THE SECOND CONVERSION

October 18, 1992

8:30 and 11:00 a.m. Worship Services
John M. Buchanan

Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago

Scripture
Isaiah 58:6-9
Luke 16:14, 19-31

"Is not this the fast that I choose:... to share your bread with
the hungry...bring the homeless poor into your house;... Then
your light shall break forth like the dawn.

-Isaiah 58:6-8 (NRSV)

It would be neither faithful nor relevant to read that
passage of scripture this morning from a pulpit in Chicago,
Illinois and not mention the name Dantrell Davis.

If you are a guest from out of town and have not been read-
ing the Chicago papers and watching television, you may not know
that on Tuesday a first grader, seven-year-old Dantrell Davis
was shot and killed as his mother walked him to the Jenner EFle-
mentary School in the Cabrini Green housing complex - a few
blocks west of here. .

It's not that it never happened before. In fact, there is a
Sense in which it happens so much that people in Chicago cope
with it by not paying attention, by pushing it and all it repre-
sents, out of our thinking. And that is why it is not faithful
to read what I just read and not acknowledge it.

Dantrell was the third Jenner Elementary School student
killed since March of this year. 120 children under 18 years of
age have been shot and killed in Chicago this year. How do you
deal with that except by repressing it, denying it?

The city is talking about it at the moment. The Chicago Sun
Times, on the front page this time, told the story and in an
extraordinarily responsible gesture, asked the whole community to
become responsible for what happened and for the resolution to
the war which is raging on our streets.

Dantrell Davis was killed by a man who had in his possession
a very efficient weapon; a semi-automatic, military assault
rifle, equipped with a long distance scope which allows you to
see and to kill the enemy from distances of hundreds of yards.

People who care about Dantrell and the 119 other of our
children might begin by simply asking why, in the name of God, is
it that semi-automatic assault rifles with laser telescopic
Sights are available? Why, in the name of God, have we allowed

this nation, this beautiful city, to be turned into an armed
camp?

Of course, there are complex socio-economic reasons why
children of poverty die. And, of course, guns are not the reason
people turn to violence. But why, we might ask this morning,
have we made it so easy; and then when tragedy happens, why do we
avert our eyes? Dr, Morgan Simmons, our Organist and Choirmas-
ter, and the members of the morning choir have asked that their
Offertory Anthem become our Fourth Presbyterian Church Memorial

to Dantrell Davis and all the other children who have been
killed. , ,

Won't you take a few moments today and join me by writing
the National Rifle Association and pleading, in the name of God,
for that very powerful lobby to change its opposition to the
control and elimination from our streets of semi-automatic mili-
tary weapons? And then won't you write two senators and your
congressional representatives and the White House and urge sup-
port of the Brady Bill, a very modest measure, and beyond Brady,
serious gun control?

It was Mark Twain, you know, who said that he wasn't both-
ered by what he couldn't understand about the Bible. It was what
he understood perfectly well that really bothered him.

I have never preached on the passage of scripture which we
just heard. TI didn't consciously avoid it, but when it came up
in the Lectionary readings in the past, I found a convenient
reason not to use it. Perhaps my avoidance was not coincidental,
This story makes me very uncomfortable.

My discomfort was amplified by the death of Dantrell Davis,
and by a book a friend gave me. It is by the distinguished
economist and former editor of Fortune Magazine, John Kenneth
Galbraith. The title of the book is The Culture of Contentment.
The friend who sent it to me wrote inside the front cover: "I'm
sure you will read this with interest." He Was right. I did.
It was interesting and very disturbing. Galbraith makes no
illusions to the Bible or religion, but his book and the little
story Jesus told one day about a rich man and a poor man are
about the same thing.

Briefly, Galbraith maintains that American culture in the
past several decades has become a culture run by, and for, people
who have become comfortably contented. Their characteristics
are: one, a sense of entitlement - they deserve their affluence.

Two, the culture of contentment thinks consistently short term
rather than long term. Three, contented people regard government
programs to assist the less fortunate as an unnecessary burden,
but government subsidies and support of their own affluence, a
right. And contented people are amazingly tolerant of a new and
frightening income gap between rich people and poor people.

It is not a cheerful book. But it is an honest and incisive
book, and reading it at the same time I was working on Luke 16 in
preparation for this sermons was, to say the least, disturbing.

Now - let's take a look at the Luke material. There is no
topic: more important to Luke than the relationship between people
and their possessions. There is a lot in Luke about it. In the
Passage before us Jesus has just told a story about a creative
but unscrupulous manager and has admired his ingenuity. And then
said something striking: "You cannot serve God and wealth."

And the Pharisees, the religious and social elite, the
establishment, who were also relatively well-to-do - not weaithy
generally, but certainly not poor - the Pharisees scoffed at hin,
laughed, ridiculed him. "bia you hear that? An unemployed
carpenter telling us what's right and wrong about the economic
system. He'd do better to stick to religion."

They ridiculed him because they loved money, Luke says.

And it was that scoffing, I think, which prompts Jesus to
tell this disturbing little story. The characters are carica-
tures: a rich man, dressed in the finest Egyptian linen, dining
sumptuously daily, and a poor man, whose name is Lazarus, the
poorest of the poor, sick, helpless, lying in his own filth.
Both men die. The rich man is buried and goes to Hades where he
is tormented. Lazarus is carried by angels to the bosom of

Abraham. The rich man prays to God for mercy. "Send Lazarus so
that he can cool my tongue with a drop of water." Abraham re-
fuses. "At least send someone to warn my brothers," he pleads.

Abraham refuses. End of the story.

The trick is to understand it without disarming it. The
rich man seems to be guilty of some terrible offense simply
because he is rich. But that doesn't compute. Luke is not on
the topic of income equalization. There are people of means in
his Gospel, portrayed positively. In Luke, wealth can be used
creatively and helpfully. So there is something going on here
more complex than a simple condemnation of wealth.

Keep your eyes on those Pharisees who laughed at Jesus
because they love money. The story is for them. It is not a
description of heaven and hell, and it is not a critique of all
wealthy people. It isa sharp commentary on a group of misguided
people who were in the process of missing the glory and meaning

of their own lives... and the reason was their commitment to
their possessions - their contentment, if you will.

Professor Galbraith Says contented people are convinced that
they are entitled to their affluence. The Pharisees believed
that if you had it, you deserved it. And if you didn't have it,
you didn't deserve it. They could quote the Bible, the book of
Deuteronomy, to the effect that wealth was a sign of God's favor
and poverty a sure sign of God's judgment. The mind-set and
social system of which they were a part, over which they presid-
ed, in fact, assigned wealthy people to heaven and poor people to

hell on theological grounds, and then treated them consistently
with that theology.

One of the wonderful and important details about this story
is that the poor man is the only character in all the parables
Jesus told who has a name, Lazarus. And the reason is that the
culture did not have a name for him. The poor were intentionally
Marginalized, kept away from the Temple; for instance, Lazarus is
@ nhon-person, a statistic, an economic problem. And that — the
fact that these wealthy people don't even know his name, don't
care about his name, don't even acknowledge his membership in the
human family, and then use their religion to justify it - really
makes Jesus angry, I think. He wants to say something so shock-
ing it will get their attention, which he does, I think.

The love of money according to Jesus, not money, but the
love of money, is a kind of primal sickness, a complex condition
which affects all people,

I can still hear an aunt of mine Saying frequently to my
parents, "There's nothing wrong with me that a five pound box of
money wouldn't fix." Who doesn't think that way sometimes? One
of the more bizarre activities during time-out at a Bulls game
used to be a lucky person, chosen by lottery who was placed in a
glass booth; a fan was turned on and hundreds of dollar bills
were dropped into the booth and swirled and twirled wildly. The
idea was to snatch as much as you can in 60 seconds. It was
awful, but everybody watched because everybody wondered what that
might be like.

Those who look at the culture carefully seem to agree that
our materialism, our consumerism, our devotion to our toys, our
stuff, our possessions, is out of hand. There is an ad for’a
simulated car phone. If you can't afford a telephone for your
car, $5.00 will get you a simulated phone for use while you are
driving. In a fascinating Wall Street Journal interview recent-
ly, John Updike spoke about the spiritual emptiness he sees in
the heart of the nation.

Updike has written four novels about Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom
~ Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit at Rest.

Rabbit runs but never arrives; lives hard and fast, drinks and
eats too much, but is never satisfied. He is a victim, not of
limits, but of dreams. Updike says there is never enough for
him. Happiness, satisfaction, even God elude him. He says,
"Somewhere behind all this, there's something that wants me to
find it."

it's what's wrong with us, Updike believes, and he observed:

"The number of already very rich men who were
willing to commit crimes during the 80s to get
even richer proved there was not enough. Maybe
that's one of the words Americans have a very hard
time hearing: the word 'enough.!"

And then he made the observation so many others have made -
namely that there seems to be a relationship between material
abundance and spiritual emptiness.

T. S. Eliot wrote about it a generation ago:

"And the world shall say: Here were decent god-
less people. Their only monument the asphalt
road, and a thousand lost golf balls." [The
Rock]

Jesus said you can't love God and money.

If the moralists and preachers and novelists can't get our
attention, maybe the economists can.

Galbraith thinks we are headed for disaster, and its clear-
est symbol is a frightening new development: a greatly expanded,
seemingly permanent underclass; people who do not work, do not
vote, who have learned to live without hope for much change; who
have simply dropped out, or have been dropped out - a new caste
System. Galbraith calls it a secession from the nation, more
dangerous than the confederacy. And it is symbolized perhaps
most dramatically by an enormously increased crime rate. Basic,
minimal respect for law is gone. Alex Kotlowitz, talking to our
tutors two weeks ago said the frightening new twist to the recent
increase in gang activity in the projects is that while gangs
have always fought with one another and kept a respectful dis-
tance from the police, there now seems to be a general declara-
tion of war against the whole of society.

Love of money is a disease that affects those who have it
and those who don't, says New Testament scholar, Fred Craddock.
And Jim Wallis, pastor and community organizer in Washington,
D.C., describes the way the disease affects particularly the
poor. Looking out the window he observes:

"In our neighborhood children 8, 9, 10 years old
wear beepers. It is not because they are young
doctors or lawyers, but because drug dealers call
the children at play when a drug run has to be
made. Kids can make more ‘money in a day or week
than they can ever imagine,"

Wallis, who keeps the church and faith on the front lines,
observes:

"...the irony of the children of the poor pursuing
the same glitzy materialistic dream as the others,
in the quickest and perhaps only way open to
them... Ironically, highly paid entertainers and
athletes become the role models encouraging young
African-American children to reject the big money
they can make in drug traffic and settle for
minimum wage." [Envisioning the New City: A
Reader in Urban Ministry, p-. 52]

It irritated Jesus when people of privilege and influence,
intelligent people who knew how to get things done, refused to
use their power and influence for anything other than their own
amusement, or contentment. It irritated him, not only because it
was not fair to the unfortunate, the weak, the outsiders, but
more importantly it was responsible for spiritual emptiness in
their own lives. They weren't living very fully, actually. The
rich man in hell was his metaphor for a life lived without love
and compassion and caring for other human beings.

There is, that is to Say, a second conversion, in the Chris-
tian religion. To turn to Jesus, without - at the same time -
turning to your neighbor, is to miss the point. It is not to
turn fully to Jesus.

In an important new book, Truth to Tell, The Gospel as
Public Truth, Leslie Newbegin writes:

"From the beginning we are warned that what fol-
lows will require nothing less than a radical
conversion of the mind... a radical rearrangement
of our mental furniture."

I like that - conversion as a "radical rearranging of our
mental furniture." And may I presume to suggest that the mental
furniture that needs rearranging and which we most resist rear-
ranging, has to do with how we regard other people, particularly
the poor.

Howard Rice put it eloquently, I thought.

"Any experience of Christ that does not lead us to
share his passionate concern for others is misun-

derstood or simply imagined, no matter how power-

ful it may be." [Reformed Spirituality]

The Pharisees had missed it. They had become selective
readers of the Bible. Had they read on they would have encoun-
tered Isaiah:

"Is not this the fast I choose...

to let the oppressed go free...

to share your bread with the hungry...

to bring the homeless poor into your home...
when you see the naked to cover him."

Jesus gave the poor man a name. That was his point. The
religion and politics and economics of the Pharisees kept the
poor man anonymous ~- kept them from knowing him as a child of God
and denied him, robbed him of his God-given dignity. And this is
important - their attitude toward the poor kept them from seeing
Jesus Christ fully.

The Chicago Sun-Times urged readers to demand of politi-
cians, police, educators and clergy an accounting about Dantrell
Davis. So let me tell you that we try to give people names here.

That's what we ask one another to support with our prayers,
Our encouragement, our time and our money.

Tereatha Akbar, our Director of Educational Outreach and the
Tutoring Program, explained it this way:

"Sometimes," Mrs. Akbar said, "tutors become
discouraged. They are bright, well-educated,
highly motivated, full of optimism and altruism;
they sit down with their ten-year-old student from
Cabrini Green, start asking questions - 'How was
school today? What do you think about this? How
do you feel about that? Do you like math?! And
they get no response. 'Do you like sports, what
kind? Do you like rap music?! — a shrug of the
shoulders is all they get. They come to her and
they say, 'Mrs. Akbar, my student doesn't like me.
He or she wontt talk, won't even answer my ques—
tions. '"

And Mrs. Akbar patiently explains that for many of these
children, being asked a question, being asked an opinion or how
they feel about anything is a totally alien experience. In ten
years no one ever asked them about their feelings; no one ever
asked if they had feelings.

So tutoring, in addition to helping with reading and writing
and arithmetic, tries to help children know that they have names,
that they are valued, loved members of the human family, children
of God, even.

When a child was shot in Cabrini Green, 350 Fourth Presbyte-
rian Church tutors held their breath until they knew that it was

not their student. It is why we do what we do here - welcome
the homeless into our Social Service Center; and give jackets and
coats and underwear, and sandwiches... and it is why people from

this church go to the County Jail and tutor and the County Hospi-
tal to comfort and cheer. We are intentional in devising ways
for interaction between people to happen: 25 mothers of Tutoring
youngsters were guests for dinner in the Manse Friday; and on
Saturday mornings people gather here to go to Cabrini Green and
scrub and paint walls side by side with the people who live
there. One of the buildings in which we have worked was Dantrell
Davis' home. And it is why people go to Central America and
build houses and it is why we persist in asking one another to
give, and care, and share, and provide.

Why are we doing all this, I am asked on occasion. A visi-
tor from Great Britain was distressed by the frantic pace and the
constant pushing he experienced in this parish. I ask it myself.
Why not have a wonderful Sunday worship service with gorgeous
music and tell people that God loves them and that they are
beautiful and special, and let it go at that? It sounds very
good at times! And the reason we don't: the reason we seem
almost obsessive about outreach and mission: the reason there is
hardly a Sunday that we aren't asking you to give your money to
something, or volunteer your time for something: the reason is
that to not do it is to miss the power of the Gospel. To cast
the Gospel in one dimensional terms is to miss it altogether. To
proclaim God's inclusive love for us without proclaiming the
inclusive, passionate love for others to which God's love calls
us is to cheat ourselves.

The Second Conversion...

The first is that time, that moment, or hour, or year, or
that process which began long ago and continues to evolve, by
which we came to know Jesus Christ, came to terms with a God who
loves us as a mother and father love their own children and, as a
parent, who wants us to be and become all we can be, wants much,
much more for us than contentment; a God who longs for relation-
ship; a God who comes into our lives with creative energy and
looks for ways to heal and reconcile, forgive and make us
whole; sometimes a shattering experience, more often a quiet
growing over the years, but always - for all of us - almost
indescribably profound.

And the Second Conversion...having turned inward, to meet
the Lord of our heart and soul, now turning outward with our

hands and arms open, to meet our neighbor, to meet particularly
the one who needs us.

And in the turning - to come alive, to know that we do God's
will; in love and service, to be what God created us to be; to
know the name of the one who needs us; to never rest, never be
content until the day when all God's children have names, when
there is peace and freedom and justice and fullness of life for

all; that day, the prophet promised, when your light shall break
forth like the dawn.