Readings for Jazz Worship — February 14, 2010

Rev. Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson

Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, OH

 

I'm not going to preach as such  this morning.  (Let the people say, "Amen.") What I am going to do this morning is read several scripture passages along with a few poems and a story.  Consider these like jazz riffs on biblical themes—beginning with God as creator of heaven and earth and how we are to be both stewards and sharers of creation.

Psalm 24:1 —     The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it,
    the world, and those who live in it;

Psalm 115:15-16 —    May you be blessed by the Lord,
    who made heaven and earth.
    The heavens are the Lord’s heavens,
    but the earth [the Lord] has given to human beings.

If the earth is given to bless all human beings, why then are there such vast differences in blessing between rich and poor?  There’s a Haitian proverb that says, “God gives us everything we need to flourish, but [God’s] not the one who’s supposed to divvy up the loot.  That charge is laid upon us.”  It’s our responsibility.  So here are some suggestions from Proberbs 22 and 31.

Proverbs 22:16 —     Oppressing the poor in order to enrich oneself,
    and giving to the rich, will lead only to loss.

Proverbs 31:8-9 —    Speak out for those who cannot speak,
    for the rights of all the destitute.
    Speak out, judge righteously,
    defend the rights of the poor and needy.

Tom Wayman takes the game “Rock, Paper, Scissors” as an image of competition leading to inequalitiy.  But looking deeper with the eyes of a poet, he finds interconnection instead of competition at the heart of things.

Paper, Scissors, Stone  —  by Tom Wayman (1986)

An executive’s salary for working with paper
beats the wage in a metal shop operating shears
which beats what a gardener earns arranging stone.

But the pay for a surgeon’s use of scissors
is larger than that of a heavy equipment driver removing stone
which in turn beats a secretary’s cheque for handling paper.

And, a geologist’s hours with stone
nets more than a teacher’s with paper
and definitely beats someone’s time in a garment factory with scissors.

In addition: to manufacture paper
you need stone to extract metal to fabricate scissors
to cut the product to size.
To make scissors you must have paper to write out the specs
and a whetstone to sharpen the new edges.
Creating gravel, you require the scissor-blades of the crusher
and lots of order forms and invoices at the office.

Thus I believe there is a connection
between things
and not at all like the hierarchy of winners
of a child’s game.
When a man starts insisting
he should be paid more than me
because he’s more important to the task at hand,
I keep seeing how the whole process collapses
if almost any one of us is missing.
When a woman claims she deserves more money
because she went to school longer,
I remember the taxes I paid to support her education.
Should she benefit twice?
Then there’s the guy who demands extra
because he has so much seniority
and understands his work so well
he has ceased to care, does as little as possible,
or refuses to master the latest techniques
the new-hires are required to know.
Even if he’s helpful and somehow still curious
after his many years—

Without a machine to precisely measure
how much sweat we each provide
or a contraption hooked up to electrodes in the brain
to record the amount we think,
my getting less than him
and more than her
makes no sense to me.
Surely whatever we do at the job
for our eight hours—as long as it contributes—
has to be worth the same.

And if anyone mentions
this is a nice idea but isn’t possible,
consider what we have now:
everybody dissatisfied, continually grumbling and disputing.
No, I’m afraid it’s the wage system that doesn’t function
except it goes on
and will
until we set to work to stop it

with paper, with scissors, and with stone.

Amos of Tekoa described himself as a farmer—“a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees”—but he was also a poet and prophet who spoke the word of the Lord to those in power, naming what was wrong in his world.  Martin Luther King, Jr., in his “I Have a Dream” speech, quoted the closing words of this passage.

Amos 5:11-12 —    Therefore, because you trample on the poor
    and take from them levies of grain,
    you have built houses of hewn stone,
    but you shall not live in them;
    you have planted pleasant vineyards,
    but you shall not drink their wine.
    For I know how many are your transgressions,
    and how great are your sins—
    you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe,
    and push aside the needy in the gate.

Amos 5:21, 23-24 —     I hate, I despise your festivals,
    and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies…
    Take away from me the noise of your songs;
    I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
    But let justice roll down like waters,
     and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Wendell Berry is a farmer and poet from Kentucky who writes prophetic essays and poems that cry out against what’s wrong in the world.  Here’s one of his many Sabbath Poems.

Sabbath Poem V  —  Wendell Berry (2007)

Those who use the world assuming
their knowledge is sufficient
destroy the world.  The forest
is mangled for the sale
of a few sticks, or is bulldozed
into a stream and covered over
with the earth it once stood
upon.  The stream turns foul,
killing the creatures that once
lived upon it.  Industrial humanity,
an alien species, lives by death.
In the clutter of facts, the destroyers
leave behind them one big story,
of the world and the world’s end,
that they don’t know.  They know
names and little stories.  But the names
of everything are not everything.
The story of everything, told,
is only a little story.  They don’t know
the languages of the birds
who pass northward, feeding
through the treetops early
in May, kept alive by knowledge
never to be said in words.
Hang down your head.  This
is our hope.  Words emerge
from silence, silence remains.

Amos’ could be pretty direct—like calling the wives of the wealthy, unjust rulers “cows of Bashan… who oppress the poor [and] crush the needy.”  In his poem “Questionnaire,” Wendell Berry confronts us with ways we participate unthinkingly in “the way things are” in our world.

Questionnaire — Wendell Berry

1. How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade?  Please
name your preferred poisons.

2. For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

3. What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy.

4. In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms,
you would most readily do without.

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.

Amos’ message was not just about confrontation and speaking truth to power.  He also had a vision of what “justice flowing down like waters” would be like—a nation where the people all shared in the produce of the land.

Amos 9:13-14 —    The time is surely coming, says the Lord,
    when the one who ploughs shall [be] the one who reaps,
    and the treader of grapes the one who sows the seed;
    the mountains shall drip sweet wine,
    and all the hills shall flow with it.
    I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel,
    and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them;
    they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine,
    and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit…says the Lord your God. 

Wendell Berry ends one of his “Mad Farmer” poems by calling for people to “practice resurrection.”  In this poem he calls for people to do this by participating fully in care for one another and for the good gifts of God’s creation.

The Mad Farmer, Flying the Flag of Rough Branch,
Secedes from the Union — Wendell Berry (2008)

From the union of power and money,
from the union of power and secrecy,
from the union of government and science,
from the union of science and money,
from the union of ambition and ignorance,
from the union of genius and war,
from the union of outer space and inner vacuity,
the Mad Farmer walks quietly away.

There is only one of him, but he goes.
He returns to the small country he calls home,
his own nation small enough to walk across.
He goes shadowy into the local woods,
and brightly into the local meadows and croplands.
He goes to the care of neighbors,
he goes into the care of neighbors.
He goes to the potluck supper, a dish
from each house for the hunger of every house.
He goes into the quiet of early mornings
of days when he is not going anywhere.

Calling his neighbors together into the sanctity
of their lives separate and together
in the one life of their commonwealth and home,
in their own nation small enough for a story
or song to travel across in an hour, he cries:

Come all ye conservatives and liberals
who want to conserve the good things and be free,
come away from the merchants of big answers,
whose hands are metalled with power;
from the union of anywhere and everywhere
by the purchase of everything from everybody at the lowest price
and the sale of anything to anybody at the highest price;
from the union of work and debt, work and despair;
from the wage-slavery of the helplessly well-employed.
From the union of self-gratification and self-annihilation,
secede into care for another
and for the good gifts of Heaven and Earth.

Come into the life of the body, the one body
granted to you in all the history of time.
Come into the body’s economy, its daily work,
and its replenishment at mealtimes and at night.
Come into the body’s thanksgiving, when it knows
and acknowledges itself a living soul.
Come into the dance of community, joined
in a circle, hand in hand, the dance of the eternal
love of women and men for one another
and of neighbors and friends for one another.

Always disappearing, always returning,
calling his neighbors to return, to think again
of the care of flocks and herds, of gardens
and fields, of woodlots and forests and the uncut groves,
calling them separately and together, calling and calling,
he goes forever toward the long restful evening
and the croak of the night heron over the river at dark.

From the Book of Acts, here’s a story of the early Christian community—of people so taken with the vision of the Kingdom of God present among them—a Kingdom in which everything is created and given for the abundant life of all—that they, to use Wendell Berry’s words, “seceded into care for another.”

Acts 4:32-35—    Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.  With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.  There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.  They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

A few weeks ago Nicholas D. Kristof wrote in the New York Times about the Salwen family who found one way that they could live out a similar vision.

What Could You Live Without?
By Nicholas D. Kristof  (New York Times, January 24, 2010)

It all began with a stop at a red light.

Kevin Salwen, a writer and entrepreneur in Atlanta, was driving his 14-year-old daughter, Hannah, back from a sleepover in 2006. While waiting at a traffic light, they saw a black Mercedes coupe on one side and a homeless man begging for food on the other.

“Dad, if that man had a less nice car, that man there could have a meal,” Hannah protested. The light changed and they drove on, but Hannah was too young to be reasonable. She pestered her parents about inequity, insisting that she wanted to do something.

“What do you want to do?” her mom responded. “Sell our house?”

Warning! Never suggest a grand gesture to an idealistic teenager. Hannah seized upon the idea of selling the luxurious family home and donating half the proceeds to charity, while using the other half to buy a more modest replacement home.

Eventually, that’s what the family did. The project—crazy, impetuous and utterly inspiring—is chronicled in a book by father and daughter scheduled to be published next month:  The Power of Half. It’s a book that, frankly, I’d be nervous about leaving around where my own teenage kids might find it. An impressionable child reads this, and the next thing you know your whole family is out on the street.

At a time of enormous needs in Haiti and elsewhere, when so many Americans are trying to help Haitians by sending everything from text messages to shoes, the Salwens offer an example of a family that came together to make a difference — for themselves as much as the people they were trying to help. In a column a week ago, I described neurological evidence from brain scans that altruism lights up parts of the brain normally associated with more primal gratifications such as food and sex. The Salwens’ experience confirms the selfish pleasures of selflessness.

Mr. Salwen and his wife, Joan, had always assumed that their kids would be better off in a bigger house. But after they downsized, there was much less space to retreat to, so the family members spent more time around each other. A smaller house unexpectedly turned out to be a more family-friendly house.

“We essentially traded stuff for togetherness and connectedness,” Mr. Salwen told me, adding, “I can’t figure out why everybody wouldn’t want that deal.”

One reason for that togetherness was the complex process of deciding how to spend the money. The Salwens researched causes and charities, finally settling on the Hunger Project, a New York City-based international development organization that has a good record of tackling global poverty.

The Salwens pledged $800,000 to sponsor health, microfinancing, food and other programs for about 40 villages in Ghana. They traveled to Ghana with a Hunger Project executive, John Coonrod, who is an inspiration in his own right. Over the years, he and his wife donated so much back from their modest aid-worker salaries that they were among the top Hunger Project donors in New York.

The Salwens’ initiative hasn’t gone entirely smoothly. Hannah promptly won over her parents, but her younger brother, Joe, was (reassuringly) a red-blooded American boy to whom it wasn’t intuitively obvious that life would improve by moving into a smaller house and giving money to poor people. Outvoted and outmaneuvered, Joe gamely went along.

The Salwens also are troubled that some people are reacting negatively to their project, seeing them as sanctimonious showoffs. Or that people are protesting giving to Ghana when there are so many needy Americans.

Still, they have inspired some converts. The people who sold the Salwens their new home were so impressed that they committed$100,000 to the project. And one of Hannah’s closest friends, Blaise, pledged half of her baby-sitting savings to an environmental charity.

In writing the book, the Salwens say, the aim wasn’t actually to get people to sell their houses. They realize that few people are quite that nutty. Rather, the aim was to encourage people to step off the treadmill of accumulation, to define themselves by what they give as well as by what they possess.

“No one expects anyone to sell a house,” said Hannah, now a high school junior who hopes to become a nurse. “That’s kind of a ridiculous thing to do. For us, the house was just something we could live without. It was too big for us. Everyone has too much of something, whether it’s time, talent or treasure. Everyone does have their own half, you just have to find it.”

As for Kevin Salwen, he’s delighted by what has unfolded since that encounter at the red light.

“This is the most self-interested thing we have ever done,” he said. “I’m thrilled that we can help others. I’m blown away by how much it has helped us.

Friends, hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.  
Thanks be to God.