Matthew 10:24-39
Sermon: When Truth Makes Us Uncomfortable
On my way out of Chicago, while taking the train to
O’Hare airport, a man walked onto the train car and began telling his truth to
the whole car.
If you live in Chicago, you’ve seen this
before. Technically it’s not allowed by
the CTA, but often, and especially at rush hour, people down on their luck will
come on the train and announce that they are in need, they are hungry, they
just need a little to get home, that every little bit helps, and walk up and
down the aisles hoping to collect people’s loose change.
It’s both a smart strategy to reach a lot of people
all at once, and an uncomfortable reminder as so many of us are riding home
thinking about our dinner plans with friends, or grocery shopping, or
television show list for the night that we are blessed, and this would be an
opportunity to share our blessings.
(And inwardly, we usually groan and try to find
something to stare at on the floor or out the window, so we don’t have to meet
the eyes of the person asking for money.)
This man caught my attention because he was
different. Although he was just wearing
a t-shirt and pants, he wasn’t dirty or smelly.
While it was clear he hadn’t shaved in quite a while, he didn’t have any
of the visible signs of long-term homelessness – he wasn’t missing teeth, or limping,
or showing any indicators of substance abuse.
More than that, the man was proud.
He stood tall, spoke in complete sentences, was respectful but was not
apologizing for his existence. He wasn’t
there to pathetically beg, he was there to reasonably afflict.
He said, ‘ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to
interrupt your commute, but I am homeless. I am looking for work. I thought perhaps there might be a hiring
manager somewhere on this train. I am
able-bodied, and here asking for your help.
Does anyone know of someone hiring?
I was staying at a shelter, but the shelters all have bed bugs. I’m trying to get into a room but I need to
raise $12 in order to get a bed tonight.
I am willing to work, but I will need to raise $19 for bus fare for the
commute. People never think about how
much it costs to be homeless. They don’t
think about how much it costs to go back and forth for food, and beds, and
services and searching for work. They
don’t think about the bed bugs, and I wanted you to know. I am ready and willing to work, and looking
for a referral. People always think the
homeless are addicts or criminals, but here I am, telling you that I am healthy
and not an addict and just need a job.
Can anyone on this train help me find a job? I also need a toothbrush. Can anyone help me with a toothbrush?’
This man wasn’t just seizing an opportunity to ask
for money. There was some real burning criticism in his words. Especially because, in my former state of
Illinois, a political stalemate between the Speaker of the House and the
Governor has led to a failure to agree on a state budget for over 2 years.
Without a budget, the state is just not paying its bills. Debt is climbing exponentially by the month,
the credit rating of the state has been downgraded to ‘junk status’, and social
service organizations from all regions have been forced to close their doors
because they haven’t been paid in 2 years.
So, under these conditions, it’s easy to imagine that shelters have
bedbugs, and agencies that might help with housing or employment are no longer
serving people like him. This man was
just dropping a little uncomfortable truth into the minds of people who are
insulated from his experience.
As I was already thinking about the scripture for
today’s sermon, I wondered if that man’s name was Jeremiah.
The call of the Lord is an uncomfortable one. Jeremiah shows us just how uncomfortable it
can be. Jeremiah had a lonely life in a time of great social upheaval. He has the unpleasant task to warn the people
of Jerusalem that the city was to be destroyed by the kingdom of Babylon. Jeremiah will live through the year that is
so defining in the Jewish experience – the destruction of the temple in 587 BCE
and the first exile. By failing to
uphold God’s covenant and be God’s people, Jeremiah is certain that their fate
is sealed. He is compelled to speak
against Jerusalem and encounters hostility as a result. On the other hand, when he decides to stop
speaking, the word of God burns inside of him, and he has no peace then
either.
Jeremiah
shares not only his message, but also details of his experience as a messenger.
He is known by historians to be “the weeping
prophet”. The prophet's pain is on display for all to
see. Hiding from neither God, himself, nor the reader, Jeremiah refuses to be
silenced by any who would rather turn away, by any who would prefer to reject
him and tune out his message. Jeremiah was given a gift – he was
given a sight, an understanding, a conscience.
It would have been an abdication of his responsibility to be silent.
Responding to the call of God can be uncomfortable,
but it’s a burning in your bones. It’s
an undeniable screaming of your conscience. There was a provocative quote on Facebook
recently that spoke to this:
“I screamed at God for the starving child until I
saw that the starving child was God screaming at me.”
Jeremiah could hardly quiet his screaming conscience
– and if he did, it would have been an
abdication of his responsibility to respond to God’s call.
We live in a world that has
already broken the demands of God’s covenant, to love God, and love one another
as Jesus loved us. We live in a world
that more often than not ignores the cries of the widow, the orphan, and the
homeless guy on the train. We live in a
world where someone always profits from the conflict between the police and the
poor, between the worker and shareholders, between the sick person and the
insurance company that doesn’t want to pay for medical care. And those powers are so powerful that when
that doesn’t seem to be enough, they go further, press for more power, reach
for more profit.
On Thursday, the Senate
released the health care bill they hope to replace Obamacare. In their efforts
to bring down the monthly premiums for the average person, this bill shifts
those costs to even higher deductibles, smaller subsidies, less guaranteed
coverage for marketplace enrollees, the ability to discriminate against people
who have costly medical conditions, and older people.
But more critically, hidden
deeper in the bill is a gutting of Medicaid - the health program that has for
decades served poor children, the elderly, and people with disabilities. Medicaid is what paid the bills for my
grandmother during the 6 years of dialysis at the end of her life. Medicaid is what kicks in when my friend
Kath, the one with cancer, becomes too sick with chemo-related side effects to
go to work. In fact, Medicaid is the only reason she’s alive at all. Medicaid
has provided health insurance for children and women who have children, but
leave childless men and young people without children in a lurch.
Until the ACA. The ACA
provided a whole bunch of federal funding to allow states to expand this
program, and Medicaid enrollment represents about half of the 23 million people
who are considered newly insured – including 441,300 Veterans. You may not
realize this, because the state of Nebraska is one of 19 states that didn’t
take the money to expand Medicaid. But
in Illinois, I met dozens of people who were, sometimes for the first time in
their lives, able to take care of their health.
This was because for the first time, the ACA made it possible to sign up
for Medicaid based on income only, not gender or children. This meant that a lot of the people who lived
on the street could see a doctor. People
like the homeless man on the train, or a Veteran dealing with PTSD, or others trying
to manage diseases while homeless; young men and women who were runaways or
people who aged out of the foster program; low-income students and grad
students and people doing seasonal work and people with addictions who are
desperate for treatment; the expansion of Medicaid appeared like a new doorway
in their lives. And it’s a door that will be closed again under this new bill.
The Senate health care bill
would roll back all these expansions beginning in 2021– but not stop
there. After 2024, the amount the
federal government funded would slow, and not be adjusted for increases in
population or need. Effectively, it
would be a net reduction in funding, forcing states to eventually narrow the
eligibility, decrease benefits, or push people off of Medicaid completely.
Where they go from there, I have no idea.
Who is deserving of good
health? Who is deserving of being able
to pay for their health? If you are
sick, is it your fault? Do we have any
responsibility as a society to care for our neighbor’s health? Does God’s covenant with His people involve
caring for their well-being?
For me, this is where I feel
the burning fire shot up in my bones.
This is when I cannot stay silent; when I see vulnerable people be
treated as if they are disposable, as if we can’t see their needs as human
needs, as if their health coverage isn’t a major factor in whether they will
ever be able to stand on their own two feet…I cannot let it pass. Our choice to be in covenant with God is a
pledge to love God with all our heart, mind, and strength, and to love our
neighbors as ourselves.
In our Gospel today, Jesus
says he comes not to bring peace, but the sword. It’s not a comfortable moment
when we hear those words from the man we know to be love incarnate. But it can be uncomfortable to claim that
every human life matters in the face of powerful forces that will,
unconsciously at best, profit off of the suffering and deaths of the weak and
infirm. If we demand that our leaders
see humans the way God sees humans, those leaders who are charged with
shrugging off our responsibility to others will turn on you, and that will
bring division.
But if we ignore the details
of this law, ignore the scream of a hungry child, ignore the fire in our bones
or the pricks of our conscience, then WE are abdicating our responsibility as
God’s people.
If we are truly trying to be God’s
people, we must keep the covenant that requires seeing God, that heart, that
core of humanity, in each person. And if
we have it in our power to be sure they get life-saving treatment, maybe
life-changing treatment, how do we profess to love God and follow his healer
Son if we ignore those same needs?
We can pretend it’s not happening, but
someday down the road it may be your neighbor, your best friend, your daughter,
or your mother or father who pays the price for this retraction of health care
for the most vulnerable. For as the
scripture said, the hairs on every head are counted, and God’s eye is on us.
No comments:
Post a Comment