via ABC7NY
When The Billionaire Becomes The Priest
Brethren, gather ‘round as I preach from the steps of truth.
Metropolitan Museum of Art (MoMA)—bless its hallowed halls—turned into a cathedral of glittering excess Monday. But, something pierced the veil. Hypocrisy stood naked, undeniable before the eyes of the Almighty. Met Gala Coverage
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos reigned as Met Gala co-chairs.
Bezos, Amazon titan, who’s globally battling unionization like Pharaoh against the Hebrews. His warehouses? Battlefields of injury, relentless surveillance, souls burned out for profit.
Forbes pegs his net worth at over $250 billion as of 2026. Meanwhile, Amazon workers barely survive on $15-22 per hour. Forbes Billionaires List 2026 Amazon wage data
Sánchez Bezos, once a voice in the news, a whirlybird pilot, basked in the adoration beside him at the hedonistic event honoring beauty, culture, divine artistry. The theme? “Costume Art: Fashion Is Art.” Irony sharp as a serpent’s tooth.
While they lorded over an evening hauling $26 million for the Costume Institute, Amazon laborers in Staten Island, Baltimore, and beyond punched out after grueling shifts, rents devouring their paychecks in cities their sweat built. Met Gala fundraising
That’s not happenstance, friends. It’s the beast system purring contentedly.
Power Dressed In Haute Couture
The 2025 Met Gala hit May 5. Vogue and the Met confirm it raked in $26 million. Tickets? $35,000 a pop. Tables? $275,000 to $3.5 million for the elite. Vogue 2025 details
Guests? Tech lords, fashion kings, stars—net worths topping $2 trillion collective. Forbes clocks average attendee wealth at $1.5 billion. Bezos, world’s #2 richest, co-chaired with Sánchez, setting the holy tone.
That week, U.S. Census says median household income hovered at $78,000. One ticket? Near half a year’s labor for the working man. Census Bureau 2025
Homelessness gripped 650,000 souls (HUD 2025). Food insecurity starved 44 million. Minimum wage? Still $7.25 since ‘09. Amazon hands earn $15-22/hour—EPI says that won’t cover a one-bedroom in 95% of counties. EPI report
The contrast screams from heaven’s throne.
Idolatry In The Temple Of Mammon
Recall Jesus stormin’ the temple, flippin’ tables on the money-changers squeezin’ the widow’s mite. “My house a house of prayer—not a den of thieves!” (Matthew 21:13).
The Met Gala? No prayer house. A robber’s den in Schiaparelli silk and Valentino gold.
But 2026 etched it eternal: Bezos and Sánchez as co-chairs ain’t just pageantry. It’s blasphemy bold. The Gala exalts not the beauty of all, but the beauty of excess.
Yet helmed by exploiters? It declares: Beauty’s for the crowned. Culture’s a bauble for the rich. The poor toil so elites can preen. That’s no gospel—that’s Mammon’s throne, wealth as a false idol in couture.
Amos thundered at ivory-bed loungers feastin’ on fatted calves while crushin’ the poor: “I hate your festivals!” (Amos 5:21). God of the oppressed ain’t amused by Bezos presiding, his empire crushin’ union cries for justice.
Who Pays For The Spectacle?
Amazon Workers: The Invisible Architects
Bezos’s billions? Built on backs. Amazon’s 1.6 million global hands in 2025, 575,000 U.S. (company reports). Warehouses track every step, quotas breed injury—OSHA notes 80% higher musculoskeletal rates than average. OSHA Amazon data
$35k ticket? A $20/hour worker toils 1,750 hours—9 months straight—for one seat. Invisible on that carpet, but foundational to the fortune.
The Displaced: Gentrification and Cultural Erasure
Met sits by Harlem, cradle of renaissance—Baldwin, Lorde’s ground. Rents soared 80 percent 2000-2025 (NYU Furman Center). Gentrification evicts the faithful.
The Hungry: Feast While Others Starve
NYC: 1.5 million food-insecure, half kids (Food Bank NYC 2025). One ticket feeds a family a year.
Garment Workers: The Hands Behind the Gowns
75 million global garment souls, many under $2/day (ILO 2025). Sweatshops pollute; a gown’s 300 hours yields pennies. Invisible artisans.
The Queer and Trans Communities: Celebrated and Commodified
Gala hails queer icons—if rich, shiny. Yet 35% trans adults poor, Black trans women dying in streets (NCTE 2025). Commodified, not liberated.
Long Arc of Spectacle & Suffering
Empires always dazzle to distract: Rome’s games, kings’ spires atop hovels. But prophets refuse—Rustin in streets, Hamer’s testimony, Johnson’s brick at Stonewall.
Name The Thing By Its Name
Met Gala ain’t neutral. It’s idolatry: Inequality as sacrament, presided by Bezos, union-buster. Sin ain’t the gowns—it’s obscene hoards while workers starve. Call it extraction masked as art. Repent, or face the Judge. Amen.
Call To Concrete Action: Another World Possible
Beloved community, we cannot shop our way to justice. We cannot consume our way to liberation. We cannot celebrate our way out of this.
But we can organize. We can resist. We can build.
IMMEDIATE ACTIONS (This Week)
1. Support Amazon Workers
Donate to the Amazon Labor Union, which organizes Amazon warehouse workers across the United States. Even $10 supports legal defense, organizing materials, and worker support funds.
Follow and amplify the work of Athena Coalition, which coordinates advocacy across labor, environmental, and civil rights organizations fighting Amazon’s expansion.
If you are an Amazon customer, consider a one-month boycott or reduction in purchases. Redirect that spending to local, worker-owned businesses.
2. Demand Accountability from the Met
Contact the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s director, Kaywin Feldman, at [email protected]. Demand that the museum establish a worker justice fund—directing a percentage of Met Gala proceeds to support garment workers, Amazon workers, and displaced Harlem residents.
Attend the next Met community board meeting (held monthly). Demand transparency about the museum’s relationship to gentrification and displacement in Harlem.
3. Support Displaced Communities
Donate to the Community Service Society, which fights gentrification and advocates for affordable housing in New York City. They have specific programs supporting Harlem residents.
Volunteer with Harlem Tenants Council, which organizes tenants facing displacement and fights for rent stabilization.
MEDIUM-TERM ACTIONS (This Month)
4. Learn and Teach
Read The Everything Store by Brad Stone to understand how Amazon was built on worker exploitation.
Read Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer to remember that another relationship to beauty and resources is possible.
Host a study group in your faith community or neighborhood. Use this newsletter as a starting point. Ask: What does the gospel demand of us in response to billionaire-led spectacle?
5. Organize Locally
Join or start a Democratic Socialists of America chapter in your area. DSA has active campaigns around worker organizing, housing justice, and wealth redistribution.
Connect with Faith in Action, a national network of faith communities organizing for economic justice. They have chapters in most states.
Attend a local city council meeting and demand that your representatives support living wage ordinances, union protections, and affordable housing preservation.
6. Divest and Reinvest
If you have investments, audit them. Do you own Amazon stock? Sell it. Redirect those funds to worker-owned cooperatives, community development financial institutions (CDFIs), or funds that explicitly exclude companies with poor labor records.
Move your banking to a credit union or community bank that reinvests in local communities rather than funding corporate expansion.
LONG-TERM ACTIONS (This Year)
7. Political Engagement
Call your U.S. senators and representatives. Demand they support:
The Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, which extends labor protections to domestic and care workers.
The Raise the Wage Act, which would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour.
The Billionaire Minimum Income Tax, which would tax billionaires’ unrealized gains.
Find your representatives at house.gov and senate.gov.
8. Build Beloved Community
Start or join a mutual aid network in your neighborhood. This could be a food pantry, a tool library, a childcare collective, or a housing cooperative. The goal is to practice the economics of the kin-dom of God—sharing resources, meeting needs, building power together.
Mentor a young person from a marginalized community. Help them understand their own power and potential. This is prophetic work.
9. Spiritual Practice
Fast from consumption one day per week. Use that day to pray, to study scripture, to sit with the poor and the displaced. Ask God: What am I called to do?
Lament the idolatry. Write a prayer or a poem naming the ways we have been seduced by the false god of wealth. Share it with your community.
Study scripture with your community. Focus on the prophetic books (Amos, Isaiah, Micah) and Jesus’s teachings on wealth (Luke 4:18, Matthew 19:24, Luke 12:33).Share
Benediction: Go In Resistance
The Met Gala will happen again next May. The wealthy will ascend those steps. The spectacle will continue.
But we do not have to accept it as inevitable. We do not have to celebrate it. We do not have to participate in the lie that this is how the world must be.
Another world is possible. A world where beauty belongs to everyone. Where resources are shared. Where the last are first and the first are last. Where the hungry are filled with good things and the rich are sent away empty—not in punishment, but in liberation.
That is the world God is calling into being. That is the world we are called to build.
Jeff Bezos has $200 billion. But we have something he does not: we have each other. We have the power of organized people. We have the God of Exodus on our side.
Go forth. Organize. Resist. Build.
Angelic troublemaking for justice. Strategy that liberates. Communications that move power.
The work continues.
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