March 23, 2025 First Congregational Church UCC, Brimfield MA
The problem in American politics isn’t that poor white people vote against their interests so much as it is that poor people don’t have anyone to represent their interests. The Rev. Dr. William Barber II, White Poverty, P76
James 4:11-17: 11 Do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters. Whoever speaks evil against another or judges another speaks evil against the law and judges the law, but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. 12 There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. So who, then, are you to judge your neighbor?
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.” 14 Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. 17 Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it commits sin.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
One of the hardest things for us to figure out these days is just how to live among each other. I don’t think I need to describe the challenges to you. So, let’s be clear; we are divided politically and those political divisions are biting deep into our personal relationships.
That’s why, during Lent, I felt led to spend the season talking about the deepest problems of our land…. Not to promote a particular set of political expectations, but to say, again and again, that there is a particularly Christian way of dealing with those differences.
You see, right now it’s not just ideas about the best way to manage the federal government that divide us, or even beliefs about the most appropriate allies we should have, or whether or not to start a shooting war with Canada… those are all political decisions, and we have our ideas… but underlying those political opinions are beliefs about the nature of human beings, and that is our business.
Here’s the thing: Christians believe that every person is important. Every person. That’s because we believe that every person is made in the image of God. God did not choose the tall blond Dutch folks to be the image of God (and Dutch people _are_ tall, and blond). God doesn’t just choose the wealthy. God chose everyone. You can be short, fat, ugly and poor, and God loves you.
Because God loves everyone, and everyone is made in God’s image, we Christians believe it is essential for us to care – not just theoretically, but actively – for everyone everywhere. Sure, that’s impossible if I’m the only one in the world doing it, but it’s not impossible when you think of all of us together, each figuring out how to reach out in our locality and how to band together to meet needs across the world.
During Lent we’ve been listening to two voices – that of the Rev. Dr. William Barber, a pastor and professor, ordained in the Disciples of Christ denomination, and a man whose passion throughout his life has been the challenge of racism and poverty – and the second voice has been that of the Letter of James.
Probably written about fifty years after the Resurrection, by followers of James the brother of Jesus, who was the head of the church in Jerusalem, it speaks to a continuing challenge for the followers of Jesus as we struggle with just how and why we live out our faith in the ways we do. This letter is a wonderful counterbalance to the idea that all we need to do to follow Christ is say that’s what we’re doing and, optimally, get baptized.
James believes and teaches that words without deeds are meaningless. Pastor Barber believes and teaches that the least among us matter.
And I also believe that living with, recognizing, supporting, and honoring those who are the least among us is an absolutely foundational piece of our faith. Our political beliefs do not allow us to step aside from our Christian convictions.
You could put it this way. Jesus Christ teaches us, and his brother James reinforces that teaching – that every person matters, that it is an absolute requirement of our faith to have empathy for others, and to move that empathy from “I feel your pain” to some kind of response.
Sometimes the response that’s needed is one that involves the whole congregation. We made that kind of response when as a church, we voted to become an Open and Affirming Church. We continue that response by having pins available for individuals who are called to do so to wear them in public, to share the commitment to equal support and recognition of the LGBT+ community.
Last Sunday, like many of you, I picked up one of the pins and put it on. After church, on the way home, I stopped for lunch at the Applebees in the Blackstone Valley Mall in Millbury. My waiter thanked me for wearing the pin. I’ll probably never see him again, but for that short time, he saw someone who was willing to see him as a full human being. It was a little thing, but powerful.
Sometimes, we show our compassion for others, our willingness to learn what’s going on by reading a book like White Poverty. It’s an easy read, well-written, clear – and it’s a hard read, because it makes you think anew – do we really know what’s going on in our world? Barber believes that the powerful among us use racism as bait to divide poor whites from poor blacks so as to keep them from uniting and demanding fairer treatment.
In today’s quote, he says “The problem in American politics isn’t that poor white people vote against their interests so much as it is that poor people don’t have anyone to represent their interests. P76
Because poor people are divided, they are invisible. This past week, Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, suggested that the Social Security Administration could stop sending checks and no one would complain except the fraudsters. He said his mother in law wouldn’t complain; she’d just assume it’d come next month.
There are a couple of problems here: Lutnick is a multi-billionaire; I think it’s fair to assume that his m-i-l won’t run out of money if her check doesn’t arrive. So, apparently he thinks that no one on SS needs the money. But the Social Security Administration says that 12% of men and 15% of women depend on SS for at least 90% of their income. I know that for me, when I’m not working, it’s 50% of my monthly income. But Lutnick can’t see the poor among us; he thinks everyone has the financial resources he has. And he’s not alone.
As Christians, we are called to pay attention to our world. That might mean noticing the neighbor who buys a lot of cat tuna – when you know she doesn’t have cats – but cat grade tuna is a lot cheaper. Friskies Cat tuna is $2.56 a pound at my Shaws this week, while the cheapest human tuna, StarKist chunk is $4.00. It might mean realizing that a neighbor is home bound because their car died, or because they can’t drive anymore. It might mean realizing that those 2 job families are doing because they can’t make ends meet without both jobs.
Both James and Dr. Barber want us to see the poor among us, and to recognize that they are as much a part of God’s world as those of us who have resources are. This is the Christian way, whether we are Republicans, Democrats or independents.
We are people of love, empathy, and action. May we continue to live up to our faith.
Amen.
© 2025, Virginia H. Child
To Believe is to Care. . . To Care is to Do 