This sermon was delivered by Pastor Kirsten Klepfer on Sunday, August 31, 2008.
Exodus 3:1-6; Romans 12:9-18; Matthew 16:21-28
This is the final week of a four-part sermon series on the economy. This is also, of course, the day before Labor Day. That was entirely accidental, but it seems fitting to be ending right before the holiday that was originally established to create more humane and just working conditions by putting humans at the heart of the economic system. Tomorrow, many people will have picnics, relax with family, sleep in, and find other ways to celebrate this holiday. But, in this time of economic difficulty, it feels more like a bitter sweet holiday. In an age of globalization and powerful forces that seem beyond our capacity to affect, what should Labor Day be about now? How can we find ways to put humanity and justice ahead of profits and bottom lines? What is our role as Christians? Good questions to ask this weekend.
But, maybe you are like me. Maybe in the face of arguments for and against “globalization”, you feel completely inadequate in sorting out what and who is right. It all seems so complicated and over my head. I find myself not knowing what to think, yet I realize that the forces of globalization affect us all – and not just a little bit. So I feel compelled to understand it and find ways to engage the issue as a Christian.
At its best, economic globalization is the effort to integrate national economies into one international economy through trade, foreign investment, capital flow and the spread of technology. Or so says one definition I found. And, in a more general sense, what follows from economic globalization is a utopic social system where all are one and free and borders are diminished. As such, it is easy to understand why some think this is a worthy, if not necessary, goal. Our world is getting smaller and smaller through technology and travel; it no longer makes sense to be isolated economically.
But, we have also seen some of the pitfalls of globalization. We see people in our own community and church lose jobs that are sent to other countries where labor is cheaper and overhead is dramatically less. We see, in many ways, a race to the bottom in terms of lowering the cost of production, regardless of the human cost. People are unable to make enough to live on, and many are left jobless and without health insurance, scrambling to pick up the pieces and find something else – which is becoming more and more difficult.
So, as Christians, should we be in favor of globalization or opposed to it? Should we be celebrating things like NAFTA, or should we be protesting the World Trade Organization meetings? It is difficult to argue against policies that are meant to unite the world and share resources. At the same time it is difficult to support this effort when it seems to be destroying local, independent cultures and markets. So which is it?
Well that’s the problem. Such choices assume that there is a dichotomy between local and global; that globalization and particularization are opposites. Any attempts at curbing or furthering globalization based on this dichotomy will be doomed one way or the other. But I think our faith has something to offer a world in desperate need of a third way. Namely, in Christ there is no dichotomy between global and local, between particular and universal.
When we live in God, with God at the center, the dichotomy that fuels a failed system disappears. Why does this change things? What difference can it make to put this God at the center of our economics? Let’s first take a closer look at the inevitable problems that arise when we don’t do this.
When either the local is sacrificed to the global or the global to the local, someone loses. And on one hand, we deprive the particular when we demand conformity to this new global economy. Last week, we talked about how, in the free market as it is understood today, people are not really free because – absent shared, communal values – each economic decision simply becomes a battle of wills and wants and at the end of the day, what matters most is sheer power. Globalization – as it exists – amplifies this exponentially.
The free market lacks concern for local cultures and practices. And globalization not only lacks this concern, but it assumes the local is less important than the universal goods of capitalism and democracy. Through our power – those of us who believe our economy is not just good for us but will be good for all – we force change in others by punishing those not willing to conform.
It’s easy to see the results of this crowding out of local cultures by just driving from one coast of our country to the other. It is becoming more and more difficult to distinguish one place from another. You see the same restaurants, the same stores, the same malls, the same housing developments. And this doesn’t stop anymore at the edges of this country. It is getting harder to travel the world without seeing the early stages of the same phenomenon. McDonalds and KFC are in communities that had virtually no similarities to ours prior to this global effort at spreading our economic virtue.
On the other hand, at the same time that we are pushing out local cultures by imposing universal sameness, almost paradoxically we are retaining a veneer of unique local culture by exploding the particular and commodifying it. In the sophisticated world of global economies and the ability to be anywhere, in any country or culture in a matter of hours, not months, and with the whole world at our finger tips, we have found ways to turn other cultures and ethnicities into commodities. We assume that consumption of these things connects us to diverse people all over the world – expanding who we are while ignoring that consuming culture by definition takes the local out of it and makes it universal – nondistinct. Then, our perceived connection to others through these purchases – including purchasing experiences as tourists – end up being thin. Worse, they become a substitute for actual solidarity and action.
A white kid in Illinois can listen to reggae music and in doing so think himself to be in solidarity with the poor of Jamaica. But, no matter how much we think we are connected to others, virtual solidarity through consumption of culture offers no concrete results. Consumption is substituted for political action. We merely bring the distinct parts of a community’s culture into our economic system, and dilute them in the sea of sameness.
Like culture, capital has lost any attachment to time and place – or person for that matter. We see this, as I mentioned before, in our labor capital when jobs are distressingly mobile. But it is true of financial capital as well. Financial systems now transcend time and place and currency can move in an instant from one place to another, affecting the wealth and poverty of any one place at the mere whims and wishes of a small number of people.
And finally, because it seems like the only other option, in response to the overwhelming conforming power of globalization and the explosion of the particular until nothing has value or meaning, we find those who believe the only way to fight this is by asserting particularity over universal and making it the only thing that has meaning. The one particular expression becomes the only true universal expression, and we fight to the death for this. Whether that particular thing is religion, or democracy, or fast food, fundamentalism is one dangerous result of a system based on a dualism of global and local.
Our God, the God that both transcends time and space and is fully attached to each particular location, time and things offers a way beyond the dichotomy that currently drives economic policy. We know there is an alternative way to build global communities that neither collapse the particular into the universal nor fiercely asserts the particular over and against any attempts at uniting diverse peoples into one global community.
And, like so much of the Christian faith and life, the way to do this is counter-intuitive. And it is definitely counter-cultural; at least it is counter to the dominant culture in which we all live. And probably we, like Moses encountering God at the burning bush in order to get his marching orders, we know that living from a relationship with the concrete universal God will require bold and great things from us ordinary people. Moses’ intuition told him that an encounter with God would change his life. What happened in this meeting was that the God that Moses understood as universal, creator and removed was present to him in extreme particularity. Here was God, face-to-face literally with Moses. It doesn’t get anymore local than that.
Interestingly, Peter had almost the opposite experience, yet the same realization of a God that is both local and universal. Peter finds, in the words of Jesus, the unexpected universal in this concrete person and friend. He sees only the possibilities for this one person, but Jesus makes it clear that it is not finally just about him – just about them. He must die so that the whole world can rise with him. His particularity must be infused with the universal. For both of these people, Moses and Peter, this encounter is jarring and gives them more than pause – it makes them retreat at first.
Jesus, through his very local life in Palestine, calls us to reinvent how we live in relationship to each other. And then, as he approaches the cross and the universalizing event of the resurrection, he tells us we must reinvent how we live in relationship to our own lives and in relationship to all those who come after. We have to lose our lives as individuals, seeking only our current goals. In that life is gained – life for all, life for Christ.
And so for the fourth time in four sermons on economics, we are drawn back to the communion table – our symbol of the concrete universal, of the gathered body of Christ in Jesus, and Jesus in this gathering. Each gathering of people who share communion is not merely a part of a whole, as if Christ could be divided into parts, like a commodity that is finite and can be offered only until the pieces are all gone. Each community is a microcosm, a mini-cosmos in which the universal Christ is wholly present. The closer one is attached to the particular community gathered around one particular table, the more united one becomes to the universal.
In this way, God’s community and economy can only be made real in concrete local practices. For it is in the encounter with the other persons that the whole Christ is encountered; in the concrete, not the abstract. As William Cavenaugh puts it, “the call to Christians is not so much either to embrace or try and replace abstractions such as capitalism and globalism with other abstractions. It is rather to sustain forms of economy, community and culture that recognize the universality of the individual person.”
Paul’s vision is the model of such a community. Paul is writing to one community in Rome, but he understands what is at stake in this community living according to the Christ-centered values he lays out beautifully. He knows that he is writing to Rome, which at the same time is the church universal – the ekklesia, as he calls it. The ekklesia is the entire gathered people. It is whole, and this church is not a part of that whole, but is the same as it.
One could argue that in these few verses of Paul’s we are given a charge to construct communities that operate quite differently from the world community we see in a global economy. It is not a call to either accept it or reject it. It is to step out altogether and not buy the assumptions.
And the implications of this are huge – and they are small, little steps each day in very particular, very local ways. We need to be in community together…closely. Not just coming here once a week, but sharing our economic lives as well. Almost like building an economy right here among us; an economy in Christ where each person is seen as universal and each transaction is a chance to meet the universal Christ.
Recently, in a very organic way – meaning necessity breeds creativity J, I entered into an economic agreement with a friend where we are exchanging laundry facilities for child care. It sounds small, almost silly. Yet, there is no reason in the world that two people who know each other and live minutes apart should both have a full washer and dryer. At the same time, building someone into the fabric of my and my daughter’s life who will be there when we need can be nothing but good. I’m able to not buy people to offer the commodity of care for my daughter. Instead, we share in life in concrete ways that builds a mini-economy where we all flourish.
And the question for us as a congregation is what can we do – literally economically – to offer each other, and so also the universe, a third way? We already do some things; sharing produce and certainly the practice of sharing our money each Sunday not just with each other but with a ministry and mission is counter-cultural. But, what else can we do. How might we be a bit more brave and bold?
They might be small, little ways, yet a huge step off the cliff of cultural norms. As pastor and theologian Sarah Dylan points out – well, really as Jesus lays it out to Peter – “there is a price to pay for defying these cultural mandates, and though it’s often miniscule in comparison to the price Jesus paid…it’s going to feel like a steep one for those of us accustomed to privilege. As we follow Jesus, things will change – us, our relationships, our world. Change means losing things as they were, but if we’ve caught Jesus’ vision for how God is redeeming the world, we know that what we gain is of far greater value that anything we might lose.” Amen.
