#OccupyFriday God is in the Detail

Guest Sermon by Cosmetic Brain Surgery

The doors did not close, for my love is unconditional

The people said "the invisible hand of the free market is really God at work." However, a man once told of a Merchant who said:

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. 

An evil soul producing holy witness 

Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, 

A goodly apple rotten at the heart: 

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath! 

The people said "the economy works because God wants it to work" but a wise Rabbi replied:

"We are taught to never assume that left to their own devices, those who have will naturally take care of those who don’t...it’s downright dangerous to claim that God, working through the divine machinations of the free market, will somehow provide.”

They said that we must sacrifice and serve our earthly masters as they divide us, but those of faith said:

we stand alongside people of all religions who are resisting economic injustice with active nonviolence. The global economic system perpetuates the wealth of the few at the expense of the many. It is based on idolatrous subservience to markets. We cannot worship both God and money.

They said that the work of a great man was done and praised him:

Yet we showed how a great man's words should be remembered:

We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.  When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, militarism and economic exploitation are incapable of being conquered. A nation can flounder as readily in the face of moral and spiritual bankruptcy as it can through financial bankruptcy.

But now as the nights and covers draw down and a child waits to be born, the Church and maybe all of us should do well to remember a Jewish protester killed on a Friday as the skies turned red:

Some asked what He would do, but a man of cloth reminded them:

If you looked around and you tried to recreate where Jesus would be born – for me, I could imagine Jesus being born in the camp

And whilst they trembled before Mammon who offered them salvation they were reminded:

Not by might and not by power, but by my spirit