Reflections on Bill Moyer's Speech at the UCC 50th General Synod
July 15, 2007
by Mark Clark
When Briget called and asked if I would bring this part of the message this morning she suggested, jokingly I think, that I tell you about how Bill Moyers spoke about Thomas Jefferson stoking the breast and caressed the thigh of his slave Sally Hemmings. But I’m not going to because I want you to read his whole speech on the UCC website and I figure that line alone may get you to it.
What I want to do this morning is share with you the end of Moyers hour long very moving (to me anyway) speech about what has been happening in our collective life together as Americans in the last few decades.
Moyers spoke eloquently about what we have gotten right and what we have gotten wrong and I think it is safe to say he thinks increasingly our society is getting it wrong, especially when it come to how we deal with wealth, privilege and power.
He recount the disturbing statistics about the concentration of wealth and the power it brings in our society, and about divide between the very wealthy and the rest of us.
And, as any of us who heard him can tell you, he made the case very powerfully, but you will need to read the speech to get, as he called it, “the argument.”
What I’m going to share with you is what he called the altar call. He noted, “You can take the boy out of the Baptist, but you can't take the Baptist out of the boy.”
One morning, Moyers recounted, he and his wife Judith had arrived early at New York's Riverside Church. In the quietness of the hour, he picked up a Bible from the pew, and opened it randomly to the Gospel of Matthew, where the story of Jesus of Nazareth unfolds, chapter by chapter. The birth at Bethlehem, the baptism in the River Jordan, the temptation in the wilderness, the sermon on the mount, the healing of the sick and the hungry, the parables, the calling of the disciples, the journey to Jerusalem and always embedded like pearls throughout the story, the teachings of compassion, forgiveness and reconciliation. In these pages, he noted, we are in the presence of one who clearly understands the power of love, the joy of mercy, and the healing of kindness.
But suddenly, as he was reading he said he noticed that the story turned. Jesus' demeanor changes. The tone and temper of the narrative shifts, and the Prince of Peace suddenly becomes a Disturber of the Peace. "Then Jesus went into the temple of God, and drove out all those who had bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers, and he said to them, 'It is written, my house shall be called, A House of Prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.
No cheek turned there. Moyers noted No second mile traveled. On the contrary, Jesus turns angry. He passes judgment. And he takes action.
Moyers said he closed the Bible, and sat there, and that morning, he didn't hear what (the Preacher) Jim Forbes was saying. Because he was turning the text over and again in his head, absorbing the image of Jesus striding through the Holy Precinct that had been transformed into a market place or stock exchange, upsetting the dealers, scattering their money across the floor, bouncing them forcefully from the temple, indignant at a profane violation of the sacred – Jesus threw the rascals out
And sitting ... sitting in the pew that morning, Moyers told us he thought of what he had been saying to us earlier in his speech that Saturday morning at Synod, of how in the past generation the number of the poor has increased, wages have fallen, health and housing costs have exploded, and wealth and media have become more and more concentrated; that prophetic religion has lost its voice and the religious right has drowned out everyone else, and they have hijacked Jesus. The very Jesus who stood in his hometown and proclaimed, "The Lord has anointed me to preach the Good News to the poor." The very Jesus who told 5,000 hungry people that all, that not just the people in the box seats, would be fed. The very Jesus who challenged the religious orthodoxy of the day by feeding the hungry on the Sabbath, who offered kindness to the prostitute and hospitality to the outcast, who said "The Kingdom of Heaven belongs to little children," who raised the status of women, and treated even the hated tax collector like a citizen of the Kingdom.
The indignant Jesus who drove the money changers from the temple has been hijacked, and turned from the friend of the dispossessed, into a guardian of privilege, a militarist, a hedonist, a lobbyist... sent prowling the halls of Congress in Gucci shoes seeking tax breaks and loopholes for the powerful, costly new weapons systems and punitive public policies for people without political power.
Yet it was this very Jesus, Moyers went on to note, the Jesus aroused by indignation when the sacred was profaned. It was this Jesus who inspired a Methodist ship caulker named Edward Rogers to crusade across New England for an eight hour day; who called Frances Williams to rise up against the sweatshop; who sent Dorothy Day to march alongside auto workers in Michigan, brewery workers in New York and marble cutters in Vermont; who roused E.B. McKinney and Owen Whitfield to stand against the Mississippi oligarchy that held sharecroppers in servitude; who summoned the young priest named John Ryan ten years before the New Deal to champion child labor laws, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage and decent housing for the poor; and summoned Martin Luther King to Memphis to march with the Sanitation Workers, the garbage workers, in their search for justice.
My friends, Moyers told us, they say your (our) church is ... dying. 1.2 million against the Southern Baptists 16 million and growing. They say your (our) church is ... lame, and limp, and liberal. And they're coming after you (us). Read the book recently done about how the Institute for Religion and Democracy is after your local congregations. (BTW that book is co-authored by a dear friend of your pastor, UCC minister John Dorhauer) But you know ... they don't take on people they're not afraid of. And it is a small, committed, determined People of Conscience who can turn this country around, Moyers reminded us!
Please, please ... listen he called upon us ... And listen, this new struggle for a just world – it's not a partisan affair. God is not a liberal or conservative. God is not a Democrat or Republican. She may be a Baptist, he said. But to see whose side God is on, just go to the record. It's the widow and the orphan, the stranger and the poor who are blessed in the eyes of God. It is kindness and mercy that prove the power of faith, and it's justice that measures the worth of the state, not empire. Kings are held accountable for how the poor fare under their reign; Presidents, too. Prophets speak to the gap between rich and poor as a reason for God's judgment. Poverty and justice are religious issues, and Jesus moves among the disinherited.
For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was naked and you gave me clothing. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me.
Then the righteous will answer him, "Lord, when was it we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?
AMEN
And the Lord will answer them, "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these, who are members of my family, you did it to me.
This, Moyers closed, is the Jesus who drove the money changers out of the temple of Jerusalem, and it is this Jesus called back to duty who will drive the money changers out of the temples of democracy.
Moyers' speech can be read by clicking the link below
http://www.ucc.org/news/significant-speeches/moyers-challenges-ucc-drive.html