All the Good We Can: A Sermon on Healthcare

Sunday's sermon seems to be getting a lot of positive comment from folks in various quarters. When that happens, I tend to post it to my personal blog, in the hopes that anybody else who might find it helpful can easily find it.

It's a sermon about healthcare. As you can't help but know, this issue pervades our society right now. This is the second time I've preached on this timely issue in recent months.

I am not a politician or social scientist, but I am a preacher, among other things; and so at the encouragement of folks in our congregation, I preached this sermon about healthcare last Sunday:





If you can't see the player on this page, click here to go to the file.

In the sermon, I mention the United Methodist view on healthcare. The quote I cite comes from the 2008 Discipline, and is a part of the United Methodist Church's official position on healthcare, adopted by the 2008 General Conference. (For those outside our denomination who might not know, the General Conference is the only group authorized to speak on behalf of the whole church...)

In case anybody's interested, here is the excerpt I cited:

"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 all, a responsibility government ignores at its peril..health care is best funded through the government's ability to tax each person equitably and directly fund the provider entities...We believe it is a governmental responsibility to provide all citizens with health care."
-- The General Conference of the United Methodist Church, Paragraph 162 of the 2008 Book of Discipline

Following up on this statement from the Discipline, the General Board of Church in Society has put together this website which also has important information about healthcare and healthcare reform. You might also find it helpful.

Finally, several folks have asked about the quote from Wesley. It's a good one too, and here it is:

"Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can."

That quote is a part of my ever-growing number of "Credo-Bytes."

As always, you're free to disregard a Methodist preacher's point of view. But I hope some might find it helpful as they sort through their own views on this important issue.