Building a House By Righteousness

Building a House by Righteousness
A Sermon in The Other Six Days Series
Rev. Mark Schaefer
Kay Spiritual Life Center
November 12, 2006
Jeremiah 22:13-17; Isaiah 10:1-4; James 5:1-6

Jeremiah 22:13-17
Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbors work for nothing, and does not give them their wages; who says, "I will build myself a spacious house with large upper rooms," and who cuts out windows for it, paneling it with cedar, and painting it with vermilion. Are you a king because you compete in cedar? Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not this to know me? says the Lord. But your eyes and heart are only on your dishonest gain, for shedding innocent blood, and for practicing oppression and violence.

Isaiah 10:1-4
Ah, you who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be your spoil, and that you may make the orphans your prey! What will you do on the day of punishment, in the calamity that will come from far away? To whom will you flee for help, and where will you leave your wealth, so as not to crouch among the prisoners or fall among the slain? For all this his anger has not turned away; his hand is stretched out still.

James 5:1-6
Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.

I. BEGINNING

Some years ago, I saw a film starring Keanu Reaves called Johnny Mnemonic that has since mercifully faded into obscurity. The opening crawl sets up the story of this science fiction thriller by stating that it is the near future, and that "corporations rule." A friend of mine who is a commercial real estate attorney responded by saying "Yes!" The only problem with that, was that the producers of the film clearly intended this to be bad news. And with the exception of my friend, I would say that most people interpreted the message that way.

II.CORPORATE IRRESPONSIBILITY

And I suppose that there are enough reasons to do so:

In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company locked its women workers inside the factory. One day a fire broke out and 146 women died inside the factory.
In 1984, Union Carbide was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Indians when its plant in Bhopal, India released 27 tons of poison methyl isocyanate gas into the atmosphere, killing nearly 8,000 people immediately and resulting in the deaths of perhaps as many as another 12,000 in the years following.
The Swiss food and beverages company Nestlé is criticized for labor conflicts in Colombia and for its aggressive marketing methods for baby food, which jeopardize breastfeeding.
Chevron released crude oil waste in Ecuador that were at least 30 times larger than the Exxon Valdez spill, and the toxic waste has now permeated the water table in an area greater than the size of Rhode Island. Its parent Texaco reaped $30 billion in profits from its operations in Ecuador.
Since 1989, eight union leaders at Coca Cola's bottling plant in Columbia have been murdered by paramilitaries that observers say are working with plant management. Hundreds of others have been kidnapped or illegally detained by those same paramilitaries. Coca Cola denies responsibility and refuses to allow an independent third party examination.

And the list goes on. Tales of corporate greed have become so numerous they have almost become cliché.

III. CORPORATIONS

Is there something about corporations that inclines them to such wanton irresponsibility?

The legal definition of a corporation is: "An association of shareholders (or even a single shareholder) created under law and regarded as an artificial person by courts, 'having a legal entity entirely separate and distinct from the individuals who compose it, with the capacity of continuous existence or succession, and having the capacity of such legal entity, of taking, holding, and conveying property, suing and being sued, and exercising such other powers as may be conferred on it by law, just as a natural person may.'"

A. Facelessness

And yet, in spite of this "personhood" of a corporation, most people find them faceless, without any other sense of personhood outside of legal status. People feel lost when confronting corporations. Unable to compete against some faceless massive entity. You can get this feeling very easily by calling one and getting lost in an endless phone-mail tree, increasingly despairing until you at long last reach a human being--someone who can hear what you have to say. Of course, by the time you get there you're usually so frustrated that your primary emotion is one of anger. And, because they have to sit and listen all day to angry people, their emotion is often one of indifference.

B. Accountability

However, it's not the having made mistakes, or even the facelessness that makes most people distrustful of corporations. What makes them most upset is the lack of responsibility. Ambrose Bierce defined a corporation as " an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."

IV. THE PROPHETS

It is this responsibility that we hear lifted up time and time again by the prophets. Now, it should be noted that in ancient Israel or in the Roman Empire of Jesus' day, there were no corporations. So, the Bible is unusually silent on the question of legal entities creating fictitious legal persons for the purposes of transacting business, having access to the courts, and shielding individuals from direct financial responsibility.

A. The Prophets' Message

But the prophets have a lot to say on how one makes money. Listen again to some of the words we read earlier:

Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbors work for nothing, and does not give them their wages; who says, "I will build myself a spacious house with large upper rooms," and who cuts out windows for it, paneling it with cedar, and painting it with vermilion. Are you a king because you compete in cedar? Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not this to know me? says the Lord. But your eyes and heart are only on your dishonest gain, for shedding innocent blood, and for practicing oppression and violence.

Jeremiah does not condemn business and success per se. Only that which does not take into account the poor and needy. "Did not your father eat and drink (that is, was he not successful?) and do justice and righteousness?" It is entirely possible to be a material success and to do justice and righteousness. "Then it was well with him." Those who do not follow in this way build their houses by unrighteousness.

B. Corporate Responsibility

So, it is not that we do not know what makes for responsible business practices. It is not the case that we don't understand the moral idea of transacting business with an eye toward the poor and needy.

The bigger problem is that we in this country tend to view responsibility as an individual thing. Holding that person responsible for what that person did.

But our spiritual forebears did not understand responsibility that way alone. They understood that responsibility was something that was often shared. They understood a corporate responsibility of the entire people.

In the prayers that are still said on Yom Kippur, there is a prayer of confession called the Ashamnu. It means "we are guilty" and is a litany of confession for sins that are all in the plural. The community confesses sins together and asks for forgiveness together. It is an understanding of guilt and morality that goes beyond the individualistic way we are inclined to think.

We just recently watched the movie American Dreamz as one of our Monthly Movies with the Methodists. It's a funny film, but serious in many ways. At one point one of the characters asks, "I have met such nice people here in America, but at the same time their country causes so much hurt in the world. To what extent are Americans responsible for America?" It is a poignant question that is not answered but should give us pause. Are we responsible for our individual actions alone? Or do we have a responsibility for the broader community?

C. The Community

As Christians, we understand that responsibility is not solely an individual enterprise. Because ultimately, neither is salvation. Perhaps the greatest sin that we modern Americans make and continue to make is that we think that this is all about us as individuals. It's not about us individually, it's about us together. It's why we pray "Our Father" instead of "My Father". It's why we say Christ "came down for us and for our salvation". It how we understand Jesus talking to us in plural language: "Ask and you (all) shall receive"--a statement that is often interpreted as a guarantee of individual satisfaction rather than communal. We Christians are a people--a community. We understand God as a communion of love between the Father, Son, and Spirit. We understand our faith only in the context of community.

What that means for us is that it should not matter whether individuals have committed wrongdoing or whether a faceless corporate entity--the responsibility is the same. For us as Christians, when individuals commit wrongdoing in a community or in a corporation, that community or corporation has to accept responsibility for that wrong. Now, this is not an excuse for collective punishment, the way the Romans did, where they'd burn down an entire town if someone from that town attacked Roman troops. This is saying that we take ownership of something that a member of the community does wrong in order to make it right. This is the opposite sentiment from those bumper stickers you see that say something like "Don't blame me I voted for _____". It's this idea that one is no longer responsible for the actions of a government or a nation merely because that person cast his vote in a particular way.

It is this same kind of insular individualistic thinking that causes corporate irresponsibility. The mechanism that has allowed individuals to avoid bearing personal financial responsibility has seemingly allowed them to avoid taking moral responsibility.

V. CHRISTIAN RESPONSE

So, how do we as Christians respond? Where we see houses being built by unrighteousness, built on the backs of the poor and needy, without regard to human freedom or dignity or life?

A. Learning

We can learn about these topics. We can do our homework, conduct our research. There is plenty of information available out there. There's information on the back table at the back of the sanctuary and on the insert in your bulletins, that you can use. We have an obligation to learn.

B. Compassion and Remembrance

First we start by remembering those who suffer at the hands of corporate caprice and greed. We hold them in prayer, we try to meet their immediate material and spiritual need. We offer ourselves as a comfort, and enlist others in meeting their needs. But beyond reaching out in compassion, there are other ways we respond.

C. Accountability

We have a duty to speak out. The way Jeremiah and Isaiah did. The way James did when he wrote:

Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you.

We in this country are so set on the idea of sin as an individual concept that we cannot see that collective actions and corporate actions are sins as well. If the Christian community were to speak about exploitation of workers as a sin with as loud a voice as we do about sex, we might actually be able to make someone notice. Some Christian groups boycotted Disney because they tolerated homosexual employees and provided benefits to same-sex couples. Where is the moral outrage over the Exxon Valdez from Christian communities? Why were there no Christian boycotts of ExxonMobil? Where is the moral outrage over collective sin rather than individual moral sin?

We have not done a very good job of lifting up the idea that we are accountable as communities. The early church understood that very well. But we, on this side of the Enlightenment think that the world is all about us as individuals. It's not. We have a duty to proclaim the same message as the prophets did, who reminded Israel that God cares about justice and righteousness--which are not individual sins alone. Justice and righteousness are the responsibilities of the people. Racism, economic injustice, oppression, corporate greed--these are all sin, as much as murder, adultery, theft, or bearing false witness.

One of the most important parts of a Christian response to problems of corporate responsibility is reminding ourselves and the world that we are responsible for some sins corporately, as a body.

For we, as the church, are a body. As St. Paul reminds us, we are connected with one another. We bear one another's burdens. We celebrate one another's joys. We rejoice in one another's blessings. And we suffer the consequences of other people's sufferings. As Paul writes to the Corinthians: "If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together."

D. Accountability

Wesley understood that. He knew that it was practically impossible to be a Christian on your own. "The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion," he said. "The Gospel of Christ knows no religion but social, no holiness but social holiness." Implicit in this understanding of social holiness, is not only a commitment to social justice, but a commitment to mutual accountability. It was for this reason that Wesley promoted a system of classes and bands, small groups akin to our Covenant Discipleship groups, where Christians would meet and sustain one another in Christian love and support. They would hold one another accountable as they walked on their Christian journey. Wesley knew that Christian living meant Christian accountability.

And this forms our ethic of holding those people responsible who are causing hurt and suffering in the world. The Social Principles of The United Methodist Church read in part:

"Corporations are responsible not only to their stockholders, but also to other stakeholders: their workers, suppliers, vendors, customers, the communities in which they do business, and for the earth, which supports them. We support the public's right to know what impact corporations have in these various arenas, so that people can make informed choices about which corporations to support. We applaud corporations that voluntarily comply with standards that promote human well-being ad protect the environment." (¶163. I)

In this community, upon our own reflection on the Gospel, we have committed ourselves to actions designed to hold certain corporations accountable. We participated in the Taco Bell and Mt. Olive Pickles boycott following the 2004 General Conference (I will confess that was somewhat easy since our regular purchases of pickles are pretty infrequent and there's not a Taco Bell anywhere nearby).

But we have followed this up with our own actions when it comes to the beverages we drink. Last year, this community voted to approve a boycott of Coca Cola products until such time as Coke allowed independent third-party examination of the labor situation in Colombia. If that examination yields nothing, the boycott will end. If it yields wrongdoing, the boycott will end when Coke redresses the wrong. It is why we do not serve Coca Cola at our functions. And since Pepsi can't exactly claim the moral high ground either, we have decided to serve RC. Which makes our Southern contingent happy, except that we don't have any moon pies to go with it.

Do we pretend that a multi-billion dollar corporate giant is going to miss the $15 a week we spend on soda? Certainly not. But our voice is still an important witness. Our voice on this community has been an important witness in many arenas. If we help AU to move this direction, and even Wesley Seminary to do so, as other schools have done, including University of Michigan and Union Theological Seminary in New York, then we might begin to see some change. Not because Coke can't survive without our money--it can. But because it raises the profile of an issue and causes embarrassment.

A boycott can be an effective tool --the Taco Bell and Mt. Olive pickles boycotts were ended within a year because those organizations changed the labor policies toward those who were doing the harvesting--the reason for the boycott in the first place.

VI. END

But it is incredibly important to remember that when we seek to hold others accountable it be done from a place of love. We are all sinners. We have all done wrong. We seek merely to help others to reform their conduct, especially since that conduct harms so many. It is important that we proceed with humility and not with self-righteousness. It is important that we seek not the condemnation of the sinner--in this case the various corporations who commit these acts--but their reformation and salvation.

For Jeremiah reminds us, it is possible to eat and drink and to do justice and righteousness. Our task is not to destroy corporations, but to lead them in the way of repentance, responsibility, and accountability. The same way that we would want to be led as a result of our own failings. For it is not only those who are the victims of exploitation who suffer--the perpetrators do as well. In the civil rights movement, much talk was made of freeing the oppressor from oppression as much as the oppressed.

Love must be the guiding principle of any movement for justice. Righteousness is not ours to give, but Christ's. We have no righteousness apart from the grace of Christ. For we are made righteous by grace, we grow in righteousness by grace. If we would seek others to build their houses in righteousness, we must live our lives in the righteousness of Christ.

When we live these lives of righteousness, when we testify on behalf of the oppressed, when we work for justice, when we hold ourselves and others accountable for wrongs, then we testify to the righteousness of Christ, and through that righteousness, to the grace and love of God. And we help ourselves and others to build houses not of unrighteousness, but of righteousness.

Notes
http://www.bhopal.org/whathappened.html
http://www.publiceye.ch/en/p25003346.html
http://www.chevrontoxico.com/article.php?id=286
http://killercoke.org/crimes.htm
Barron's Law Dictionary, 3d., citing 200 N.W. 76, 87. See, 17 U.S. 518, 657.
http://www.alcyone.com/max/lit/devils/c.html

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*Building a House by Righteousness* A Sermon in The Other Six Days Series Rev. Mark Schaefer Kay Spiritual Life Center November 12, 2006 Jeremiah 22:13-17; Isaiah 10:1-4; James 5:1-6 Jeremiah 22:13-17 Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbors work for nothing, and does not give them their wages; who says, "I will build myself a spacious house with large upper rooms," and who cuts out windows for it, paneling it with cedar, and painting it with vermilion. Are you a king because you compete in cedar? Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not this to know me? says the Lord. But your eyes and heart are only on your dishonest gain, for shedding innocent blood, and for practicing oppression and violence. Isaiah 10:1-4 Ah, you who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be your spoil, and that you may make the orphans your prey! What will you do on the day of punishment, in the calamity that will come from far away? To whom will you flee for help, and where will you leave your wealth, so as not to crouch among the prisoners or fall among the slain? For all this his anger has not turned away; his hand is stretched out still. James 5:1-6 Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you. I. BEGINNING Some years ago, I saw a film starring Keanu Reaves called Johnny Mnemonic that has since mercifully faded into obscurity. The opening crawl sets up the story of this science fiction thriller by stating that it is the near future, and that "corporations rule." A friend of mine who is a commercial real estate attorney responded by saying "Yes!" The only problem with that, was that the producers of the film clearly intended this to be bad news. And with the exception of my friend, I would say that most people interpreted the message that way. II.CORPORATE IRRESPONSIBILITY And I suppose that there are enough reasons to do so: In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company locked its women workers inside the factory. One day a fire broke out and 146 women died inside the factory. In 1984, Union Carbide was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Indians when its plant in Bhopal, India released 27 tons of poison methyl isocyanate gas into the atmosphere, killing nearly 8,000 people immediately and resulting in the deaths of perhaps as many as another 12,000 in the years following. The Swiss food and beverages company Nestlé is criticized for labor conflicts in Colombia and for its aggressive marketing methods for baby food, which jeopardize breastfeeding. Chevron released crude oil waste in Ecuador that were at least 30 times larger than the Exxon Valdez spill, and the toxic waste has now permeated the water table in an area greater than the size of Rhode Island. Its parent Texaco reaped $30 billion in profits from its operations in Ecuador. Since 1989, eight union leaders at Coca Cola's bottling plant in Columbia have been murdered by paramilitaries that observers say are working with plant management. Hundreds of others have been kidnapped or illegally detained by those same paramilitaries. Coca Cola denies responsibility and refuses to allow an independent third party examination. And the list goes on. Tales of corporate greed have become so numerous they have almost become cliché. III. CORPORATIONS Is there something about corporations that inclines them to such wanton irresponsibility? The legal definition of a corporation is: "An association of shareholders (or even a single shareholder) created under law and regarded as an artificial person by courts, 'having a legal entity entirely separate and distinct from the individuals who compose it, with the capacity of continuous existence or succession, and having the capacity of such legal entity, of taking, holding, and conveying property, suing and being sued, and exercising such other powers as may be conferred on it by law, just as a natural person may.'" A. Facelessness And yet, in spite of this "personhood" of a corporation, most people find them faceless, without any other sense of personhood outside of legal status. People feel lost when confronting corporations. Unable to compete against some faceless massive entity. You can get this feeling very easily by calling one and getting lost in an endless phone-mail tree, increasingly despairing until you at long last reach a human being--someone who can hear what you have to say. Of course, by the time you get there you're usually so frustrated that your primary emotion is one of anger. And, because they have to sit and listen all day to angry people, their emotion is often one of indifference. B. Accountability However, it's not the having made mistakes, or even the facelessness that makes most people distrustful of corporations. What makes them most upset is the lack of responsibility. Ambrose Bierce defined a corporation as " an ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility." IV. THE PROPHETS It is this responsibility that we hear lifted up time and time again by the prophets. Now, it should be noted that in ancient Israel or in the Roman Empire of Jesus' day, there were no corporations. So, the Bible is unusually silent on the question of legal entities creating fictitious legal persons for the purposes of transacting business, having access to the courts, and shielding individuals from direct financial responsibility. A. The Prophets' Message But the prophets have a lot to say on how one makes money. Listen again to some of the words we read earlier: Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbors work for nothing, and does not give them their wages; who says, "I will build myself a spacious house with large upper rooms," and who cuts out windows for it, paneling it with cedar, and painting it with vermilion. Are you a king because you compete in cedar? Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is not this to know me? says the Lord. But your eyes and heart are only on your dishonest gain, for shedding innocent blood, and for practicing oppression and violence. Jeremiah does not condemn business and success per se. Only that which does not take into account the poor and needy. "Did not your father eat and drink (that is, was he not successful?) and do justice and righteousness?" It is entirely possible to be a material success and to do justice and righteousness. "Then it was well with him." Those who do not follow in this way build their houses by unrighteousness. B. Corporate Responsibility So, it is not that we do not know what makes for responsible business practices. It is not the case that we don't understand the moral idea of transacting business with an eye toward the poor and needy. The bigger problem is that we in this country tend to view responsibility as an individual thing. Holding that person responsible for what that person did. But our spiritual forebears did not understand responsibility that way alone. They understood that responsibility was something that was often shared. They understood a corporate responsibility of the entire people. In the prayers that are still said on Yom Kippur, there is a prayer of confession called the Ashamnu. It means "we are guilty" and is a litany of confession for sins that are all in the plural. The community confesses sins together and asks for forgiveness together. It is an understanding of guilt and morality that goes beyond the individualistic way we are inclined to think. We just recently watched the movie American Dreamz as one of our Monthly Movies with the Methodists. It's a funny film, but serious in many ways. At one point one of the characters asks, "I have met such nice people here in America, but at the same time their country causes so much hurt in the world. To what extent are Americans responsible for America?" It is a poignant question that is not answered but should give us pause. Are we responsible for our individual actions alone? Or do we have a responsibility for the broader community? C. The Community As Christians, we understand that responsibility is not solely an individual enterprise. Because ultimately, neither is salvation. Perhaps the greatest sin that we modern Americans make and continue to make is that we think that this is all about us as individuals. It's not about us individually, it's about us together. It's why we pray "Our Father" instead of "My Father". It's why we say Christ "came down for us and for our salvation". It how we understand Jesus talking to us in plural language: "Ask and you (all) shall receive"--a statement that is often interpreted as a guarantee of individual satisfaction rather than communal. We Christians are a people--a community. We understand God as a communion of love between the Father, Son, and Spirit. We understand our faith only in the context of community. What that means for us is that it should not matter whether individuals have committed wrongdoing or whether a faceless corporate entity--the responsibility is the same. For us as Christians, when individuals commit wrongdoing in a community or in a corporation, that community or corporation has to accept responsibility for that wrong. Now, this is not an excuse for collective punishment, the way the Romans did, where they'd burn down an entire town if someone from that town attacked Roman troops. This is saying that we take ownership of something that a member of the community does wrong in order to make it right. This is the opposite sentiment from those bumper stickers you see that say something like "Don't blame me I voted for _____". It's this idea that one is no longer responsible for the actions of a government or a nation merely because that person cast his vote in a particular way. It is this same kind of insular individualistic thinking that causes corporate irresponsibility. The mechanism that has allowed individuals to avoid bearing personal financial responsibility has seemingly allowed them to avoid taking moral responsibility. V. CHRISTIAN RESPONSE So, how do we as Christians respond? Where we see houses being built by unrighteousness, built on the backs of the poor and needy, without regard to human freedom or dignity or life? A. Learning We can learn about these topics. We can do our homework, conduct our research. There is plenty of information available out there. There's information on the back table at the back of the sanctuary and on the insert in your bulletins, that you can use. We have an obligation to learn. B. Compassion and Remembrance First we start by remembering those who suffer at the hands of corporate caprice and greed. We hold them in prayer, we try to meet their immediate material and spiritual need. We offer ourselves as a comfort, and enlist others in meeting their needs. But beyond reaching out in compassion, there are other ways we respond. C. Accountability We have a duty to speak out. The way Jeremiah and Isaiah did. The way James did when he wrote: Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you. We in this country are so set on the idea of sin as an individual concept that we cannot see that collective actions and corporate actions are sins as well. If the Christian community were to speak about exploitation of workers as a sin with as loud a voice as we do about sex, we might actually be able to make someone notice. Some Christian groups boycotted Disney because they tolerated homosexual employees and provided benefits to same-sex couples. Where is the moral outrage over the Exxon Valdez from Christian communities? Why were there no Christian boycotts of ExxonMobil? Where is the moral outrage over collective sin rather than individual moral sin? We have not done a very good job of lifting up the idea that we are accountable as communities. The early church understood that very well. But we, on this side of the Enlightenment think that the world is all about us as individuals. It's not. We have a duty to proclaim the same message as the prophets did, who reminded Israel that God cares about justice and righteousness--which are not individual sins alone. Justice and righteousness are the responsibilities of the people. Racism, economic injustice, oppression, corporate greed--these are all sin, as much as murder, adultery, theft, or bearing false witness. One of the most important parts of a Christian response to problems of corporate responsibility is reminding ourselves and the world that we are responsible for some sins corporately, as a body. For we, as the church, are a body. As St. Paul reminds us, we are connected with one another. We bear one another's burdens. We celebrate one another's joys. We rejoice in one another's blessings. And we suffer the consequences of other people's sufferings. As Paul writes to the Corinthians: "If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together." D. Accountability Wesley understood that. He knew that it was practically impossible to be a Christian on your own. "The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion," he said. "The Gospel of Christ knows no religion but social, no holiness but social holiness." Implicit in this understanding of social holiness, is not only a commitment to social justice, but a commitment to mutual accountability. It was for this reason that Wesley promoted a system of classes and bands, small groups akin to our Covenant Discipleship groups, where Christians would meet and sustain one another in Christian love and support. They would hold one another accountable as they walked on their Christian journey. Wesley knew that Christian living meant Christian accountability. And this forms our ethic of holding those people responsible who are causing hurt and suffering in the world. The Social Principles of The United Methodist Church read in part: "Corporations are responsible not only to their stockholders, but also to other stakeholders: their workers, suppliers, vendors, customers, the communities in which they do business, and for the earth, which supports them. We support the public's right to know what impact corporations have in these various arenas, so that people can make informed choices about which corporations to support. We applaud corporations that voluntarily comply with standards that promote human well-being ad protect the environment." (¶163. I) In this community, upon our own reflection on the Gospel, we have committed ourselves to actions designed to hold certain corporations accountable. We participated in the Taco Bell and Mt. Olive Pickles boycott following the 2004 General Conference (I will confess that was somewhat easy since our regular purchases of pickles are pretty infrequent and there's not a Taco Bell anywhere nearby). But we have followed this up with our own actions when it comes to the beverages we drink. Last year, this community voted to approve a boycott of Coca Cola products until such time as Coke allowed independent third-party examination of the labor situation in Colombia. If that examination yields nothing, the boycott will end. If it yields wrongdoing, the boycott will end when Coke redresses the wrong. It is why we do not serve Coca Cola at our functions. And since Pepsi can't exactly claim the moral high ground either, we have decided to serve RC. Which makes our Southern contingent happy, except that we don't have any moon pies to go with it. Do we pretend that a multi-billion dollar corporate giant is going to miss the $15 a week we spend on soda? Certainly not. But our voice is still an important witness. Our voice on this community has been an important witness in many arenas. If we help AU to move this direction, and even Wesley Seminary to do so, as other schools have done, including University of Michigan and Union Theological Seminary in New York, then we might begin to see some change. Not because Coke can't survive without our money--it can. But because it raises the profile of an issue and causes embarrassment. A boycott can be an effective tool --the Taco Bell and Mt. Olive pickles boycotts were ended within a year because those organizations changed the labor policies toward those who were doing the harvesting--the reason for the boycott in the first place. VI. END But it is incredibly important to remember that when we seek to hold others accountable it be done from a place of love. We are all sinners. We have all done wrong. We seek merely to help others to reform their conduct, especially since that conduct harms so many. It is important that we proceed with humility and not with self-righteousness. It is important that we seek not the condemnation of the sinner--in this case the various corporations who commit these acts--but their reformation and salvation. For Jeremiah reminds us, it is possible to eat and drink and to do justice and righteousness. Our task is not to destroy corporations, but to lead them in the way of repentance, responsibility, and accountability. The same way that we would want to be led as a result of our own failings. For it is not only those who are the victims of exploitation who suffer--the perpetrators do as well. In the civil rights movement, much talk was made of freeing the oppressor from oppression as much as the oppressed. Love must be the guiding principle of any movement for justice. Righteousness is not ours to give, but Christ's. We have no righteousness apart from the grace of Christ. For we are made righteous by grace, we grow in righteousness by grace. If we would seek others to build their houses in righteousness, we must live our lives in the righteousness of Christ. When we live these lives of righteousness, when we testify on behalf of the oppressed, when we work for justice, when we hold ourselves and others accountable for wrongs, then we testify to the righteousness of Christ, and through that righteousness, to the grace and love of God. And we help ourselves and others to build houses not of unrighteousness, but of righteousness. Notes http://www.bhopal.org/whathappened.html http://www.publiceye.ch/en/p25003346.html http://www.chevrontoxico.com/article.php?id=286 http://killercoke.org/crimes.htm Barron's Law Dictionary, 3d., citing 200 N.W. 76, 87. See, 17 U.S. 518, 657. http://www.alcyone.com/max/lit/devils/c.html Back to Sermons page Back to AU UMC Home Copyright © 2006. Mark A. Schaefer. No part of this text may be reproduced or otherwise disseminated without the express written consent of the author.

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