“Does God Want You To Be Rich?”: A Sermon to Honor Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

January 15, 2012

Rev. Sandra Fees

In 2006, a Time Magazine cover read: “Does God Want You To Be Rich?” Movements that answer “yes” to that question have come to be known by various names, such as Word of Faith, Health and Wealth, Name It and Claim It, Prosperity Theology, and probably, most commonly, the Prosperity Gospel.

Joel Osteen is among those preaching this gospel. He is probably one of the most widely known television preachers doing so. He leads one of the nation’s prominent mega-churches, Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. His book, Your Best Life Now, has sold 10 million copies. In it, he writes about things like overcoming trauma and being generous, but he spends far more literary real estate on references to personal gain. For example, Osteen attributes his dream house and being bumped from economy to business class as the results of God’s favor. Osteen’s examples might lead us to believe this is a theology for the wealthy. You might think this theology waned when the bubble burst. But it continues to gain in popularity, especially among people who are poor.

Joyce Meyer is another popular television preacher and author., and her comment suggests the reasons. Her theology has been dubbed “Prosperity Lite.” She says, "Who would want to get in on something where you're miserable, poor, broke and ugly and you just have to muddle through until you get to heaven? I believe God wants to give us nice things."

Critics see the Prosperity Gospel as deeply flawed because it is “treating God as a celestial ATM.” Mega-pastor Rick Warren who became well-known for his book, The Purpose Driven Life, is among the critics. In fact, Warren finds the Prosperity Gospel "laughable." He says, "This idea that God wants everybody to be wealthy. There is a word for that: baloney. It's creating a false idol. You don't measure your self-worth by your net worth. I can show you millions of faithful followers of [Jesus] who live in poverty. Why isn't everyone in the church a millionaire?" ("Does God Want You To Be Rich?," Time Magazine, David Van Biema and Jeff Chu, Sept. 10, 2006).  

The question, “Does God Want Us to Be Rich?,” seems woefully inadequate on any number of fronts. The question erroneously suggests that being rich is a core value to which religious people aspire. The point is not that as religious people we ought to take vows of poverty. But to place the acquisition of material things at the center of faith and to make it a symbol of our value as   human beings are deeply troubling approaches to religion.

Just as being poor does not make anyone morally inferior, being rich does not make anyone morally superior. Beyond that, the idea that God wants certain things for us or favors some over other runs counter to the understanding many of us have of Ultimate Reality and of how God does or doesn’t function in the world.

So if we are not people of the Prosperity Gospel, for surely we are not, what is our gospel – our good news - when it comes to poverty? The word “gospel” means quite simply good news.

Many Unitarian Universalists and other liberal-minded religious people seem to be in sympathy with the Occupy Movement. Some people have even begun to refer to it as the Occupy Gospel. The movement’s message, as you know, is about income inequality and injustice. Some are touting it as the answer to our current economic woes. Is it our UU Gospel – or part of it?

Certainly, the idea of “the 99 percent” has contributed to a better understanding of wealth distribution in America and to where most individuals fall on the spectrum. Many Americans are seeing how they are closer together, financially speaking, than they may have realized.

A few weeks ago, National Public Radio covered an interview by senior reporter Mitchell Hartman, on Marketplace in Portland, Oregon. It got my attention because Hartman was talking about the number of ministers preaching about Occupy. He said, “to hear some preachers from the pulpit these days, you’d think the arrival of Occupy Wall Street is tantamount to the Second Coming.”

And indeed, many in the progressive religious community are finding in Occupy what Hartman calls “the most significant spark for [religious] activism against poverty since the Civil Rights movement.” (www.marketplace.org/topics/life/occupy-wall-st/preaching-occupy-gospel-or-not).

And it seems that, whether we ally ourselves with the Occupy movement or not, it does offer a hopeful response and corrective to poverty and economic injustice. The Occupy Gospel resonates with our Unitarian Universalist goal of economic justice and connects to King’s prophetic message.

So as the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day approaches, I have been reflecting on the issue of poverty, looking at these two popular “gospels,” one promising the blessing of individual wealth and the other calling us to heed the common good. And I have been reflecting on them through the lens of King’s words and through our Unitarian Universalist faith.

King’s message is a far cry from seeing individual financial gain as a blessing from God. Instead, he proclaimed that the fate of all people across the planet is linked.  What happens to one of us matters to all of us. As King said, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” King also said,

As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in their world cannot expect to live more than 28 or 30 years, I can never be totally healthy even if I just got a good checkup at Mayo Clinic. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent.

When King was assassinated in April of 1968, he was on the cusp of tackling the issue of poverty. It was to be the second phase of the civil rights movement, which he called a Poor People’s Campaign. The focus was economic justice and housing for poor people, all poor people not just African Americans. He was planning a march on Washington, D.C. to call for a national minimum wage act to ensure a decent standard of living for all Americans.

It’s shocking now to realize that our nation’s poverty rate is higher today than it was when King was organizing the Poor People’s March. Today, 15 percent of Americans live below the poverty line. The minimum wage is no longer an adequate goal.

Our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee promotes a living wage rather than a minimum wage. A living wage ensures that workers and their families can acquire the basics – food, shelter, medical care. It raises individuals above the poverty line. The service committee teaches that “Worker’s rights are human rights.” Ensuring workers’ rights ensures human rights. 

Achieving a basic level of economic security is essential to the spiritual path, for a person’s ability to pursue their dreams and life’s purpose. Rev. William Sinkford, former president of the Unitarian Universalist Association and minister in Portland, OR, describes the spiritual relevance of a living wage. He explains it this way:

Rewarding an honest day's labor with a just living wage is the right thing to do, and advocating for fair compensation is our religious duty. It is only when our most vulnerable sisters and brothers achieve a basic level of economic and physical security that they can embark upon a “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” Making that spiritual journey possible for all people is the heart and soul of Unitarian Universalism.

The heart and soul of Unitarian Universalism is also our belief that we can effect change. The current situation we are in is not inevitable. People and institutions have created it, and they, and we, can reform it. What I admire about the Occupy Movement is their vigor and enthusiasm for the possibility of systemic change.

Our current Unitarian Universalist Association President Rev. Peter Morales describes the harsh reality of why we have a failed system. He says:

We tend to treat changes in the economy as if they were like the weather—natural phenomena governed by forces beyond our control. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have chosen to live in a society with high unemployment and with income distribution that is becoming medieval. A tiny percentage of Americans owns most of the wealth. Meanwhile millions of willing and able people are without work. This did not just happen. We created this situation.

Right after the New Year, my colleague Kent Matthies who serves our Germantown Philadelphia congregation asked me to serve on the Unitarian Universalist Pennsylvania Legislative Advocacy Network, known as UUPLAN, as the issue coordinator for economic justice. He is president of UUPLAN.

I said yes, even as I was explaining to him that I feel far from expert on the subject. I also told him I feel called to do it because our city of Reading has been in the news as among the nation’s poorest and our whole state has been hard hit. I also feel called to take on this role as an extension of this congregation’s existing efforts to alleviate poverty. We run a food pantry. We host families who are seeking to move out of homelessness and toward economic stability. We have a minister’s discretionary fund that supports members of the church and of the local community who need help paying a bill or to get over a short-term financial crisis. We take special collections, many of which support poverty-related programs and charities.

And as much as we do, I know there is still more to be done, more we can do. There are systemic changes that must be made. More can be done to promote human rights, to ensure the worth and dignity of every person, and to create more justice and equity – and jobs. So I am hopeful that UUPLAN will offer another avenue for that work.

One of King’s most famous quotes is: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” The original source of that quote was the 19th-century Unitarian minister, abolitionist and transcendentalist Theodore Parker. When people quote King as having said these words, tell them where he got them. Tell them about Theodore Parker. Parker’s original words were not quite as succinct as King’s. In an 1853 sermon, Parker wrote:

I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight. I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends toward justice.

I confess there are times when I wonder whether the arc of the universe does indeed bend toward justice. And then, just the same, I get up every morning and approach the world as though it were so and as though I can have a hand, however small, in making it so.

Ours is a faith that asks not whether God wants us to be wealthy, but which asks how we can create more fairness in the world. Ours is a faith that asks not whether God wants us to be wealthy, but which asks how we can reduce suffering, share resources, and live more cooperatively and compassionately. Our is a faith which asks not whether God wants us to be wealthy, but which asks how we can better serve the cause of justice.  

Let ours be a “Justice Gospel.” Let us ally ourselves with King in saying that “As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. “ Let us be preachers and keepers of the “Justice Gospel.” Amen.