(The Message) Isaiah 59:15
12-15Our wrongdoings pile up before you, God,
our sins stand up and accuse us.
Our wrongdoings stare us down;
we know in detail what we’ve done:
Mocking and denying God,
not following our God,
Spreading false rumors, inciting sedition,
pregnant with lies, muttering malice.
Justice is beaten back,
Righteousness is banished to the sidelines,
Truth staggers down the street,
Honesty is nowhere to be found,
Good is missing in action.
Anyone renouncing evil is beaten and robbed.
15-19God looked and saw evil looming on the horizon—
so much evil and no sign of Justice.
He couldn’t believe what he saw:
not a soul around to correct this awful situation.
So he did it himself, took on the work of Salvation,
fueled by his own Righteousness.
He dressed in Righteousness, put it on like a suit of armor,
with Salvation on his head like a helmet,
Put on Judgment like an overcoat,
and threw a cloak of Passion across his shoulders.
He’ll make everyone pay for what they’ve done:
fury for his foes, just deserts for his enemies.
Even the far-off islands will get paid off in full.
In the west they’ll fear the name of God,
in the east they’ll fear the glory of God,
For he’ll arrive like a river in flood stage,
whipped to a torrent by the wind of God.
My Mother told me I could do and be anything I wanted to be if I dreamed and worked hard enough for it. I took these words to heart, despite growing up in the craziness of Marlboro County, South Carolina. Today, too many children in Marlboro and Darlington County and throughout America are not being taught to dream and to work hard for a better future.
Unemployment in this county has hovered between 18 and 20 percent for long periods of time and many children there have never seen anyone in their family able to find a job and go to work.
Hopelessness and despair is too often the product of poverty. Today, 15.5 million children are living in poverty in America—the highest child poverty rate the nation has seen since 1959. And the younger the children are the poorer they are. Recently released U.S. Census Bureau data confirmed our worst fears about the impact of the recent recession. Nearly four million Americans fell into poverty last year.
And worst of all, children experienced the steepest rise in poverty and the largest single year increase since the 1960s.
I have always stayed close to the work of Children’s Defense Fund and one of their recent reports by Julia Cass’ who according to Mrs. Marian Wright-Edelman puts human faces on the statistics that tell the frightening and heartbreaking reality of how poverty is impacting America’s children.
Cass found that despite safety net protections put in place over the past generations, poor children are still adrift in a sea of poverty with their future in jeopardy.
Years of research link childhood poverty to a multitude of poor outcomes: lower academic attainment, higher rates of teen pregnancy and incarceration, a greater chance of health and behavioral problems, and lifelong poverty.
I want to go on record and say that the greatest threat to America’s national Home land security comes from no enemy in the North Africa, North Korea or without but from our own failure to protect, invest in, and educate all of our children who make up all of our futures in this global economy. If the leaders in Congress want to really do something in a Christian Ethos they don’t need to cut programs and budgets but find more money to deal with poverty.
Isa. 59:1-8 describe the discouragement and dissatisfaction which the Jews of the first century felt because of their economic and political situation. They were slaves of the Romans, not actually, of course, but politically dominated by the powerful Caesars on the Tiber River. They could not even appoint their own High Priest. Powerful units of the Imperial Roman Armies were stationed in Jerusalem itself, Capernaum, Caesarea, and other strategic locations in Palestine. They did not have their own governors, these being appointed from Rome; and the vassal kings who were the titular rulers, such as Herod the Great, all held their offices under the permission of Imperial Rome. The foreign despots who ruled the Jews were often bloody and cruel tyrants; and, as the New Testament mentioned, Pilate put down an uprising in Jerusalem, mingling the blood of Galileans with their sacrifices.
This Text “quite appropriately describes the moral condition of the world that laid the foundation for the necessity of Divine intervention by the Messiah”. Indeed, this final paragraph of the chapter undoubtedly refers to Him. No one can attentively read this passage and doubt it. This is a most beautiful description of the Redeemer, and of the effects of his coming." The Reality is the time of the text and now are very similar. (Albert Barnes’ Commentary, Vol. II, p. 350.)
Today Still, 15.5 million children live in poverty in America today.
One of them is Audrey, a 13-year-old African American girl who lives in Quitman County, Miss., in the town of Lambert two miles south of Marks. She’d been suspended from school for five days and didn’t know what to do with herself the day Cass says when she met her. She dyed her hair a reddish color one morning. She threw a ball against the side of the house. She took a walk to her sister’s house. Then she wandered around town,
Audrey said something that captures the feeling of poverty that only those caught in it know and that could have been said by most all the children she met while researching this report. Cass remarked that Audrey seemed isolated in this decaying town where 34.5 percent of households live in poverty.3 “Yeah,” she said, “Isolated. Remote Island. Held captive.”
Today at This Lent service We need to stand with Isaiah and stand with Audrey and the Rest of the world Held captive not by Hosni Mubarak or Colonel Muammar Qaddafi but by Poverty.
Move 1)
I want to announce to everybody that the Folks in the Text in a Mean cycle of Exile, Slavery and Abuse Saw themselves as being trapped and in such a bad situation that only a Messiah only a redeemer could Fix. Only Gods Devine interaction could help. They felt as all of us have from time to time that things were so bad that Justice and Righteousness could only come from the head of God.
Move 2)
Poverty in America in 2011 needs the Hand on God to deal with our situation. Something’s only God and the Hand of God Can Fix. Poverty is a God size Problem. During the 1960s:
A visit to a fledgling Head Start program in Marks brought home the reality of rural poverty to Dr. King and Ralph Abernathy. “We looked around the primitive schoolhouse and saw them watching us, wide-eyed and silent, having been told who we were,” Abernathy recalled in his autobiography. “They seemed bright and alert, but something bothered me about them. Then I realized what it was: virtually all of them were under weight, a condition that lent a special poignancy to their enormous eyes.” After witnessing the teacher divide an apple into four pieces for four hungry children at lunchtime, Dr. King uncharacteristically broke into tears. “The tears came streaming down his cheek. And he had to leave the room.” Later that evening, Dr. King told Abernathy, “I can’t get those children out of my mind…We can’t let that kind of poverty exist in this country. I don’t think people really know that little school children are slowly starving in the United States of America. I didn’t know it.” Seeing these children planted these seeds for Dr. King to think about a Poor People’s Campaign. (Abernathy, Ralph. And the Walls Came Tumbling Down. Harper & Row, 1989: 412. Cited from the CDF Report “Held Captive”: Child Poverty In America A Children’s Defense Fund Report By Julia Cass Dec. 2010 )
Move 3) Closing
Someone has to ask today who is crying for the Poor in American Now? As I thought about this, I remembered Jesus’ words in Matthew 26:11 when He said, “The poor you will have with you always.” But why? Why will there always be poor? Well I am Glad you asked there will always be Poor not because its right but because Poverty and Sin go hand and hand and that as long as we have persons who sin by being greedy, sin by overlooking the Lest in Gods Kingdom, Sin by cutting Education and entitlement programs we will have the Poor. But the real Question is who you are trying to be in Gods Kingdom a Saint or A Sinner.
