income inequality

Repair and Restore

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Repair and Restore” Isaiah 58:1-12

On December 4, 1967, Martin Luther King was in Atlanta for a press conference. Dr. King had come to Georgia to announce his newest initiative in the pursuit of American social justice, The Poor People’s Campaign. In recent years, his activism had taken him north to tackle the problems of racism and poverty endemic in our cities. He chose to live in solidarity with the poor, moving Coretta and their four children to a tiny walk-up apartment in the Lawndale neighborhood on the West-side of Chicago, a community better known by its local nickname “Slumdale.”  The entryway of the building where the Kings lived was used as a public toilet, and a hastily applied coat of paint couldn’t hide years of neglect that are the hallmark of low income, substandard housing. In Chicago, while peacefully demonstrating with an interracial group in Marquette Park, Dr. King was hit by a stone, hurled by an anonymous hate-filled hand. He had fewer friends in those days. Malcolm X had rejected his non-violent ethic as too soft and slow to wrest change from white oppressors. One-time white political allies, like LBJ, had come to see King’s radical commitment to the poor and his call for economic change as dangerous. When he stepped up to the microphone that night in Ebenezer Baptist Church, Dr. King looked tired and in need of a friend as he called the nation to “the total, direct, and immediate abolition of poverty.”

Dr. King, in his justice work across the United States, had come to understand that the problem of inequality and injustice is not just about race. It’s about economics. Even as visible lines of color were being crossed and overcome, invisible lines of hopelessness and want kept generations of Americans of all races bound in poverty and need. King saw neighbors “locked inside ghettos of material privation and spiritual debilitation” in urban ghettos, in southern shanties, in rural small towns. Everywhere there was a yawning chasm between prosperity’s children and those for whom the American Dream was unfulfilled, whose lives were defined by hunger, low wages, and substandard housing. 

With his Poor People’s Campaign, King resolved to bring Americans together across dividing lines of race to change the plight of the poor. He envisioned a massive, widespread campaign of civil disobedience aimed at the federal government. The poor and disenfranchised of our nation, and those who stood in solidarity with them, would march on Washington, DC, beginning in ten key cities and five rural areas. They would make a cross-country pilgrimage to the very seat of national power.  Once there, poor folk would peacefully demonstrate for economic reform by day and camp out in a massive tent city by night.  They would stay, as a visible witness to the breach in America’s social fabric, until change was enacted and the promise of dignity was made real for all. Dr. King saw this movement as a direct response to God’s challenge to care for poor and vulnerable neighbors. “It must not be just black people,” King told the press in December 1967, “it must be all poor people.  We must include American Indians, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, and even poor whites.”

The plight of the poor and oppressed is nothing new. In our reading from the Hebrew Bible, God through the prophet Isaiah took Israel to task for their neglect of the poor.  “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”

Isaiah’s bold words were addressed to good church folks, Israelites who had returned from exile in Babylon. God the great liberator, who had long ago freed the people from Pharaoh’s yoke and led them through the Sinai wilderness into a land flowing with milk and honey, God had again been at work to free Israel from captivity. God had raised up Cyrus of Persia to topple the Babylonian empire and release Israel from bondage. A hurting people had crossed desert sands and through the Jordan’s muddy waters, returning home to their Promised Land. There, they began to repair the walls and repave the streets. Their rebuilding efforts were only outmatched by their piety. They worshipped and fasted, in penance and thanksgiving, seeking to be holy as God is holy. 

Yet as God looked at our Israelite ancestors, God saw something terribly wrong with the community. While some in Israel returned from exile to find prosperity and a promising future, others had found only want and privation. God brought liberation to Israel, yet there in the very land meant to be a blessing for all its citizens there was hunger, poverty, and oppression. Children went to bed hungry. Widows had no place to call home. People with disabilities begged in the streets. Despite their fasting and outward signs of piety, the Israelites had missed the point of what it really means to be a faithful people. They could not love God with worship and fasting if they did not love their neighbors, especially their hurting and at-risk neighbors.

Isaiah teaches us that it is only when we choose the fast of righteous living that we can be healed. It is only through care, compassion, and justice that a nation may mend the gaping holes in the fabric of society.  It is only by knowing that our well-being is inseparably bound to the well-being of all our neighbors that we begin to understand God’s vision for our world. As long as Israel endured as a land where want co-existed with plenty, the promise of the land would remain unfulfilled.  Sabbath day piety must be matched by week day action that feeds the hungry, houses the homeless, clothes the naked, and welcomes all God’s children into the bounty of the Promised Land. It is only then that we become repairers of the breach and restorers of the streets to live in. It is only then that our light shines.

58 years after Dr. King’s insistence that the breach in American society be healed, the chasm between rich and poor gapes wider than ever in our nation.  Nowhere is that more apparent than right here in the North Country where multi-million-dollar camps coexist with rusted out trailers, dirt-floored cabins, and substandard, tumble-down housing. In Franklin County, 23% of our children and 13% of our seniors live in poverty.  9,870 people in Franklin County live with food insecurity.  That means 9,870 people don’t have the economic resources to put enough food on the table each month to meet their basic nutritional needs. Those numbers do not include the recent cuts to SNAP benefits. Even families who live above the poverty line struggle. 80% of our children are eligible for federal nutrition programs.

We know the two Americas that Dr. King described, and we are challenged today to be repairers of the breach and restorers of the streets to live in. We are needed to stand in solidarity with the poor and oppressed and to share the time, talents, and wealth entrusted to us for the benefit of all God’s children. We may worship God on Sunday, but we also worship God on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday and more when we reach out to care and make a helping difference in the lives of our at-risk neighbors. We are called to join God’s work of healing and transformation for our community, our nation, and our world.

We will never know how Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign would have changed of our nation. One month before the campaign was to be unleashed, five months after that press conference in Atlanta, an assassin’s bullet found Dr. King on the balcony of a Memphis motel, ending his life and cutting the Poor People’s Movement off at the knees.  Under the leadership of King’s old friend Ralph Abernethy, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference orchestrated a Poor People’s demonstration in Washington, DC. A tent city, Resurrection City, sprang up on the green lawn of the Lincoln Memorial. But after 40 days and 40 nights of non-violent direct action against a recalcitrant government, the movement crumbled, and the poor returned to their slums and tumble-down cabins, hopeless, silenced, and rejected. Dr. King’s great second phase in the Civil Rights Movement remained unfulfilled. The gap between rich and poor stood as a seemingly irreparable breach.

But the story doesn’t have to end there. Does it? Help and healing are more needed now than perhaps any time since Dr. King stood at the microphone in the Ebenezer Baptist Church. Over the last three and a half decades, the richest 1% of households in the United States have accumulated almost 1,000 times more wealth than the poorest 20% of Americans, and economic inequality is getting worse at a rapid pace. Our nation needs people of faith that love God and stand in solidarity with those who still wait for a seat at prosperity’s table. Are we with Dr. King? Are you with me? May we go forth to be repairers of the breach and restorers of the streets to live in.

Resources

Jonathan Alther, “King’s Final Years,” in Newsweek, Jan. 9, 2006

Josie Cox. “Income Inequality Is Surging In The U.S., New Oxfam Report Shows” in Forbes, Nov. 3, 2025. Accessed online at https://www.forbes.com/sites/josiecox/2025/11/03/income-inequality-is-surging-in-the-us-new-oxfam-report-shows/

Kevin Thurun, “On the Shoulders of King,” an editorial, in The Other Side, Jan-Feb 2003.

Martin Luther King, Jr.  The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., “Press Conference Announcing the Poor People’s Campaign,” Atlanta, GA, Dec. 4, 1967.

Statistics for Franklin County were obtained from Census Reporter and Feeding America online at https://censusreporter.org/profiles/05000US36033-franklin-county-ny/ and https://map.feedingamerica.org/county/2019/overall/new-york/county/franklin

Amy G. Oden. “Commentary on Isaiah 58:1-9a (9b-12)” in Preaching This Week, Feb. 9, 2014. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-after-epiphany/commentary-on-isaiah-581-9-10-12

Gregory Cuellar. “Commentary on Isaiah 58:1-9a (9b-12)” in Preaching This Week, Feb. 9, 2014. Accessed online at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-after-epiphany/commentary-on-isaiah-581-9a-9b-12-2

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Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” Luke 19:1-10

Americans are worried about income inequality, the disparity of wealth between the rich and poor in our country. In the lead up to the 2024 election, 71% of Americans said that the growing gap between rich and poor would be a crucial factor in how they cast their votes. America’s 806 billionaires control more wealth than the 65 million families that make up the lower earning half of our population. That wealth gap has grown dramatically since the onset of the pandemic with the combined fortunes of America’s top twelve billionaires jumping from $1.3 trillion dollars in March of 2020 to more than $2 trillion dollars today.  Those in the middle and lower classes have not similarly benefited. In looking at just financial assets like savings or stocks and bonds, the typical American has added no wealth in the past thirty years. The median retirement savings for the bottom half of Americans is zero. 52% of Americans have no emergency savings; they are one economic setback away from financial hardship. 23% of Americans aged sixty-six and older face poverty. When compared to the rest of the world, we have greater disparity between rich and poor than any other nation in the G7.

The government shutdown shines an uncomfortable spotlight on our economic disparity. If you are like me, you were shocked to learn that 42 million Americans receive SNAP benefits, food assistance from the federal government. That’s about 12% of our population. 38% of SNAP benefits help children, and 20% assists the elderly. Depending on whose statistics you use, between 40% and 85% of households that receive SNAP work, but their low-wage jobs don’t bring in enough income to put food on the table. The shutdown affects more than SNAP. It compromises WIC—Women, Infants & Children, a USDA nutrition program for children under five which helps 41% of our nation’s infants. It also burdens the national school lunch program, which serves up 4.8 billion meals a year to school-aged children. Lord, have mercy.

Jesus lived in a time of shocking income inequality. A small minority, like King Herod, the emperor, and the Temple elite, possessed vast wealth while the majority struggled to meet their basic needs. Property ownership and access to resources were concentrated in the hands of a powerful few, creating an economy where the privileged accumulated more and more wealth while the lower classes remained trapped in generational poverty and want. The bible weighed in on the personal responsibility of faithful people in a world plagued by poverty; Deuteronomy 15:11 taught, “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore, I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.”

In this world of vast economic differences, Zacchaeus was a rich man. He had amassed his wealth as the Chief Tax Collector for the Jericho region. Rather than collecting the imperial taxes themselves, the Romans farmed out the debt.  Zacchaeus personally paid the taxes of the entire Jericho region. Then, he set about making his money back, hiring lesser tax collectors to collect debt—with a comfortable commission tacked on to cover his expenses and make a tidy profit. It was a system rife with greed and corruption, with Zacchaeus turning a blind eye to the heavy-handed collection efforts of his minions while his personal wealth grew and grew, year after year, and his neighbors lived in poverty.

Zacchaeus was not only the wealthiest man in town; he was also one of the most unpopular.  His neighbors saw him as a Roman collaborator, a traitor to his people, growing ever richer at their expense. Zacchaeus’ ongoing contact with foreign money and Gentiles rendered him “unclean”—someone who was ritually impure and separated from God. Anyone concerned about holiness would have avoided Zacchaeus. The man did not receive a lot of dinner invitations.

Who can blame the neighbors for getting a little uppity at the gracious welcome that Jesus shared with Zaccchaeus? The man was a reprobate, but there stood Jesus, looking up into the sycamore tree and insisting that the tax collector come down and share a little Jericho-style hospitality with him. More than a few righteous families had hoped to host Jesus, but he chose to honor the wealthiest, least loved, and shortest resident of Jericho. Jesus chose to remind Zacchaeus that he was still a child of Abraham, even if he had gotten terribly lost somewhere along the way.

It was then that the miracle happened. When those neighbors started to grumble about Jesus’ choice of dinner companions, Zacchaeus promised to do something about the economic inequality in Jericho. He would give half his possessions to the poor and make 4-fold restitution—that’s 400%—to those neighbors he had defrauded.  When we consider that the Torah required restitution of only 120%, we see that Zacchaeus’ encounter with Jesus rendered him radically generous and righteous. It was a miracle, indeed.

Meanwhile in America, income inequality grows. Federal workers are furloughed, some working without pay. Fifty-two million of our neighbors wonder how they will put food on the table. It feels like a Zacchaeus moment. It feels like Jesus is standing at the foot of the American sycamore tree and inviting himself to dinner—he wants to bring some guests who are every bit as poor as he was. He knows there is enough for all if we will only open our hands and hearts. Jesus wants a miracle of us. The jury is out on whether or not he will get it.

Given the income disparities of our nation and the economic challenge of this moment in time, preaching on stewardship isn’t easy. I can confidently say that not one of us is among America’s 806 billionaires. We are among those 65 million families whose resources would need to be combined to equal the wealth of those 806 richest Americans. We know people with more month than money—our college grads who can’t get a decent job, our senior citizen friends surviving on social security, people bankrupted by health crisis, young families who fear they will never buy a home. We want a miracle for them. We want the world that Jesus envisioned, where the hungry are fed, the sick are healed, and there is enough.

Perhaps the greatest reason that we pledge to this church is because this is a place that has heard Jesus calling to us from the base of the sycamore tree. We are out of the tree. We are doing our best to stand on Jesus’ level. We want a world table where everyone has a place, the plates are full, all are satisfied, and joy abounds. That’s why we partner with the Food Pantry to feed hungry neighbors. We house the homeless at Samaritan House and have rolled up our sleeves to renovate Beacon House. We befriend refugees and advocate for our immigrant neighbors. Our Deacons Fund helps out people in crisis, whether they struggle with rent or healthcare costs, car repairs or utility bills. That’s why we dare to be provoked by sermons that wrestle with big, uncomfortable questions of faith—like “How do we love Jesus and love our neighbors in a world where income inequality abounds and the rich get richer while the poor get poorer?” We trust that our gifts to this church make a difference and move this world closer to the Kingdom.

We don’t know what happened to Zacchaeus after Jesus went on up the road to Jerusalem. I like to imagine that he went home and looked at his fine house, abundant flocks, and big bank account. Instead of seeing them through his eyes, he saw them through Jesus’ eyes. He began to make some different choices. He refused to defraud his neighbors and cracked down on the collectors in his employ. He lived generously, paying the dowries of the poor women of Jericho and offering micro-loans to help families launch small businesses. He took up bread baking and gave away all that homemade goodness. He opened a soup kitchen and took regular turns dining with his impoverished guests. He imagined that Jesus was his guest, always his guest. Local folks even began to grudgingly like him and accept him as a brother, a child of Abraham. The more Zacchaeus shared, the greater his joy.

I trust that the government shutdown will come to an end when our politicians can no longer make political hay from it—or it somehow pricks the conscience of our 806 billionaires. But the Zacchaeus moment won’t pass. As the Deuteronomist warned, “There will always be poor people in the land.” Will we give them a seat at the table? Jesus stands at the foot of our national sycamore tree. Will we come down?

Resources

Sarah Anderson. “Ten facts about wealth inequality in the USA” in the blog of the London School of Economics, Jan. 1, 2025. Accessed online at Ten facts about wealth inequality in the USA – LSE Inequalities

Teresa Ghilarducci. “7 alarming facts about wealth inequality” in Forbes Magazine, April 18, 2025. Accessed online at 7 Alarming Facts About Wealth Inequality: Bring On the Pitchforks?

American Compass. “A Guide to Income Inequality,” April 27, 2021. Accessed online at A Guide to U.S. Economic Inequality | American Compass

Factually. “Fact check: What is the average employment rate of food stamp recipients in the United States as of 2025?” October 29, 2025. Accessed online at Fact Check: What is the average employment rate of food stamp reci…

Barbara Hartshorn. “Economic Disparities in Biblical Society: An In-Depth Examination” in Bible Journal, Dec. 4, 2023. Accessed online at Economic Disparities in Biblical Society: An In-Depth Examination

Eric Barreto. “Commentary on Luke 19:1-10” in Preaching This Week, Nov. 2, 2025. Accessed online at Commentary on Luke 19:1-10 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

Lis Valle-Ruiz. “Commentary on Luke 19:1-10” in Preaching This Week, Oct. 30, 2022. Accessed online at Commentary on Luke 19:1-10 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

David Lose. “Commentary on Luke 19:1-10” in Preaching This Week, Oct. 30, 2022. Accessed online at Commentary on Luke 19:1-10 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

Luke 19:1-10

19 He entered Jericho and was passing through it. 2 A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. 3 He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. 5 When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. 7 All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” 8 Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” 9 Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”

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