At the end of June, I had the honor of helping to lead the biblical and theological foundations section of the Moral Political Organizing Institute Seminar (MPOLIS) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Hosted by Interfaith Worker Justice and dozens of grassroots ministries, advocacy groups and organizations in New Mexico at the Canossian Spirituality Center, this was the sixth MPOLIS. These events are being organized by Repairers of the Breach as part of “The Revival: Time for a Revolution of Moral Values” national tour. Before Albuquerque, we were in Birmingham, AL, Charleston, SC, Atlanta, GA, Philadelphia, PA, the Bricks, NC and in the coming weeks we’ll be in Kansas City, MO, Cleveland, OH, Indianapolis, IN, Jackson, MS.
The multi-racial, multi-issue, inter-religious group of people assembled for the day long training were all feeling and fighting the very real and deepening crisis in New Mexico and this country. Together, we came to a moral analysis of this crisis in its many dimensions, and we committed to taking moral action to lead the way to solutions. But first, to ground ourselves in the lessons of faith and history, we looked at the critique of religious (mis)leadership in Chapter 23 of the Gospel of Matthew.
Matthew 23
In Matthew 23, Jesus exhorts his contemporary religious and political authorities. He says that instead of standing for justice and inclusion, these so-called moral leaders are acting as opponents of the poor, opponents of the Jesus movement. They tie up heavy burdens for others to carry, worship gold and power and wealth, and cross land and sea to convert one person while ignoring the demands of justice, mercy, and faithfulness at home. If we explore these critiques in their literary and historical context, we see that they are economic and political critiques of power, corruption, and the exploitation and exclusion of the poor by the rich and powerful.
We can also see the ways that they apply to our own moral and political mis-leaders today.
Jesus condemns the hypocritical religious leaders of his day for holding gold and religious temples sacred rather than God, who has made gold and those religious sites sacred and valuable in the first place.
The critique reminds me of a comment from a mom organizing against the effects of the BP oil spill in the Gulf Coast: “You can’t eat gold, you can’t eat oil. Why then do we worship it and try to get so much of it?” Our society has conditioned us to worship gold rather than our Creator God, the source of all of our resources, including gold.
And it reminds me of Flint, Michigan, where I was a few weeks ago for the Poor People’s Campaign Midwest Organizing Tour. The families of Flint are still struggling with the poisoning of their water and their whole bodies and their children’s bodies: Their whole community. They were poisoned for years, while the General Motors plant got switched back to clean water after just months, complaining that the Flint water was corroding their engine parts.
Poor moms there were saying: “What good is it if you can go to a store and get lead-free paint, and go to a gas station and buy lead-free gas, but you can’t go home and get lead-free water.” We must stop worshiping gold and profit and power, and start worshiping and therefore practicing the justice, mercy, and faithfulness of God.
Matthew 23 continues with its emphasis on some specific hypocrisies of the moral and political leadership in Jesus’ day. Calling out religious authorities, Jesus says that: “You are like whitewashed tombs that look beautiful on the outside but inside are full of the bones of the dead.” In ancient Israel, whitewashing tombs happened annually, connected to big events like the Passover, so Jesus and the disciples would have seen them while entering Jerusalem. This would have been a real example of how those in power try to make rotten things look pretty – how rather than ending poverty and oppression and needless death, those in power pay lip-service and paint over the real issues of the day.
This reference to white-washing tombs reminds me of seeing employees of the City of Philadelphia literally spray painting the grass green throughout poor communities for the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in 2000, trying to paint over the decades of deindustrialization and job loss and poverty growth across the city. At the MPOLIS, Rev. Barber pointed out whitewashing tombs can also be compared to the media imploring Donald Trump to take his outrageous comments down a notch but in no way fundamentally challenging his or our entire political system’s values and actions.
The biblical images of whitewashing tombs and the larger critique of political and moral hypocrisy stayed in our conversation throughout the day-long training. People continued to raise up major issues like the high hunger and poverty rates in the state, the nuclear disaster in Trinity 71 years ago, and the rise of blue baby syndrome connected to the corporate control of the dairy industry, a major employer in New Mexico. We connected the conditions of life in New Mexico with the biblical critique of poverty, power, and complicity in structures that dispossess and demean.
Poverty in New Mexico
New Mexico is a young state: 25% of the people there are children and youth. Not being very population-dense, poverty is mostly in the more rural areas. And it’s very diverse: No one race or ethnicity makes up 50% of the population. Its population is 10% Native American and it has large white and Hispanic populations, with African-Americans and Asians also living there.
New Mexico is 21.3% poor with 30% of the children living in poverty. It’s the second-poorest state, after Mississippi. There is high unemployment, the median income is low, and many people are living without the basics of life. New Mexico rates 49th in child wellness and last in the number of hungry kids. 453,000 New Mexico residents receive SNAP, and every week 70,000 New Mexicans go to food pantries and shelters for emergency food. The state has high home ownership but in many cases that housing is substandard, and there are an estimated 17,000 homeless people.
New Mexico is doing a little bit better with health care. 10% of New Mexicans are without health insurance – half as many as before Medicaid expansion. Indeed, 42% of New Mexicans are enrolled in Medicaid (which is another indicator of how poor the people living in the state even are). Despite this reliance on the program by so many of the state’s residents, there is a concerted attack on Medicaid expansion under way. This attack is evidence of the political and moral hypocrisy of the political and religious leaders there.
Education is under attack in New Mexico, too. Higher education has been dealing with major funding cuts – in the last year alone, tuition, even at public universities, increased by 45%. The state is spending less on early child care than in past years. Advocates asserted that the state and the private corporations hired to “test” the schools are shifting priorities away from our own kids and to corporations. In fact, the state gave away 1/10th of the public school budget to the wealthy and corporations this year. One advocate said that instead of declaring war on poverty and hunger in New Mexico, the state declared war on 3rd graders and teachers.
And adding to the insult and injury, oppression and hypocrisy, the governor vetoed a raise in the minimum wage on Good Friday of this year. At the MPOLIS, we saw this as the governor crucifying kids and working families on Good Friday. Perhaps he’ll even whitewash the tombs of the families who will suffer because of this inhumane action.
The people of New Mexico are facing serious ecological crises. The state has uranium mines and three nuclear waste storage sites. And this dependence on the nuclear economy – the war economy – has had disastrous effects. In 1979 the Church Rock nuclear waste disposal pond breached its dam, spilling millions of gallons of radioactive material into the Puerco River. The people of the Navajo Nation bore the brunt of the contamination, suffering severe burns and amputations and highly elevated cancer rates. Even the uranium waste ponds that haven’t overflowed have been leaking into the area’s drinking water for decades, continuing to poison families and their children.
There are 60,000 oil and gas facilities in the state – 145,000 people live within a very short distance those sites. This leads to the pollution of water and the contamination of the community, including areas with schools nearby. In fact, New Mexico sits under the biggest methane cloud in the country, which is caused by leaks from natural gas production.
New Mexico is also the 3rd largest dairy producer in the country. The dairy products come from factory farms which are major polluters and perpetrate terrible working conditions.
Climate change is exacerbating the other social, economic and environmental problems in the state. There are regular dust storms. And always it is the poorest communities most impacted.
We heard about life in Mesquite, close to the borders with Texas and Mexico. In Mesquite, there are no parks and no after school programs. The chemical companies and dairy industry dominate all things. Residents there in Mesquite described the “smell of money” in their community, which really is the smell of the chemicals and dairy industry. And these wealthy corporations, the ones impoverishing the residents and enriching themselves off of both the people and the natural resources of the state, have even sued community leaders who dare to stand up to them.
“Building the tombs of the prophets”
Stories of the intimidation of local leaders bring us back to the text from Matthew 23. After Jesus’ critique of whitewashing tombs, he continues by saying: “You build the tombs of prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous.” In ancient times there were large-scale projects to build tombs. Jesus is pointing out the irony and hypocrisy of those in power building important monuments to the very prophets who were rejected and in fact killed by their predecessors.
This reminds me of a saying from the documentary Citizen King about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “It’s easier to build a monument than a movement.” Dr. King was reviled by the powerful during his life, especially after his public opposition to the war in Vietnam and call for a Poor People’s Campaign. And, according to a 1999 civil case, he was killed by them as well. Today he is celebrated by those in power, and he even has his own monument in Washington, D.C. But they’ve ignored his demand for a “revolution of values” and a “radical redistribution of economic and political power.” The life and death of Rev. Dr. King is a good example of building tombs and monuments to a prophet without heeding their prophetic critique of society.
But today in New Mexico, and all around the country, there are new prophets taking up their calling to speak the truth and expose the hypocritical moral and political mis-leaders. Throughout this revival and MPOLIS tour I’ve drawn strength from their example. If we can find a way to continue to work together, then it really can come to pass that, as it says in Matthew 23: “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Top photo – Credit Clean Up the Mines.