Scripture text: Matthew 14:13-21
Scott Gustafson, in his book Behind Good and Evil, argues that the origin of moral codes and systems was a way for civilized societies to determine the answer to a simple question: Who gets food and who does not? You see, in pre-civilized times and in many tribal societies even today, food is shared. When there is abundance, all benefit, and when there is scarcity, all suffer. But one of the major elements of a civilized society is the transformation of food into a commodity where distribution was controlled by the leadership of said society. This leadership would then distribute food to those they felt worthy of it and the people who were worthy of it were often defined by the whimsy of those leaders. As civilization evolved, legal and moral codes replaced the king’s capriciousness, but the ultimate purpose remained the same: they define who is worthy of food and who is not.
Even today, this still proves largely true. The worth of human beings like you and I is under constant scrutiny by government, business, religion, and even other everyday people. And time and again, we divide people into two camps: those of worth and those without. Those with worth are deserving of life, prosperity, health, safety, freedom, and all other virtues of our society. Those without deserve only scorn, suffering, rejection, poverty, starvation, and death. We like to pretend that this isn’t true. We like to pretend that we don’t behave this way, but we do and the results of these thoughts and behaviors are all around us.
The mission trip that I led last Sunday is a prime example of this very dynamic at play. I took a small group of people from both Canadochly and St. John’s, New Freedom down to my hometown of Charleston, West Virginia. I took them into the mountains of Appalachia. I took them into a place where the people who live there are frequently and often unapologetically regarded as unworthy of life by the outside world.
Our first stop on Saturday was the Exhibition Coal Mine in Beckley, WV. I had done this tour before, when I was roughly the same age as many of the mission trip participants, and I knew the history. Our tour guide knew that history as well and was bluntly and gratefully honest about it. He told how the animals that pulled the coal carts in and out of the mine were more valuable than the people who worked the mines. He said how dog-eat-dog it was down there, where your coal, your food, your water, and pretty much anything might be stolen by your fellow miners. This was largely because of how pathetic the wages were. Twenty cents per one ton of coal, giving a miner around $2 a day in wages. Two dollars that was often not paid in the legal tender of the land, but in scrip that could only be spent at the painfully overpriced company store, keeping you in debt the whole of your life. All this on top of the extreme dangers you faced day in and day out.
We’d like to think we’ve evolved somewhat since those days and we have somewhat. The company store is gone. Wages have improved dramatically. But one need only read a short list of mine disasters of recent times: Upper Big Branch, 29 dead. Sago, 12 dead. Ferrell, 5 dead. And, of course, Buffalo Creek, 125 dead. Nearly all of them caused by the deliberate neglect of government and business officials who looked the other way regarding safety violations. And that’s just WV, let alone all other states. Human life is cheap.
Last Sunday, we prepped over 700 meals for people who are the inheritors of that legacy of disregard for human life. People who have lived in systemic poverty for generations, scraping together what they can to survive.
And as much as I wish I could say this was all unique, that it’s something that only happens in the mountains and towns and cities of my home state. But it isn’t. Downtown York, even right here in our little communities of East Prospect, Wrightsville, Hallam, Craley, there is hunger, there is poverty, and that’s true everywhere in the United States. In the wealthiest country the world has ever seen, this is a travesty.
All the more so because it is by design, not accident. Wal-Mart could add a single penny to the price of its wares and it could pay every single one of its 1.4 million workers a living wage. That’s all. Reduce our defense budget by a single day’s expenditures and we could feed every single hungry person in the world for a year. that’s all it would take. But we choose not to, because there are those who are worthy and those who are not. We would hem and haw about how difficult it would be, or whether those people deserve it or not, or how unfair it would be that they didn’t work for it, or some other excuse. All the while, 35,000 people worldwide die daily for lack of food. Human life is cheap, even to us.
The only morality that matters to Jesus is a simple one. He said all the law and prophets hung upon two commandments: Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. He showed that in action on that day at the deserted place, where a crowd had gathered and remained well into the late hours of the day, all there to hear him speak. As tummies began to grumble, he took bread and fish, gave thanks, broke them, and then gave them for all to eat. There was no application process. No demand to prove one’s worthiness to receive their subsidy of food. No proof of income required. No drug test to pass. No proof of citizenship required. All received regardless and all ate. And all ate in abundance, 5000 and then some.
There is a reason that visions of the kingdom are often that of a feast where fine food and drink is given in abundance. Old Testament, New Testament, you name it. All come to the feast: rich, poor, black, white, gay, straight, young, old, men, women, liberal, conservative, hero, villain, all people come. The distinctions we make between ourselves and others do not matter one whit, distinctions that kill people every day because we claim their lack is what they deserve.
Deserve has nothing to do with it. Compassion is what truly matters. Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself. Upon these hang all the law and the prophets. This was not a morality that divided, but united. One that gave worth to all, with no distinctions.
Because that’s who Jesus is. It’s what he does in his life. His teaching, his miracles, there are no distinctions. And when he went to the cross, it was not for just some people, those he felt deserved it for some arbitrary or capricious reason. No, the Scriptures tell us plainly that he went for everyone, there to die for the sins of the whole world and to give life back to all. ALL! It is the most powerful word in all of Scripture. One we desperately need to take more seriously. ALL. Not some. Not the deserving. Not the worthy. ALL. Jesus loved all. Jesus died for all. Jesus rose again for all.
For us humans, life is cheap. But to God, it is the most valuable thing in the world. Every life, yours, mine, and everyone else, is worth dying for. Amen.
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