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[Silence] The following message for the moment is delivered by the Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is entitled, "Pittsburgh, Poverty, and Presbyterians." [Silence]

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I dedicate the sermon of the morning to the glory of God, and in memory of a member of this church and a friend of mine, Wayne Holt, who went to be with the Lord in the church triumphant on Easter Day of this year. Pray with me.

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. The newspapers are on strike, and so the matter has dropped out of the news, but for a while it was headlined in both of our local news sheets,

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namely that Pittsburgh has 21-plus percent of its citizens living below the poverty level. The poverty level is $12,750 a year for a family of four. We now have over 75,000 Pittsburghers who live on an income less than that. Indeed, we have the highest poverty rate of any city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,

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and we stand at 8-1/2 percent above the national poverty rate. What makes the matter even more serious is the fact that the number of people living on poverty in this city has increased by 5 percent in the last ten years. In other words, the problem is getting worse.

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Here in Pittsburgh we have many beautiful boulevards lined with great enterprises, businesses, and industries, and some of the most exquisite and expensive shops in all of the country. We have beautiful green parks and fountains and fine statuary, but we also have pockets of poverty where not only the roads, but even the sidewalks, are torn into nothingness.

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Now, a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that the money, which we commonly refer to as welfare money, that goes into these areas of need stays there. But in point of fact, most of the money that goes into these areas in the form of welfare ends up in either middle or upper class suburbs of our city.

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For example, the first large chunk that is taken out of welfare giving in this country is expended for the cost of living raises of civil servants, most of whom live not in the poverty pockets, but rather in places of affluence. The largest chunk that is taken out of welfare is that which goes to Social Security.

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Now, because middle class people and upper in-class income people have paid the most into Social Security, they derive the most from it, even though many of them have very generous pension programs, and some of them are so wealthy that they have no need of this welfare payment whatever. We build highways and we build airports and we build subways,

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but people living in poverty pockets do not drive on highways, for they do not have cars, and they don't fly in airplanes out of airports no matter how new and sophisticated they might be. And the subway system, in our city at least, is principally designed to bring those from middle or upper in-class areas, income areas, into the heart of the downtown.

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We have a city council which consistently invests the city's funds in areas where there is not the greatest need. We have representation from the poverty pockets on our city council, but it is easily outvoted and it is carefully controlled. A fast food chain will go into a poverty area and it will employ a certain number of people,

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usually young people, paying them the minimum wage or something similar to it. But far more serious is the fact that that fast food chain sucks money out of that poverty area to the hands of those who own that business. They live in the suburbs or in places of affluence.

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In fact, studies have shown that money that is spent in mother and father stores, mom and pop stores, little neighborhood businesses in poverty pockets, stays there eight times longer than money that is spent in places like food chains and similar enterprises. A good deal of the money that comes in a form of welfare from our government goes to assist our hospitals.

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The fact is that a lot of this money which goes to our hospitals is meant to put carpets on hospital room floors and colored television sets in hospital rooms. The poor do not get into those rooms. And even if they were to get into them, they have to be sick in order to be entitled to be there.

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We pour a lot of money in educational funds into poverty pockets, but most of the people who teach in those schools live in affluent suburbia. So that money, too, does not stay where the poor are, but goes instead to where those live who have enough or more than enough.

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So in a very real sense, poverty pockets serve as a kind of funnel for funds that come from the government but that end up in areas that do not have great need of them. Now, why should this concern us as Christians? Well, think for a moment what God has to say about poverty.

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Let me give you just two examples. The single most significant event in all of the Old Testament is the Exodus, when God freed his people from economic slavery in Egypt and brought them to the land of promise. You will remember that when he gave them the Ten Commandments, he began by saying,

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"I am the Lord your God who has brought you out of bondage." In other words, this most principal of Old Testament events is an act of God designed to bring his people out of enslaving circumstances to freedom. Now, as his people prospered, as they became more sleek and successful,

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they began to persecute the poor within their own midst and the poor in nations about them. And God responded by sending the prophets to them to warn them not to do this. Isaiah says, "You rob the poor of their rights." Micah says, "You oppress the poor."

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Jeremiah says, "You do injustice to the poor." Amos says, "You trample upon the poor while you lie on beds of ivory. You have solemn feasts and worship assemblies, but I will not listen to them," says the Lord of Hosts. What I am listening for is the sound of justice rolling down like waters

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and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. And because Israel would not heed God's warnings, he sent them back into poverty again. And they became enslaved people once more. Now, the central event of the New Testament is, of course, the incarnation,

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God coming into the world in human flesh. And how did he come? He came as a poor man. And what was the theme of the first sermon that he preached? Jesus says, "I have come to preach good news to the poor."

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And his ministry was spent largely in the healing and the teaching and the comforting of the poor. Christ says to his disciples, "When you do something for someone who is poor, you are doing it for me. When you do not do something for those who are in poverty, you are not doing it to me." It is as if God and the poor are one and the same.

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In Proverbs, for example, we read, "He who opposes a poor man insults his maker." Or again in Proverbs, we read, "He who is blind to the poor and who gives to the poor lends to the Lord." Let me quote that again. Proverbs 19, "He who is kind to the poor lends to the Lord." Now, when I speak about God's identification with the poor, using the central example out of the Old Testament

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and the central example out of the New Testament, let me quickly add two footnotes to what I am saying. The first footnote is this. I'm not saying, nor does the Scripture say, that God despises the rich. The Bible teaches us that God is not a respecter of persons. He does not love people on the basis of the economic level where they live.

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But his love is an expression of moral responsibility. Now, just as a parent becomes especially affectionate and solicitous and ministers to whichever one of the children in the family is sick or has been beaten up or for one reason or another is desperately afraid, just as the parent ministers with special compassion to suffering children,

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so God ministers especially to those who are sinned against in this world. And that's the reason his love flows out to the poor. And that is the reason he condemns much that is done by the rich. Because the poor have the need and the rich ignore them.

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I think it's significant to notice that God loves sufferers of whatever kind, but God also is angry with those who inflict suffering upon another. God, in other words, is just. The second footnote which I would suggest is this.

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The Bible nowhere teaches that all poor people are nice people. Yes, there are people who receive welfare and cheat. There are winos who take their food stamps and trade them in for more booze. The poor can be as nasty as anyone.

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The only thing is they are not quite so secretive about it. I mean by that that a poor man will use a gun. A rich man will use a stockholder proxy. A poor man will use a knife, while the rich man inflicts pain with his checkbook.

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The poor are just as sinful as the rich. They are no better and they are no worse. But this does not lessen our responsibility to them. Because you see Jesus tells us we are to love the unlovable.

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He tells us we are to love even those who are our enemies. Paul says to the Colossians, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly." And what is that word? It is the word of love.

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And that's what all of us need the most. Now what does this poverty situation in Pittsburgh and what the scriptures teach about God's concern for the poor, what does this have to say to us as Presbyterians?

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You understand, of course, that Presbyterians are, according to repeated studies, the richest Protestant denomination that has existed in the entire history of the Christian Church. The average income of Presbyterians is far higher than that of any other Protestant faith group and even the Roman Catholic Church in this country.

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And when we, the rich, look at places like Los Angeles and what is happening there, we need, it seems to me, to become passionately concerned. Events there are ominous. They show and reveal the animosity, the hatred, the frustration that is building up in poverty pockets.

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But strange to say, this growing catastrophe has been met by the Church in large measure through the development of a kind of weird new theology which draws part of its teachings from John Stuart Mill and part of its teachings from Ayn Rand. From John Stuart Mill it gathers, "Let each be free to make the most of himself that he can."

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Nothing wrong with that. That's the free enterprise system. But then many add to that the teachings of Ayn Rand, "Let no one feel any obligation to help anyone else." Make all you can and keep it. Now compare that with the life of the Apostle Paul.

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Paul worked very hard for the poor. In Palestine in 46 AD there was a very serious famine. And Paul traveled throughout all of Asia Minor raising money for starving persons back there in the Palestine area. He talks about this in his letter to the Galatians and the Romans, in the Corinthian correspondence,

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and it's also described in the book of the Acts. He is warned in Acts chapter 21 that what he is doing is very perilous. And in Romans 15 he acknowledges that he's risking his life to do this. But he believed that the needs of the poor were greater than his need for life.

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And so he kept on risking himself. And finally in Acts chapter 24, while he is out on one of these fundraising journeys for the poor, he is arrested, he is jailed, he is condemned, and he is beheaded. And it's the Apostle Paul who writes to us under the influence of the Holy Spirit, "Be ye imitators of me."

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My friends, the answer to the great poverty problems that confront our country is not to be found in welfare, and it's not to be found in workfare or any variations on those themes of which you might think. It is to be found when Christians start to act like Christians in the midst of a world of dark selfishness. And this is what reminds me of my friend Wayne Holt.

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Wayne led a very hard life. He had only a distant family, and he made some serious mistakes. But though he was very poor, he gave away almost everything that he had, not only in terms of his money, but also in terms of his time and of his skill.

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All of these, treasure, time, talent, he made available to the service of God. He is the one who led our girls' club and built those girls not only as a group, but as individuals. And now, incidentally, we're going to have to close that club because we have no one who's ready to take up the task anymore.

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He is the one who spent the last few weeks of his life taking care of an elderly, bed-fast woman. He cleaned her apartment, he cooked for her, he went on errands for her, and he did all of this without any recompense whatever. When his memorial service was held here in this sanctuary,

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one of the fine members of this congregation stood at that sacred desk and said, "I am a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, and I am a graduate of that university because Wayne Holt pushed me and pulled me through it." Once Wayne walked into my office with this little clown,

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and he said, "We're all fools for Christ's sake." And you know, I've always kept that clown in a place in my office where I can readily see it. You see, there are people who would call a person like Wayne Holt a fool. But if he was a fool, then he was God's fool.

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You see, you have to labor with the poor, mix with them, before you begin to understand them. It's a matter of tangling your life into their lives. It gives you the sensitivity that is required to meet the needs that are there. It's not enough to send a check.

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There has to be closeness as well. We as a church are very involved in ministry to the poor in this city. We help to support health care for 5,500 youngsters in this county who live below the poverty level. We have a food pantry for the hungry.

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We have two agencies designed to help people get jobs. We support an agency which takes care of poor women, Bethlehem Haven, and poor men, the Light of Life Rescue Mission. We have a boys' club and a girls' club, both of which are in danger of closing in the near future because others will not take up the task that has been borne by so few for so long, so splendidly.

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You know, sometimes I hear people complain about the size of the staff that we have in this church. You know why we have them, don't you? Because the membership is willing to pay to have someone else to do the job, but they will not undertake the doing of the job themselves.

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We have a walk-in ministry which is open to all of the poor, regardless of their religious background. The last 12 people who have come to me for financial assistance, 11 of them were Roman Catholics and one was Baptist. And now we're involved in our Mission Bridges campaign to try to raise $25,000 for an evangelist to young black males and $25,000 to assist elderly people who are too poor to take care of themselves.

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These are the two greatest poverty groups in our society, the young black and the older person with no remaining resources. Now, I will confess to you that as I approach my retirement, a single thought keeps coming into my mind. I suppose it's not a good thought, but it's there. Every time I do something, for the last time, I think to myself,

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"That's the last Palm Sunday sermon you have to write. That's the last Maundy Thursday meditation you have to write. That's the last Good Friday service you have to write. That's the last Easter you have to go through.

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You'll be able to sit with congregations now and enjoy those times of worship, not stay up all the night before preparing yourself for them." I think these kinds of thoughts. This is the last annual meeting over which you'll ever have to preside.

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And when we had our third century campaign a few years ago, which was over the top because of the generosity and the leadership of our people, I thought to myself, "That's the last special financial campaign in which you'll ever have to be engaged." And then I heard about this need, and I couldn't say no.

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Granted, when you become involved in hands-on ministry with poor people, when you put your talents to work in the task of the Church with its people or with the people that it riches, when you do that, you are going to confront moral complexity that you will not confront in other places. You are going to confront despair beyond that which you have known in other areas of ministry.

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You are going to find out what it is to have people say to you again and again, "No, I'm sorry I can't give. No, I'm sorry I can't take time to be on the leadership committee. No, I am not able to give the time that is necessary to carry out the task." You will get sick to death of hearing those things.

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But God still calls us to precisely those tasks. I read recently a magazine article about the stately homes of Great Britain, and it talked about how many of them are falling into ruins because their owners can't afford to keep them up any longer. Some are collapsing. Some are being made into museums.

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They are, in a sense, tombs of a way of life that has now passed away. And the person who wrote the article closed it with this sentence, "We cannot keep sighing over 700 years of English history." And I understood him, and I think every other thoughtful person understands him.

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We do lament the passing of those romantic days of the past that were so memorable, even when they were so many times crowded with mistakes. But that world is gone, and history shows us that what the world needs now is not masters, but servants. Servants of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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It is time, my friends, for every Christian to acknowledge in thought, in act, and in giving, in the heart, in the hands, and from the purse, it is time that every Christian acknowledge that the man in the mansion must bow down before the man who was born in a stable. Let us pray.

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For all of its problems, its vicissitudes, and its difficulties, our Father, we still love this place in which we live. But grant that our love for thee, and grant that our love for those who inhabit these hills with us, might lead us, as servants of Christ, to be agents of reconciliation between humankind and thee, and between human and human.

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O, make us such agents of reconciliation. For we pray our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen.