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Sermon September 18, 2022
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers, MSW
The Church of the Nativity and St. Stephen’s
15th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 20, Track 2
Observance of LatinX Heritage Month
https://lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Pentecost/CProp20_RCL.html
Audio: /documents/Eucharist__September_18__2022
Video: https://youtu.be/ifDfFdBMcYY
Hear this, you that trample on the needy,
and bring to ruin the poor of the land, Amos 8:4
No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.’ Luke 16:13
You’ve probably heard about the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi. There is definitely plenty of blame flying around. All of the blame and finger pointing doesn’t much help the people there to have clean drinking water and water for flushing their toilets.
A story from July, that I heard about on the TV news this past week, talked about how a 2020 audit discovered
“…that as much as $94 million in federal funds may have been misspent in Mississippi. Instead of going to poor families, the audit found, much of the money ended up in the pockets of prominent Mississippians, including Mr. Favre, a Mississippi native, who was paid $1.1 million for speaking engagements he did not attend.” In addition, Mr. Favre was able to get an additional $5 million of funds meant for people who are poor to build a new volleyball center at the University of Southern Mississippi.
So often we blame people for being in poverty and we are quick to blame individuals for welfare fraud. Yet, this is a huge fraud in a place where people in the capital city cannot even get safe water.
We really haven’t moved very far from the nearly 2,800 years since the time of the prophet Amos. We still find ways to trample on the needy and bring ruin to the poor.
We so often blame individuals for being poor. It goes way back, doesn’t it? “If you were doing what God wanted, you wouldn’t be poor, right?” By blaming individuals, we do not have to look at larger systemic and community issues.
A report came out this week from the organization Child Trends that showed that child poverty had plummeted and the major factor in that steep decline was government programs. Government programs. You will probably remember that in the 1990s, there were changes to assistance programs. While there were work requirements, there were also government increases in things that families needed. Yes, our tax dollars contributed to an across-the-board decrease in child poverty. Together, we found a way to not trample on the needy or ruin the poor.
Miguel Escobar, currently Executive Director of Anglican Studies at the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary, wrote a book about our Gospel reading today. The book was available on Thursday and is titled The Unjust Steward: Wealth, Poverty, and the Church Today. Also, this month, Mr. Escobar wrote an article for the online Vestry Papers entitled Questioning Stewardship.
The parable we heard this morning is one of the most confusing parables, isn’t it? Best to just look at Jesus’ explanation that you cannot serve God and wealth.
Yet, Mr. Escobar, in the Vestry paper, explains how during a seminar on stewardship with Episcopalians who are Latino, a seminar held almost entirely in Spanish, the participants pointed out that being a Steward, or mayordomia, was not something to be desired. Often the stewards were the overseers who exploited people. Yes, just like the manager in our Gospel today. The manager or steward was responsible for the master’s wealth – for protecting the master’s wealth, not necessarily for caring for the people or the workers.
Escobar says:
“Therefore, I question stewardship as a sound way of describing how Christians should relate to God’s abundance. Frankly, I don’t see much in Jesus’s life or in the Gospels inviting us to be shrewd wealth managers. What I do see are repeated invitations to join in what the late Episcopal LGBTQ+ advocate Louie Crew once described as Jesus’s “promiscuous generosity” – a form of generosity so open that it scandalized not only stewards, but onlookers and disciples alike.”
The promiscuous generosity of God…what does that look like in our lives, our communities, our world?
There was a story about promiscuous generosity in the news this week, I think. It was the story of the 48 people, most, if not all of them, from Venezuela who took a monthslong journey to seek asylum in the United States.
Can you imagine what that journey on foot must have been like? It’s over 3,600 miles from Caracas to San Antonio Texas. Go to Google maps and you can’t even find a walking route from Columbia to central Panama. There is no road or train or bus, only a national park and the jungle and dangerous crossing at the Darien Gap.
And 1/5 of the population of Venezuela has fled the country in recent years. People working more than one job cannot make enough to feed their families for a week. Obviously, they are desperate if they take on this long and dangerous journey to reach the US border. They turn themselves in to immigration at the border and receive dates to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and court dates. You can imagine how backed up the immigration courts are, so the cases can drag out for many years.
This past week, 48 people in San Antonio were offered rides on a chartered plane to Massachusetts. In many cases, they were told there would be jobs and shelter and necessities to help them. Some thought they were going to Boston. However, they ended up in Martha’s Vineyard. Martha’s Vineyard has some permanent residents, but the jobs and population swell during the summer tourist season, which has now ended. There is also no ICE office where people can check in, nor any immigration court. It turns out that the State of Florida arranged for the flights as part of their $12 million effort to transport unauthorized immigrants out of state.
Yet, the members of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Edgartown, were right there to help. For two days the asylum seekers slept at the church. Donations of help and necessary items to support the group flooded in. The group was eventually taken to Joint Base Cape Cod where there are more resources that can help them. The people of St. Andrew’s hugged the asylum seekers. They cheered them on to their next destination. Some of the asylum seekers said they would like to return and people on the island have offered to host them.
The people of St. Andrew’s and the island did not trample on the needy nor ruin the poor. Instead, they acted in ways that demonstrated the promiscuous generosity of God… they served God and not wealth. May we do also.
Amen
Mississippi funds https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/23/us/mississippi-lawyer-fired-welfare.html
Jackson, Mississippi, On Point https://dcs.megaphone.fm/BUR9591485092.mp3?key=48310d1e82e9c76597aba71a77f4cd71
Fall of Child Poverty https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/11/us/politics/child-poverty-analysis-safety-net.html?searchResultPosition=2
Questioning Stewardship https://www.ecfvp.org/vestry-papers/article/1023/questioning-stewardship
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/world/americas/migrants-venezuela-us-immigration.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/us/marthas-vineyard-venezuela-migrants.html
