It is said that
if money is the root of all evil then why do they always ask for it in
church? That’s a silly question, however
a good one!
No matter how you
righteous you want to be, just about everything does revolve around money. It, more than just about anything else, is
necessary for your life. You must know
how to navigate with money if you’re going to survive in this world. You may want to buy a farm in a remote area
and become a self-sufficient all-organic homesteader, but you still need to
make enough money to pay for taxes and insurances. Our choices and lifestyles are largely determined
by money. Economic viability is key. If it can make money, or be economically
sustainable it can survive. If it can’t
it disappears. That’s the foundation of
all economic systems, everything from unbridled capitalism to totalitarian
socialism.
I remember
reading an article some time ago about the things major snack food companies do
to increase sales. They hire
psychologists to help develop snack foods that are addictive so that you want
to eat more. I know exactly what they
mean. I love chocolate. I love peanut butter. They are each a food group of their own! But despite how much I love them I can’t eat
all that much of them. My taste buds
become saturated, or I am satisfied and I stop.
However, give me a bag of potato chips and a bowl of some sort of sour
cream dip and I’m hooked. I’ll eat the
whole bag, empty the bowl of dip, be stuffed full and want more! If you’re trying to sell snack foods that’s
what you’re aiming for – something that people can never get enough of.
Snack food
companies only focus on healthy snacks when there’s money in them. Let’s say two people own snack food
companies. One decides it is the
company’s moral obligation to only produce things that lead to health, better
cholesterol, lower blood sugar; and that sort of thing. The other decides to focus on producing what
people crave and will buy a lot of.
Which of the two companies will survive?
If you’re going to stay in business
you have to do everything to stay on top.
If you’re a snack food company and your competition is hiring
psychologists to develop products that sell you’d better do the same. You can stay high and mighty all you want,
but you’ll lose market share. You’ll go
out of business and eventually you’ll be replaced by someone else who also
develops products with psychologists!
The world of
money also knows how to use the saying, “Out of sight, out of mind.” Since we grow strawberries in the church
garden many years I’ll use that as an example.
If you go into Wegmans a quart of strawberries costs $3.99. Now think about that. That quart of strawberries was grown in
California taking up space, nutrients, and water. The plants were planted, grown and
tended. Someone had to pick them, handle
them, and package them. Then the were
loaded into a refrigerated tractor trailer, probably operated by Leonard’s
Express in Farmington, and driven over 2600 miles here. Wegmans employees unload them, store them
briefly and put them on retail display shelves.
From growth to store shelf
strawberries take a tremendous amount of labor.
There are no commercially operating robotic pickers out there. And then you have to remember that Wegmans
probably nearly doubles the price to all the operating costs Wegmans incurs in
running a retail store.
While bulk
processing and economies of scale can keep costs remarkably low, do you really think
there is any way for every person in that chain to be reasonably paid, and
everything done responsibly, for you to get two pounds of strawberries for
under $4. No way! But all we the consumer sees this time of
year is a shelf in a great grocery store with strawberries at a good
price. We think if we buy it we have
been part of a fair transaction.
I don’t say any
of this to make us feel guilty. But I do
want us to use it as a way of understanding what Jesus meant when he saw many
successful people making large donations to the temple while a poor widow put
in a few cents.
And before we go
any further, let’s notice something very very important. Miss this point and you’ve gotten Jesus’
point entirely wrong. This is not a
story about generosity. Jesus DOES NOT
praise the widow for putting in everything she had. If you come away from this thinking that
Jesus is pleased when people give their every last penny to religious
institutions and charitable causes you’ve missed the point!
Jesus does not
praise the widow. He simply makes a
point. The system of religious
expectations required all that she had, and it shouldn’t have been that
way. As Luke tells the story of Jesus
this is a turning point. Immediately after
this scene Jesus goes on to predict the destruction of the temple; symbolically
God’s rejection of it.
The religious and political leaders –
those whom Jesus watched put in large sums – were required by the religious
laws to maintain fairness and integrity in the economic system. Obviously they weren’t or they wouldn’t have
so much and the widow so little.
I’m not an expert in ancient
economies, but I believe the Bible’s economic laws are unique in the world’s
nations. We read the heart of it in our
first reading from Leviticus. While it
was overall what we might call capitalism, it had one very unique twist. That had to do with land ownership.
The Jews were told that there was no
such thing as private ownership of land.
All the land belonged to God.
People were stewards of it. Each
family was allotted a portion of land.
That was passed on for generations in perpetuity. It was a subsistence living agricultural
economy. Having land meant that you
could survive. Without land you really
couldn’t.
If all the land belonged to God and it
was held in perpetuity in a stewardship arrangement that also meant that land
could never really be bought or sold.
However, there was what we might call
a long-term lease arrangement that could be made. You could rent land from someone else up
until the Year of Jubilee.
The Year of Jubilee occurred every 50
years. On the year of Jubilee all slaves
were set free and all land was returned to its original family. Thus the amount of a land lease would be
largely determined by how many years it was until the next Year of
Jubilee. If it was 49 years till the
next one you’d pay more than if it was 2 years.
The whole point of the system was
God’s way of ensuring wealth never became concentrated and poverty never became
too deep. It wasn’t a welfare
system. There was no welfare system! If you wanted to eat you had to grow your own
food. And as long as you could never be
permanently locked out of land you’d never end up in abject poverty.
It is important to remember that
populations stayed relatively stable in that era. There weren’t exploding birth rates. And there would have to be ways to deal with
situations when families died out and when some family was consistently
growing.
Do you see however, that the Jewish
legal code was designed by God to provide for basic sustainability of the whole
population.
Unfortunately there is no record that
the Year of Jubilee was ever celebrated.
It appears to have never happened.
When Jesus gets upset about the Jewish
leadership not following the Law of Moses I expect this is some of what
outraged him the most. At the very core
of their society was a guarantee of safety.
But what happened? The rich got
richer and the poor got poorer.
It is not possible for us to opt out
of our economy – I suppose we could become street people, but that’s not what
God is calling us to either! Instead, I
think we need to remember some key things from the gospel and from Leviticus.
First, all things are God’s. In some sense there is no such thing as
private ownership. Second, foundational
to Jewish faith was, and Jesus’ expectation is, that we would not participate
in systems of exploitation. From the
poor widow we learn that just because something has a good price, and we can
afford it, does not mean that we can ethically buy it. There are lots of things our society and our
economy says are okay that are not.
God wants us to live in such a way
that we use the power of our money for good.
That certainly involves charitable giving. But it is mostly using your money as a
consumer who directs your power to create and maintain systems of fairness and
opportunity for all.
A challenge that I have for myself,
and that I give to all of you, is that before you buy something know where it
comes from. Know the process by which it
came to you. If it seems unfair then
consider a different product.
We do not want to be those whose lives
are easy based upon the exploitation of other people; who are also created in
God’s image. For if we exploit them, we
are actually tearing down God’s own work.
With money comes power and
obligation. Use it as a part of who God
calls you to be.
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