Matthew 25:31-46
The Seven Deadly Social Sins
Wealth without work
Pleasure without conscience
Knowledge without character
Commerce without morality
Science without humanity
Religion without sacrifice
Politics without principle
- Mahatma Ghandi
We have been busy collecting words that describe the way we believe God wants the world to work. It’s been interesting to reflect on what is the best vision for life together as humanity, and we’ve made a good collection. When I walk past Victoria’s beautiful rendering of our words on the windows, it lifts my spirits and gives me hope. Today’s word, accountability, reminds us that all our good visions are useless unless we commit to actually putting them into practice. We have to hold ourselves and our leaders accountable for our actions and measure actions against values on a regular basis.
For a change it was easy to choose a scripture to hold against this value. Jesus was very clear that people would be held accountable at the end of life for their actions during life. There will be a judgment. And he was very clear about the criteria against which we would be judged. Jesus’ bottom line was whether or not we treated other people with compassion and generosity. Did we share what we have to meet needs? Did we make connections when people were in trouble? Were we good neighbors?
Let’s start by asking how we as a congregation are doing against this standard. It’s a good place to start because we come out pretty well. We feed people. We help people in need of shelter – motel rooms, rent deposits, payments to forestall evictions. We are generous with used clothing. We pray for folks who are ill and occasionally send a nice card. More than many congregations we have connections with people who are imprisoned. Good job!
When I think about how we got here, I realize that we didn’t start at the end. We took one step at a time – one meal, a few coins in the noisy offering, a friend in need – and gradually meeting needs became easier. If we’re honest, we don’t work at a single high level all the time. We do more in one area for a while and then we step back and rest a bit. As people come and go our focus shifts. That makes this work manageable. We aren’t meant to do everything all the time.
Our accountability as individuals is pretty good, but I think we struggle with holding ourselves accountable on a wider level. How much are we responsible for what’s broken in our community, our country or the world? I’m getting better at naming what’s not working, but I’m not sure I’m getting better at fixing it. Because I carry our church credit card and give out assistance, I can tell you that many people in economic trouble are there because they don’t have health insurance or paid sick leave. That may be the primary cause of not being able to pay rent or meet other expenses. Fixing that is beyond my pay grade. Fixing that clearly meets Jesus’ criteria for accountability.
Mahatma Ghandi’s list of social sins helps us think about systemic change. It’s a clear critique on most of today’s nations. We are not prioritizing the kinds of qualities we’ve spent several months lifting up. Notice that Ghandi doesn’t say that wealth, pleasure, politics and other big categories are wrong, but that they are prone to abuse. When they benefit individuals at the expense of the whole, they have lost their benefit. They become sinful, to use religious vocabulary. Each area needs to be held in balance by qualities that connect us to each other. I notice how Ghandi’s list and Jesus’s list align. They match qualities that have been listed by the world’s major religions over millennia. They match our list. People don’t lack vision that describes how life works best for everyone. People lack incentive for implementing that vision. It’s not impossible to describe systemic change that benefits everyone. It’s hard to implement that change. We think we stand to lose personally by giving up taxes or personal preferences. We forget what we stand to gain. Maybe the role of people of faith is to remind the world what could be gained if we lived by the vision.
Today our government is sponsoring an hours-long celebration of faith and nation. It’s described as a kickoff to our 250thbirthday. It will lift up a vision of what’s good about our nation – and there is much to celebrate. We will hear about how this nation was founded in faith, which is true, but it is not true that we were founded in only one faith. We will hear how we have fulfilled that founding vision of equality and opportunity, which is true, but it is also true that we, unlike any other time in our lives, are watching equality and opportunity be taken away from many people. A stage full of white, rich, Evangelical Americans will celebrate – but they will not celebrate diversity, they will not call us to lift up those who are hungry or ill, they will not ask us to welcome the stranger, they will not name the many ways Christian values match those of our Jewish and Moslem and Buddhist neighbors.
On the day we’re talking about accountability, we’re being gifted an opportunity to compare our vision of standards to those of some of our leadership. It’s going to be very clear that there is a disconnect. We begin by naming that. What will we do next?