| Stewardship in God’s Radical Economy–Part 1 |
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| Written by Skip Jackson | |
| Sunday, 08 October 2006 | |
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A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson – October 8, 2006 Texts: Exodus 22:21-27; Leviticus 19:1-4, 9-18, 33-37 Don’t charge interest when you lend money to any of my people who are in need. – Exodus 22:25 (Contemporary English Version) When you harvest your grain, always leave some of it standing along the edges of your fields… Leave it for the poor and for those foreigners who live among you. – Leviticus 19:9-10 (Contemporary English Version) Whenever people go on about posting the Ten Commandments in schools and courthouses, I wonder why they limit themselves to that one tiny piece of the Old Testament law. Oh yes, "10" is a nice round number, and Charlton Heston holding those two stone tablets aloft is a powerful picture. But when these "Ten Rules" first appear in Exodus 20 the stone tablets don’t show up until chapter 34. And Exodus 20 is just the start of three-and-a-half chapters of assorted rules. In one Bible translation, the part of Exodus 22 we just heard is in a section labeled, "Laws for Everyday Life." The Leviticus passage repeats several of the "Commandments" but only on the way to the more encompassing commands to "love your neighbor as yourself" and the even more radical "love the alien as yourself." Actually most of what we heard this morning would be deemed way too radical for courthouse or schoolroom. I guess those who want to post the "Ten Commandments" also want to pick and choose just what rules to follow? This morning I want to focus in particular on two of the most radical rules–the one from Exodus on not charging interest on money loaned to the poor and the one from Leviticus about leaving some of your harvest in the field for the poor. These two are part of what theologian M. Douglas Meeks calls rules for being stewards in the household of God–that is, rules for our economic life together. In this and my next two sermons, we’ll be considering a number of such rules under the broad title "Stewardship in God’s Radical Economy." I hope you will come to see that "stewardship" is much more than pledging money to the church, passing the plate on Sunday, and then singing a doxology… and also that our spiritual and economic lives are deeply interconnected. Stewardship refers to how we make choices in our homes and our economy. It is a spiritual issue. The New Testament Greek word we translate as "stewardship" is oikonomia–literally "household rules"–from oikos for household and nomos for law. The oikonomos is the steward, who cares for and manages a household according to some set of rules. A related word, oikomene, means the entire inhabited world–literally, all the households (oikos) under the moon (men). Our English word, "economy," comes directly from the Greek oikonomia (you can almost hear it), so economics and stewardship are twins. Unfortunately, most of us learned early on not to mix religion and economics. Business is a worldly matter, but the church is about spiritual things. Yes, churches have budgets, and once a year we talk about pledging. But that’s an unfortunate and uncomfortable topic. The church really ought to keep its nose out of economic affairs. But if we take scripture at all seriously, we simply cannot do that. There are way too many passages in the Bible about the use and abuse of money and wealth. No other area of human life, not even sex, is treated more often than economics. We are called to be caretakers and household managers of God’s creation, stewards in God’s economy. And the household rules, the oikonomia, have broad implications for our society as well as for our daily lives as individuals and families. Sometimes the implications are clear and obvious. At other times we must look beyond the rules to the deeper questions they ask of us. The first rule is: do not charge interest to the poor. So who does that? Not us. But think again. We are all part of a vast system that is fueled by return on investment. The stock market goes roller-coastering on the least hint of what Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve will do with interest rates. And we are involved up to the level of our savings and retirement accounts and the balances on our charge cards. We expect banks to pay interest on our savings. Banks in turn charges an even higher interest whether it is loaning to rich or poor. Often they charge the highest charge card rates (24-30% or more) to those least able to pay. Now, we’re never going to do away with interest on loans. The one example I can think of is Habitat for Humanity, which charges no interest on its home loans for the houses it builds. But underlying the rule against charging interest are some concerns that touch profoundly on our own lives. The Hebrew community was shaped by the Exodus. Out of their experience of slavery and oppression in Egypt came rules about not mistreating or abusing foreigners. Knowing that they never wanted to be slaves again would forever influence their corporate life together. "You yourselves were slaves," says the Lord, "and I set you free. Now you must not enslave others." But slavery was precisely the problem with charging interest on loans. In ancient Israel, falling into debt was a real hazard. If you couldn’t repay your debts, your family lands were forfeit–the only source of support for you and your family. Then you’d literally end up a slave to your creditor until you worked off the debt. Interest made it all the harder, even impossible, to escape debt slavery. Literal slavery like this is not a part of our Western world–although it exists in various forms in the so-called Third World. Yet our language gives us away. People speak of being wage slaves, of working for the bank or the credit card company. We all know of people (perhaps ourselves included) who are nearly slaves to debt–bulging credit card balances, fancy cars complete with a car loan likely to outlive the car, bloated McMansions with mortgages to match, Christmases financed by Visa cards to be paid off (hopefully) by next Christmas. These are part of the everyday lives of far too many people. Yet the growth of our economy seems to depend on ever more extravagant, consumer spending even as the world’s largest banks bombard our mailboxes with pre-approved credit card offers. Must our economy–our oikonomia–really involve us in slavery? Not at all! The household rule against interest questions us about our personal debts as well as our participation in a debt-ridden and debt-dependent system. The second household rule is to leave something for the poor. Don’t harvest everything, but leave behind some gleanings. The specific rule is for an agrarian society. The Hebrew landowners were to refrain from harvesting the edges of the field and leave behind whatever was dropped in the fields so the poor, the widows and orphans, and the aliens could come through the fields and gather enough to survive. In the familiar story of Ruth, she meets Boaz while gleaning wheat in his fields. Have any of you ever gone out gleaning? There’s an organization called the Gleaners that gathers leftovers–not just from harvests but also from places like stores, bakeries, and restaurants. When I was a kid, we gleaned in my uncle’s popcorn fields every fall. We’d gather bushels of popcorn on the cob to be dried in our basement, then shucked and winnowed (oh, the blisters I remember on my hands!), and then… hot, buttered popcorn every Sunday evening! Now, this agrarian household rule for gleaning has little direct application to us. Leaving some work undone benefits no one. So again we must look below the surface of the rule, where we will find questions like: What does it mean to see that our own access to food also allows access to food for the poor? As stewards in God’s economy can we ensure that there is enough for all? What does it mean to forego some of what we have earned and are entitled to, in order to provide for those who are in need? Like those Hebrew landowners, we usually don’t go to bed hungry. We don’t wonder where our next meal is coming from. In fact, too many of us–like me!–could do with missing a meal or two. But there are thousands of people here in Columbus, tens or even hundreds of thousands in Ohio, millions in the US, who do not have enough food to sustain adequate nutrition. And we think of ourselves as the richest nation on the planet!? Perhaps part of our problem in being stewards in God’s economy is the idea so prevalent in our world that we must work for all we can get and get everything we can earn. We are a nation addicted to efficiency experts, and Wall St. tells us that our well-being in the world economy depends upon ever increasing worker productivity and corporate profits. There’s a story I recall hearing as a child, one of those cautionary, little moral tales that stuck in my mind and seems now to epitomize such thinking. The details are a bit fuzzy for me, but the essence of the story involved John D. Rockefeller, then the richest man in the world, visiting a factory he owned that produced motor oil in one-quart metal cans. Each can was sealed using 50 drops of solder. Supposedly he stopped the production line and asked the workers to try fewer drops. Some of the cans leaked at 45 drops, fewer at 46 and 47. But at 48 drops, the cans didn’t leak. So the line was restarted at that level, increasing profits by a few thousand dollars a year. The lesson for my young mind was that success meant making every last cent you could. Looking back, it’s hard to see the ultra-rich "hero" of this story leaving behind much in the way of gleanings at harvest time. But few of us are Rockefellers. Certainly not all the Hebrew landowners were wealthy. They had to feed themselves and their families. They had workers to pay at the end of each day (recall Leviticus 19:13). And there were taxes, always taxes. This was their crop, their harvest. They’d taken the risks and worked hard for it. They were entitled to all of it. But the rule says to leave some. What does this mean for us, who are certainly entitled to the money we earn, the money we need for food and shelter… and to acquire those comforts and luxuries we enjoy so much. For one thing, it means that as stewards we must decide for ourselves the boundary between what we need and what we want. Our world bombards us with ads designed to create new and ever more extravagant "needs" in our lives. Buy this, consume that, here’s an American Express Card! When we do find ways to leave gleanings–whether through food banks or churches or emergency relief–we define our own real needs even as we meet some of the real needs of others. And we truly do something to love others as we love ourselves. Another question is: What exactly entitles us to the fruits of our labors? Our abilities? Our talents and skills? How hard we work? That’s our common understanding. Yet do not our abilities and talents come from God? Absolutely! And they should be used for God’s purposes. We are to be stewards not just of ourselves and our own households, but of God’s economy. As Psalm 24 declares, "The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it." Four weeks ago, I preached on a "Radical Faith-Based Economics." I noted that according to the Bible what matters most in God’s radical economy is not blessings for a chosen few or even "the greatest good for the greatest number." What matters most is the well-being of the poorest people in the land–those with low incomes and few resources, the most vulnerable, the ones some call "the last, the least, the littlest, and the lost." I closed my sermon with a story of a rabbi who looks out on the suffering of the poor in the world and cries out, "O God, it is so terrible! Why don’t you do something?" And the Lord replies, "I did do something. I sent you." Stewardship in God’s radical economy begins with a primary concern that all people remain free and have their basic needs met. In my next sermon in two weeks we’ll go on from there. Amen and amen. |
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