All Other Ground Is Sinking Sand
When the Living Pulpit editorial board suggested an issue with the theme of Marketplace, we wanted to look at the marketplace from several perspectives. We intended to look at how we go about placing values on goods, ideas, services, and beliefs. We wanted to explore what the constant process of valuation reveals about our faith. We were intrigued by the fundamental aspect of the marketplace as the arena for face-to-face to exchange not only goods but also news, gossip, concepts, and information. We wanted to explore how we strengthen our existing relationships in the agora and how we establish new ones there. Three years ago, when we selected Marketplace as the theme for the Fall 2008 issue, it seemed to be an intriguing vehicle to explore the intersection of faith with the realities of day-to-day living.
Of course, we could not have envisioned the economic chaos that would be surrounding us when the issue was actually written, edited, and published. If ever there was a time when our congregations needed to hear preaching that helped them to make sense of the days headlines within the framework of Biblical principles, this is the time!
We know that we need to preach with our deeds as well as our words. This is not the season for the token “feel good” food drive, but rather it is the time to encourage our congregations to commit to stocking the community food pantries and to keep doing so week-after-week. This year’s mitten tree is not just a valuable lesson for our Sunday School classes but is going to make a difference to our neighbors who are genuinely struggling to get through the long cold winter.
As pastors we will be offering our understanding and empathy to more and more people coping with inevitable strains of unemployment and dashed dreams. We will see more individuals battling addictions. We will have more people asking us for rent money, food money, and prescription money. And we dare not call ourselves Christians if we offer the too-easy response to these desperate requests that there are plenty of other community organizations, charities, and government agencies to do all of the heavy lifting.
At the same time that we preach the Gospel with our actions, we need to remember that people are also turning to us for something that the social service agencies and the Scout food drive can not provide. People need to hear from us that in the eyes of the one who created us, we all have worth that is not measured in dollars, that does not rise and fall with the Dow Industrial Average. In the shower of pink slips that is raining down on blue-collar and white-collar worker alike, laid off employees are receiving the message that they, their skills, their talents, and their past contributions are no longer valued by their employers. They are receiving the message that in a difficult marketplace where employers are deciding who to retain and who to let go, “You are not worth your keep. You are worthless to us.” It is a bitter message with devastating repercussions in every facet of a person’s life and network of relationships. It is the task of every pastor to preach, to shout, to affirm, to emphasize that our real worth as children of a loving God is absolutely not diminished in any way. We need to refute this sense of “worthlessness” with everything at our command — our preaching, our love, our fellowship, our sense of community, our worship, and our prayers. For if we are not affirming the real worth of people, where will they receive this affirmation?
As too many of our brothers and sisters cringe when the phone rings with yet another strident bill collector’s call, we need to be the counterbalancing comforting voice reassuring people that God loves you and God’s community is there for you. Financial and political crises come and go but we know and we must share our unshakable belief that the treasures of the Gospel never, ever go down in value. In this period of mistrust, pain, and disorientation, we need to proclaim the words of the old hymn: “On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand; All other ground is shifting sand.”
