The common good.

Something to celebrate and defend.

Lent 4C - Joshua 5:9-12, 2 Corinthians 5:16-21, Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

The bumper sticker says: “Equal rights for others does not mean fewer rights for you. It’s not pie.” Not everyone feels that way.

For over 350 years our laws and customs have been structured so that only straight white men had access to the pie. We may rejoice that access is finally being opened up.

But to others, that opening up feels like a deprivation and diminishment. It has given rise to an anger that paraded with Tiki torches in Charlottesville and is now trying to destroy the federal government.

Anger over the loss of privilege is not new. It is as old as the elder son in this Sunday’s gospel parable of the Prodigal. How do we move towards reconciliation when some are so angry over lost privilege while others still lack the basic necessities?

I wonder if we need to re-think that bumper sticker.

This week I read a NYT Op-ed written by a woman who took the measles vaccine at the age of 63. She didn’t need it to keep from getting sick herself. She took it to protect others — those who cannot tolerate the vaccine.¹ She wrote:

To be in community is to recognize that we all . . . have an obligation to support and protect one another, to work together to create a society that is safe for everyone, including our most vulnerable neighbors.”²

She’s talking about what philosophers call the doctrine of the common good. It takes as a given that our world is like pie: it is a limited resource. So all of us — each of us — needs to accept some deprivation, burden or inconvenience in order to ensure that everyone has enough, including our most vulnerable neighbors.

In some ways, we as a nation have already begun to embrace the common good. There is a lot of it in the agencies and programs of the federal government.³ We can celebrate that, be proud of it and speak out in support of it when needs support, as it does now.

When speaking out for the doctrine of the common good we may have to push back at the notion that finding “waste and inefficiency”⁴ is some overriding sacred value. That’s ok, because it’s not.

Saying so, and then saying what is, is something we can all do.

Peace.

1. E.g., infants and the immuno-compromised.

2. Margaret Renkl, NYT 2/24/25. https://www.nytimes.com/20325/03/24/opinion/measles-vaccine-babies.html

3. Thanks to Frances Perkins who was responsible for the Social Security Act and many other laws which serve the common good. She was a lifelong Episcopalian. Her vision points to the compatibility of the common good and a faith-based understanding of social justice. Her feast day is May 13.

4. According to the AP, in 2024, Social Security’s inspector general stated that from fiscal years 2015 through 2022, the agency paid out less than 1% in improper payments. And Heather Cox Richardson writes (based on 3/22 WaPo reporting) that far from saving money, “billionaire Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” has cost the government $500 billion, 10% of what the Internal Revenue Service took in last year.”

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash