Sunday, March 15

Featured Reading: Psalm 19

While we pastors may not have an abundance of many things in life, there is one thing that we are NEVER lacking: invitations to attend things. We get invitations to attend open houses, invitations to attend workshops, invitations to attend meetings, and – if we’re really lucky –invitations to share a meal with someone. You name it, and we get invited to it.

Now it doesn’t take new pastors long to figure out that if you are going to survive in this thing called ministry, you have to develop a system to sort through all those invitations. So we do. My system goes something like this. Invitations that come from within the congregation go into a stack I call Pile Number One. Invitations that come from one of the denominational bodies we are affiliated with go in Pile Number Two. Invitations that come to us from the community at large find their way into Pile Number Three.

In a good week, a pastor will be lucky enough to accept invitations from all three piles. During Lent, however, there is no such thing as a good week – since our schedules are stretched to the max. Consequently, I’m lucky if I’m able to even think about dipping into Pile Two at all.

Ten days ago, however, I received an invitation to attend a Pile Three event that caught my eye. The invitation was to a lecture titled “Wage Theft in America”. Since I deeply respected the individual who invited me and had heard great things about the presenter, I decided to throw caution to the wind and attend the Pile Three event.

I walked into the lecture hall last Wednesday expecting to spend the hour listening to statistics about all of the economic injustices that were being perpetuated upon workers in the land, so I found myself a little crabby at the outset. And while there were a few key statistics that got bandied about early in the presentation, the speaker got my attention by throwing about something I wasn’t expecting – stories. Of all the stories she shared, one stood out more than any other. It was the story of a group of twenty-one developmentally disabled men who – at the start of our story - lived near Abilene, Texas.

A food processing plant whose headquarters were located nearby heard about the facility and decided they had an opportunity that could supposedly benefit both their company and the developmentally disabled men. So the plant reached an agreement with the facility housing the men to ship them up to a small town in Iowa – Atalissa, Iowa to be exact - where they could spend their days working productively.

In order to house the men, the plant rented a 108-year old school house from the city for just $600 a month. Now you might wonder why renting the school house was so cheap. Well, it was because the school house was in total disrepair. The boiler, for instance, had given out back in 2002. No problem. The plant managers simply boarded the windows with plywood and bought space heaters to warm the men who were housed there.

Of course on most days the men weren’t on the premises long enough to get too cold. Each morning around 2:30 AM, the disabled men would be roused from their sleep so they could get on a bus and be transported to their jobs in the city where they started work by 4:30 AM. Most days they didn’t return “home” until after dark.

To make matters worse, the managers decided since the company housed, transported, and then fed the men that it was only right to take a little out of their paychecks to cover the expenses. $500 a month was taken out of each man’s check to pay for housing; another $600 was taken for what managers ironically called kind care. Even the Social Security Checks written to the disabled men found their way into the company’s pockets. So you know how much was left in each disabled man’s paycheck after a grueling month’s work? Roughly $65.

The situation would have continued had it not been for one thing: the law. And of all things that could have brought down the operation, it just so happened that it was Iowa State’s Department of Public Safety that put an end to things due to the condition of the school house.

As the group of clergy and community leaders processed the story, we were thankful that laws were in place that allowed such a racket to be shut down. The presenter immediately reminded us of the limitations of the law. She noted, for instance, that due to lack of funding for investigators – for every violation that is found there are dozens that go undiscovered. She also noted that by time the case works its way through the legal system, it will be years before any restitution might be paid to those victimized by the plant.

As I walked away from the lecture, there was a part of me that wondered, “Just what good is the law anyway if it continues to allow such things to happen?”

Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly thrilled when I got home that afternoon and sat down to begin work on this week’s service. For the theme of this week’s service was what? That’s right. The law. And if the subject itself wasn’t bad enough, this week’s theme had to go one step further and talk about the beautiful law!

Yeah, right!

As I began to dig into the Psalm, however, I began to notice a shift in how the Scripture invited me to think about this thing called law – or Torah. Let me see if I can help you understand that shift.

You see as I looked back on the story I heard earlier that morning, I realized that laws created by human beings are about accomplishing one thing: controlling our behavior. They either tell us what we can - or what we can’t - do. That’s about it.

God’s law, on the other hand, moves far beyond simple do’s and don’ts.

In explaining the central message of this morning’s psalm, J Clinton McCann, Jr. began by noting there is one – and only one – thing that makes life as we know it possible.

That thing?

Our relatedness to God.

And that relatedness comes to us – among other things - through the law – for it “enables [us] to live in harmony with God and with the whole of creation” (New Interpreter’s Bible 752).

As I sat McCann’s words, I realized my attitude toward the law had begun to shift. I began to let go of my sense that the law was either a tool designed to get me to do what other people wanted me to do, or an instrument used to punish me when I failed to do what others wanted me to do. From God’s perspective, the law was about something else: it was about helping me live in right relationship with God and with my neighbor.

“According to the psalmist,” McCann wrote, “the God whose sovereignty is proclaimed by cosmic voices is the God who has addressed a personal word to humankind – God’s Torah. Furthermore,” McCann concluded, “this God is experienced ultimately by humankind not as a cosmic [code] enforcer but as a forgiving next of kin! God is love, and love is the force that drives the cosmos” (New Interpreter’s Bible 753).

Friends, as we live into these culminating days of Lent – days that will move our focus from the Torah to the cross, the empty tomb, and beyond – I ask you to remember those simple words from Mr. McCann that spell out our foundational truth as Christians: “God is love, and love is the force that drives the cosmos.” For those are words that can not only direct your behaviors – they are words that can put hope back into our hearts.

May each of us here this morning go forth with a renewed sense of commitment to live as law-abiding residents of God’s kin-dom.

Amen