A CHURCH FULL OF LOSERS
A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Jack E. Skiles

September 28, 2008

Philippians 2:1-13

Would Jesus wear either an Obama or McCain tee shirt to the synagogue for worship and the reading of the Holy Scriptures? Would Jesus carry in his wallet a card showing him to be a registered Republican or Democrat or Libertarian or a member of the Green Party? Would Jesus stand beside either

Evan Bayh or Richard Lugar on a podium at a political rally?

This morning in several churches across our country there are pastors who will be challenging the constitutionality of the premise that electioneering by churches who receive tax free benefits risk losing that tax benefit if they actively allow electioneering as part of their church programing. These church pastors will be actively preaching in favor of one particular presidential candidate.

If you didn't know, churches do not pay property tax, income tax, or sales tax. There are exceptions to the general rule. If we have property as a church which is used for commercial rather than religious purposes we would pay tax on that particular piece of property. If we were to go to a department store and buy clothes, we would not have to pay tax on our purchases; the assumption is that we would be buying clothes for people who need what we have just purchased. The argument has been that religious organizations only do good for society and therefore should be exempt from taxation.

Our governmental system has argued since near the beginning of our nation's existence that to take sides in a partisan election for one person over another is unfair. The law has traditionally been interpreted that for a church to participate in taking sides in an election of persons means that we are not being fair and therefore we must pay tax like everyone else.

The same exclusion from electioneering does not apply to issues, only candidates. I will be surprised if there is an overturning of the precedent as the result of the challenge that is being made in many churches this morning. For much different reasons, I have often wondered if Jesus would be in favor of our tax-free status? It is a great gift we possess, not paying tax, and it brings with it great accountability to give back more fully. Perhaps such accountability needs to be more fully detailed, regulated, to determine if we are giving enough back to society to deserve the break?

The other big issue this week is the proposed $700 billion dollar taxpayer gift to the Wall Street investment structure which it seems has failed so horribly. I can legally talk about this because it is an issue not a candidate for office, though please know I have some opinions about those in office both past and present who have overseen this mess developing. I have one degree in Psychology, two in theology and I took the required course in economics in High School, so it has been interesting this week to be asked about the financial crisis so often.

But, like you, I am not as much dumb as I am untrained professionally in economics. A lot of folks tell me that I am very liberal. I find myself to be very conservative economically. I think we need to be able to afford our debt or we shouldn't take on any more. I have found myself with all of you pondering God's take on the current crisis.

For sixteen years living in greater Chicagoland I have watched property values grow beyond reasonable merit. The church-owned house in Chicago that we inhabited was estimated to be worth $200,000 when we moved into it in 1990. Sixteen years later when we left the parsonage to move here to Indiana , the house was assessed at nearly $500,000. There had been no improvements to the house and it was in fact in need of a great deal of help.

I spent many trying moments in that church with retired elderly persons whose property taxes had escalated to such a degree that they were going bankrupt, living in poverty, hungry staying in the homes they had in lived for forty or more years. One does not need to be a successful theologian to know where God's concern is in such circumstances. I did a wedding up in Chicago about three weeks ago and the groom's property tax on his very nice house is $24,000 a year. The median income in Monroe County , our county, is $28,000.

When we moved to Bloomington just over two years ago we went to the bank in search of a mortgage. Within five minutes the loan officer said, “Your credit is so good, we will extend a line of credit for whatever amount of money you want to spend.” I remember telling her at the time, “I'm not an economist, but that is stupid.” She said, “We trust that you will make a good decision.” Translated, she told me, “We can sell that mortgage and make money on it after you make the deal and that is all we care about.”

By not caring or having ethics with regard to me or the after-market on mortgages, the bank, the lender, was existing in a morally deficient mode of conduct, religiously and spiritually. Being the conservative person I am, I bought within my means, though the house is worth less today than it supposedly was worth two years ago. I would prefer not to have to sell.

If you commit a crime and you're guilty, you would want me to be your judge, perhaps not your jury. Not your jury because of my conservative nature. If we are wrong, we need to just acknowledge it and save society the trouble. But, why you would want me as your judge, is because of part of my more liberaI self, I believe in forgiveness. Why you would not want me as your judge, perhaps, is because I also believe in penitence, restoration and justice.

The word penitentiary, where we send a lot of guilty people convicted of crimes, is based on doing penitence, not punishment. It is not adequate for me that I would send someone to jail and they do their time and just get out free and clear. Without repentance and doing penance, creating some sort of meaningful restorative work to the injured, creating some sort of increased justice, not revenge, then the time spent in the penitentiary is a waste for all parties.

Johnny Cash says in one of my favorite prison songs, “I'm trapped in Folsom prison, I know I can't be free.” I understand incarceration as a pragmatic reality. But punishment is way too easy. I am suspicious of the long-term value of punishment. We remain as a society trapped in the easy syndrome. It is easy to just punish and makes for great headlines as people are crying forth their rage and hurt, calling for the punishment of the guilty party.

I would propose not that we could ever eliminate punishment, but it is such a juvenile response to ugly realities. We hope, most of us,that God is not into punishment. I would wish on our system of justice that we would invest doubly in demanding restoration to the hurt and rehabilitation of the guilty. You can hurt me once, probably twice. But, then I'm on to you. I don't want to punish anyone. I want us to grow to discover how to stop doing bad behaviors.

When I hurt someone, I need to be held accountable, which may well include punishment, but the bigger plan must include huge amounts of my making up for my errors and demonstrating that I have learned. I appreciate most the people who have hung in there with me while I have corrected some of my more obvious flaws and sought to live a life more honest, more morally and ethically astute. How about you?

I am much less concerned about the actual $700 billion, than I am with how my government brings restorative justice to the injured and misused people and how the government bailout seeks to insure that it will not happen again. In the last eight years my government has increased debt levels beyond anything I have ever known, and for reasons that I find despicable, and has been guilty of using the inappropriate pressure of time to lessen a more seasoned debate.

If you come into my office with a crisis I will caution you, as a pastoral counselor, to make only as much of a decision as you have to in order to insure safety and we will seek to structure additional responses in due time. Hasty decisions made out of fear of what might happen are often loaded with decades, if not centuries, of regret.

Please forgive me for what I am about to say if it does not apply to you. Credit cards should be renamed debt cards. They don't create credit they create debt. Minimize your amount of debt to what you absolutely must incur. Most of us would do well to do without much of what we charge. Only charge on your cards what you can pay off each month. If you are living off of your credit cards, come and see us and let us help you. Debt abuse is as addictive and destructive as any drug and demands respect and good help.

I read this morning's lesson from Paul's letter to the Philippians last Monday afternoon and then worked the day and went home after our church council meeting and while eating a late dinner sat down to watch the local PBS offering. He was a motivational speaker, seeking to motivate people to use their money well in this economy to do well, to get rich. He knew how to push all the right buttons. One of his lines was cute. “Do you want to make money and make it fast?” I thought to myself, I've never heard a motivational speaker get up and say that if you will put aside a little each month, then when you get old, you'll be able to pay your property taxes and perhaps have enough leftover to buy groceries. They don't say that. They promise a lot of money tomorrow, if you just buy this book of mine for $14.95, have your credit card ready, but wait there's more. Buy two and I'll include this credit card-sized light so you can see your bills in the dark.

I laughed as I listened to the motivational speaker because I had just been reading the Apostle Paul. If there was ever anybody who was not a motivational speaker, it was Paul. From a motivational point of view, everything he says is wrong.

To begin with, his first appeal to the Philippians is for them to mature and to grow up, and he reaches out to their common experience as Christian brothers and sisters. He call on their compassion, their sympathy, their sharing together, their working together, serving together, praising God together—everything they have done in love and harmony and compassion. He makes this his first appeal.

But that won't work. You're supposed to go against other people, compete with them, be the best, not one of the group. To depend on others and to serve together is what it means in our world to be a loser. Whichever one of us here dies next, let's make sure that we let Paul know he was a loser.

You know what he says next? He say that if the Philippians do these things, it will make his joy full. Look, Paul, it is not your happiness we're interested in; it ours. I mean, tough, but you're going to have to do your own thing. We have to deal with our own happiness.

Listen to what Paul says next: DO not do anything out of ambition. DO not do anything in order to brag. Regard other people better than yourself. Look to the interest and concern of other people and not just your own. And then this: I want you to have the mind of Jesus Christ who did not count being equal with God as something to be clutched at. But he turned it loose and emptied himself and became a servant and a full human being who was even faithful to God to death on the cross. He says, I want you to have the same mindset as Jesus. There's a spiritual discipline for you.

What if I took our Philippian text for today, put it into contemporary English, printed it on a plain sheet of paper without indicating that it was from the Bible, gave it to some good motivational speaker, and asked, “What do think?” He would say, “That is a speech by a loser to losers, and they're going to lose. You are not going to get any money, and you are not going to get any members with that. It will not succeed.”

There we go, two different ways to look at success in the world of Wall Street, at home, in business, in academia, in our personal relationships.

A couple of years ago, while in London , I took a tour of the High Gate cemetery in the Northend. It was a marvelously, deliciously rainy and cold London afternoon. I went to see the grave of Karl Marx. I was met at the gate by this mean, older, humorless, proper English matron holding a box to receive my £3 pound donation, who said, “Why would you want to look at the grave of a communist, come with me I want to show you the grave of someone worthy, George Eliot. I was afraid to do otherwise so I followed.

She told me what I knew, of course, that George Elliot was a woman, a lesbian whose real name was Maryann Evans. She said that someone puts fresh flowers on her grave EVERY DAY. She told me that she had to use a man's name to get her writing published.

When her friend McCarthy died, George Eliot visited his grave to mourn. She was the only one that went. He belonged to her circle, she said. She said that they were at events together in the community and at parties and church. There were quite a number of friends about the same age that went around together, and McCarthy was a member of the group but a little different from the others. George Eliot said that McCarthy was looking for the pearl of great price in a group of young people who were content with fake jewelry, as long as it was gaudy and would shine at parties. He was, she said, a most sensitive and caring person, and sometimes even at a social event he was moved to tears by things that happened to people. She said that McCarthy would talk to them and tell them that you don't have to buy friendship, you don't have to buy membership in the human race, you don't have to buy love. Just love and be a friend, that's all it takes. And everybody just kind of looked at him like he was strange. She said McCarthy would have given his life for people who would not give him the time of day.

So none of his friends, except for George Eliot, showed up for his funeral. I guess McCarthy was just a loser. And I said to myself, what could be done if we had a church full of losers like McCarthy? But I leave it with you. There are two ways, you know, to think about church. You know where I stand.