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.

Posted by

Eric Folkerth is a minister, musician, author and blogger. He is Senior Pastor of Kessler Park UMC United Methodist Church in Dallas, Texas. Previously, he was pastor at Northaven UMC in Dallas for seventeen years. Eric loves to write on topics of spirituality, social justice, music/art and politics. The entries on this blog reflect that diversity of interests. His passion for social justice goes beyond mere words. He’s been arrested at the White House, defending immigrants and “The Dreamers,” and he’s officiated at same sex weddings in his churches, in defiance of what some believe is Methodist teaching. Eric is an avid blogger and published author, and 2017 recipient of the prestigeous Kuchling Humanitarian Award from Dallas’ Black Tie Dinner. (Human Rights Campaign) Eric has led or co-led hundreds of persons on mission trips around the globe, to places such as Mexico, Haiti, Russia, and Nepal. He has worked with lay persons to build ten homes, and one Community Center, in partnership with Habitat for Humanity of Dallas. He’s a popular preacher, and often tackles challenging issues of social justice in his writings and sermons. His wife, Judge Dennise Garcia, is a State District Judge for Dallas, County. As judge of the 303rd Family District Court, she consistently gets high ratings from area lawyers, and was named “best judge” by The Dallas Observer. First elected in 2004, she was the first Latina ever elected to a county-wide bench in Dallas County, and is currently the longest service district judge in that district. She was re-elected for a fourth term in 2018. They have the world’s best daughter, Maria, and an incredible dog, Daisy. Find links to Eric’s music-related websites, at the top of this site’s navigation menu.

Leave a Reply

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.