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| Bishop Gerald Beaumont |
On the notice board at the back of the church, and in a couple of other places here, there is a profoundly affecting image; it is of a tattered child crouching to pick up and consume some filthy scraps from the gutter.
You would, almost certainly, have passed it a number of times. Perhaps, it moved you, as it does me everytime I see it. In a way it keeps me honest, but I struggle not to take it for granted.
We are assaulted so much by terrible images of destitution, it is hard for them to stake their proper claims in an engaging and persistent way.
Over the last many months, Joy and I have sought to put before this Parish, a range of opportunities for us all to see for the first time, or to be reminded, of the persistent nature of God’s preferential option for the poor. This has been in the preaching of this place, and in the physical presence of the poor, or those who espouse their cause.
I have introduced you to my Aboriginal friends from both near and far.
Joy and I have attended to the pressing needs of some who wander our streets in moments, and seasons, of despair.
This Parish itself has a fine record of care for those in need, and delights to do this in a number of ways.
There can be no release from the pressure of these considerations,however, for there is no diminution in the number of the poor, or the claims on us of their need.
And it is the Scriptures which form the foundation of our knowledge of God’s perspective on these things.
It is vital for our spiritual health, and for the cause of peace in our world, that we take up, over and over again, the Agenda of God, and do so in a way that is both faithful to the Scriptures, and which is also close to our hearts.
In the reading from Amos we have just heard, there is a small fragment of a harsh, prophetic word that cuts into the the self-confident Israel of his time.
This lowly shepherd has been called to denounce Israel for its “grave injustice in social dealings , abhorrent immorality, and shallow, meaningless piety”. [OAB p1170 OT ].
The worst part about his task was that he was preacing into a profoundly successful community, that was at the height of its powers on every level. Israel was never to be as successful as this again in its history.
We may imagine how welcome Amos was made to feel. In fact he was finally expelled and forbidden to prophesy again in the king’s city at Bethel.
Sitting at the heart of Amos’ concerns was the issue of social justice. “Hear this”, he says. “you that trample on the needy, and bring ruin to the poor of the land.......The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob; surely I will never forget any of their deeds. Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who lives in it...” [Amos 8:4, 7-8 ]
In both this passage, and in the Gospel for today, there lies beneath the text a very particular corruption. That of usury. The illegal taking of interest on loans. The people who were most affected by this practice then, as - indeed - now, were the very poor. Contracting to purchase the basic necessities of life, in a way that would only compound the material shipwreck of their lives.
Can we discern a resonance here with recent local ripples in the sub-prime home-loan market? A barely averted disaster that tingles in our own hip-pockets!
The Hebrew Law forbade usury for this very reason. The Law was consistent in expressing the will of God, and God’s concern for social justice. A concern that bristles out of almost every book of the Torah.
The biblical commentator G.B.Caird speaks of the ingenuity of the dishonest steward and the way in which he extricated himself from his predicament.
It has to do with the detail of the Jewish Law on usury.
“The Law of Moses forbade the taking of interest from Jews on loans of any kind. The Pharisees, who had large financial and commercial concerns, had found ways of evading the intention of the Law, without transgressing its letter.
They argued that the purpose of the Law was to protect the destitute from exploitation, not to prevent the lending of money for the mutual profit of lender and borrower.
There were some situations in which a loan could be regarded as a business partnership, and interest as a fair sharing of the profits of a joint enterprise.
They had, therefore, laid down the rule that, if a man already possessed some of the commodity he wished to borrow, he was not destitute, and the taking of profit by his creditor was not usurious.
However poor a person might be, he was likely to have a little wheat left in his bin, and a little oil for his lamp.
These were, therefore, the two commodities most commonly chosen for the working of this particular form of legal fiction...... so are exposed the niggling methods of scriptural interpretation by which the Pharisees managed to keep their religious principles from interfering with business....[ G.B.Caird - Luke p 186/7 ]
Amos exposed fraudulent business practices in his time, and did so in a way that illustrated how faithless business practitioners manipulated the Law to serve their own ends.
There is more than a hint of this when he puts into the mouth of the exploiters, words of greedy anticipation.
“ When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.”
“The merchants are impatient for the holy days to pass so they can resume their fraudulant practices.” [OAB p 1179/80 ]
It is remarkable how few things change in the history of humankind. The temptations are legion in our affluent Western society.
Amos wrote over 2700 years ago. Same issues, same struggles for God’s people to remain faithful to the spirit of the Law, rather than just its letter. All rather depressing, one might say.
And it is the same voice of God that we hear in the focussed ministry of Jesus, so long after Amos has had his say.
Jesus preaches into a much diminished Israel, but one that was still wrestling with the same issues.
The Gospel for today is complex and problematical. It seems to be making a number of points, and some of them don’t seem to be very consistent with the Jesus we have come to know.
Is the rich man really congratulating a faithless servant who has ripped him off? Is Jesus commending some rather dodgy business practice? Has Jesus mutated into a hard, practical business adviser?
Beneath all the possibilities, there is a question of how we use our wealth. Not that we should have none, but rather how it is to be used, and how it may be deployed best in the interests of God’s agenda first rather than our own.
These are difficult matters to discern amidst the competing and, mostly legitimate, practical concerns of our lives.
There is, however, one sure way to keep us up to the task, and that is to look into the very face of another’s poverty and dispossession and to find there the heart of God; to allow ourselves to be moved and re-formed by the experience; to renew our vows to travel with God in the way of justice and compassion.
So, I urge you once more to seek out that image of the child-beggar, and to allow it to lead you again into the heart of God. What might come out of that encounter God alone knows, but we may, all of us be open to a new way of appreciating and sharing the riches of our lives.
For, as a wise man has tellingly affirmed:” to invest money in benefaction is to exchange it for the currency of heaven.” [ G.B.Caird - Luke p188 ]
( Acknowledgements:- St Luke - G.B.Caird - The Penguin New Testament Commentaries. The Oxford Annotated Bible (NRSV) - OUP)