Assault Upon Christ!

In true Barthian fashion, I am preparing a sermon with the Bible in one hand and the internet (newspaper) in the other. Bonhoeffer echoes Barth in saying: "I cannot experience the reality of the world without the reality of God; nor the reality of God without the reality of the world". So, here goes my feeble attempts to reflect these sages.

The other night, Jonathan Alter, senior writer for NEWSWEEK, crystallized the moral issue behind the health care debate. To paraphrase his insight: "This is a civil rights issue. To deny adequate, affordable health care to those who are ill or unemployed is discriminatory". Let me hear an "amen"! Isn't there something in the Constitution about equal protection under the law?

Yet, for many, including the "birthers", "deathers", and "screamers", the issue is not discrimination, but protecting what is mine. They say, equal access has little to do with health care. Fear has become the armor for my self protection. My survival is paramont to equality, and trumps justice for all. The "birthers" use the argument of illigitamacy in its rant against President Obama. We cannot support this plan because it is being pushed by a person who is not rightly our president. What they won't say is because he is an African American. Racism is alive and well in the hearts of many. But they won't admit it.

The "deathers" (to use the name coined by Rachel Maddow), and the simple minded Sarah Palin, shout the canard that the evil, faceless, cold government is openning the door to euthanasia through this health care plan. To show how far out this group is from reality, they are comparing Obama to Hitler's program of euthanasia for "those less than life", intimating that the government will begin establishing portable Hadamars to cleanse our nation of the unfit. Fear and desparation live!

The "screamers" are those who care not for debate but for stifling conversation. Finding common ground is not sought, only domination and maintaining the status quo. I've got mine, and if you get yours I will be denied. It is all about me. Indeed, we have become a nation of narcissists.

Fueling this fight are fear, denial, ignorance, and profit: fear that I will lose my health care, denial to others as a necessity for my well being, ignorance of the facts (remember Daniel Patrick Moynahan's pithy words: "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts"), and profit to maintain a system of bankruping the nation and the survival of a company.

In the end, what is called for is a commitment to justice. As a nation with significant Christian roots, it would be well to listen to Holy Scripture as we debate health care. The lectionary lesson for 30 August, lifts up James 1:17-27. "...let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God's righteousness....Religion that is pure and undefiled before God...is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained from the world". Orphans and widows are consistently mentioned in scripture because they were considered the most vulnerable.

To care for means to insist upon justice for all. Health care for all. Let us listen and speak. Let us be civil in our discourse. How about Christians reflecting Christ instead of evil?

Frank Schaefer, a one time "far right crazy", now repentant, has written a book entitled CRAZY FOR GOD, in which he reveals how those professing to follow Christ are actually prostituting the Word of God for their own survival's sake. In commenting on this sad state of affairs, he quotes Bart Simpson: "The election broke their brains". I would also say, "broke their souls". Yes, we all sin. And we are all called to repentance. The ways of Christ are being assaulted. Justice is being assaulted. "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness." "Let justice roll...."

Peace!
Ron