The Games God Doesn't Play - Epiphany 5A

Epiphany 5A - Isaiah 58:1-9a, Matthew 5:13-2

Oh the games people play now
Every night and every day now
Never meaning what they say now
Never saying what they mean.

And they wile away the hours
In their ivory towers
Till they're covered up with flowers

In the back of a black limousine
La-da da da da da da da
La-da da da da da de
Talking 'bout you and me
And the games people play.

Some of us are old enough to remember this top of the pops 1969 song from Joe South, "Games People Play". It’s been my ear worm this week as I returned from the Gathering of Leaders conference in Albuquerque. Our theme this year was “Stewardship: Money in the Missionary Church” and we had a number of presentations about money following mission and the challenges of the 21st century. One of our members, the Rev. Paul Fromberg – rector of St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco, gave a presentation that caused me to remember this song. In that presentation he talked about the human games God doesn’t play. What does that mean?

In an intersection between sociology and the Gospel, he talked about our assumptions as humans that how we live is how things have always been believing our current reality is eternal instead of recognizing how much is made up human stuff. We even confuse how we think it’s always been with God’s blessing – especially when the systems we invent are working in our favor. That got me thinking about Walter Brueggmann's work on the common good and how our belief in our human made up systems become closed ideologies. When we carry closed ideologies about how things are based on our experiences, members of a society can be very defensive when you challenge those ideologies. Brueggemann defines the work of a prophet as speaking truth to closed ideologies so their lies can be exposed, and the Holy Spirit can enter and remake us anew. One of the major human games we play is the money game. In America, our closed ideology is that our money game of capitalism has always been the way economic things are and it is the best economic system – even blessed by God.

The reality is capitalism is not “how it’s always been” – as an economic model humans made up! It’s only about 450 years old. Prior to that and overlapping its development was the system of barter and trade which was highly relational. The growth of capitalism as a dominant economic engine came in the early 16th century on the heels of Pope Alexander VI issuing the Papal bull “Inter Caetera” which initiated the Doctrine of Discovery. This doctrine provided the spiritual, political, and legal justification for colonization of lands not inhabited by Christians. As European countries colonized the world, they claimed land for exploitation and enslaved native populations all in the name of wealth and fueling a nascent capitalistic economy. Capitalism worked very well for the European conquerors, but it relied on the enslavement of Black and brown bodies for labor – and it still does. Even here in the United States, human labor trafficking is big business and the continued legal system of slavery of incarcerated persons allowed by the 13th Amendment in the Constitution has continued the disproportionate enslavement of African Americans and Hispanics.

Many of us are beginning to hear the term “late stage capitalism” as what we are experiencing now. It describes a form of capitalism where large, multi-national corporations are dominating the economic systems around the world and controlling more and more of the resources, to the neglect of people and the environment. Paul shared how this impacts his context in San Francisco where there is a huge homeless population while simultaneously the city has 30,000 vacant housing units. Those 30,000 vacant housing units are owned by corporations and absent owners who are disconnected from the community and don’t care about the neighborhood. In truth, capitalism is a human money game which one day will collapse. This money game is one God doesn’t play.

Now, some of you may be thinking I’ve gone from preachin’ to meddlin’ but I’m going to take a risk of going just a bit farther on the matter of our closed ideologies and talk about another game God doesn’t play: God doesn’t play our governance game of representative democracy. Right now, we are experiencing a period of deep anxiety about the future of our republic and whether our democracy will remain intact. We’ve all be raised with “God Bless America” and the belief that our democratic form of government is the best way of guaranteeing freedom. Well, I’m not so sure we are as free as we like to think we are. When I look around and see active, blatant voter suppression robbing people of their agency, that doesn’t look like freedom. When I see young people saddled with student loan debt that’s the size of a home mortgage and even with a good paying job, there’s no way they can pay off their student loans, that looks like economic oppression not freedom. When unarmed Black men are gunned down by police, that doesn’t look like freedom. When our elections are subject to foreign interference and their integrity not secured, that doesn’t look like freedom. When corporations are considered “persons” who can make huge donations and buy the candidate of their choice, that doesn’t look like freedom, or democracy for that matter. Democracy is a human made construct – it’s a game God doesn’t play.

Here’s one more: God doesn’t play the game of religious rituals that don’t change and transform us into doers of God’s will. Doing whatever we want and then engaging in religious rituals hoping God will bless us is exactly what Isaiah is talking about in today’s lesson from the 58th chapter of his prophecy. In relaying God’s voice, Isaiah tells the people:

“Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.”

God is not playing human games. Fasting and the wearing of sackcloth don’t mean anything if we continue to follow our ways and ignore God’s priorities. It’s as true for us as it was for the Israelites. God doesn’t care if you go to church and take Communion if that isn’t changing you.

So what is God’s game? Isaiah lays it out quite clearly:

“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?”

The righteousness of God has everything to do with relationship, regardless of the human money, political or religious games in play. Breaking down injustice, releasing the oppressed (no matter what the form of oppression is), feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless poor, clothing the naked, building relationships across our divisions – this is God’s game.

It’s the work we are called to when Jesus speaks of us being salt and light for the world. When Jesus speaks of the salt losing its saltiness, we have trouble understanding what he’s talking about. But in his day, salt was used as a catalyst in the community cooking ovens to keep the fires burning. When that salt’s catalyzing capacity wore out, it was taken out of the oven and thrown out. Jesus’ point is we are to be the catalyst to keep the vision of the kingdom burning and alive. Isaiah names the signs of the kingdom and God’s priorities, Jesus tells us we are to be the catalyst that ignites the work of the kingdom on earth no matter what human games surround us.

In Baptism, you and I were claimed and marked as Christ’s own forever. Each week in the Eucharist we are reoriented to offer our lives as living sacrifices to embody the signs and work of God’s game and not our own. God’s call to a different kind of fast in Isaiah is a call to fast from the human games that hurt, oppress and exploit God’s beloved. It is a call to trust we are beloved of God and that we have been given everything to be the catalyzing salt to bring the light of Christ to the world in real tangible ways for the healing of the world.