Monday, August 4, 2014

What Kind of Authority?


Luke 20:1-19
I.
            A few weeks ago we looked at Jesus’ parable of the pounds, which he gave while staying in Jericho in the house of a reformed former tax-collector named Zacchaeus.  I suggested that, as he was about to make his way up to Jerusalem, Jesus wants his disciples to consider very carefully what kind of king they are expecting him to be.  Will he be a ruthless tyrant like the king in the parable?  Or will his power be more profound and subtle, evident not in dead enemies bleeding on the pavement, but in changed lives like that of Zacchaeus?
            Between that reading and this one a lot has happened.  Jesus has entered Jerusalem, riding pointedly on a humble, yet messianic, donkey.  And when he got there he proceeded to cause a disturbance in the Temple because the leaders had managed to turn it into a market.  (Yet another example of Jesus’ rejection, or at least very deep suspicion, of markets.)
            The people are abuzz with anticipation of what Jesus might do next.  The important and dangerous Passover festival is coming up in a few days.  And the establishment, the priests, scribes, and lawyers who control the Temple, are becoming nervous.
            So they insist that he tell them by what authority he is doing the things he is doing.  Mainly that riot he caused in the Temple.  They want to know what his authority is for doing this and who gave it to him.
            Jesus declines to answer directly.  He knows it’s a trick question that can get him into trouble with somebody no matter how he answers.  If he says, “My authority comes from God,” they can get him on blasphemy.  If he says, “My authority comes from the people,” he is a revolutionary. 
            So he responds to their question with another question.  “Well, where did John the Baptizer get his authority to do what he did, do you think?  If you can tell me where he got his authority then maybe I can tell you where I get mine.”
            Jesus knows that they will not be able to answer this.  He puts them in the same political bind that they wanted to catch him in.  And that political bind has to do with the attitude and role of the people.  The priests, scribes, and elders fear the people, who revere John as a prophet.  So, even though they don’t believe John’s authority came from God, as evidenced by the fact that they did not follow him, they can’t say that out loud without alienating the people.  So, just as Jesus refused to answer their trick question, they refuse to answer his.
            The question of authority remains, then, so far unanswered.

II.
            Then the Lord tells a parable.  It is a bit of an inversion of the parable he told back in Jericho.  In that case, there was a nobleman who had to go away to get the authority to become king.  In this one, there is a figure who already owns a vineyard, and leaves it in the stewardship of some tenants when he goes on a long journey.
             “Vineyard” was a well-known symbol for Israel from the Hebrew Scriptures.  We just heard this in Isaiah 5.  The authority of the tenants over the vineyard comes from the owner.  Unlike the money given to the servants in the previous parable, with which they are to make as large a profit as possible by any means necessary, here the tenants are given charge over a vineyard.  A vineyard is an agricultural enterprise that naturally produces grapes, which then have to be harvested and turned into wine.  Which takes some work.  A vineyard is a partnership between humans and nature.
            So, in the parable, the “vineyard” is Israel, and the “tenants” represent the leaders of Israel, who manage the vineyard on behalf of the “owner” who is God.  But what is the “produce”?  A vineyard produces grapes and then wine; what is Israel supposed to produce?  If Isaiah 5:7 is any indication, the vineyard is supposed to produce “justice” and “righteousness.”  And, in case you are wondering what “justice” and “righteousness” are, Isaiah helpfully clarifies that in the remainder of chapter 5.
            Actually, the prophet does this by saying what justice and righteousness are not: He says, “Doom to those who acquire house after house, who annex field to field,” obviously referring to the wealthy.  He goes on to pronounce doom on those who overindulge in strong drink, as well as those who doubt God’s justice, and “who call evil good and good evil,” who think of themselves as wise and clever, and who take bribes to “rob the innocent of their rights.”
            So, instead of producing justice and righteousness, the vineyard – Israel – produces inequality, greed, gluttony, moral relativism, conceit, and unfairness: in other words, injustice and self-righteousness; a regime in which the rich and powerful abuse their wealth and authority.
            In the parable, the owner sends servants to collect the owner’s share of the vineyard’s produce.  That is, God sends prophets to Israel as reminders of who owns this vineyard and what it is supposed to produce… and they are abused and sent away empty-handed.  There was no justice and righteousness for them to collect. 
            The owner’s final entreaty is to send his beloved son, which is to say that God’s final offer is to send Jesus Christ.  God refers to Jesus as “my son, whom I love dearly” when Jesus is baptized and at the Transfiguration.  He is also to remind the tenants whose vineyard this is and what the vineyard is for.

III.
            The tenants mistake the owner’s patience for weakness.  They have decided to take vineyard and its produce for themselves, not returning to the owner his rightful share, but basically consuming, wasting, depleting, and destroying the vineyard.  If the image of Isaiah 5 holds, they set up an extractive, exploitative regime based on selfishness, greed, gluttony, injustice, and fraud.  They steal the produce of the garden for themselves, refusing to share and distribute it fairly according to the owner’s wishes.  They don’t want to give anything back to the owner at all. 
            Remember what Jesus has just done before being confronted by the scribes and priests.  The whole reason they ask him about his authority in the first place is because he has the audacity to throw the merchants out of the Temple.  He calls them crooks and robbers. 
            Then he tells a parable in which the tenants have basically done the same thing to the vineyard as the scribes and priests have done to the Temple.  Instead of producing justice and righteousness, they make it serve their own avarice.  Instead of God’s values, they embrace the values of the market by bringing in merchants.  Instead of managing the vineyard according to the will of the owner, they run it into the ground according to their own ego-centric desires.  It is not much of a stretch at all to equate the merchants corrupting the Temple with the tenants corrupting the vineyard in the parable.
            So when the son and heir shows up at the vineyard, the tenants have become so deluded that they imagine the owner will lose interest in the property if there is no one to inherit it.  So they throw the son out of the vineyard and kill him.
            The tenants resent being tenants.  They don’t want to hear about how the vineyard “is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.”  They understand that “possession is 9/10ths of the law,” and figure that since they are the ones in possession of the vineyard, who are doing the work to keep it going, that therefore they should not be beholden to any stinkin’ absentee landlord. 
            Which would be something I could normally sympathize with… if nature itself were not doing most of the real work by producing grapes in the first place, and if the tenants were not, according to Isaiah 5, destroying the ability of the vineyard to produce grapes, and if they did not commit cold-blooded murder.
            What this parable teaches is that there is a way bigger “owner” or “landlord” who made the whole place to run well in a certain way, and we, especially our human landlords, leaders, kings, priests, scribes, and whatever, have messed up the whole place out of greed.  God is the ultimate landlord and all of us, including our leaders, are tenants; as God says in Leviticus 25, “the land is mine, you are just aliens and tenants to me.”

IV.
            I imagine the Lord pausing after the part about the owner’s beloved son being murdered.  Then he asks his listeners, “What will the owner of the vineyard do to [the tenants]?”
            By now they would have surely figured out that the parable is about the rulers of the nation who have, for instance by bringing merchants into the Temple, corrupted and debased the original vision and mission of Israel. 
            Jesus looks around.  No one answers his question.  They know the answer; it’s in Isaiah: God destroys the leadership and takes the people away into exile.  But that is too horrible a national memory for them to imagine could ever happen again.  So they say nothing.
            Jesus himself answers.  “[The owner] will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.”  Just like Isaiah said.
            The people respond, “May this never happen!”  They may not like their leaders, but they do not want to have to endure the consequences of their leaders’ actions like their ancestors had to.  They know it is always the people who pay the price for bad leadership.  They are also not expecting the nation to be destroyed but saved when a new king comes, whom they think they are looking at right now.  They are hoping Jesus himself will be the one to redeem Israel.
            And he is.  But not in the way they expected or desired.  Due to its own persistent injustices, epitomized by bringing merchants into the Temple, the Jewish nation had already doomed itself.  Injustice is so out of synch with God’s will that to persist in it necessarily causes a nation to bring down disaster upon itself.  40 years after Jesus says these words, the Temple would be destroyed and Jewish autonomy in Palestine ended for around 2000 years.
            But Jesus, though he is brokenhearted about that, reminds the people of the core of biblical faith.  Quoting Psalm 118, which was one of the Psalms always sung at the Passover holiday, to begin in a couple of days, he says: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”
            The faith of God’s people has always been the faith of the rejected stones, the stones that the architects and masons deemed unworthy, weak, and misfits, the stones that do not measure up to the world’s standards of success.
            It begins with a band of escaped slaves, and was ever after a gathering of misfits, outcasts, losers, oppressed, repressed, victims of bigger, stronger, more successful powers.  In their few and far between moments of worldly wealth, power, and success, that is, when they forgot their original identity as slaves in Egypt, and started acting instead like Pharaoh the oppressor, they invariably suffered dire consequences.

V.
            Jesus goes on: “Everyone who falls on that stone will be crushed; and the stone will crush the person it falls on.”  In other words, the rejected stone will come back and bite those who reject it.  The losers now will be later to win.  The last will be first, the hungry fed, the grieving comforted, and the rich and powerful will be brought down and sent away empty-handed. 
            The stone represents the Messiah who identifies with and epitomizes the people of God: the poor, the deprived, the excluded, the oppressed, the diseased, the defeated, and the suffering… whom these leaders fear so much that they are unable to lay hands on Jesus the Messiah now.  But within a week they will figure out a way to have the Romans nail Jesus to a cross and die there.  Jesus thereby identifying with the ultimate losers: the murdered, the dead.
            But then…  but then he will be resurrected!  He will reveal and fulfill the great reversal, the great overturning, in which the rejected stone does become the cornerstone of God’s Kingdom of justice, peace, and love.  That’s what Jesus has been promising since before he was even born. 
            And he will give his Spirit to the new community gathered in his name, the gathering of rejected stones cemented together in love to become the foundation of God’s future.
            We are that gathering of rejects.  We are the failures and losers to whom God gives the vineyard, having taken it away from the unworthy, successful people, who used it for their own ends.  God entrusts it to us.  The vineyard, the Kingdom, Israel, the earth….  The garden. 
            What will we do with it?  Will we also forget whose vineyard this is?  Will we forget the purpose for which the vineyard exists?  Will we forget that it is about justice, equality, righteousness, peace, and joy?  Will we try to keep the vineyard for ourselves?  Or will we manage the vineyard in such a way that God’s blessings pour and flow through us into a needy and broken world?
+++++++   

What Kind of King?


Luke 19:11-28.

I.
            Jesus is in Jericho.  He is still in the home of a tax collector named Zacchaeus, who famously repented of his very profitable oppression of his neighbors, and made restitution and reparations to them all, and is now presumably thoroughly broke and happily ready to follow Jesus.  Zacchaeus is praised because he actually does what Jesus recommends to other rich people in vain: he gives all his money to the poor and becomes a disciple.  He divests himself of his wealth.  He embraces a lifestyle of humility and simplicity, rejecting the acquisitive and competitive values of the dominant economy.
            Jesus is already ruminating on what he knows will happen in Jerusalem, where he is preparing to go next.  He is thinking about this final walk, up through several miles of incredibly rough, desert country.  He knows that the word is passing among his disciples that he will declare himself king in Jerusalem.  He knows some are expecting either a violent insurrection or some kind of spectacular miracle that will install Jesus in the palace and remove the Romans.  He knows that, in spite of everything people have seen him do and heard him say for 3 years, many are still salivating for retribution against their oppressors.  He has just given an example of what salvation means for an oppressor named Zacchaeus; which is not death but a transformed heart.  But it is hard to cut the tumor of hatred, fear, anger, and punitive violence from people’s souls.
            He has probably already decided that he will enter the city, not on a white stallion like a Roman general, but on a humble donkey.  This is not only scriptural but projects a non-violent, gentle image.
            But he wants to have his disciples thinking about what kind of king they really want, and what kind of a king he is going to be.  So he tells them this parable.  It is a parable which has the effect of separating his disciples according to how they interpret it.
            Now, parables have multiple meanings, and this one has usually been interpreted in certain ways, but that’s by mainly using Matthew’s more focused version.
            “A certain man who was born into royalty when to a distant land to receive his kingdom and then return,” he begins.  His listeners would immediately remember how King Archelaus had to go to see the Emperor in Rome for permission to take the throne of his father, Herod the Great.  They would also recall that the Jews sent a delegation along to plead with the Emperor that this not happen… a project that didn’t work out so well.

II.
            First of all, the nobleman has to go somewhere else to receive his power, indicating that he is an agent of a foreign, conquering power.  Archelaus was not a good king; he was a Roman stooge.  That’s why the Emperor appointed him.  The people hated him, probably because he ruled by ruthless violence.  He was so bad the Emperor removed him after few years, and ruled Judea from then on through appointed Roman governors.
            It would not occur to the people that Jesus is identifying himself with Archelaus.  That would have been ridiculous and offensive.  There is no way they would have understood him to be saying, “I’m just like Archelaus; I am going away to the Father to receive my real power.” 
            They know that he already has real power; they have watched him using it for 3 years.  He has exhibited power over illness, evil demons, and even the weather!  Does anyone doubt that if he wanted to use his power to defeat the Romans he could have?  That is part of what his disciples are expecting!  Surely he does not have to go someplace else to receive even more power.
            Neither is Jesus making an excuse in advance for his coming crucifixion, as if the plan were for him to be killed now but come back later to finish the job.  He is not saying that this time around he’s been a failure, but when he comes back he’ll have real power.  Some Christians may have decided to frame it this way; but Jesus could not have meant that here.  And it goes against everything Jesus has been saying and doing.  (And to apply the notion that he’s not God yet is contrary to what eventually became Christian doctrine.)   
            Jesus continues the parable talking about the departing nobleman.  He says, “He called together ten of his servants and gave them each money worth four months’ wages.  He said, ‘Do business with this until I return.’”  The prospective king is trying to discover which of his servants is worthy of a high position in his government when he returns.  He is trying to discover which is the most ruthless in his service.  So he gives to each of them a moderately large amount of money to “do business with”. 
            Jesus doesn’t tell us anything about what happened in what must have been at least a few months if not a year or more.  The nobleman returns having received royal power from the Emperor, which basically means that he is protected by the Emperor’s army.
            He calls the 10 slaves in to account for themselves.  The first one reports that he made a profit of 1000%.  Remember that they are still in the house of Zacchaeus!  A man who got very rich in just the way this new king wants his slaves to act.  The people listening would have instantly known how that kind of profit is made.  It is done through extortion, foreclosure, loan sharking, theft, graft, and insider trading. 
            This performance is so impressive that the king gives that slave 10 cities to rule over.  Lucky them.  The same thing happens with the second servant who is not quite so ruthless.  He makes a 500% profit so only gets 5 cities to rule.

III.
            Then Jesus says “another” of the ten servants comes forward.  This one comes before the king in simplicity and humility, saying, “Master, here is your money.  I wrapped it up in a scarf for safekeeping.  I was afraid of you because you are a stern man.  You withdraw what you haven’t deposited and you harvest what you haven’t planted.”
            This servant is not going to play this game.  This servant refuses to participate in a system where he is rewarded not just according to his work, but according to his ruthlessness.  This servant is already where Zacchaeus had finally come to. 
            This servant says to the Master, “I am afraid of you, like everyone else.  But I am not going to let my fear determine my actions.  I am certainly not going to let my fear make me exploit and steal from my neighbors so you can get richer.  I am not going to let my fear turn me into a nasty and violent person, however many cities you promise me; even if it costs me my life.  I will not be ruled by fear.  I will not be ruled by you.  I will not make myself the enemy of my people.  Here is your money.  I kept it safe.”
            The Master is, as they say, not amused.  He is used to controlling people through fear and intimidation.  He is used to people exhausting themselves to make him happy at all costs.  He is used to his servants choosing their own comfort and success over the safety and security of their neighbors.  He thunders that the servant could at least have put the money in the bank so he would accrue some interest.
            But the servant no doubt knows that banks make a profit in the same ways as other enterprises, and he wanted no part of that either.
            In the context of what Zacchaeus has just done, and where Jesus is headed after he leaves Jericho, Jesus’ listeners got the point.  The third servant is a hero, standing up to an unjust system at the risk of his life.  He was sorely tempted to become what Zacchaeus had been.  Instead he maintains his integrity and becomes what Zacchaeus is now.
            The Master commands that the money be taken from the third servant and given to the one who made the most profit.  Even the attendants see this as unfair.  But the Master darkly snarls the motto of his new regime: “Everyone who has will be given more, but from those who have nothing even what they have will be taken away.”
            There is the new order.  If you think things were hard before, just wait.  This king is even more ruthless an oppressor of the people.  It is not about the equality advocated in the Torah, but just the opposite.  This king is about more inequality, more violence, more injustice, and harsher oppression.

IV.
            Then he proves his point by calling for his enemies, the people who told the Emperor that they did not want him for a king, and having his soldiers take their swords and slaughter them right there in front of him so he may sadistically enjoy it.
            But the third servant receives no further punishment.  Jesus doesn’t even say he gets fired!  And the other 7 servants?  They don’t appear to have to make an accounting to the Master at all!  It’s almost like the one who refused to produce a profit for the Master was so incomprehensible that the Master didn’t know what to do with him.  And the Master was so distracted, and his bloodlust so satisfied, that he forgot about the other 7.
            Or maybe now the Master is the one who is afraid.  Maybe he’s worrying that if fear didn’t work on this one man, maybe it wasn’t going to work on the other 7 either.  Maybe he doesn’t want to find out.  Maybe he’s afraid that these other servants, having refused to exploit and throttle the people, have the people’s support and gratitude.  Tyrants always fear the people.
            The parable is over.  Jesus and his disciples, and Zacchaeus and his guests, all sit in silence, reflecting on this story.  Jesus doesn’t explain.  He gets up, and begins immediately to get his things together to head for Jerusalem.
            Jesus is forcing them too ask what kind of a king they want, anyway?  What kind of a king do they think Jesus is?  After 3 years are they all still hoping for a king like the one in the parable?  He only rewards people for what they do for him.  But Jesus bring grace, forgiveness, and healing into the world for whomever needs it.  The king in the story demands ruthless obedience based on fear.  But Jesus looks for willing followers based on love.  The first 2 servants sell their souls for money and power.  But the third one stands fast in his faith, and stands with the people.  Do they really want to live in a world where those who have get more and those who have nothing lose what little they have?  Do they really think that’s what Jesus is about?
            Earlier we read what the prophet Samuel thinks of kings, as he warns the people not to insist upon having one.  The people say they want a king anyway in spite of the abuses that are inherent to the institution of monarchy.  I forget who said that power corrupts.  But it’s true.  (I even use the Samuel passage to warn presbyteries about having an Executive!)

V.
            Jesus comes to be a different kind of king.  By human standards he’s kind of an anti-king.  He rejects coercive power.  He rejects the use of violence.  He rejects threats and the manipulation of people’s fear and anger.  He rejects turning people against each other. 
            His power will be manifested conclusively in the cross and empty tomb.  His power will be realized by absorbing the violence and hostility of human powers and authorities, and revealing them to ultimately be empty.  His power will be more like the subtle and sacrificial courage of the third servant in the parable, who calmly and quietly refuses to be bought, or compelled to do evil.
            Jesus’ parable may be taken as a warning and a plea to his disciples not to fall into the trap of wanting earthly power or an ordinary kind of king.  What Jesus calls us to is extraordinary.  It is exemplified in Zacchaeus who changed his life by rejecting a system in which he had profited greatly at the expense of his neighbors, and embracing a different kind of life with Jesus. 
+++++++ 
                 
                
             

The Job of Government.


Psalm 72.

I.
            Sometimes I get into a conversation with a person who says, “I believe in helping the poor and the disadvantaged.  I just don’t believe it is the job of government to do this.”  And that’s their justification for cutting Food Stamps or unemployment benefits, or for advocating the dismantling of Social Security and Medicare.  “It’s not the government’s job; individuals should be doing this,” they say.
            Sometimes they try to tell me that this is a Christian and biblical position they hold.  I tell them that they must have a Bible in which Psalm 72 – and a lot of other passages – are missing.
            Psalm 72 is a great enthronement Psalm.  It was sung by the people at the coronation of the king.  The king was the head of the State on God’s behalf, and he was the government.  This Psalm is specifically about what God expects government to do.  It is not written to the king as an individual citizen as a guide to his private life.  In biblical times the king was not an individual in this sense; he represented the people in a way that is largely lost to us. 
            In this Psalm the new king is given instruction by God concerning how he is supposed to govern.
            The context is that the old king has just died, and the new king, often a boy or young man, is called upon to take over the throne.  There is a great ceremony in Jerusalem, where the king-to-be moves up in procession to the Temple.  The priests wear their ceremonial robes.  Thousands of people are present to encourage the king and celebrate the continuity of the dynasty.
            There is music and singing; and they are singing this Psalm, to God, at the top of their lungs.  “God, give your judgments to the king.  Give your righteousness to the king's son.  Let him judge your people with righteousness and your poor ones with justice.  Let the mountains bring peace to the people;
let the hills bring righteousness.  Let the king bring justice to people who are poor; let him save the children of those who are needy, but let him crush oppressors!  Let the king live as long as the sun, as long as the moon, generation to generation.”
            And so on.  It is a plea to God that this will be a good king!  And it defines and spells out clearly what a good king, a good government is and will do.   He will “bring justice to people who are poor; let him save the children of those who are needy, [and] crush oppressors.”
            Now, we don’t have a king, of course.  But we do have a government.  I wish we sang this Psalm at every inauguration and installation of our government officials.  This Psalm expresses what Christians – and perhaps others as well – should expect of our government.  It expresses what we should expect of ourselves, since in a democracy we are the State; the government represents us.  We should pray this prayer over our leaders all the time because it says what God wants.  It tells us how to stay in harmony with God’s will and plan, thus ensuring peace, justice, and prosperity.

II.
            I have to say, though, that this never really worked.  In spite of what the people pray with they sing this Psalm for the new king, all the kings of Judah, and especially of Israel, failed.  Some did better than others, relatively speaking.  Some, like Ahab, were unmitigatedly horrible.  But even the best kings – David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Josiah – were deeply flawed and in the end did not keep the promise of this Psalm.  The nation eventually suffered the consequences of falling into idolatry and injustice. 
            It is not that God punished them for their bad theology.  It is that their actions in allowing, or even promoting, injustice and inequality put them in opposition to God and thus to God’s creation and people, and eventually this contradiction caused a catastrophe.  As it always does.
            This Psalm tells the king – the government – how to avoid this.  It tells the king what kind of government will keep him in harmony with God the Creator and the creation, so that the people will not experience the horrible disasters that invariably ensue when we disregard God’s will and instead allow idolatry and injustice to flourish among us.
            The core of what the king is supposed to do, that is, the central and essential job of government, is expressed in verses 12 through 14.  “He delivers the needy who cry out, the poor, and those who have no helper.  He has compassion on the weak and the needy; he saves the lives of those who are in need.  He redeems their lives from oppression and violence; their blood is precious in his eyes.”
            In fact, if you read the Psalm closely, caring for the needy and weak is the only thing the king or government is supposed to do.  There is nothing in this Psalm asking God to authorize the king to make war, or build roads, or keep out foreigners, or make trade agreements, or manage the currency, or even arrest and prosecute criminals! 
            Not that kings and governments should not do those things.  Indeed, these are things concerning which governments usually don’t need to be reminded.  The government has no problem doing anything that involves violence and power, or that results in impressive projects that the king can put his name on.  If anything, government needs to have a brake put on this kind of authority because it is so easy for it to get out of hand.  This is what the prophet Samuel warned the people about when he set up the monarchy in the beginning.
III.
            But the only thing God cares about, and the only thing the people plea to God about, is that the king take care of the needy, the poor, and the weak.  This is what the king needed reminders about.  Not just at his coronation.  But God continually sends prophets with the same message.  They tell the king, “Look, it’s not about you.  It’s about God’s people whom God has appointed you to watch over and protect.  And you are to watch over and protect them, not according to your own impulses – God doesn’t care about your opinions and reasoning.  You are to watch over and protect them according to the Law that God gave the people. 
            The problem with having a king, or a government, is that it creates a power differential and two classes.  Kings just naturally end up associating with wealthy and powerful people.  A king is not going to appoint a homeless single-mother to his cabinet.  He is more likely to appoint the CEO of some corporation, or a military general, or one of his own royal relatives.  The advice the king receives is going to be skewed by the interests of the kind of people who have access to the king.  It reminds me of that famous quote from President Coolidge.  When asked about the economy, he said, “Everyone with whom I come in contact is dong well; of course, they would have to be doing well or they wouldn’t come into contact with me.”
            God knows this, of course.  So God puts into the heart of the people this Psalm, whereby the people remind the king what his real job is.  So that at his coronation the king has to listen to thousands of voices singing, “Don’t forget what your real job is, O king!”
            The king is to use the power God has given him to bring about the equality and justice envisioned in God’s Law.  God insists that the people, and their government, never forget that they were slaves in Egypt.  And God gives the Law so that they will not ever degenerate into an oppressive polity like that of Pharaoh.  This is not just because of how horrible it is to be a slave and not wanting to place anyone else in that position.  But, as this Psalm indicates, following God’s Law brings peace and prosperity.  As opposed to the series of 10 plagues, environmental disasters that Pharaoh’s idolatry and injustice brought down upon Egypt.
            And God’s Law is, frankly, redistributive.  When the people sing that the government take care of the poor and needy, those resources have to come from somewhere.  And the Law of God provides, in the principles of Sabbath and Jubilee, for resources to be periodically redistributed downward.  To sing this Psalm is to advocate for wealth to be taken from those with too much and donated to those with too little.

IV.
            Near the end of the Psalm, God reminds the people that this is the recipe for general prosperity.  If the king, in obedience to the Creator, adopts policies that create equality and justice among the people, then there will “be abundant grain in the land,” waving “on the mountaintops,” its fruit flourishing “like [the famously green and abundant land of] Lebanon.”  Then the king’s name will last forever.
            In other words, a moral government policy that dedicates itself to lifting up the disadvantaged and bringing about equality through redistribution will create prosperity for everyone.  This is God’s promise.  God is saying, “I made the world to work this way.  Trust me.”  Just as injustice is rooted in idolatry and bears the bitter fruit of disaster; justice reflects joyful worship of the One God and bears the sweet fruit of abundance for all.   
            As I said, none of the kings really lived up to this vision.  Kings always fall to the temptation of their wealthy friends who convince them that, contrary to God’s will, it is really best for everyone if some have more and most have less.  They get convinced that, contrary to God’s Word, the way to help poor people is to give money to rich people. 
            And of course we still delude ourselves that this works, even though throughout history it never has.  Throughout history the practice of economic inequality has always led inexorably to some kind of catastrophe.  Think of the French and Russian Revolutions.  Think of what we are even now doing to the Earth’s climate, and what consequences we are already beginning to face.
            But God does not give up on us.  And, in the end, God sends a new and different kind of King.  God comes to us in Jesus Christ, the Messiah.  He is our King.  He is the One enthroned on high.
            Jesus does not need to be reminded of this Psalm.  He embodies this Psalm.  He gathers around him a new community made up of the disadvantaged, the outcast, the alien, the poor, the sick, the excluded, and those deemed by the establishment to be hopeless sinners.  He proclaims Jubilee; he brings forgiveness and release to all.  It starts in the human heart, where people experience repentance, that is, their minds and outlook changes so they can welcome others as equals and no longer see according to hierarchies and categories. 
            As Paul says, there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; all these barriers have been broken down by the love of God in Jesus Christ, and we have been made one, equals in God’s family.  In Christ, there are no longer human kings at the top and slaves at the bottom; we are all slaves… of the God of love who calls us to live together in joy and peace.

V.
            And our job is to create by God’s Spirit this community of peace reflected and described in Psalm 72, and many other places.  We are Christ’s Body in the world.  We are to embody ourselves these qualities of the good king, as Christ does.  We live in a democracy and in a sense we are the government here too.  As disciples of Jesus therefore it is part of our calling to bring this vision into our public life.  Not as any imposition of Christianity.  But simply as a matter of obedience to the Lord.  And a warning to our own world and country of the consequences of continuing in a polity that feeds injustice and inequality… and offering the promise of one that creates peace and prosperity by following God’s will.
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Debt and Jubilee.


Leviticus 25:1-24.
I.
            One of the most prevalent and powerful ways the people are kept subservient, compliant, and oppressed is debt.  One of the main purposes of debt is to widen and maintain the gap between the few who have everything and the many who have little or nothing.  Debt is basically another means for transferring wealth from the people doing the work to the people… well, not doing the work. 
            One of the main purposes of God in giving the people the Torah is to ensure that they did not fall into the oppressive, exploitative, arrangement they knew in Egypt.  Debt is of course just a slightly kinder and gentler form of slavery.
            We have managed to make debt seem a little more benign by giving indebted people the illusion of ownership.  But in a crisis this quickly evaporates, as we saw in 2008 and 2009.  In that mess, you notice, it was not the debtors who got bailed out but the creditors.
            To prevent the ravages of economic inequality, God gives the people the Torah.  And a central element of the Torah is a collection of laws having to do with the Sabbath, culminating in Leviticus 25 and the laws providing for Jubilee.
            Sabbath is more comprehensive than the requirement that no work be done one day in seven.  There is also provision for a Sabbath every seventh year, when the land was to be left unworked and people were to live off what they had saved or what the land produced by itself.  And finally there is the Jubilee which is observed every 7 x 7 years, when all debts are canceled and all land reverts to its original family of ownership.
            In other words, God recognizes the tendency of human greed and depravity to cause the economy to degenerate over time into inequality.  So God gives the people a system with a built-in series of reset buttons by which equality is restored and wealth redistributed downward.  These are the periodic Sabbaths leading up to the great Jubilee every half century.
            But, like much of the Torah, by the time of Jesus even these revolutionary regulations had stagnated and been twisted into rote, empty, and oppressive religious observances.  Instead of regular ways to restore justice and equality, Sabbath laws became just another way for the authorities and the privileged to assert their control over people’s lives.  We’re not sure the Jubilee was ever celebrated at all.
            And it is Jesus’ insistence on enacting the true and original meaning and practice of Sabbath as restoration of God’s justice and peace that generates the most friction between him and the ruling authorities. 
            Why do they get so viscerally upset with Jesus when he heals and forgives on the Sabbath?  Why was it such a big deal to them?  Because they know that Sabbath is really about a redistribution of wealth and power.  They know that their power depends on keeping people poor, sick, possessed, guilty, and in debt.  Anyone who is telling the people otherwise, like Jesus, would have to go.

II.
            When Jesus comes into the world, a large part of his mission is to proclaim Jubilee.  For one thing, the timing is right.  It had been 500 years since the building of the Second Temple after the people returned from exile.  That means there were 10 missed Jubilees, leading to this super-Jubilee that some ancient writings seem to predict would herald the arrival of the Messiah.
            In any case, Jubilee themes permeate Jesus’ ministry, beginning with the hymn his mother sings even before he is born, and continuing with his inaugural sermon in Nazareth, and the Sermon on the Mount, and in his numerous healings, exorcisms, and proclamations of forgiveness, the Greek word for which is better translated as “release” and is the same word used for the remission of debts.
            Wherever we find language of restoration, release, or reversal, wherever we hear about the last and the first changing places, or the poor being lifted up and the rich brought down, or the blessings of the gentle, the bereaved, the persecuted, or the hungry, we are in the spirit of Jubilee. 
            It could be argued that when Jesus talks about the Kingdom of God, he is talking about some version of Jubilee.  And of course he talks about the Kingdom of God more than anything else.
            We don’t notice it anymore, but we pray for Jubilee every day whenever we say the Lord’s Prayer.  For some reason only a few Christian groups say the words as Jesus says them in Matthew: “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”  Or:  Release us from our debts as we release others from their indebtedness to us.  (Most English-speaking Christians use an adulterated and obfuscated version of the prayer, in which the words “debts” and “debtors” are changed to “trespasses” and “those who trespass against us,” which isn’t in any of the gospels.)
            And Jubilee is not just about canceling debts and redistributing wealth, it also has to do with restoring the family at the center of the society.  Only with Jesus, he does not want to keep the traditional family of his time which was based on blood and where the father often ruled like a little, tyrannical king.  He establishes a new kind of family based on equality and discipleship.  It is this reformed family of people who trust in him and his message that becomes the building block of his new Jubilee community, the Kingdom of God.
            And Jesus’ larger point is that this new community and family is not simply a sociological entity, but a spiritual one.  It is an anticipation of the fulfillment of God’s original plan for humanity. 

III.
            Reading through Leviticus 25, and then looking at how Jesus fulfills this vision and spirit in his ministry, is very sobering because of how far we have fallen away from it.  I think it is reflected in that “debts vs. trespasses” thing.  Instead of using Jesus’ words, that imply a desire to build a community where we release each other from various kinds of indebtedness, including financial, many Christians choose to use words implying we want merely to overlook each other’s missteps.  We decline to hold it against each other when we invade each other’s space.  But that is a lot weaker than relinquishing the bonds of debt and owing that tie people together into webs of injustice, guilt, poverty, and inequality.
            We Presbyterians should not congratulate ourselves that we use the right words.  Last week I got a phone call in my other job from a member of a church somewhere all upset that the session was spending the principal of the church’s endowment, when he felt they should only be spending the income, and is there anything the presbytery can do about it.  To which I replied that generally a church’s money is the session’s to spend as it pleases, and I hope they’re doing something good with it and not just replacing the steeple or something. 
            That exchange just reminded me that not only are many main-line Protestant churches, especially Presbyterian churches, creditors, that is, part of the privileged class that seeks to live off the income generated by other people’s work, but we like it this way and resent any suggestion that it might be otherwise.  Which means many of us don’t want to hear the message of Leviticus 25 or, for that matter, Jesus.  We appear to think it is possible to be “Christian” while studiously ignoring, or twisting into some more domesticated, psychologized form, most of Jesus’ teaching.
            It is not just us.  Ever since at least the 4th century the church has been busy figuring out how to be “Christian” without Jesus.  So we talk incessantly about holding the right doctrines, hierarchies, and procedures, but never mention where he says “Woe to you who are rich,” or “Give away all that you have,” or “Do not store up your treasure,” “the first shall be last and the last shall be first,” and so forth.
            Somehow we manage to say daily, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” and at the same time enthusiastically take on more debt and/or make more money off our debtors.  As if he only meant figurative debts and symbolic debtors?  As if he didn’t intend to actively demolish the very foundation of a predatory economy?

IV.
            The basic theological point of Leviticus 25 is in verse 23, where God says, “The land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants.”  This of course is also expressed in Psalm 24, which we hear weekly leading up to the offering: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; the world and all those who dwell therein.”
            Everything derives from this affirmation.  All the rules about the Sabbath day and the sabbatical year and the Jubilee year are expressions of this truth.  They are ways in which we are to remember whose we are and whose planet this is.  They are ways in which we proclaim that it is not our initiative that holds everything together, but the Word and Spirit of the Creator.  They are ways in which we affirm our radical trust in the God who has delivered us to a place of stupendous abundance, where there is more than enough for everyone.
            The whole place belongs to the One who made it.  It is not ours to dispose of as we please, but we are stewards responsible to treat the planet according to the Owner’s expressed wishes, revealed in the Torah and finally in Jesus Christ.  And it is not the Owner’s wish that a very few people have a very large amount of wealth while the vast majority of people are poor.  Which is what we have now.
            The response of the Lord to such a situation is to gather people – mainly poor, broken, disenfranchised, alien, outcasts, “sinners,” and the sick – into an alternative community, new family-like units, governed by Jesus’ vision of the spirit of the Torah, in equality, non-violence, and mutual forgiveness, nourished by his Body and Blood, in anticipation of the final renewal and restoration of Creation.
            It is the holy task of every congregation to participate in this mission.  We are witnesses to the truth that the earth and everything on it belongs to God.  Every congregation is supposed to be a place where Jesus’ values, practices, and ways of thinking are followed, and those of the world are renounced and rejected.  Every congregation is supposed to be a place of generosity, equality, justice, sharing, goodness, and love.  Every congregation needs to be a place where selfishness, greed, avarice, hoarding, inequality, stealing, and violence are unequivocally and categorically excluded.
            Every congregation is a place where jubilee is happening!  Where debts are canceled, where the new family of God is established and fed, where people come to find acceptance and learn the ways of peace.

V.
            In the end, this is how we will be evaluated.  This is how every congregation will be evaluated.  To what degree did this gathering reflect and express the Kingdom of God?  The usual criteria of a secular economy mean nothing to the Lord.  He will only want to know how well we trusted him to provide for us, and for all.  He will want to know how we made for equality and sharing in our congregation and in our society.  He will want to know whether we cynically and selfishly perpetuated a corrupt and violent system, or faithfully represented his Kingdom of justice and peace.
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