“Social Insecurity”
Sunday, October 2, 2016
The Rev. Dr. W. Frederick Wooden
Fountain Street Church
24 Fountain St., NE
Grand Rapids, MI 49503
www.fountainstreet.org
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To the reader: This sermon was only part of a service of worship with many components
working together, all of which were designed to be experienced in a community context.
In our "free pulpit" tradition, its concepts are intended not as truths to receive, but as spurs
to your own thought and faith.
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“Social Insecurity”
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched,
every rocket fired signifies in the final sense,
a theft from those who hunger and are not fed,
those who are cold and are not clothed."
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Readings
Deu 29: Surely, this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling
for you, nor is it beyond reach. 12 It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who
among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may
observe it?” 13 Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who among us can
cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may
observe it?” 14 No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to
observe it.
“America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without
civilization in between.”
– Oscar Wilde
“Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual
preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in
importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our
descendants than it is for us.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
*****
Sermon
Very close to you, the scripture says. Moses is speaking and means the covenant
handed down at Sinai forty years before. He is telling the story of how they got to this
place and why, and saying that if they follow the rules laid down by God they will
survive and prosper. These rules, summarized on the two tablets as the Ten
Commandments, are the thing that is very close, “in your mouth and in your heart.”
My message this autumn is like that. That which makes us a great nation is not
baffling nor beyond reach, but is very close to us, in our mouth and in our heart. We
hear it in the Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Emma Lazarus’s poem, Dr. King’s Dream.
But this election drowns out that ‘still small voice’ with bluster and pontifications. I seek
to remind you of that voice, those words and hopes you know by heart. To do that I
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am using part of our American covenant, the Preamble of the Constitution, to frame
my thoughts. That eloquent statement serves as our national mission statement, a
summary of what American government is for, the six commandments to ‘form a more
perfect union’ and so on. My subject today is our imperfect domestic tranquility
expressed in my title, Social Insecurity.
The phrase reaches back to the Declaration which condemns the king for allowing
domestic strife. It accuses him of ‘exciting domestic insurrections among us,’ which
was an oblique reference to the British offering freedom to any slave who joined the
king’s army. A different insurrection, Shays Rebellion in Massachusetts, provoked the
Constitutional Convention itself.
Years later our own Gerald Ford referred to it in his decision to pardon President
Nixon, citing his responsibility “not merely to proclaim domestic tranquility but to use
every means that I have to insure it.” It lay behind Franklin Roosevelt’s efforts to
mitigate the Great Depression. His famous Brain Trust was criticized for excessive
spending by conservative members of Congress, who believed the economy would
sort itself out in the long run. To which Harry Hopkins replied, "People don't eat in the
long run, they eat every day." Much of the New Deal was about preventing the nation
from falling into civil disorder as the unemployed and homeless and hungry became
more and more desperate.
Like Ford and FDR we sense the danger of fragmentation, and not just as a nation.
Bringing this matter to our home, and speaking of the homeless, we have struggled as
a church community with our duty to homeless people in our neighborhood who often
sleep on our front portico. This has gone on for months, waxing and waning, but of
late it became more troubling for members of our community and also theirs. Our
domestic tranquility was troubled as some found their presence risky and unhealthy
while others saw it as walking the walk of acceptance and inclusion.
But lately the tranquility of those outside was troubled by a few who abused our
hospitality and the well-being of those sleeping there. Last week it became clear that
any solution would take too much time for us to ignore the present situation. We thus
imposed a no trespassing order effective tomorrow which means anyone on the
property after hours will be removed by the police.
This is not a solution. In fact, I am deeply saddened. As someone told me, “it just
doesn’t seem right for a church to have no trespassing signs.’ She’s right. Especially
us. No church proclaiming that everyone belongs can also say that some are
unwelcome. Jesus of Nazareth, who remains a founding teacher of liberal religion,
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spent his career among the poor, the lame, the psychotic, the outcast. He sent his
disciples out with no money or food, homeless and poor. He said that care for ‘the
least of these,’ was in effect caring for he himself. This action bespeaks our inability
to walk the walk, to live by the ‘better angels of our nature’ as much as theirs. Next
week at our congregational town hall I hope we will spend some time asking how we
can do better in the future.
By better I mean dare ourselves to relate to them not just talk about them, to make
them part of us not apart from us. They have names and stories, if you ask. One has
bone cancer. One is deaf. Two have full time jobs but they do not pay enough to
keep a roof. There are singles and couples. Several are over 65 and thus not able to
work. Their reasons to sleep or just rest here are as individual as they are. Altogether
they are no more dangerous than you or me, and most of them are far more at risk
than you or me. These are the least of Grand Rapids, and when we sit here under the
grand benevolent gaze of Jesus on the ceiling the irony could not be more vivid.
But this is the state of the nation not just us. Whether about wealth or race or
health or gender, we sense a kind of centrifugal motion pulling us further apart rather
than closer together. Fear of immigrants and Muslims, belief the president is not a
citizen, ‘preppers’ stockpiling for the coming social collapse, all grow from that
fragmenting. Schools today almost as segregated as generations ago as middle class
people move to suburbs and poorer darker families are left behind. The Brookings
Institution noted that, “Rising income inequality means those at the top… use these
resources to pay for housing in particular neighborhoods, resulting in increasing
segregation by income between neighborhoods over the past four decades.” Here in
the Midwest only one in three white people regularly deal with blacks or Hispanics,
according to CNN. Grand Rapids is among the 26th most segregated city as of 2011.
Our domestic tranquility is threatened by invisible walls that separate class, wealth,
and race. The same Alexis de Tocqueville who admired American habits of
association and civic involvement observed of his native France on the eve of its
vastly more violent revolution. “Society was cut in two: those who had nothing united
in common envy; those who had anything united in common terror.” The ancient
Greek, Plutarch, said: “An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most
fatal ailment of all republics.”
Our local inability to find a solution for our poor means there are no ready
solutions. And certainly the politicians are not talking about it. But as I have said in
past weeks, maybe if we talk about it, if we made this an issue, something could
happen. Perhaps we have to have the ideas and they should listen.
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For example – what if every child had health coverage and enough to eat and
clothes to wear and a decent place to live? Sounds extravagant. Healthcare costs
alone for children under 18 amounted to $207 billion in 2015, then add food and
housing. We are talking about real money here. Yes, it would be expensive, but if we
think we can’t afford poor uneducated children, we really can’t afford poor uneducated
adults. Medicaid for poor people costs $500 billion right now.
Let’s admit that education is still profoundly unequal in ways that hurts us as a
nation. We all want our children to excel but do we really need to win by making
others fail? That’s what we do in the way we spend and staff our schools. And these
days even a good high school education is not enough to have a solid career.
Community College is a necessity. That should be part of our public education
system, and that in turn would make four year state colleges less expensive as well,
which would also make them truly competitive with private four year schools.
Many of the poor and homeless are there for medical reasons. Medical
emergencies are the most common reason for personal bankruptcies. Substance
abuse is a common reason for failed families and ruined lives. What would it take to
make basic Medicare something we all have? Would it actually cost more than the
house of cards system we have in place now? I want to know. The question is not
why we should do these things but why not?
Our domestic tranquility is nothing other than our sense of community, which does
not stop at our front door or our town lines. A nation segmented and segregated by
wealth and race eventually loses its heart. We need a spirit of cooperation as well as
competition, of collaboration as well as innovation. Together, these habits of our
communal heart keep it beating and not breaking. I know that sounds naïve but the
promises of the Declaration and the Constitution were heard the same way.
I am no communist, but I believe community is as American as individuality. I am
not puritan but I believe we have responsibilities as well as rights. There is no me
without we, and no rights without the duty to do right. It is time for more Americans to
grow up, to put on their big boy or big girl pants as some say, and take responsibility
for their rights and use their rights responsibly, which is what the Greatest Generation
did. If we want to be ‘great again,’ we the people have be great if we want our leaders
can be great. If we want a better government we need to be a better people.
May the words of my mouth …
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