The Panic Zone

Grace Episcopal Church, Monroe, Good Shepherd Sunday, 22 April 2018

Jesus said, I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.

Some evening in the past 12 months, I don’t remember exactly when, I participated in a meeting of Northern & Central Louisiana Interfaith at Bethel Church of God in Christ.

We began the meeting as we often do with an opportunity to spend 20 minutes in conversation with a person whom we did not know. Anticipating this process, I had chosen to sit next to a woman I did not know. When the time came, we turned to each other, made introductions and began to chat.

Interfaith uses these short, one-on-one encounters to initiate relationships among people. They are often guided by a question, something like “What brought you here tonight?” or maybe “What do you hope to gain from being here tonight?”

I don’t remember the specific question we used that night. I do remember that part of our agenda was to talk about United Way’s analysis of financial hardship in Louisiana. That study was published under the acronym ALICE, which stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed.

Whatever the specific question, it did not take long for my conversation partner to get to the point. I call it “the panic zone,” she said.

It’s that moment, she explained, when you realize that this week the paycheck is not going to reach, that for a wide variety of reasons—ranging from a car repair to the growing kid having outgrown his sneakers to some family member’s medication—whatever—once again, for some rather mundane reason, income will not cover basic expenses. The electric bill or the water bill or the rent is due, and there isn’t enough money to go around.

United Way’s analysis says that across Louisiana, 723,077 working households — 42 percent of the state’s total — are living from paycheck to paycheck, unable to save, must spend every penny they earn to pay basic costs of living and still fall short with regularity. These families are one major car repair or medical bill away from poverty, perhaps homelessness, very likely the clutches of the payday lenders.

Jesus said, I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also.

A sheepfold is a shelter, a refuge. It is a place where there’s food and water to go around. A place where everyone lies down together to rest, secure in the care of the shepherd, who vigilantly guards the entrance to the sheepfold.

It’s a place where the grotesque disparities of our world are unthinkable.

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday, and I wonder what thoughts, feelings and images each of us associates with the Good Shepherd.

I subscribe to an online series called “Soulwork Toward Sunday.” As the title suggests, each edition of the series (published along about Wednesday) begins with the lections for the upcoming Sunday and offers thoughts, meditations, quotes from related literature that invite the reader to reflect on and engage the lessons at a deeper, indeed, a soul-searching way.

A chief architect of Soulwork Toward Sunday is Episcopal priest Suzanne Guthrie, and she began her reflections for today by stating this:

Good Shepherd Sunday promises sentimental loveliness and nostalgia but instead delivers overwhelming challenges.

I venture to guess that the symbolism of the Good Shepherd is pretty comforting and heart-warming to most of us most of the time. We might not want to be anyone else’s sheep, but we don’t mind being Jesus’ sheep!

And that is because Jesus as Good Shepherd is about love. The Good Shepherd is not good due to moral rectitude; he is Good because he loves—enough to lay down his life for the sheep.f

And the sheep in the Good Shepherd’s fold are not there because somehow they have measured up or have managed to get through life thus far without making dumb decisions or wandering into blind canyons. They did not earn their way into this place of love and plenty and security.

But Jesus said, I have other sheep… I must bring them also…

Notice that even as we find ourselves resting in the comfort and warmth of God’s love, Jesus the Good Shepherd is focused on the ones still out in the cold, the sheep out there in the panic zone, the ones who live the risky lives of choosing between medicine and food, rent and electricity, payday lenders and homelessness.

Please be reminded that today I am talking about working families, not welfare families, working families. In some cases the wage-earners in these families work multiple jobs trying to make ends meet.

And they do necessary work. They are the nursing assistants who take care of our elderly in nursing homes. They work in restaurants. Their labor makes it possible for you and me to dine out at an affordable price, to buy fresh produce they cannot afford in the grocery store. Literally, the working poor subsidize our relatively comfortable middle class lifestyles.

Brothers and sisters, I believe that the plight of the working poor in U.S. America today is nothing short of a scandal of massive proportions. In comparison, the moral failings of people in high places—the kind of scandal that rocks Washington D.C. on a regular basis—is, in my view, much less significant.

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that our elected leaders ought to be paragons of virtue.., but I don’t enjoy privileges as a result of them behaving badly in their personal lives. I do enjoy privileges at the expense of the working poor.

I thoroughly appreciate our Epistle reading today:

We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us-- and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?

Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.

Great! Love that. Spoken like a true Deacon!

But I do not think charity is the answer to the plight of the working poor. I believe this can only be fixed with fundamental change, a fundamental overhaul of a system that is okay with producing vast disparities in quality of life, valuing some labor with salaries beyond what any person can possibly spend and valuing other labor not even enough to keep body and soul together, not even enough to feed a family and keep a roof over its head.

To me, those statistics generated by United Way, those 723,000+ families, they have faces and names—like Pat, the woman I met at Bethel Church of God in Christ, and her family.

I don’t have all the answers about how to overhaul the system, but I can tell you how NOT to do it. In the current legislative session, a bill to establish an extremely modest minimum wage in Louisiana died in committee. But just last week, a bill to fully fund TOPS, a program that is a huge boon to the middle class and up, passed in the House Appropriations Committee with flying colors—and by definition, given the state of Louisiana’s revenue stream, simultaneously threw the charity hospital system, higher education in general and families who care for elderly and disabled members under the bus.

That’s how to make it worse.

Here’s the bottom line: Jesus is THE Good Shepherd, capital G, capital S. But we who follow him, who bask in the warmth of his love and who shelter with him inside the sheepfold… we are the good shepherds, small g, small s. We must overcome our natural selfishness and focus—as he does—on those still out in the cold, still out there in the panic zone.

We have other sheep not yet in the fold. We must bring them also. That’s what following him means.

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.