Hebrew Scripture Reading—Zechariah 7: 1-12
Jaime Silahua is a handyman who works hard to support his partner and their three children. He is an active member of his church and can frequently be found doing various maintenance tasks around it. In 2007, Jaime’s 15-year-old son Erick was diagnosed with leukemia. The months that followed would throw his family not only into the hardships of fighting this disease but also into the hardships of fighting for their home. Jaime’s family lives in a “one-story, ranch-style” house. They bought it seven years ago for $281,000 on a 30-year fixed interest loan. A week before this past Christmas, however, they were notified by the bank that their home would be going into foreclosure due to falling behind on mortgage payments. Jaime had earlier sought to have his mortgage modified but his lender denied his petition because his income fell $220 short of the required amount.
Less than a month ago Jaime was surrounded by a dozen supporters outside a courthouse. His priest was among those gathered. A local interfaith organization had helped bring everyone together. Inside the courtroom, Jaime’s supporters served as a “good cheering section” which was unique according to a bank attorney who had sat through nearly 7,000 eviction proceedings. On that day, Jaime received a partial victory. He was given a month extension before eviction. Still, on the 27th of this month, his family may suddenly find themselves homeless unless the bank rescinds the foreclosure and reinstates his mortgage.
The organization that rallied around Jaime at the courthouse is part of a national faith network called People Improving Communities through Organizing. Also known as PICO this organization connected Jaime’s plight to the plight of the millions like Jaime who have either experienced foreclosure already or are close to it. This past month Jaime joined a cross-country caravan to tell his story and call upon the government “ to take bolder action” in fighting foreclosures. The centerpiece of the caravan was a 45-passenger bus emblazoned with signs that read “Recovery Express.” The bus was filled with those who have suffered from the foreclosure crises. On Tuesday of this past week, the Recovery Express finally arrived on Capital Hill in Washington, D.C. One of their foremost aims was to encourage Congress to pass legislation that would reform the bankruptcy code and “give responsible homeowners the right to ask a bankruptcy judge to modify their loans if their banks refuse to work with them.” In particular, such a bankruptcy code would seek to protect “those who were victims of predatory lending.” Such an approach to our nation’s economic recovery would directly help those who have experienced a substantial brunt of our current crisis.
In our scripture reading for today, the Israelites are in a period of recovery. After having been evicted from Jerusalem and forced to live in Babylon, they have finally returned. They have finally arrived back at the house of God in Jerusalem, but what Zechariah soon discovers is that their hearts have not yet fully returned. They have been fasting but going through the motions. They have been doing the rituals but have been thinking more about themselves than about God. They have forgotten everything that the prophets told them in the past. It’s at this point that Zechariah tells them how to get back in touch with God. He points to an ancient version of the Recovery Express. He points to the people who were suffering the most during the recovery period. He points to the widows, the orphans, the strangers, and the poor. In failing to pay attention to the least of these, the people of Jerusalem had effectively shut their ears to God. Zechariah points out that living with justice, kindness, and mercy goes hand in hand with getting back in touch with the divine. Ultimately, Lent isn’t really about giving up cookies, cakes, and calories. It is about getting back in touch with a God who lives in the beating heart of justice and love.
Paying attention to widows, orphans, immigrants, and the poor may seem simple enough, but there are some obstacles. A columnist named Neil deMause recently wrote about the attention the poor receive or sometimes fail to receive. For instance, in the presidential debates the word poverty never surfaced. When poverty is given attention, it is not always the best attention. During the tail end of last year, one study showed that the media did run more poverty-related stories than the previous year, but as deMause observed, “More coverage…does not necessarily mean better coverage.” The common trend has been to focus on the newly poor, especially those with a middle class background. Middle class journalists identify with the plight of those of their own class who are experiencing unemployment insurance and food stamps for the first time. These are seen as the “deserving poor.” Meanwhile, little attention is given to the 37 million who were “already at or below the poverty line” when the crisis started. One historian notes that this distinction between those perceived as deserving and those perceived as undeserving has been around for a long time. The basic outlook has not changed as people have sought to distinguish between those who on the one hand are deemed “poor through no fault of their own, and therefore deserve our sympathy and our assistance” and those who on the other hand are deemed poor because they are dumb, lazy, or responsible for “too many babies.”
In confronting the stereotypes of the undeserving, a couple of points can be made. First, as the historian noted: “The people who are becoming newly poor [after] being laid off from businesses that are failing are not different than the people who were laid off two years ago. The only thing that’s unusual about it is the scale.” A second point to consider is that there is a difference between the misleading anecdote and the representative story. A misleading anecdote is the welfare queen who picks up her food stamps in a Cadillac. Even if one witnesses that with one’s very own eyes, it is still not representative of most people who receive food stamps. The story of Jaime, however, is a representative story in that there are a lot of people who face medical difficulties and medical costs and cannot make the mortgage payments they once made. Public policy should always be grounded in an assessment of well-represented trends rather than the highlighting of individual occurrences.
The distinctions between undeserving and deserving are impacting our current policy discussions. Today, it is nothing for politicians and editorialists to talk about giving “a mere $40 billion” to help banks with failing mortgages, but it is estimated to cost only $24 billion more to do away with hunger in our country entirely. If one senses that there is something wrong with the current tenor of perceptions and policies, then were does the hope lie? Can people’s outlooks change? As the historian cited earlier noted, during the Great Depression, the distinctions between the deserving and undeserving poor began to change because most everyone knew of friends and neighbors who were impoverished. No one wants to see us head into another Great Depression, but a lesson can be learned from this: People’s perceptions change when they no longer sense a vast distance between themselves and others.
Some years ago in Columbia there was a popular rock group known as “Los Pasajeros” or in English “The Passengers.” On one occasion, after they were arrested for performing at a public protest, youth soon rallied to their support. They began wearing t-shirts that read, “I too am Los Pasajeros: Arrest us all!” I am not sure if all of us are ready to be arrested for a cause, but just maybe the hope for us is in realizing that we are all passengers on the same bus. We are all on the Express. There’s no first and second class seats. There’s no deserving and undeserving. There’s no looking out for no one but oneself. Instead, we hop on board knowing that our destiny is bound together. We are all interconnected and interdependent. We can no longer say it is just the person down the block who is trouble. The whole block is in trouble. It’s all of us. In the end, the strength of our recovery may well depend upon the extent to which we realize this. Amen.