"Wal-Mart or God: Is
Bigger Better? Mightier Righter?"
I am not out to bash Wal-Mart. Can’t we just see Sam’s largest private
corporation and wealthiest family in the world just quaking in their
“best-price” boots about some wild-mouthed preacher in Reno! ! But with
Thanksgiving come the biggest shopping day of the year and the costly
consumptive competitive Christmas chaos that follows. All over again we ask
ourselves, just because it’s out there, and just because I can afford to buy it
– if not by Cash by Credit, by God! -- and everyone else is buying it, and this
is America anyway, and the solution to anything is to shop – and if shopping all
in one or just a very few mega-stores runs a lot of smaller retailers out of
business, and runs a lot of producers out of the country, and runs the quality
of employment and community into the ground – well, hey! Nobody said it’s easy
to be the biggest and best, richest and strongest, smartest and freest (whatever
that means) nation on earth!
Hear again the scripture the children just led us in reading – What really
makes God the Judge mad (God the Howard McKibben or the Jim Hardesty of our
congregation – Don’t we wish all judges were like them?) What really makes
God mad on this Judgment Day, this “Last Day” of the church year, is how
lost all we “small sheep” have become! Not so much because of any fault or
choice of our own, but because those with power over us have chosen to use
their power to scatter us. They have chosen to come between us and one
another and the common resources we need for our lives, and to play us off
against one another – by age, by color, by culture, by class, by creed, by
gender, by sexuality, by language, by nationality, whatever. So now we find
ourselves so divided and so conquered, so impoverished and so powerless –
even to question a war that squanders good will, life and resources in every
conceivable way! – while we pass budgets with tax-cuts for the rich --and
job-cuts, health-cuts, child-care-cuts, education-cuts, transportation-cuts,
you-name-it-cuts for the poor!
This is not John Auer who’s mad – This is God! Saying I, I myself, will
seek out my lost, my poor, my forgotten, abused, and neglected ones! I will
bring them to a land of their own – with plenty to eat and to drink, to
shelter and to care. I, the Lord GOD, will do this myself – because all of
my shepherds, of both church and state, religion and politics (including the
one preaching now!) have failed me! I, I myself, will bind up the injured,
strengthen the weak, destroy the fat and the strong, the too-big and the
too-mighty – and feed them ALL with justice!
For justice in the High and Low Courts of God means mercy for those without
mercy, and judgment for those without judgment. God means to judge between
fat and lean – precisely because, consciously or not, willfully or not – due
to outright individual and family greed or “inright” systemic injustice –
the fat, the wealthy, the big, the mighty have pushed and butted and
scattered the lean, the poor, the small, the weak – and God is determined to
be God! To be some of ALL! God is determined to save. God is determined
to share God’s resources. On this last Sunday after Pentecost, we recall
the Holy Spirit as both our sanctifier and our sustainer -- both discerner
and distributor of our gifts – spiritual and material. Matthew’s gospel
spells out plainly how “material” God can be!
Real “thanksgiving” is also “thanks-sharing.” Thanksgiving is a tabling
feast. We are a tabling people! God is a tabling God. Christ tables with
us, with all of us, all the time. God knows, we believe --God has revealed
God’s knowledge to us in the life and work of Jesus and by the Holy Spirit
-- God knows God’s creation, God’s provision, God’s compassion, and God’s
care are plenty for all! With God there is no such thing as “enough!”
God’s table is always supplied! With room enough and relief for all! Jesus
says in this gospel lesson – Jesus’ only teaching about Day of Judgment! –
the Ecumenical Institute used to chant it responsively with every offertory
– “I was hungry and you gave me food!” “I was thirsty and you gave me
drink!” “I was a stranger and you welcomed me!” “I was naked and you
clothed me!” “I was sick and you visited me!” “I was in prison and you
came to me!” And we remember numbers of others God will not forget or
neglect.
“Enough” is never for God “Enough” is only for us – for each one of us to
decide and to act on ourselves. For Julie and me a large part of the joy of
growing older together has been to learn how little we truly need, how much
we can live well without – with the possible exceptions of used books and
CDs! Of course, systemically, we have been well provided for. We try never
to take it for granted that we are given secure beginnings in life. We are
given food and drink, and shelter and clothing. We are given education, we
are given employment and job security, we are given child care, we are given
health care – There are so many “givens,” of most of our lives! We like to
think of them as “earneds” or “deserveds” – on the basis of some kind of
arbitrary distinctions between us and others. What if we thought of them as
“entitleds?” As “shareds?” As gifts of God for all of the children of
God? As the “end” or purpose of God in all of creation?
To save every one of God’s creatures – giving us so much more than “enough!”
Our favorite local columnist, Deidre Pike of the Reno News and Review,
writes in this week’s issue (which also has our ad thanking readers for
voting us “next best” church in the area!) – “When a nation buys more junk
from other countries than it sells to other countries, there’s a trade
deficit. The U.S. trade deficit has been increasing for years. The up side
of this is that the stuff we import is often cheaper.” Why? “For one,
multinational firms that own overseas junk factories don’t have to pay their
workers as much. Or provide benefits. Or deal with pesky and expensive
environmental rules. “So thanks to underpaid laborers and environmental
degradation, we get cheap stuff.” “Cheap stuff! So what if our nation is
bleeding money and jobs into a world economy in our incessant demands for
low, low prices?” Deidre spells out dangers of the trade deficit.
Then she asks what I would call a good “Thanksgiving/Christmas Shopping”
question – “What can be done? Does my lifestyle impact something as
seemingly abstract as the trade deficit?” She suggests we take the
“Ecological Footprint Quiz” at Earth Day Network,
www.earthday.org, with such questions as “How often do you use public
transportation?” and “How often do you eat meat?” Deidre writes, “My
ecological footprint is 21 acres. On this planet, there are 4.5
biologically productive acres per person. ‘If everyone lived like you,’ my
quiz results say, ‘we would need 4.8 planets!’” Then Deidre took the quiz
for her “foster” child Unti-Begam in Nepal – “Her footprint is around two
acres. I realized I’m using her space – and that of others who didn’t have
the good fortune to be born in the United States.” Sisters and brothers,
you, I, and we all together are “using the space” of everyone else in this
world. Let us not be thankful for that!
Again, it’s a much bigger problem than “Wal-Mart,” and all the huge
“one-size-fits-all” mega-stores, mega-corporations, mega-buildings,
mega-homes, mega-cities, mega-churches -- bigger footprints, bigger wars.
You name it – if it’s bigger we think it’s better. If it’s mightier we
think it’s righter. On this day God begs to differ with us. God is mad
about hogging and hoarding resources. If we want to read up on Wal-Mart,
the literature and now the film “The High Cost of Low Prices” are out
there. We can go to
www.walmartwatch.com, for instance.
Social ethicist Melissa Snarr reminds us as peoples of biblical faith –
“Frugality is not a spiritual discipline!” Despite our “Depression”
origins! Yet “getting a ‘deal’ has largely displaced righteous dealings” in
the marketplace.”
The Bible is about generosity, not “saving money!” Simplicity may serve
generosity but frugality per se, as an end in itself, does not. Frugality
may work against generosity. Snarr says generosity is in the very nature of
God! Even God the Judge to whom scriptures point this morning. God,
literally, as in communion, is broken open and poured out – for all of the
people, all of the time! “The creating, redeeming, and sustaining character
of biblical generosity is not about short-term charity but long-term justice
for all God’s children!” Even Wal-Mart knows the good “PR” of short-term
charity. But biblical justice in our time of the “global village” is about
wasting no more resources on dealing death and destruction upon one
another! Rather, it is about building up common shared systems and
structures of enduring wholeness and fairness -- of, by and for all peoples,
not just here but everywhere! Every table is a communion table to us.
Another local “Thanksgiving/Thanks-sharing” resource for us is the Conscious
Community and Business Network’s “Hometown Directory” of “Locally Owned
Businesses and Community Organizations.” The motto is “Keep Truckee Meadows
Wild and Independent!” “Strengthen our local economy.” We are not saying “no”
to Wal-Mart so much as we are saying “yes” to each other! “Build a more
cooperative community.” Get away from the competition, the win-lose, in-out
mentalities of our culture! “Practice conscious living.” Which means,
“encourage behaviors that result in greater awareness of the connections within
our community that make us stronger.” That’s what real “corporateness,” real
togetherness, mean. There are lots of these directories on the table in the
Parlor – Take some for your business, your school, your organizations or
agencies.
I say, on this “Last” Sunday of the church year, this Day of Judgment, let’s
redeem the good name of “corporate” -- literally, to be of “one body” together!
That good name has been so ripped off and ripped up by the biggest and mightiest
interests and investments of super-national, super-communal corporations -- and
by the gutless governments they so plainly own and operate at our cost! We
allow huge corporations the “rights” of mere individuals! As President
Eisenhower used to put it, someday the peoples of the world are going to want
peace (with justice!) so much, governments will have to get out of the way and
let them have it! My image of this day is not so much “Christ the King”
reigning down from the sky sword in hand to destroy the unrighteous world. That
kind of thinking just fosters and exploits the lostness and scatteredness of
God’s “small sheep” – the divisions and conquests already between and among us.
Rather, I see “the Cosmic Christ” bubbling up everywhere from deep within the
earth – Christ moving, even dancing, to the heartbeat of the drum we dedicate
here today -- Christ enlivening and enriching grassroots movements of “small
sheep” and “little people” everywhere -- to talk back and take back the word and
the work of God for ourselves – until once again we are of one body, one table,
one sustenance – subsisting, sustaining us all! All things of God, as Paul says
on this day, lie in the earth, and in those closest to it, those lowest on the
“food chain” – at the very just and merciful feet of the cosmic Christ – “the
fullness of the one who fills all in all!” Happy Thanksgiving! Happy
Thanks-sharing! Amen.
