A Message on Health Care Reform

A Sermon Delivered by The Rev. John D. Painter at Centenary United Methodist Church
Metuchen, New Jersey August 30, 2009

Text: James 1:17-27
Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.
If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.
—James 1:17-27, NRSV
A car hit an elderly man. The paramedic asks him, “Are you comfortable? “ The man says, “I make a good living.”
The Doctor gave a man six months to live. The man couldn’t pay his bill, so the doctor gave him another six months.
The Doctor called Mrs. Smith saying, “Mrs. Smith, your check came back.” Mrs. Smith responded, “So did my arthritis!”
The doctor told the patient, “You’ll live to be 60!” The patient responded: “I AM 60!” The doctor said, “See! What did I tell you?”
Believe me, I am well aware that the concerns about our health care system in the United States are no laughing matter. But I wanted to share those stories with you in the hopes that they would help us relax and loosen up as we approach an extremely complicated and conflict-laden topic this morning.
It was many weeks ago when I selected the reading from the Epistle of James as my Ser-mon text for this morning, and at that time I had an entirely different Message in mind. However, when a number of general agencies and leaders of our denomination began to ask clergy to con-sider speaking about health care concerns to their congregations on this Sunday, I revisited the passage to see if it still was appropriate to the topic. And lo and behold, here is what I discov-ered: “…let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.” and “If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”
The words from our brother James seem keenly relevant for this conversation today, es-pecially when it comes to being quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. For the primary concern I want to address this morning is the painful rending of our social fabric in the face of the heated and angry exchanges in recent weeks around the issue of health care reform. I have been deeply troubled by what appears to be the deliberate fomenting of discord in “town hall” information sessions with congressional representatives. Shouting matches do not provide information…they merely shut down reasonable speech, exacerbate fear and foster the spread of misinformation.
I will admit up front I am not qualified to address the complicated details of health care policy. Thank God that there are committed people of faith who have this kind of technical knowledge and are seeking to use it to provide helpful suggestions in the complex area of health care reform. Neither is it my role to criticize or support either national political party in this or on any other matter. Nor is that the role of the larger church.
My role as a pastor—and our role as a faith community—is to address the moral concerns challenging the people of our country in the face of a severely damaged health care system. The role of the faith community is to issue the call for honest dialogue around the numerous health care reform proposals. The role of the faith community is to condemn the spreading of outright lies that sow the seeds of fear among particular groups of people. The role of the faith commu-nity is to call for a civil national discourse with respect for one another and for differing points of view.
Our United Methodist Church has advocated for health care reform for many years. As you will see in the quotation from the Social Principles of our denomination which is on the hand-out sheet of resources you received this morning, our church asserts that “Health care is a basic human right.” The Social Principles go on to say: “Providing the care needed to maintain health, prevent disease, and restore health after injury or illness is a responsibility each person owes others and government owes to all, a responsibility government ignores at its peril… We believe it is a governmental responsibility to provide all citizens with health care.”
In a related resolution on health care from our General Conference—also on your re-source handout—the church has spoken of the inequities and injustices of the present health care system in the United States in which “health care access is disproportionately afforded to the af-fluent, the employees of government and large corporations, the very poor, and many receiving adequate pensions plus Medicare.” The fact that at least 46 million of our American sisters and brothers lack health care coverage is a devastating inequity that contributes to excess insurance obligations for many of the rest of us, and contributes to keeping many persons trapped in the cycle of poverty. Despite the exceedingly high costs of health care in our country—per capita health care costs in the United States are more than twice the median level for the 30 industrial-ized nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development—our health care system delivers far less satisfactory results than in many of the “developed” nations where health care costs are significantly lower. Just as one example, the infant mortality rate in the United States is the worst among the “developed” countries of the world.
It is clear that we have a health-care crisis. The health-care system in the U. S. is sick and broken: 46 million of God’s children are left out with no health insurance coverage, and 14,000 more are losing their coverage every day. Without change, costs for health insurance will con-tinue to go up, and—without reform—we all will pay more and more for health care.
President Obama has made health-care reform his top domestic policy priority, and Con-gress has been slowly moving to embrace a plan. But as members of the House and Senate came home for their August recess, the opposition forces to reform mounted a ferocious offensive.
One of the national religious leaders I hold in especially high regard is the Rev. Jim Wal-lis, founder of the evangelical Christian community Sojourners, based in Washington, D.C. If you have been following the various news broadcasts in recent weeks, you may have seen Jim Wallis being interviewed on CNN or MSNBC, and even the Fox News Network. In a recent E-mailing about “People of Faith and Health-Care Reform,” Jim Wallis had some unusually strong words for the current divisiveness of our national debate:
“We have a democracy crisis, with right-wing forces trying to prevent and destroy a civil debate with their ‘mob rule’ campaigns. Fueled by right-wing conservative talk-show hosts and funded by special interests in the health-care industry who are afraid they will lose money if the system is fixed, a vicious campaign to defeat health-care reform has begun. The ‘storm troopers’ of political demagoguery, such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck, have mobi-lized their followers to disrupt town meetings and defeat comprehensive reform by yelling louder than anybody else. The campaign tactics include lies, intimidation, character assassination, ver-bal abuse, and even mob behavior against members of Congress trying to conduct town hall meetings on the issues. In some places violence has broken out, and it has been threatened in other instances. Their approach seems to be to confuse and scare people, shout down the reform-ers, and disrupt the town meetings—to prevent a serious, honest, and civil public discussion about the best way to fix a broken system. There are also now some stories of left-wing groups organizing to confront these disruptions. Left-right shouting matches and confrontational tactics will not create the civil discourse we need, and could finally sabotage need health-care reform.
“There are difficult and complicated issues involved with truly reforming the health-care system, and there isn’t even a bill yet. It will take the best efforts of our legislators and the best attention of our citizens to accomplish real reform. But the lies and intimidation are designed simply to shut down the discussion, to make people afraid, to poison the civic atmosphere, and kill any possibility of real reform…
“Simply put, we must stop them from doing that. The faith community must protect the nation’s civil discourse from the clear threat of demagoguery.
“The country needs a good, honest, and healthy debate on the best ways to reform the health-care and insurance system, but fix it we must, and in a way that includes all who are now left out.
“It’s time for the faith community to unite around the moral imperative of health-care re-form, defense of the most vulnerable, and support for moral conscience in a comprehensive re-form of the health-care system.
“It’s time for the faith community to confront the distortions and lies that are being told. It’s time for the ministry of ‘truth-telling’ and to surround the nation’s discussion of health care with fervent prayer.
“It’s time for the faith community to practice nonviolent tactics of reconciliation and re-sistance against those on either side who would threaten the public debate with intimidation, fear, and even the threat of violence.”
It’s time for the faith community to make its voice heard—loudly and clearly.
People of faith may never entirely agree on every aspect of health-care reform, but there are guiding principles on which I believe we can find broad agreement within the faith commu-nity:
1. Health care must be affordable for all families. Reform must include limits on out-of-pocket expenses in proportion to income, and guarantee comprehensive benefits suf-ficient to maintain and promote good health.
2. Health care reform must cover all Americans.
3. The cost of health care reform must be broadly shared and placed on a sustainable funding foundation.
4. Lower-income children and families must be protected.
5. Reform legislation must respect religious liberty and the values of health care provid-ers.
As we move forward in the days ahead, what can you and I do to influence the conversa-tion around health care reform?
1. Pray about this issue and, as appropriate. discuss your personal experiences about health care with your friends and neighbors.
2. Educate yourself—do not believe everything you read in e-mails or see on TV.
3. Write letters of support for health-care reform to the editor of your daily newspaper.
4. Share your views with your congressional Representative and with our Senators Lau-tenburg and Menendez. Information on how to do that is on the resources hand out.
5. Pray without ceasing that our nation will not lose its soul at this critical moment in its history.
It is in many ways ironic that Senator Edward Moore Kennedy should have passed from this life during the week before many of us pastors are speaking about health care. Universal health care in America was, as many of you know, a priority passion for Senator Kennedy for much of the 46 years he served in the U.S. Senate. But one of the best-kept secrets about Senator Kennedy was his commitment to an open and civil discussion on the merits of any proposed plan.
“On October 3, 1983, Ted Kennedy surprised many in Washington by accepting the invi-tation of Dr. Jerry Falwell to come and speak at what is now Liberty University. Noting the seeming contradiction, he said, ‘They seem to think that it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a Kennedy to come to the campus of Liberty Baptist College.’
“The divisive issue at the time was a nuclear freeze in the midst of the Cold War. He condemned those who called Falwell a ‘warmonger’ and criticized a Harvard University audi-ence that had booed and hissed at Falwell during a speech. He warned against all those who would distract from such an important debate by raising ‘phantom issues’ and ‘false charges.’” (Hmmm, sound familiar?)
“He challenged his audience and his [own] political party by saying, ‘I hope that tonight and in the months and years ahead, we will always respect the right of others to differ, that we will never lose sight of our own fallibility, that we will view ourselves with a sense of perspec-tive and a sense of humor.’
“America is a different place in 2009 than it was in 1983, but Sen. Kennedy’s call for a better debate is needed as much now as it was then. And his comments at Liberty University have an obvious application to the current health-care debate, which has become one of the most rancorous in recent American political history.
“Ted Kennedy showed you can have passionate and clear political commitments (nobody had stronger ones than he did) and, yet, still reach out to others with very different political views on the basis of shared moral values, love of country, and commitment to the common good.
“We desperately need to heed his voice now: ‘I hope for an America where we can all contend freely and vigorously, but where we will treasure and guard those standards of civility which alone make this nation safe for both democracy and diversity.’ His hope should be our goal today.”
The faith community has a critically important role in this growing debate. In the name of truth-telling, fairness, and social justice—and in the name of the God of mercy and grace—let us go forth prepared to lift up our voices on these fundamental moral issues. Amen.
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