have mercy upon us,
for we have had more than enough
of contempt.
Our soul has had more than its fill
of the scorn of those who are at ease,
of the contempt of the proud.
When I read these final verses of Psalm 123, it struck me that they sound a bit like some of the voices in "Occupy Wall Street," a loosely organized and varied movement that is spreading beyond NYC. And while the movement contains varied viewpoints and agendas, I suspect that many would agree with the final line about having all they can take "of the scorn of those who are at ease, of the contempt of the proud."
Regardless of how one feels about street protests and civil disobedience, the Wall Street protesters have raised serious questions about whether or not the powers that be in this country have the best interests of typical citizens at heart. Have governments and corporations lost sight of a shared social contract in which we all are participants?
It is difficult to give easy "Yes" or "No" answers to such questions. There are corporations, for instance, that do not lay off workers even when there is not enough work for them to do, that maintain a payroll larger than some business models say are efficient because they feel an obligation to their employees as well as their investors. But of course there are corporations that view employees as little more than "resources," things to use when it is beneficial to the company and to discard when that benefit is ended. And one can find a similar wide range of thinking regarding run of the mill citizens among politicians, political parties, government workers, and so on.
But what does God think of all this? Is God more offended by what some label the disruptive, chaotic aspects of Occupy Wall Street? Or is God more upset by growing numbers of the poor and children who are hungry, by the perceived need to cut social services to the most needy while corporations are enjoying record profits? I think these questions much easier to answer than my previous question about the social contract. There simply is no question whose side God is on when it comes to the poor, the needy, the oppressed, and the victims of injustice. And for all our culture's worship of wealth, Jesus is equally clear that it is the single most likely thing to come between us and the new day God will bring.
One of the perennial problems with religion is that it inevitably is co-opted into helping maintain the status quo. The notion that Jesus stood for the status quo is hard to entertain seriously, yet the history of the Church features a regular rhythm of the faith becoming captive to the powers that be followed by a movement of the Spirit that helps the faith break free. The Protestant Reformation began as such a movement, and it produced radical changes, some within the Roman Catholic Church itself. The Civil Rights Movement was largely a faith movement where the Spirit guided people such as Martin Luther King, Jr. to challenge the status quo.
Predicting where the Spirit will blow next is more than difficult. But there is no doubt that the wind is blowing. Even within evangelical Protestant movements, the idea that God is simply for personal morality or purity, and not about good news to the poor, is being seriously challenged.
All religious people like to think that God is on their side. I'm certainly no different on that. And very often, we deal with this in terms of our theology and practice. Do we understand the Bible correctly and do we live in ways that conform with this? To a certain extent, this is unavoidable, but I wonder if we wouldn't often do better to think about this a bit differently. What if we simply identified those Jesus says that God favors, and then aligned ourselves with them. Jesus says that God favors the poor, the meek, those who long for a better world, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted because they try to create a better world, and so on. God is on these folk's side, says Jesus.
What about us?
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