay we got, we deserve a bonus. Fair is fair.”

“No deal,” the boss counters. “Check our agreement. Fair is fair.” Meaning: No union. No arbitration. No appeal.

But that’s the boss. Can Jesus ─ soft-hearted Jesus ─ help out the first-hires here?

Or, writing ourselves into the parable: When people don’t work as hard as we do … or don’t play fair … or are cut deals … or get more than we think they deserve … or get what we think we deserve ─ in other words, if we feel short-changed ─ relatively-deprived — can we count on Jesus to right the balance?

Don’t hold your breath … because, how does Jesus weigh in? Sounds like, “You whine ‘deprivation’? I’ll show you deprivation!”

That is, if he had his way, the least-working, last-hired, least-qualified would get even more than the first, highly-prized workers. In God’s dream economy, he intones, “The last will be first, and the first will be last.” Not helpful to the early-hires if Jesus’ topic of the day is fairness.

But what if the topic of the day is something else? What if the topic of the day is generosity?

Well, it clearly is, because Jesus punctuates the parable — not with a statement about compensation-gone-haywire — or even fairness (which is another way of dressing-up relative deprivation) — Jesus punctuates the parable with the landowner’s — read: God’s — generosity as counterweight to the workers’ envy.

“Are you envious,” Jesus charges the early-hires, “because I am generous to folks who don’t make the A Team?”

But who are the targets of the A-Team types' envy? They’re the people, for example, Hubert Humphrey targeted for generosity: “Those who are in the dawn of life, the children. Those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly. And those who are in the shadows of life: the sick, the needy, and the physically-challenged.”

“Are you envious of them,” Jesus needles, “because I choose to be generous with them?”

That’s envious as in "crank-crank-crank": the lingering, simmering, gnawing suspicion that less-deserving people out there ─ somewhere ─ are getting what is rightfully ours.

The whip-up-the-base solution to envy of this magnitude? “Ship them out. Deny them healthcare. Let them stew in their own juices. Build a wall!”

Odd: That’s clearly not Jesus’ solution. Read Jesus’ lips. The solution is generosity, like God’s generosity. Generosity that’s based on need … not notions of fairness.

Now, key distinction: Jesus here isn’t equating generosity with generic giving. In fact, he’s pretty clear: As good as giving is, generosity — exponential giving — wins hands down every time. In other words, it’s not enough to give. To be like God — and that’s what Jesus insists we be — generosity is the high bar to clear.

In other words, Jesus makes the case elsewhere that we are designed to be good, as God is good. But, as he proves here, God is good not because God gives — a sliding scale for the workers would have proven that — but God is good because God is generous.

And the God-like generosity Jesus baits us with looks like the characters in an old rabbinic tale:

A farmer had two sons. When the father dies, the two sons work the farm jointly. Come harvest season, they divide the harvest equally.

Now, the elder brother remains a confirmed bachelor … with a fondness for show tunes. (No, that’s not in the story. I made that up! But he does remain a bachelor.) The younger brother marries and has a whopping eight children.

At harvest time, the bachelor thinks to himself, “My brother has ten mouths to feed. I only have one. He really needs more of the harvest than I do. This is what I’ll do. In the dead of the night, I’ll take a hefty chunk of my share of the harvest and put it into his barn.”

At that very moment, the younger brother is thinking to himself, “God has given me a loving wife and eight wonderful children. My bachelor brother hasn’t been so fortunate. He really needs more of the harvest for his old age than I do. This is what I’ll do. In the dead of the night, I’ll take a hefty chunk of my share of the harvest and put it into his barn.”

And so, that night, half-way between their two barns and under a full moon and cloudless sky, the two brothers bump into each other!

Suddenly, it begins to rain.

What can that be? The rabbis concluded: It was God weeping for joy because the two brothers understood that a spirit of generosity is the clearest way we can show we are made in God’s image.

From the late-comers in the parable, then, to folks we just might think aren’t A-Team timber … from immigrants to Dreamers … minorities to single mothers … welfare recipients to LGBQT neighbors who just want a wedding cake (a wedding cake, for God’s sake!): Are we envious because God is generous?

Our only option: Make God weep. Make God weep tears of joy.

Amen.

“Dream Act”

Homily for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost       10 September 2017
The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Rector

"Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”                                                                                                               Matthew 18:20

“Like what you’ve done with the Neanderthal skeleton.”

That’s an opener if you walk into the office of Svante Pääbo, headline-generating geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Leipzig.

Why the skeleton? Pääbo is committed to sequencing the entire Neanderthal genome. In the process, he’s discovered that humans and Neanderthals interbred up to 30,000 years ago. And he’s proven that all modern, non-African humans ─ from the Chinese to the French to the indigenous peoples of the Americas ─ have between one and four percent Neanderthal DNA. In other words, he’s discovered where some of us humans and the Neanderthals converge.

However, what Pääbo really wants to find out is: Where do we diverge? Read: What exactly does it mean to be human?

Or, as Pääbo frames it, what makes modern humans so crazy, like venturing out on to a wide expanse of ocean where you don’t glimpse a speck of land? Pääbo calls this “madness.”

That is, in terms of shear self-preservation, it’s just crazy. You’d never encounter a Neanderthal acting so crazy. “What is it in our human genes that drives taking a risk like that,” Pääbo asks.

Or take another “crazy” human behavior: At the nearby Leipzig Zoo, evolutionary anthropologist Michael Tomasello notes, “Chimps do a lot of incredibly smart things. But at the zoo today, you won’t see two chimps carrying something heavy together. They don’t have the kind of collaborative instinct even human children have.”

In other words, the type of community that approaches solving our common problems together with creative risk ─ like two, three, four, or more embarking on a lonely sea or sharing the task of carrying burdens too heavy for just one ─ that type of community is uniquely human. Risky collaboration of that sort, it’s crazy, really. It’s madness. But it’s what makes us human.

And if we learn nothing else from the Gospels, it’s what made Jesus human.

Case in point: A issue lighting up our newsfeed that would undoubtedly draw Jesus’ attention. It's the daily battle were engaged in over the Dreamers. They’re roughly 800,000 of our neighbors, most of whom were under the age of seven when their parents — entering the country illegally before June 15, 2007 — brought them here in the very human hope of keeping their families intact.

The Dreamers. Once again, they’re our neighbors. They’re here, now, established among us … working … getting educations … serving in our military. They’re neighbors who dream of one day enjoying the rights and responsibilities all citizens enjoy, but whose aspirations are now not only in limbo, they’re also under threat with the Administration’s suspension of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) due to go into full effect in less than six months.

Just a reminder: DACA allows these neighbors of ours to receive a renewable two-year period of deferred action from deportation. And it means they’re eligible for a work permit. And where there’s work, there’s health insurance, also pay: money earned for housing, food, education, a future. Where there’s work and pay, there are taxes. Dreamers contribute $1.6 billion in taxes per year. And — good consumers like the rest of us — they spend their earnings. It’s estimated that, if allowed to stay, Dreamers will contribute $433 billion to the economy over the next decade.

And yet, some want to ship them out of the country to return them to places they really have never known, places truly foreign to them, places where they will be lost.

Reality check: Why are we even entertaining thoughts of deporting them? Their plight — given Jesus’ own take on the issue (“When I was a stranger, you welcomed me”) — is a no-brainer for people who claim to follow Jesus.

The Christian option, then, is: Clear the Dreamers’ path to citizenship … here, where they have a clear sense of history and belonging … rather than pave their way out of the country to what? Utter uncertainty and, especially for LGBT Dreamers, certain discrimination, or violence, even death.

Under the circumstances, however, where there shouldn’t be, there’s debate. It’s a debate about two choices: The craziness of community (thinking of neighbor, working for neighbor, working with neighbor) … vs. inhumanity. Inhumanity: Doing only what’s best for yourself … and yourself alone. Looking out for your own economic interests or — or, especially if you’re a politician — the interests of your racist base. Yes, racist base. Because who dares deny that we wouldn’t be having this stimulating conversation if, let’s say, 79 percent of the Dreamers in question were from Norway … and not Mexico? (Credit goes to economist Paul Krugman for that observation.)

Which response, then — eventual citizenship or summary deportation — is the more Neanderthal? And which the more human?

Neanderthal: “I’ve got mine because my parents (or immigrants in my family before them) got it legally, so what do I care about Dreamers?”

Human: Fair play and decency. The craziness that looks a lot like Jesus’ own take on community: "Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

Was ever God’s personal stake in community more clearly stated?

Or, to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, “What life have we, if we have not life together?”

That means that the “we” that makes up the “we” when we say, “We believe in one God” and so on … or the “our” of “Our Father, who art in heaven” … that “we” is a community of twos and threes and fours and how ever many there are of us here today and every Sunday … pointing us to a key question: What is the purpose of this church?

Answer: The purpose of this church is community. To bring us together as a people gathered in Jesus’ name, all being healed of our divisions and differences and issues so that each of us might heal others and reconcile them to God and each other, all of us.

Community: To make us — together — so radically welcoming that every stranger who walks through our open doors (or into our neighborhoods or wider community … into this country) isn’t ignored or just tolerated, but made to feel genuinely at home, respected, and accepted.

Community: To press the “mute” button on our own voice so that we might hear other voices: God’s voice … or our neighbors’ voices, their stories, their needs, their answers to the questions that stump us.

Community: To suspend our own blinkered agenda so that we might be free to explore God’s agenda for this country, for St Paul’s … an agenda that may be light years away from ours.

Community: To make each of us fully human, the way Jesus was fully human. Willing to be right here among us, contributing and benefitting, learning and evolving … even when only two or three are gathered in his Name.

And, when we remember how blessed we are to be alive, housed, fed, employed, and able-bodied to venture out on a wide sea of opportunity so that our neighbors might do more than just dream?

Community.

It’s madness.

It’s human.

Just crazy!

Amen.

"Monumental Snub"

Homily for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost          20 August 2017

The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Rector

But Jesus did not answer the woman at all.  Matthew 15:23

April 21, 1945. Nuremberg, Germany.

The brute, laurel-wreathed swastika that capped the Nuremberg Stadium, centerpiece for Hitler’s infamous, staged rallies in the run-up to his reign of terror across Europe. That gargantuan swastika — monument to the Triumph of the Nazi Will — in a flash, blown to smithereens by Allied troops in the drive to consign Hitler’s “Thousand-Year Reich” to the dustbin of history.

That swastika. It’s demolition. A grainy-newsreel icon of Allied resolve. Who among us would not have pushed the plunger?

In the rumble and rubble, had there been voices of protest — “You can’t do that. That swastika: It’s part of our history. It’s our heritage. It’s our culture. It’s such a beautiful swastika!” — had we heard voices of protest, what would we think of them?

Because now — today — superseding the nostalgia of newsreels, turn on your TV, log-in to the internet, check your iPhone. All we hear are protests: “That Robert E. Lee Memorial … that Stonewall Jackson statue (and the horse he rode in on) … that monument to saintly Jefferson Davis in the very heart of the Lost Cause. You can’t tear them down. They’re our heritage, our culture!”

C'mon. That’s being disingenuous, because, as pundit Charles P. Pierce notes, most of the monuments we’re talking about “were erected either during the high-tide of lynching in the South in the early 20^thcentury or during the 1950s, when mass-resistance to racial desegregation was gathering steam in the old Confederacy. These were not put up as tribute to heritage or history,” Pierce says. “They were put up as reminders to African-American citizens as to who really was in charge.”

Nevertheless, if you want to hang on to the monuments — “They’re so beautiful,” a tweeting racist gushes — or side with those who do, how did you feel about blowing up the Nuremberg swastika? Because if you salivate at the prospect of pushing the plunger in Nuremberg, but balk at pulling down columned, granite-hewn, and gilded and bronzed memorials to Confederate treason and its oppression of black people, you’ve got a problem.

It’s called hypocrisy. And hypocrisy always calls for resolution, if we are to be morally-balanced and morally-consistent persons.

Can Jesus help?

Well, of course, he can. He’d be the first to lead the charge in hauling down those statues, any symbol that glorifies not treating black persons — anyone — as neighbor.

If that’s your take, you’re in for a rude awakening. Ask a desperate Canaanite mother … because in the first moments of her encounter with Jesus, she’s left asking, “Is Jesus a bigot?”

Picture this: Jesus is exhausted after working his familiar Jewish-populated neighborhoods. He needs a break and opts for a little R&R ─ incognito ─ in non-Jewish (read: gentile) territory.

Before he can even plunk down his bags, one of the locals ─ a woman not his kind, not of Jesus’ own race and culture — and yet a woman obviously aware of Jesus’ celebrity — accosts him. Why? Her daughter is in dire straits, suffering from what we might call mental illness. Jesus is her last resort. Will he cure her daughter? Yes or no?

No. No, Jesus refuses. And Matthew records, for my money, the most chilling words in all of Scripture: “He did not answer her at all.”

Worse than if he had said what everyone else was thinking: “Woman, you’ve got the wrong DNA. It’s our heritage, our culture: Jesus, Inc. is open for Jewish business only.”

Now, under the circumstances, Jesus’ silence would be bad enough. But then he hurls an ethnic slur-of-choice her way. Right to her face, he calls her a “dog.” And we’re not talking here Lassie or Rin-Tin-Tin. Not even Scooby Doo. Ruh-roh.

It would be unconscionable, Jesus says, to cure the woman’s daughter. “Do you take food out of the mouths of kids and toss it to dogs?” Translation: His gifts — the banquet God has prepared from the foundation of the world — are for his own kind — exclusively for Jews, not gentile “dogs.”

Problem is: This doesn’t sound like the “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world” Jesus we’ve come to know and love. But there it is, in revolting — and revealing — black-and-white: “Heal a gentile, even a gentile child? What alternate universe are you living in, lady!?!”

Is Jesus, then, a bigot? Is Jesus the sort of bigot who would let stand the Confederate monuments, leave the “stars and bars” banner flying high?

You can try to argue “no.” You can argue, and many do, that Jesus — a teacher par excellence — is testing the woman, pushing her to greater faith.

If that’s your approach, then the woman gets an A. That’s because she counters the “dog” slur with consummate cleverness. “Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Meaning: “Surely, Jesus, there’s enough of your God’s unlimited goodness to go around!”

If you buy the “test” argument, news flash. You’re skating on thin ice … because, who in their right mind would worship with abandon — let alone obey and follow — a God who withholds common compassion as fallout from a failed test, a God who punishes you if you’re not sufficiently clever?

Or you could take the save-the-Confederate monuments route. You could attempt to acquit Jesus of the charge of bigotry by appealing to his heritage and culture. You could suggest that Jesus’ cold and surly treatment of the gentile woman is the norm (to us, a scandalizing norm) for someone born into an adversarial, Jew vs gentile culture.

We do know, for example, that in his daily prayers, Jesus would have been reared to give thanks that he was born a Jew, not a gentile … that he was born a man and not a woman. Like thanking God you were born a white person and not an African-American. Or straight and not gay.

Not surprising, then, that Jesus’ knee-jerk reaction not only is to give the woman the cold shoulder, but to insult her without so much as a second thought.

Problem here is: If this is your argument, is Jesus all that different from segregation-era racists … perhaps a kinder, gentler racist … a racist minus the fire bombs, water cannons, and baseball bats?

And then, is the outsider woman any different from African-American Freedom Riders who were arrested in the summer of 1961 — and many ultimately beaten and abused — for entering a whites-only waiting room in a Jackson, Mississippi bus terminal?

If you look at it that way, can you in all honesty absolve Jesus by association? Can you give him a pass by saying that he’s just a product of his culture?

Bottomline: There’s no way around it. Jesus initially responds to the encounter from a position of bigotry … a heritage and culture of bigotry.

And yet, it’s not his only response. In what amounts to a defining moment for Jesus, the woman pries open — for Jesus himself to see, perhaps to his own shock — his own bias. How? In essence, the woman’s request to heal her child morphs into a question: Jesus, who are you for?

It’s a question that pushes Jesus to make a choice: Will he widen his charity and his moral imagination? Or will he reject the equality the woman needs only to preserve the status of the preferred, the special, the entitled by birth, custom, and law?

He chooses — not begrudgingly, but without hesitation — to heal the child. It’s almost like whiplash.

Bottomline: Just as the Confederate monument controversy is a proxy for racism, Jesus recognizes that his own heritage and culture have been a proxy for bigotry. And by finally answering the woman and going beyond (to heal the child), Jesus chooses to blast his way through the constraints of his inbred DNA.

In the same way, Charlottesville, the sallow-white-supremacist rally in Boston Saturday, and any other bigot-attracting events on the horizon don’t just raise the question: “Who is America for?” Because …

Just as the insidious Robert E. Lee monuments and their ilk were erected as reminders to African-Americans that white folk were in charge and they were not.

Just as that ham-fisted swastika in Nuremberg showed that an Aryan super race was in charge and that Jews, gay people, and other “undesirables” were not.

Just as Jesus’ initial refusal to heal the gentile woman’s child put the woman on notice that “Chosen People” were in charge and that she and her people were not …

… so that prickly encounter in a neighborhood outside the buffers of Jesus’ own neighborhood raises defining-moment questions for each of us:

Who are we for?

Who are we as followers of Jesus for?

And what are we going to do about it … no hesitation … now … so that no one need ever again hear a riff on those horrifying words: “And he did not answer her at all.”

Amen.

“We ♥ Charlottesville”

Homily for the Feast of St Mary the Virgin       13 August 2017
The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Rector

In the Name of God, lover of justice and peace. Amen.

Charlottesville.

When white supremacists and neo-Nazis are emboldened — as they were this weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia — this is what you get: racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, violence.

You get what we got: a heinous domestic terrorist attack. A 32 year-old woman dead. You get 19 peaceful counter-protesters — a rainbow of people standing up to white-bread bigotry — injured, some of them critically.

You get sides. “Many sides, many sides,” as the President — absent a moral compass — shamelessly sputtered.

What you don’t get: moral parity … because you’ve got bigotry vs resistance in Charlottesville. And by saying “many sides” are to blame for the violence — and no violence (neo-Nazi or counter-protester) ought ever to be condoned — but by saying “many sides” are to blame for the violence, you are conveniently blaming no one, least of all, yourself. You are giving equal weight to bigotry and resistance. And by doing so, you are providing cover to the bigots, the white supremacists, the neo-Nazis.

Moreover, to assign equal blame for the death of one woman and others' injuries on all parties (white supremacists and counter-protesters) is to miss the point. Or it’s a deep-seated desire not to want to get the point … because of deep-seated racism or worse, a deep-seated strategy to “Make America Great Again” for one race alone.

Because the point is: Any notions of racial superiority and its inherent divisions, discrimination, and violence are utterly at odds with the principle — consistent with the Gospel of Jesus Christ — that all people are created equal and created with equal rights.

To deny, then, that principle and those rights through bigotry and, from some corners, religious bigotry? It’s just not Christian … because when did Jesus ever give equal weight to bigotry and resistance against bigotry? No, really. Show me. You can’t. And you can’t because Jesus resisted.

That’s why our bishop, Alan Gates, has called the people of this diocese to prayerful, peaceful resistance. In a message late last evening, he wrote:

We condemn the hatred behind Saturday’s gathering in Charlottesville of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other purveyors of bigotry, which is equally un-American and un-Christian.

We affirm, with the bishops of Virginia, that as followers of Christ “we have been entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation ... [and] cannot remain silent in the face of those who seek to foment division.”

We pray with and for those who have sought to maintain peaceful witness in Charlottesville.

In the face of continuing volatility there, all congregations are urged to pray on Sunday (August 13) for peace, and for the courage to maintain our gospel ideals in the face of racism, anti-Semitism, and all forms of hate-mongering.

The Rt. Rev’d Alan M. Gates
Bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts

And in that spirit — on this day when we commemorate the Feast of St Mary the Virgin — we ask for the intercession of the Queen of Peace, the mother of the Prince of Peace, on behalf of our country:

We pray for those killed and injured in the violence in Charlottesville and for their families, loved ones, and friends.

We pray for those who are afraid because their immigration status or race or sex or religion or physical ability or the gender of the person they love makes them a target of hate.

We give thanks for those clergy and peaceful protestors who continue to stand firm as witnesses for God’s justice.

We pray for people who are so threatened by the equality Jesus lived that they feel they must resort to violence, fueled by misguided notions of racial superiority.

We pray that God would open the eyes and minds of the highest office-holders in this land to ensure that we as a people will once again hold high the Lamp of Liberty.

We ask God to give us the strength to stand up against hate whenever and wherever we witness it.

We ask that, even in the shadows of torch-lit violence, we ourselves will be brave beacons of God’s love.

Let us pray.

O God, you have made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son:

Look with compassion on the whole human family.

Take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts.

Break down the walls that separate us.

Unite us in bonds of love.

And work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

"Cold Comfort"

Homily for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost       2 July 2017
The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Rector

“Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple — truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”                                                                                                 Matthew 10:45

Pearl, penny. Candle, camel. Rooster, rock. Widow, wolf. Jesus is imaginator extraordinaire as he uses all these images and many more galore, less to entertain and more to make a point, make it stick, make it perfectly do-able 8 o’clock Monday morning.

With so many to choose from, how do Jesus’ images stack up? In a contest, the not-quite-invisible-to-the-naked-eye mustard seed — stand-in for how a smidgen of faith can pack a world-changing punch — usually gets top billing as the lowest-of-the-low, teensiest-of-the-teensy image in Jesus’ repertoire. The little sparrow might be a not-so-close second. And then, there are the hairs of our head Jesus claims are numbered.

Lots of competition in the race to the bottom. The bottom, of course, being not really such a bad thing in Jesus’ book, when you think about all things last reordered to first and first things bumped to last.

But one contender gets overlooked for its apparent insignificance. It may as well be just a drop in the bucket: “a cup of cold water.” Take that a step lower. “Even a cup of cold water” … the low-cost, low-investment, high stakes, high impact gift of even a cup of cold water given by any of us to any of the “little ones.”

The “little ones.” What’s that about? Thirsty kids … parched height-challenged folk … or perhaps the desperate-for-a-drink “little people” with their Lucky Charms?

Well, first, who’s Jesus talking to?

This is one more chapter in Jesus’ bestseller “How To Be a Disciple” for Dummies. Actually, it’s not a chapter per se, because what we have here are the untidy scraps of an arbitrary, chapter-long string of odds and ends — random sayings of Jesus — the Evangelist Matthew has dumped here. They don’t cohere, but Matthew thought they were too good to consign to the Cutting Room floor.

And yet, taking saying by saying, it’s possible to discern that Jesus is coaching the disciples, prepping them for the coming day they leave the nest, test their Moxie, and reveal their “inner Jesus” to the wide, wide world — but especially to the “little ones”: those closest to Jesus’ heart, persons easily and chronically ignored by their neighbors with exponentially-deeper pockets. Pockets untouched by charity at its most basic and humane.

Add that to all the dizzying wordplay Jesus indulges in here — “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me,” doing this or that in the name of a prophet or a disciple and so on: It’s all charity-based connections.

Meaning: When Jesus’ succession planning succeeds, the disciples’ own work catches on, and the people whose lives they touch begin working their inner disciple, their collective work can be described in the most positive — and, at the same time, most diminutive — of terms: giving even a cup of cold water to the “little ones.”

You have to admit, that's setting the bar low.

Triggering another image — a Bizarro-World image — the negative to the glass of water shared. An image not explicit in Jesus’ stories and teachings, but no less potent in shock value blitzing video and media coverage a week ago: D.C. police arresting, dragging — and, as videotape shows, dropping — dozens of protesters in wheelchairs, some bloodied — dragging them from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office.

What were they protesting? The American Health Care Act, the Senate’s version of the health care bill passed earlier by the House. And because, according to nonpartisan analysts, the Senate’s bill literally will result in the deaths of thousands of our society’s most vulnerable — the disabled — activists from the disabled community themselves staged a “die-in” right there on the spot.

An unforgettable image. The arrests, the manhandling of persons Jesus called the “little ones.” And nowhere in sight not even what Jesus would call the equivalent of “a glass of cold water.”

Now, it’s easy to say, this is “just politics.” But it’s not. This is morality (or the lack of it). This is values.

It’s easy in the heat of debate to get caught up in the data. But these persons — tossed about and discarded — aren’t data. They’re the very people Jesus has sent our way to love and treat as neighbor.

And yet, there’s telling and compelling data behind their protest. More data behind the American Health Care Act, data familiar by now: According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the commonly-called Trumpcare bill now before the Senate would cover about 22 million fewer people by 2026 than Obamacare.

And 15 million will lose the Medicaid their health depends upon.

Complication: “Many of those rendered uninsured would be older, low-income people in some of our country’s poorest states, places hit hardest by the opioid epidemic, violence, and other public health problems,” according to the University of Chicago’s Harold Pollack. He’s the go-to guru on public health policy.

Now, it’s also common to say — as I just did — that these 22 million will lose their health care insurance, that 15 million will lose their Medicaid. That’s not true, charges California Sen. Kamala Harris. At least, it’s not accurate. Our neighbors won’t be losing anything. Their health care insurance — their Medicaid — will be taken away from them. That's the galling and glaring opposite of the giving instinct Jesus mandates for each of his followers.

But a clarification: There is giving in the bill. Gobs of giving. Not to the “little ones,” but to the “yuuuuge ones”: the 0.4 percent wealthiest Americans. Not the 4 percent wealthiest Americans. The 0.4 percent wealthiest Americans … amounting to a giveaway — to the already wealthy — of half a trillion dollars in tax cuts.

Now, Jesus was no math wiz, that I’m aware. Sure, he could toss around figures like 7x70 in a forgiveness exercise. But there’s something cockamamie — something anti-christian — about bottoms-up redistribution of wealth like Trumpcare’s tax cut windfall for the gold-plated set. It just can’t be reconciled with the Gospel — the Good News Jesus proclaims to the poor, the disadvantaged, the ignored.

And, as we mark once more the Founding of the Republic, I don’t think it can be reconciled with the American ideal ... an ideal expressed by no less a patriot than John Adams (and President No. 2):

Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men.

“And not for profit of any one class.” The American ideal.

Now, the Senate bill — forged tellingly in secret and kept from the timely scrutiny essential to an open, fact-based, and informed democracy — lacking sufficient support to pass, has been withdrawn for a vote until after the July 4 recess. But zombie-like and just as carnivorous and brain-dead and heartless, come back it will.

And once more, we will be left to conclude that, as has been shown, the American Health Care Act: It’s not an American act. It’s not a healthy act. And it’s not a caring act.

Read: It is an “act.” An act of meanness, pettiness, greed, and light years from the society Jesus calls his followers to create, one that is based on a crystalline principle … a principle that requires each of us — of whatever political party — to choose the Jesus option for health care policy:

“Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple — truly I tell you, none of these” will have their reward taken away.

Amen.

“Care-Free”

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Easter       7 May 2017
The Rev’d John R. Clarke, Rector

“All who believed were together and had all things in common.”                                                                                                                    Acts 2:44-45

For Richard and Dawnell Baptista it was a double whammy. Dawnell’s kidneys were failing. So was their marriage.

To save both his wife and his marriage, Richard donated one of his kidneys to Dawnell.

But the Baptistas’ story doesn’t end there. Dawnell recovers. The Baptistas’ marriage doesn’t. Three years after the operation, Dawnell files for divorce.

Complication: Richard now wants his kidney back. But he’ll settle for its estimated worth ($1.5 million).

Triggering the question: In a divorce, who gets the organs?

And leading to the conclusion: In the sense that the kidney here is shared, you can have things in common … until you don’t.

Like the early Christian community. Luke records, “All who believed were together and had all things in common” until, as history proves, they don’t.

That is where we find ourselves today in debates about rights popping up just about everywhere, including Christian-identified communities: The right to discriminate on so-called “religious liberty” grounds. That tired and tiresome racist canard: states’ rights. And hot off The Congressional Record press, the right to affordable health care.

But that first-of-its-kind Christian community — the camaraderie, the extensive welfare programs made possible by redistribution of property and wealth? Obviously, except as Utopian fantasy, it didn’t last.

Why? Success. As the Church expanded, the interests of one group (let’s say, the original Jewish Christians) competed with those of others (newer and more numerous non-Jewish Christians). And the sticky-sweet ditty ─ “They shall know we are Christians by our love” — so popular at the beginning, acquired a tinny edge as time wore on.

And yet, history doesn’t diminish the merits of the design, as early followers of Jesus — fresh off their in-the-flesh experience of Jesus — challenge a society marred by rampant inequality, a society that failed to provide what each and all are owed: dignity, opportunity, security.

In other words, the early followers of Jesus dreamed, organized, and worked to replace what they saw as a death-spiral, profit-driven system of hoarding “possessions and goods” with a human-needs-based system. “They would sell their possessions and goods,” Luke says, “and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” Any. No one left behind. As any had need.

Now, the elephant in the room: Was it socialism (“From each according to their ability, to each according to their need”)? Not exactly, because of its limited scope. Did it showcase socialistic tendencies? It’s fair to say so.

Is that a bad thing? If you benefit from Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security or ever hope to ─ socialistic programs by any honest assessment — you be the judge.

But, if the early Christian community isn’t full-blown socialism, what is it? I’d call it “conspicuous communality.”

Conspicuous: highly-visible charity floating in a sea of brutal uncharity.

Communality: community created and sustained by sharing and enjoying as much as possible in common, while expanding the circle of the common good. The organizing principle that drives virtuous communities and governments worthy of our support.

That kind of community is what we’ll be talking about in a few moments when we welcome Logan Harris as a newly-baptized person. “We receive you into the household of God,” we will state without reservation.

Prior to that, we will align Logan’s future to opportunities emanating from our Baptismal Covenant. Note to our visitors: The Baptismal Covenant is a major thing for Episcopalians. It's yuuuge, a Gold Standard of commitments that make “conspicuous communality” possible.

Moreover, we will answer on Logan’s behalf — and recommit ourselves by answering — questions that leave the quality of life of all our neighbors and the planet hanging in the balance. Questions like:

Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

Your response? “I will, with God’s help! I will, with God’s help! I will, with God’s help!”

But, you know, there’s one question we won’t be asking this morning. That’s because it didn’t make its way into the Baptismal Covenant:

Will you endeavor to betray the vulnerable when they most need your help?

Puzzling, no? … because in the debate about the “American Health Care Act” passed by the House on Thursday, when it comes to affordability, one rep (Mo Brooks of Alabama) was uncharacteristically candid.

He stated in no uncertain terms that only “good” people deserve low-cost, affordable health care. Yes, “good” people. “People who lead good lives. They’re healthy,” he said. “They’ve done the things needed to keep their bodies healthy. They’ve done things the right way.”

Just gobsmacking.

Because Jesus, a "good" person by most accounts, was in the health care business. He even made it affordable. And at a price few, if any, could refuse: free. Nary a nano-nickel.

What’s more puzzling — given that some people who tout their Christian credentials support this callous legislation — Jesus is notorious for refusing to throw “not-good” people under the bus for causing their own health problems.

Sure, running your body into the ground is a terrible idea. I get that. But before he sets out to heal anybody — and at no cost — does Jesus ever ask: “What’s your Body Mass Index? Will you submit to a urine test? How much fiber is in your diet?” And certainly no questions about Pilates.

For example, when Jesus heals a blind person and the American-Health-Care-Act types of his day protest because either the man or his parents — they charge — caused his pre-existing condition, what’s Jesus’ response? He doesn’t back down … which is his way of saying, “For God’s sake. Be happy for the man!”

So, can you imagine there ever being a single instance when Jesus denies health care to anyone with a pre-existing condition?

Actually, there is one. A distraught woman begs Jesus to heal her daughter of a catastrophic disease. Now, we probably think this shouldn’t be a deal-killer, but mother and daughter aren’t Jewish.

That turns out to be a problem … because Jesus (the Jewish Messiah) balks at treating non-Jews (gentiles). At this point in his career, Jesus sees gentile-ness as a pre-existing condition not covered by his services.

Channeling his inner Ebenezer Scrooge — I was going to say Paul Ryan, but thought better of it — channeling his inner Ebenezer Scrooge, Jesus goes so far as to dismiss the woman, calling her a “gentile dog.” I’m not making this up. And I’m not making up the woman’s response: “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

Ouch!

Good news: Jesus finds her argument persuasive, and he summarily heals the woman’s daughter … providing fodder to those of a Christian bent bound and determined to mount organized resistance to this legislation — legislation that will cause kids born with heart defects … women with breast cancer … and long-in-the-tooth folks (like me) who dare live so long … to lose their health insurance. And — make no mistake about it — all to finance a hefty tax cut for the gold-plated rich.

Where. Is Jesus. In a scheme like that?

Bottomline: In the debates and blogging and pushback from all sides in the days ahead, when it comes to a matter so dear to Jesus’ heart — affordable healthcare for all (that just might look like a single-payer system) — the demands of Christian community — the needs of our neighbors — compel us to ask:

Who is going to pay?

Who is going to pay what?

Who wins?

Who loses?

Who will thrive?

Who — like the hapless kidney donor Richard Baptista — who will sacrifice that others may live?

Amen.