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Is there any hope for Pittsburgh? Our unemployment rate is now 4% higher than the national average. Can anything be done? What is to happen to those who are suffering tonight from the existing situation?

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You are listening to the regular Sunday evening broadcast of the First Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My name is Bruce Wheeler-Fieldman and I am one of the pastoral collegians serving this congregation.

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In less than one minute, I shall be standing before a large and vital congregation and I shall be addressing the questions I have just noted. My message is entitled "Of Kinley Conduct." I warmly invite you to stay tuned.

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Is there any hope for Pittsburgh? Let us continue in worship by giving attention to the reading of God's word as it is found in the prophecy of Jeremiah, the 22nd chapter, beginning the reading at the verse numbered 13.

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"Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbor serve him for nothing and does not give him his wages, who says, 'I will build myself a great house with spacious upper rooms,' and cuts out windows for it, paneling it with cedar and painting it with vermilion.

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Do you think you are a king because you compete in cedar? Did not your father even drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and the needy.

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Then it was well. Is not this to know me, says the Lord? But you have eyes and hearts only for your dishonest gain, for shedding innocent blood, and for practicing oppression and violence.

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Therefore, thus says the Lord concerning Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, 'They shall not lament for him, saying, "O my brother," or "O sister." They shall not lament for him, saying, "O Lord," or "O his majesty." With the burial of an ass he shall be buried, dragged, and cast forth beyond the gates of

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Jerusalem.' And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his words. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

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Amen. During the days of the French monarchy, the children of the royal family were taught by employed tutors, and it sometimes was very difficult for the tutors to enforce discipline with the royal children.

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One of the tutors solved the problem in this way. He pinned a bit of royal purple ribbon over the heart of each one of the children on their tunics, and he said, 'You now wear the royal purple. I pin it here, lest you behave in a way unbecoming your station.

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When you do wrong, I shall point to the ribbon, and I shall make my appeal to the purple.' My fathers and mothers in Christ, and my brothers and sisters in the Lord, and my sons and daughters in the Spirit, I come into this pulpit today to remind you that as Christians we wear the purple over our hearts.

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We are part of the aristocracy of heaven. The scripture teaches this. The scripture says that 'as many as receive Christ as Lord receive from him the power to become the children of God.'

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God is the great King above all kings. To become a part of God's family, to be a child of God, is therefore to be of royal lineage. This same theme is picked up in other places in the scripture.

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We are told that we reign with Christ. We are told that we are part of a royal priesthood. We are told that we are appointed to a kingdom. I acknowledge that we do not always feel very regal.

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There are times when we are defeated and dismayed. There are times when we forget our nature and when we find ourselves to be frustrated by the events of the day. But my brothers and sisters, what I want to say to you today is this, that even when we

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feel down, being down does not change our essential nature. Though we may be down, we are still kings and queens who are down. Nothing can change our relationship to God. You all know of Helen of Troy.

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Her beautiful countenance was said to have caused wars. In one of the battles, she herself was lost in the fray. Her enemies could not find her. Her friends could not find her.

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The armies returned home and she was unfound. All gave up hope of ever seeing her again except Menelaus. Menelaus went looking for her and found her suffering from amnesia in a sea coast town. She was living the life of a prosthesis.

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He went up to her and called her by name, Helen. No response. So he walked over and took her by the shoulders and took her and said, "You are Helen of Troy."

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And somehow that pierced to the center of her. And the straightness came to the back again and the royal look on the face. And she remembered the blood that flowed in her veins. In a very real sense, I come into the pulpit today to shake you a bit by the shoulders

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and say, "We are the children of the king. We wear the royal purple. We are of the aristocracy of God. And nothing can change that."

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Acknowledging this then, we would do well, I think, to go on and ask, "What is the proper behavior for royal children? What is the kingly conduct which should mark us as the aristocracy of heaven?" Well I think the mark of that is made very evident in both the Old and the New Testaments.

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The mark of royalty in Scripture, royalty that is approved of God, is a concern and a care for the poor. In the Old Testament, for example, the prophecy of Jeremiah, a portion of which I just read in your hearing, Jeremiah is addressing the king, Jehoiakim.

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And Jeremiah is speaking under the influence of the Spirit of God. He is speaking the Word of God. And this is what he says to Jehoiakim, who was in the act of building for himself a more magnificent palace at the very time when his people were knowing severe economic pain and

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hurt. Jeremiah says to him, "Do you think you are a king just because you live in rooms lined with cedar? I ask you to think of your father.

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Now your father was no ascetic. He ate and he drank. But your father was a friend of the poor. And to be a friend of the poor is to know me," says the Lord.

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Now when Jeremiah says this to Jehoiakim, he's echoing the teaching of the whole Old Testament. In Proverbs we read, "If the king judges the poor with equity, then his throne will be established forever."

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In Psalms we read, "Justice to the weak, maintain the rights of the poor, rescue the needy." These are the marks of a Christian king, of a king that loves God. In the Old Testament, kings like David and Hezekiah and Josiah and Uzziah, the kings that are most honored and praised, are the kings that held up always the cause of the

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poor. You see, the great temptation which comes to royalty, the great temptation which comes to the have, is to forget those who have not. But the whole testimony of Scripture is that when you are royal, you are called to special

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responsibility. And the premier example of this, of course, is to be found in the New Testament. It's the model of the Master. Jesus is the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

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But what does it say of him? It says that he humbled himself and took upon himself the role of a servant. He poured out red blood to win for us the purple of royalty. And Paul says, "Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, that we through

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his poverty might become rich." And what does Jesus himself say? "If someone asks your coat, give also to him your cloak. Be generous in the giving of alms.

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Do good to the least of the brethren, for when you do it to them, you do it to me." Royal conduct as it's defined in Scripture, Old Testament and New, is helping the poor. And yet, there are those who don't see that. I remember once a few years ago being invited to participate in a conference which was being

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held in Houston, Texas. Christian leaders had been called in from across the country. And the final session was being addressed by one of America's wealthiest men, a man who is worth several hundreds of millions of dollars, a man whose name you would recognize

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immediately were I to mention it. He spoke about America's need for salvation. There wasn't anything in his speech which you have not heard before. Until the last line, and I shall never forget that last line.

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I wrote it down the moment after he said it so that I knew I had it right. This is what he said. We must bring America to Christ so that we can keep everything we earn. Now think about that for a moment.

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We must bring America to Christ so we won't have to share anything. Now here is rank selfishness. Yet this man presented this as a Christian witness. Now why would he do that?

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Well, I think he did it in part because there has slipped into the thinking of our land, principally through the writings of Herbert Spencer, who was influenced by Charles Darwin, a notion that the survival of the fittest applies to the conduct of the society as well as it does to the development of the animal kingdom.

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You see, we were founded as a society on the notion that the common good was best served, economically at least, by the principled self-interest of each individual. Now notice, the common good, concern for everybody, by the principled, the generous, the loving, the concerned, the sharing self-interest with others.

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But Spencer taught, and his teachings have infiltrated our thinking, that the survival of the fittest is the law of the land, that you get everything you can and the devil takes the hindmost, and then William Graham Sumner influenced our thinking by teaching us that whatever you thought about religion, it was inappropriate when taken into the world of

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economics. I mean, the Bible does not belong in the marketplace. Now when you take those two ideas and you add to them two other false teachings which have come into our thinking as a people, the first, that if you're rich, this means you're

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a good person and God has blessed you with a lot of money. That idea has been preached by Christian preachers. The famous Episcopal bishop, William Lawrence, wrote, "Godliness is in league with riches. It is only to those who are of moral worth that wealth comes."

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And the corollary to that is, of course, if you're poor, that's because God is punishing you. That's because you've sinned. And no less a preacher than Henry Ward Beecher taught in the pulpits of this land, "No man

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in this country suffers from poverty unless it be his own sin." Now these ideas were held and announced by those who claim the name of Christ. I mean, these people hold this book next to their hearts and say that to be rich is testimony of the fact that you are especially good and blessed by God, and to be poor is testimony

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of the fact that you are a special sinner before God. Yet this book says, "Beware if you have riches. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven."

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And this book says, "If you want to act like a child of the king, you must be concerned for the poor." In more than 1,500 places, God's special love and concern for the poor is taught in this book.

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This is the book that says, "He who oppresses a poor man insults the man's maker." This is the book that says, "He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord." Ten days ago I had lunch with one of America's most well-known jurists, a brilliant attorney, a great Christian, Presbyterian elder, teacher of the Word of God.

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He lives it as well as teaching it. And he said to me toward the end of the luncheon, "You know, it's funny that none of you preacher guys have ever explained to people that it actually comes down to a matter of basin theology." "Basin theology?

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What's basin theology?" I said, "It's all two basins." He said, "When Pontius Pilate, who was a man of power, had the opportunity to help someone, he called for a basin and washed his hands of the whole matter.

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When Jesus of Nazareth, who was a man of power, was asked to help someone, he called for a basin, took off his robe, girded himself with a towel, and went to work. It's all a matter of which basin you choose. Is it the basin with which you wash your hands of the world's needs, or is it the basin with

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which you set to work trying to clean up the world's needs?" My brothers and sisters, the testimonious scripture is this, that if you wear the purple, you also wear a towel. That with privilege comes responsibility.

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That is what keenly conduct is. And that brings me to this beloved old city of ours. Right now here in Pittsburgh, our unemployment rate is four times higher than the national average, and it's not getting much better.

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This last week I had the great joy of being invited by Mr. Ernest Buckman, who's the chairman of the Oliver Realty Corporation, incidentally a company that's growing in our midst, a company that's bringing new employees to our town and hiring more people. Mr. Buckman invited me to a symposium where some leaders in the world of business and

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labor and government spoke about our situation here in southwestern Pennsylvania, and the facts are bad. And every one of those who spoke cried out for compassion. They pointed out to us that damage, serious damage is being done to some of our people.

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Let me give just one example, a fellow named Bill, 34 years old, lost his job, a nice job, in 1981. His benefits ran out in 1983. His wife works in a diner because they believe in earning their own way as far as they can,

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and her wages push them just above the amount of money that you need to lose food stamps, so they have no food stamps or medical benefits. They had to leave their house because the pipes froze in it three times. They could not pay to have them fixed.

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They live in a small apartment where he sleeps on the floor. They have two daughters, both of whom have always done well in school, but one has now been held back a year because of emotional stress and tension in the home. He has been turned down by more than 30 different companies.

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His annual income, the income of the whole family, is $6,000 a year. The poverty level for a family of four is $10,200. Now, many of our neighbors are going through this kind of situation. They're confronted by the agony of relocation, by relatives who don't want to loan to them

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anymore, by savings accounts that have disappeared, by ugly ideas concerning their own worth. Is it any wonder then that the other day at this symposium I attended, Mr. Fred Federolf, who's the president of the Alcoa, got up and pleaded for people like this, and having pled for them, said, "I especially plead to the churches of our city."

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It's in response to that today that I talk to you about the Lazarus Fund. The Lazarus Fund is a fund initiated by our presbytery, in which we're asking every presbyterian in Allegheny County to give $7 now and $7 in September to go into a special fund to help the unemployed of our area.

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If we do this, we'll raise a million dollars. Thirty percent of it will go to immediate need. Thirty percent of it will go to bring new small businesses into our Pittsburgh area. And small businesses are the businesses that are hiring the most new people.

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This money is being very carefully controlled. Individuals, they don't have to be presbyterians, must apply to church sessions. Church sessions then must approve them. And all of the money that comes goes directly to those who are owed, and the flow of the

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money is carefully directed. There is no place here for waste. This is a very practical attempt to live out the injunction of Scripture to bear ye one another's burden and so fulfill the law of Christ.

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Notice the law of Christ. It is not an option. It is laid down as a principle of our Christian belief. You know, when I think about this, I think about a little town up in New England that

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had a serious problem in that it sat at the foot of a mountain, and the road down the side of the mountain was very precipitous, and there were places where people had driven off the road and fallen either to serious hurt or to death. And they had many signs and warning lights along that road.

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But it kept on happening. And one year, they had the annual meeting of the town right after one of these serious accidents. And one of the older citizens of the town got up and said, "I plead for more signs and

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for more warning lights that this might not happen again." And a new person who had recently moved to the town got up and said, "We don't need more signs and we don't need more warning lights. What we need is a new road.

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It will cost us more now, but in the long run, it's the only way to go." My friends, with regard to this city that we love, there are no quick fixes. It doesn't do us any good to put up signs and warning lights. And it doesn't do us any good to blame one another because there's enough blame to go

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around. What we need is a new road. And what I plead for this morning is a kind of third Renaissance in Pittsburgh. Renaissance One and Renaissance Two, new buildings, clean it, wonderful.

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But we need a Renaissance of the spirit. We need to make this city known as a place where people care for each other, where the same workers and managers that used to fight unite now for the good of the place that they live, where citizens are just as much concerned with clearing their consciences as they are

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with clearing their atmosphere. And the Lazarus Fund is a step in that direction. We're asking for $7 from every Presbyterian. Now we all know that some can't give that because they don't have it.

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And some won't give that for whatever reason is there. So from some of you, I need $700 to make up for 100 who won't give. I need at least three or four $700. And I need about 40 or 50, $70 to make up for 10 people who can't or who won't.

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And all of you who listen to the radio and are hearing this broadcast in the 27 states where it's carried, I invite you to send your $7 to help Pittsburgh and to help Christians here care for one another. And at the end of this broadcast, you'll hear how you can send in your money.

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See, this is a call to live up to the name which is ours, to live up to the royal nomenclature which designates us. You know, names do have power. Let me give you one quick illustration of that.

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There used to be a very famous pianist in America whose name was Olga Samoroff. She had a 30-year career, brilliant career. She was a dazzling performer. She was the first woman ever admitted to the Paris Conservatory.

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She was a music critic of the New York Evening Post. She taught at Juilliard and at Philadelphia. Some of her students are great pianists, people like William Cappell and Rosalind Trura. And she was Russian.

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And in those days, the '30s and the '40s, that meant mystery, exotica. She had that kind of personality. She married the most famous symphonic conductor of the day, Leopold Stokowski. But she was never called Madame Leopold Stokowski.

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She was always called Olga Samoroff. I mean, isn't that a marvelous name for a Russian pianist? The interesting thing is, she wasn't Russian. And she wasn't very mysterious or exotic.

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And Olga Samoroff wasn't her real name. Her real name wasn't even Madame Leopold Stokowski. She was born in San Antonio, Texas. And her real name was Lucy Hickenlooper.

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Well, Lucy, or Hank, or Joe, or Phil, or Betty, I'm not calling you this morning by your playing name. I'm standing in this sacred desk and calling you by your royal name. I'm calling you by the purple.

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Christian, child of God, to you I make my appeal. The scripture says, "If we endure, we will reign with him. If we deny him, he will deny us." In God's name, I ask you to live like a king.

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Let us pray. O God, bless us in our living and let it show through our giving for Jesus' sake. Amen. The Lazarus Fund envelopes are the beige-colored envelopes which you will find in the queues.

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Feel free to take them home and send them in if you wish later. And as you give your offering, may I remind you of the words of scripture again, in that our Lord Jesus, though he was rich, yet for our sake he became poor, that we through his poverty might become rich.

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May God bless you in your giving. Amen.