Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
January 29, 2012
Text: Mark 10:17-27
People always ask me how I can believe the stories in which Jesus exorcizes demons from humans and animals. They ask, “Don’t you understand that demons are mythological, a product of a non-scientific age? There are no demons in this world.” Really?
If we don’t believe in demons, why are we so busy finding them just about everywhere in our society? To the far right, President Obama is a demon. To much of the Tea Party, government is a demon. To many in Occupy Wall Street, financiers are demons. To some environmentalists, oil and coal companies are demons. To some on the left, Rush Limbaugh is a demon. Many on both the left and right have decided that the 1% who are richest among us are demons. If there are no demons, why do we seem to find them everywhere around us?
There is a reason Jesus cast out demons. They distort the human landscape. Whether we are controlled by what we call demons, for lack of a better term, or obsessed with demons supposedly in others, the very idea of demons twist our behavior. We begin to misrepresent, misconstrue, and misinterpret the words and actions of others. We, in turn, begin to think everyone is misrepresenting, misconstruing and misinterpreting our words and actions. We need to stop looking for demons among us, exorcize demons from the discussion and start looking for pragmatic solutions to the very real problems we face as a people, none of which are greater than the growing gap between the rich, middle class and poor in this county.
For almost forty years, I have relentlessly and consistently preached about the disgraceful disparities between rich and poor in this country. I didn’t have to be an economist to figure out the problem. I merely had to read the Bible and look at our society. The prophets of the Old Testament railed against the income inequality in ancient Israel. We see many of the same inequities and disparities in our society. Putting the Bible together with our contemporary situation, I have not been able to remain silent.
My words on income inequality have not been uniformly well-received. Criticized by people on the left, right and middle, I have received articles from folks who disagree with me. The articles presented evidence that the income equality isn’t as bad as I portrayed it, was worse than I portrayed it, and some contended that such inequalities are the natural and inevitable order of things.
However, it is hard to find a reputable economist today who will deny that the income inequality problem is, well, a problem, a huge problem. In addition to the injustice of it, the inequalities are impacting buyer demand which, in turn, is negatively impacting our ability to get out of our economic crisis.
The statistics are clear, unequivocal and irrefutable. Using statistics from the Congressional Budget Office, from 1979 to 2007, the real after-tax income of the top 1% of income earners rose 278%. Over the same two decades, the other 99% grew in a range from 18-65%. The income of the top 1% grew four times more than that of the next highest income group, 150 times more than that of the lowest income group.
Another way to see the impact of income disparity is to look at household income. In 1970, 50% of our households were within 50% of the median income level. These folks are the definition of America’s historically strong middle class. Today, the number has fallen to 42%. The statistic demonstrates why people think the middle class is shrinking. Because it is!
The reality that the middle class is shrinking leads to the inevitable question: “Why?” This is where demons are needlessly and harmfully injected into the conversation. Depending on who is talking, the middle class is shrinking because of the demons of globalization, capitalism, over-regulation, taxes that are too high, taxes that are too low, government fiscal irresponsibility, or individual fiscal irresponsibility. Recently, we have heard a chorus chanting that income inequality is the fault of a greedy 1% at the top. The one-percent is the demon that must be exorcized from the body politic.
While identifying the sources of problems is crucial to solving problems, scapegoating has never solved anything. I don’t care if the person or group in question is in some way or another responsible for a problem. Scapegoating is always wrong and becomes a tangent taking us away from effective problem-solving.
Scapegoating is wrong not just because it almost always places too much blame on the entity or person(s) in question. It is also wrong because it lets us off the hook. It thrusts responsibility for problems onto others and makes us feel like powerless victims. In contrast, Jesus emphasized our power over the things that ail us.
Fact of the matter is, the world is not a simple place with straight lines between causes and effects. Paul explained this when he said that we don’t do the good we intend to do and do the harm we don’t intend to do. Somewhere between intention and outcome, between cause and effect, there is a myriad of factors contributing to the outcome. Demonizing always reduces the complexity Paul described, replacing it with a false simplicity.
Are there greedy people among the top 1% of this nation’s income earners? Are some of them manipulating the political process to their personal benefit? Of course. But there are also many people in the top 1% who are contributing enormous amounts of money to religious groups, the arts, educational programs and many other worthy causes. Directing our anger at the top 1% is a fool’s game in a world where being foolish is extremely dangerous. As we focus on the top 1%, we mis-diagnose not only the source of the problem but the possible solutions to the problem.
Rather than playing the blame game or the simplification game, I love Jesus’ approach as described in this morning’s Gospel lesson. When a rich young ruler came to him seeking spiritual advice, he didn’t denounce the man as part of the 1%, although the ruler surely was just that. He didn’t call him greedy. No, Jesus calmly told the young man to share his wealth with those who are less fortunate.
Jesus then proceeded to tell the disciples about the challenges of being rich, saying it is harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into heaven. Was Jesus making a categorical damnation of the rich? I think not. If he did, there wouldn’t have been a lot of wealthy people attracted to him and the early church. Any yet, the early church included many wealthy believers.
When speaking about wealth, Jesus stated well-established truths about human nature. Once we start accumulating wealth, it can govern our decision-making in ways that are harmful to our spiritual well-being. It doesn’t have to be that way. But it can be. The poor and middle classes face their own temptations. But the temptations posed by enormous wealth are unique and highly challenging; thus the increased difficulty of entering heaven that Jesus described.
In the face of the income inequality in this nation, it is reasonable to conclude that Jesus would give the same advice to the wealthy in this country that he gave to the rich young ruler two thousand years ago. Namely, he would say, “You need to share more of your wealth with those who are less fortunate.” I do not believe that Jesus thought each and every wealthy person needs to give away all he or she possesses. But Jesus clearly did not think we can simply accumulate more and more wealth while more and more people suffer. Wealth is a gift to be shared, not a gift to be accumulated and stored away.
In these United States, we ask the rich and everyone else to share through our taxation system. In a truly progressive tax system, the rich are asked to give generously from their abundance while the middle class and poor are taxed with lower rates. No one more loved by the anti-tax crowd than Adam Smith wrote, “It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.” Our denomination approved a Social Creed that included the following affirmation: “Federal tax policies are subject to evaluation by the great themes of the Bible….(The progressive taxation system) recognized that ‘of them that have much, much will be required’ (Luke 12:48) and in a practical sense, that the wealthiest profited most from an orderly and developed society.” So whether we look at income inequality from the perspective of Adam Smith or Scripture, progressive taxation seems a fair and just approach to insuring that a society doesn’t end up with grotesque imbalances of wealth, the type of imbalances that are growing by the day in these United States.
I need to give voice to a concern my conservative readers and listeners always point out when I start talking about taxes. These folks are not lacking compassion or interested in maintaining a distorted distribution of wealth. But they are angry about what they see as irresponsible use of our tax dollars. When they read about bloated defense projects, medical service providers ripping off Medicare, or bridges to nowhere, they are enraged, and rightly so.
None of us would give money to this congregation if we thought it was being used irresponsibly. United Way basically got wiped out when people realized they were using our charitable gifts irresponsibly. I think it is not only fair but required that each of us demand that our government be meticulously responsible in using our tax dollars.
When I do management seminars for pastors, I start by explaining that if we can improve our efficiency on the cost side of our budgets, we have, in effect, raised additional money. So for example, if a congregation has a budget of $1 million and can increase its efficiency on the expense side of its budget by 10%, it has created an additional $100,000 for use in mission. That kind of math and thinking gets the immediate attention of my listeners!
Well, the same is true of government. To the extent our tax dollars are used more efficiently, not only will government be more effective; it will also have more financial resources for building the nation’s infrastructure, helping the poor and other priorities. We need to listen to the voices who object not to taxes per se but who object to money being spent inefficiently or ineffectively.
Along with demanding efficiency in government, we also need to demand that the tax code be more fair. As the current presidential campaign is making clear, the current code is anything but fair. There has been a lot made of the difference between Warren Buffet’s taxes and those of his secretary. As interesting to me is the difference between what Mitt Romney pays in taxes and what his father, George Romney, paid. George Romney paid at a tax rate of 44% while Mitt pays at 14%. Remember, George Romney built a fortune paying at that much higher tax rate as did many other wealthy people. A 44% tax rate didn’t hurt him or the country’s economy.
We also need to remember that lowering tax rates for the wealthy goes all the way back to Lyndon Baines Johnson. It has been accomplished with bipartisan votes. There are valid reasons to lower the rate from 44% to something else. But lowering it to today’s rates is hard to defend. Today’s rates are especially hard to defend when we see the resulting and growing gap between rich and poor.
My concern about income inequality over the past forty years has been driven, in large part, by my concern about the impact that income inequalities ultimately have on the body politic. Any student of history knows that as inequalities grow in a society, so does the inevitability of violence between the classes. People will only sit by and watch things get worse for their children for so long. So let’s be clear: raising income inequality as an issue is not playing the class warfare card. Not discussing income inequality almost insures class warfare.
There is not one Christian answer to what constitutes a fair tax code. But there is absolutely a Christian imperative that the tax code be fair. Today, it is not. There is a bipartisan consensus around that fact. If the tax code remains unfair, the anger currently distorting our politics will only grow. Our life together will become even more contentious. The potential for differences of opinion to turn violent will increase…exponentially.
As Christians, we must also resist the temptation to blame the 1% for this problem. It is unfair to draw stereotypes about women, men, gays, lesbians or anyone else. We can’t resort to drawing caricatures of those who are part of the 1%. We need to take the biblical approach and preach that to those to whom much is given, much is expected.
Blaming the 1% will get us nowhere. It will make us feel powerless when we are not. You and I can vote. You and I can demonstrate. You and I can write letters. You and I can run for office. You and I can start a new political party. There are a lot of things we can do to change our current political dynamics. But first, we need to stop playing the powerless victim, stop looking for demons, and instead take control of a very controllable situation, manage a very manageable problem.
Jesus shows us a way out of our current political impasse. He told the rich they need to share their wealth with everyone else, especially the poor. He told the rest of us that we must be extremely responsible stewards of the substantial gifts with which we have been blessed. Most importantly, he told us that we need to love rather than blame each other, work with rather than against each other as we travel through the deserts of life on our way to the Promised Land. May we heed his advice.
Let us pray: Let us pray: Gracious God, when things get tough, we look for people to blame. As we blame them, we feel righteous and oppressed. Forgive us. Help us to take control of our lives and this nation. Enable us to draw on the amazing resources with which you have blessed this country. As we do so, transform each of us into an instrument by which your will is done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.