Last weekend, I traveled to Houston with a bunch of folks from the faith-based community-organizing group, Austin Interfaith, for the southwest regional Industrial Areas Foundation meeting. The Industrial Areas Foundation is a community-organizing organization with local affiliates all over the country, including Austin. Throughout the two-day meeting, economists from a variety of universities and policy institutes spoke about the current state of the American political economy. One of the speakers was Jared Bernstein, from the Economic Policy Institute in Washington D.C., and author of the book, All Together Now, Common Sense for a Fair Economy.
    In his talk, Bernstein described an economic ideology and a set of economic policies he calls YOYO economics. YOYO stands for You're On Your Own. In his book, Bernstein observes that the core of this ideology and these policies is hyper-individualism: "the notion that whatever the challenges we face as a nation, the best way for people to solve them is to fend for themselves." (Bernstein, 4)
    Those who champion YOYO economics are seeking to shift as much economic risk as possible onto individuals and families. Examples include efforts to privatize Social Security and to deal with the health care crises by creating personal health care accounts, eliminating regulations on corporations that protect workers and consumers, cutting social services to the poor, and cutting revenue for the government through regressive tax cuts. All these efforts, Bernstein argues, create greater economic insecurity for individuals and families by weakening a shared sense of communal and civic responsibility for our economic well-being, and by creating an ideology that claims the U.S. government can never be anything but a burden on the American people and must therefore be rendered as small and weak as possible.
    Bernstein writes in his book:

The emphasis on individualism will always be a core American value, but it has been stressed to the breaking point. As the YOYO influence has spread, assisted by the muscular application of contemporary economics, the YOYOs have implemented a philosophy of hyper-individualism that disdains using tools of government to seek solutions. More than anything else, this policy has led to our current predicament. Under the banner of "You're on your own," we have lost a sense of common ownership of our government, an institution that many of us now distrust as feckless at best and corrupt at worst. (Bernstein, 10)

With the ascendancy of YOYO philosophy, we've lost the ability to come together to create the government we need to meet the economic and political challenges we face at every level. (Bernstein, 17)

    An article in the Statesman this past week seemed to confirm Bernstein's analysis. The article described how corporate business lobbies are inundating the current administration in Washington with last-minute requests to roll back or eliminate a number of federal workplace and consumer product safety regulations because they feel the current administration is more ideologically supportive of rolling back or eliminating regulations that protect workers and consumers than a future administration will be. In other words, these lobbies are telling workers and consumers, You're On Your Own, because it's better that way.
    Bernstein contrasts the YOYO Your on Your Own ideology with one he calls, We're In This Together or WITT. He writes:

We simply cannot effectively address globalization, health care, pensions, economic insecurity, and fiscal train wrecks by cutting taxes, turning things over to the market, and telling people they're on their own....At the heart of the WITT agenda is the belief that we can wield the tools of government to build a more just society, one that preserves individualist values while ensuring that the prosperity we generate is equitable shared. (Bernstein, 7-8)

    For Bernstein, the core of the WITT agenda is to change the dominant question in our current political discourse. Instead of asking, how can we diminish the role of government in our lives, Bernstein is asking, how can we harness the power of government to solve the challenges we face? Instead of asking, how can we starve the beast, he is asking, how can we make the beast more accountable to, and work harder for, the interests of middle class and poor Americans?
    I mention Bernstein's YOYO vs. WITT analysis this morning because I want to highlight a justice theme on this Sunday in which we light the Advent Candle of Peace. But I also mention it because we have celebrated and participated in the Christian sacrament of baptism this morning, and Bernstein's analysis, no matter what you think about it when applied to our contemporary political economy, is right on the mark when you apply it to the Christian sacrament of baptism.
    The sacrament of baptism is, theologically speaking, an explicit renunciation of YOYO, and an explicit endorsement of WITT. Baptism explicitly communicates to the one being baptized: You are not on your own. We are in this together.
Listen again the opening words of our baptismal liturgy:

Let us recall the meaning of baptism. For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--Jews and Greeks, slaves or free--and all were made to drink of one Spirit. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it....Baptism is the sacrament through which we are united to Jesus Christ and given part n Christ's ministry of reconciliation. (UCC Book of Worship, 133, 135)

    In other words, baptism is a sign that you are not on your own. In baptism, the baptized individual is united with a community, a community called the Body of Christ, a community whose ministry is the reconciliation of people to God and to one another. As the Body of Christ, we say to the one who is baptized, whether that person is an adult, a child, or an infant: you are now one of us, and we are in this together.
    Baptism is a sacrament that is exceedingly rich in meaning, and we note its richness in our liturgy. Baptism relates to creation. God is the source of all our lives, the source of all that exists. Everything that exists within creation is dependent upon God, and as we are learning--hopefully not too late--everything on this planet is interdependent. We are all--humans, plant life, animal life, soil, climate, oceans, ice caps...everything that emerges from God's creative spirit--we are all in this together.
    Baptism relates to the exodus tradition in which slaves pass through water and emerge free, and sojourners in the wilderness pass through water to enter the Promised Land, not as a bunch of individuals, but as a brand new community, a community with a distinct identity and vocation within God's creation--to reflect God's righteousness and justice.
    And finally baptism relates to covenant--the covenant God makes with all creation after the floodwaters recede, and the covenant God makes with the followers of Jesus in which water symbolizes the creative, liberating, and community-building power of the Holy Spirit.
    The common denominator in all of this rich meaning is the communal aspect of baptism. That's not to say baptism doesn't address the individual. It certainly does, especially if the individual is old enough to consciously choose baptism as Jaime did last spring. In that case, baptism can symbolize a powerful personal transformation, one that some call death to an old way of life and rebirth or resurrection to a new way of life. But the common denominator of all baptism, whether it is an adult, a child, or an infant, is always the same--the incorporation of the individual into a community. The most powerful moment in Jaime's baptism in the waters of the Guadalupe River last spring was when we, the church, the Body of Christ, gathered around him, and sang to him, and hugged him. It is when we said to him, Jaime, brother in Christ, you are not on your own. We are in this together.
    And so today we say, "Jaiden Joseph Farrow, brother in Christ, you are not on your own, we are in this together." Jaiden may not be a member of this particular church, but through our actions this morning, the entire church of Jesus Christ has entered into a covenant with Jaiden, and Jaiden with the entire church. And Kaia's responsibility in all of this is to raise Jaiden within the church, so that as he grows and matures, he will come to understand his relationship with the church, and appreciate that despite all of our many differences within the global Body of Christ, we are all in this together.
    Finally, I'll just add that this is, in my view, a sound message for the Second Sunday of Advent, the Sunday in which we light the Candle of Peace. I don't see how we can ever live in a world at peace if people believe and act according to an ideology that claims, You Are On Your Own. I believe there will only be peace on earth when everyone adopts the attitude, We Are In This Together.

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