Christians in a Post-American World
a sermon by John W. Wimberly, Jr.
Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
October 5, 2008
World Communion Sunday

Text: Matthew 21:33-46

The tallest building in the world is being built not in the United States but in Dubai, replacing the current tallest building located in Taiwan.  Mexican Carlos Slim, not our own Warren Buffet, is the richest person in the world.  The world’s largest refinery is being built not in Texas but in India.  The biggest casino is in Macao not Las Vegas; the biggest movie industry is in India not Hollywood; and of the world’s top ten shopping malls, only one is in the U.S.A. (Now that is really upsetting!) With those telling indications of how the world is changing, Fareed Zakaria opens his book The Post American World.  For anyone seeking to understand where we are and where we may be headed as a global community, I highly recommend it.

As Zakaria sees it, the signs of significant economic improvement from Macao to Monterrey, New Dehli to Dubai does not mean things are getting worse for the U.S.  It means things are getting better for the rest of the world.  The world’s gain does not necessarily imply we have to experience pain.  Prosperity for others does not equate to poverty for us.  His insight is crucial.

Now surely it does mean Americans can no longer go to Europe for bargain-priced vacations; the cost of a house in parts of Mexico resembles the costs of housing in affluent parts of D.C.; products from China will no longer be the bargains they have been for the past decade (If you are my age, you remember when things from Japan were a bargain).

But the leveling of the playing field, a more equitable distribution of wealth is what we have been praying for, correct?  That is what we want, right?  I certainly hope so.  As people of faith, we want others to have the healthcare, education and safety we have, their children to have the opportunities our children have.

Indeed, over the past thirty years, 400 million people in China have moved out of poverty, with the average Chinese person’s income increasing nearly sevenfold.  India’s poverty rate is one half what it was two decades ago.  In 2006-7, Indian investment in England exceeded British investment in India.  Strong middle classes have developed from Shanghai to Singapore to San Paolo.

These statistics reveal worldwide economic growth that is an answer to prayers we have prayed on World Communion Sundays past.  For my entire ministry, we have prayed that the powerless would gain power and the oppressed would become economically self-sufficient.  It is happening.  In our time.  Before our very eyes.  What we are witnessing are, in a very real sense, prayers answered.

Certainly, all of the worldwide economic growth does have consequences for us.  When we go into debt as a nation, we no longer owe ourselves.  Incurring massive debt to fight a war in Iraq, we end up owing the Chinese, Japanese and Russians hundreds of billions of dollars.  Global growth means that when the rest of the world emulates our pollution-generating lifestyle, the earth spins rapidly toward being uninhabitable.  Global economic growth means that when the rest of the world starts to consume oil the way we consume oil, the end of the oil era charges toward us rapidly.

Perhaps most challenging to a nation whose central myth involves a rugged individual, Americans can no longer live with the illusion that we are totally self-sufficient, able to live without anyone else’s help.  Part of our national self-image is that we can live apart from the world, independent, isolated if need be.  Separated by two large oceans from Europe, Asia and Africa, we have always thought that, if worse comes to worse, we can hunker down and insulate ourselves from problems overseas.

However, as revealed by events ranging from bombs crashing into Pearl Harbor to planes crashing into the World Trade Towers, we cannot delude ourselves into thinking that we can go it alone.  There is no insulating ourselves from the rest of the world.  The world’s problems are our problems.  And as the world is learning in the current credit crisis, our problems are the world’s problems.

It is writ large in our sacred scriptures that we are not rugged individuals.  We are a human family.  The family members have names: hmong and ewe, irish and inca, mongol and tamil.  But we are one, big, interdependent family: God’s family. 

As Christians, we view our interconnected fates not as a problem but as an opportunity. After all, together we can do what we cannot do alone.  Together, we can solve the energy crisis, feed the hungry, and clean up the environment.  But to do so, we must be responsible to one another and hold one another accountable.  We cannot live for ourselves.

Jesus taught this crucial truth in many different ways.  One of them is recorded in this morning’s parable in Matthew 21.  Jesus describes a vineyard where the owner has leased the land to a bunch of tenant farmers.  As happens in such arrangements, the contract authorized the owner of the land to collect a small percentage of each harvest. 

When the landowner sent his representatives to collect his due, the tenants killed them.  After this happened a second time, the landlord sent his son to the murderous tenants. 

As a footnote, this really raises some issues for me about the father’s feelings toward his son!  I mean, if a group of rebellious tenants kills your representatives, it would be logical to conclude that they might kill your son.  So why would you put your son at risk by sending him into the middle of this violent situation?  Why not send the police or an army?  If I am the son walking toward the vineyard, with each step, I am increasingly wondering why dad is sending me, alone, to deal with this violent bunch.  But I didn’t write the parable so on with Jesus’ version.

Indeed, the tenants killed the son.  When Jesus asked his listeners what would happen next, they didn’t hesitate, “(The landlord) will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.” “Exactly,” said Jesus.  The tenants thought they could do what they wanted with the piece of land they were farming—feeling no responsibility to the landlord or anybody else for that matter.  They were wrong, dead wrong.

The tenants tried to create a bubble of self-sufficiency for themselves, killing anyone who dared to destroy the illusion of their independence.  However, they weren’t living alone.  Neither are we.  They had a landowner and so do we.  They had responsibilities to others and so do we.

Some would tell us that our current problems are the result of too much or too little government, too high or low tax rates, immigration or trade policy.  I don’t think so, although those are important issues.  Our problems flow from a frantic, feverish effort to build our own little world here in these United States; a world that is self-sufficient, independent from problems in the rest of the world.  It was always a doomed effort.  However, today, the consequences of pursuing this delusion are more dangerous and self-destructive than ever.

In a way, we are like a group of people who have been blessed to live on the top of a mountain for a while.  On the top, intoxicated by the view, we begin to think that there is no one around us.  Worse, rather than being grateful that we had a moment on the top, we want to stay there forever; keep it for ourselves. 

It isn’t going to happen.  It never has.  It never will.

Many are the nations and empires who thought they could rule forever from the top of the mountain: Rome, the Aztecs, the Egyptians, the Soviet Union.  Unwilling to see their welfare as totally tied up with the welfare of their neighbors, all those empires slid down the hill where they were confronted by angry neighbors who had suffered while they were up there on the top of the hill.

Likewise, many are the individuals who think they can stay on top of the hill, looking down on everyone else.  Whether it be the former Masters of the Universe on Wall Street or white males on Main Street thinking they don’t have to share the mountaintop of power and position, anyone who fails to live with a sense of our interconnection and interdependence is deluded.

As Christians, we must debunk the myth that someone else’s success is our failure; that someone else’s new wealth is wealth stolen from our pocket. We need to help our neighbors here in the U.S. understand that it is in all of our welfare for people to succeed—from Beijing to Bogota, Djakarta to Dar Es Salaam, Kyoto to Kinshasa.  Indeed, we can succeed individually only if we succeed together.

On this World Communion Sunday, we celebrate God’s plan for every member of the human family: to have the educations, health care, and safety we take for granted in this nation.  We are closer to realizing that dream than at any point in human history.  At this crucial moment, let us not, in fear and frustration, turn against one another.  For God’s sake and for the sake of our children, let us turn to one another.

Let us pray: Gracious God, you command us to live together.  However, fearful we will lose something, we pull apart.  We attempt to build our own little worlds.  We attack those who challenge our right to live unto ourselves.  Forgive us.  Fill us with the faith, hope and love we need to be agents of transformation in this changing, evolving, holy world.  All this we pray in Jesus’ name.  Amen.