"God's Year to Act"

A sermon for a service of U2charist sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan, Journey of Faith Church, and Christ Episcopal Church, and held at Christ Episcopal Church in Dearborn, Michigan, June 16, 2007

Isaiah 58:6-12; Psalm 40:1-11; 2 Corinthians 8:1-15; Luke 4:14-21

It’s great to be back in Michigan, where I’ve got good friends, new friends, and a great deal of history. I was born in Southfield, just a few miles from here, but I spent my teenage years in Los Angeles. And like a lot of people in sunny southern California, I learned to surf. I loved it, but wasn’t at all good at it, especially at first. I got a lot better almost instantly, though, when I finally got one insight that’s absolutely fundamental for surfing.

I imagine that even if you haven’t surfed yourself, you’ve seen enough surfing in movies and such to know pretty much how it goes: You take your surfboard to the beach. You paddle out to where the swells are forming. When a swell comes along that looks like it’s going to be a good wave, you start paddling. Once you’ve caught the wave, you can stand up and ride it.

There’s a common misconception, though, among beginning surfers about the role of paddling in that process. When I first tried surfing, I thought that it was the force of my paddling that propelled the board such that I could catch a wave. The harder I was finding it to catch a wave, the more frantically I paddled. I ended up with very sore shoulders and hardly any rides. Then I started to think what propelled the board was a current in the water, and I got very frustrated not being able to find this magical current on any given wave.

But then finally someone explained to me what really propels your board in surfing. It’s GRAVITY. A wave is a moving hill, and as long as you’re on a slick surface pointed downhill, you’re going to slide forward. Catching a wave is just a matter of lining yourself up with the wave so that you’re pointed downhill, and continuing to ride it is just a matter of pointing your board just close enough to parallel to the shore so that as the wave continues to break, you continue sliding downhill without reaching the bottom.

In other words, surfing is basically well-planned falling. It’s aligning yourself with what’s going on in the ocean and with the forces operating in the world -- gravity, friction, and so on -- such that the most natural way forward becomes an exhilarating ride. I still pretty much suck at surfing, so I’ve only caught that perfect ride a couple of times, but I can say even based on those couple of times that it’s an amazing feeling. You’re in touch with these elemental forces, and there’s something that feels very wild and powerful about that, but being aligned with them, there’s also something profoundly peaceful about it. Noise and distractions, including all of those self-conscious thoughts and anxieties, melt away into one feeling of "YES"!

I’d say that there’s no feeling like it in the world, except that I believe there is. Engaging God’s mission of justice for the poor can feel a lot like it. Let me put it this way:

The perfect wave is starting to swell in this world, and being aligned with it is one heck of a ride.

What do I mean by that? Take a look at the Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs. Eight points:
1) Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
2) Achieve universal primary education.
3) Promote gender equality and empower women.
4) Reduce child mortality.
5) Improve maternal health.
6) Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.
7) Ensure environmental sustainability.
8) Develop a global partnership for development.

Eight points to change the world. And we’re talking about a big change. Here’s how things are now in this world. Right now, more than a billion of the world’s people live on less than a dollar a day. Right now, one child every three seconds -- 30,000 children a day, 11 million children a year -- die of preventable diseases. Half a million women die every year while giving birth. 2.6 billion people don’t have access to basic sanitation that would allow them to stay healthy. I will never forget the images of those caught in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and I never want to forget that there are billions of people in the world for whom every day of their lives is like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

It’s what Bono, U2’s lead singer, calls “stupid poverty,” because it could be eliminated if just seven-tenths of one percent more of the wealth of the richest nations went toward sensible development in the poorest. Stupid poverty. It’s stupid because we let all of this heartbreak happen when it wouldn’t happen if we put our hearts and our heads together.

Right now, the U.S. spends more than THIRTEEN TIMES more on defense than on aid. Right now, our government is not fulfilling the commitments it made previously. Americans are generous in their charitable giving, but only two percent of Americans’ charitable giving goes outside the borders of the U.S., and we tend to give it haphazardly, when someone asks, or when a crisis reaches our T.V.s. A recent study by Claude Rosenberg and Tim Stone (Note 1) showed that if U.S. citizens budgeted in charitable giving to address the Millennium Development Goals -- if we figured out what we could afford and gave it regularly, instead of writing a check haphazardly, as someone asked for it -- American charitable giving would go up by ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS a year.

One hundred billion. I’m not a numbers person myself. That sounds awfully abstract. So how about this:

Nineteen billion dollars a year between now and the year 2015 could ELIMINATE starvation and malnutrition from this world.

Twelve billion dollars a year between now and the year 2015 could give every child in this world an education through primary school.

Fifteen billion dollars a year from now through the year 2015 would provide access to clean water and sanitation for everyone in this world.

Nineteen plus twelve plus fifteen. That’s forty-six billion dollars a year -- less than HALF of what planning to give and following through with those plans would generate if every American did that.

If we make that commitment and follow through on it, then, in the year 2015, everyone gets enough nutritious food to eat. Everyone gets access to clean water. And every child gets an education, EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD. Three of those eight goals met with American people like you and me planning to give what we can and then following through on those plans. And then there’s what would happen if our government followed through on the commitments it’s already made. Just seven-tenths of a percent more in intelligent, coordinated aid for development -- in putting our hearts and heads together -- and the Millennium Development Goals are more than achievable.

I’m going to turn 45 in the year 2015. Most of us in this room will still be around then. And I would love to come back here in the summer of 2015 for a party where all of us can get together and say, “Hey, remember when we all got together and sang U2 songs all night? Yeah, and we decided to join this movement -- to step up, to tell our friends, to call our senators and our representatives? Remember back in 2007, when we said we were going to have this party in eight years?”

And then we can lean over to any kids at that party who are too young to remember what it was like in 2007, and we can say, “You know, there was poverty then. Back then, there were kids who died of malaria because they didn’t have a $3 mosquito net. In 2007, there were girls who couldn’t go to school because they had to spend all day carrying water from the river, and back then people got sick from drinking the only water they had to drink after all that work.” And there are going to be some kids at that party in 2015 who are going to say, “NO WAY,” because they live in a world in which none of those things happen any more, and they just don’t remember that they ever did.

That is going to be some party, sisters and brothers. That is going to be some party all over the world, where every one of us can tell the story of what it was like then, and what you did -- and what you did -- what all of us did -- that changed the world forever.

So I hope you don’t mind if right now I invite myself to that party in 2015. I hope you’ll invite yourself to it right now too. And I hope that you and I will spend the next eight years inviting everyone who will listen to that party. Can I get an Amen?

That’s what I’m talking about. That’s the wave we’re going to ride. In our gospel for tonight’s service, we heard Jesus telling everyone in his hometown synagogue what his mission in the world was. He said:

God's Spirit is on me;
he's chosen me to preach the Message of good news to
the poor,
Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and
recovery of sight to the blind,
To set the burdened and battered free,
to announce, "This is God's year to act!"

God’s Spirit is on me, because God has chosen me to preach the message of good news to the poor. Christ’s mission in the world. This is what God does in the world when God becomes flesh and dwells among us. Christ’s mission.

And we -- you and you and you and I -- are the Body of Christ. We are the very body of Jesus in the world. We have on us the Spirit that Jesus sent to every one of us. That’s why I know that when you hear what God is doing in the world -- what Good News for the poor there is -- there’s a part of you that feels the excitement of that perfect wave when it starts to swell. Here it comes. There’s a part of you that says, “YES!” You are the Body of Christ in the world. God’s Spirit is on you because God has chosen you to bring good news to the poor. Chosen YOU. Anointed YOU. Given YOU the gifts of the Spirit to prophesy -- to speak truth to power, to invite everyone you know and even people you don’t know, or don’t know yet, to that party we are going to have on that day when every one of us can say, “the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing!” YOU are the Body of Christ, chosen and gifted to ride the wave of the mission of Christ in the world. What can one person do? I don’t know, but I know what the One Body of Christ can do because God’s Spirit is upon you. It requires your generosity and it requires your voice. But this isn’t momentum that you have to create by yourself with frantic occasional paddling. This is a WAVE, and what your calls and your letters and your generosity are going to do is line you up to ride it.

God’s Spirit is upon you because God has chosen you to bring Good News to the poor.

That’s what the invitation to this party looks like, and I want to invite every person here right now to invite one or two of the people around you to it. I want to invite you to turn to someone next to you, put your hand on their shoulder if you both feel comfortable with that, to look that person in the eye, and say:
God’s Spirit is upon you because God has chosen you to bring Good News to the poor.
Right now.

[The congregation does this.]

God’s Spirit is upon me because God has chosen me to bring Good News to the poor.

Write that on a note and put it on your bathroom mirror to see in the morning and at night. Put it in your wallet to see when you pull out a credit card. Send a note to your friends from this service in a few weeks to remind them. Pick up the information from the ONE Episcopalian campaign. Pick it up, plan to line yourself up to ride this wave, follow through, and ride it!

This is God’s year to act! Surf's up!

Thanks be to God.

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Notes:

1 - "A New Take on Tithing," Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall 2006

Sarah Dylan Breuer coined the term "U2charist" and, with the Without Walls network for alternative liturgy in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, created the first U2charist service, held in April of 2004 in Baltimore, Maryland.