SERMON Abounding Justice

This is a morning of justice. From the prayers to the psalm to the hymns to the commissioning of the Sojo LVC'ers. Justice abounds.

But so do deceptive trade practices. Practices that are contemporary.

Sounding a little like an 8^th century Ralph Nader, Amos decries the merchants who chafe at having to obey what amount to new-moon Blue laws. Merchants who are at the temple in body but not in spirit. Merchants who, rather than worshiping, are thinking:

We will make the ephah small and the shekel great,

and practice deceit with false balances . . . .

and sell[] the sweepings of the wheat.

Three thousand years ago in Israel and Judah, an ephah

was a dry measure used especially for grain, equivalent to 10.878 quarts. The skekel was a standard measure of weight used for silver or gold equivalent to 176.29 grains. (Sweeney 2000, 264)

To "make the ephah small and the shekel great" was to reduce the measure of grain sold to the customer and increase its price.

And that brings to mind Andy Rooney's wonderful pieces on 60 Minutes about the pounds of coffee that are no longer pounds but 14 ounces. And even closer to home, the 15 ounce can of garbanzo beans that, just a few years ago, was 15.5 ounces; that, twenty years ago, was 20 ounces. The cans are all the same size. The actual beans, however, are fewer and the price more. As such, the cans are exactly like bags of grain that are stuffed at the bottom with inedible chaff -- "the sweepings of the wheat."

And just as we know about paying more for less and deceptive packaging, we also know about "deceit practiced with false measures." We know about such deceit in everything from weighted scales to adjusted cab meters and odometers to inaccurate check out scanners.

And just as we hear Amos pronounce judgment on the merchants at the temple, we hear Jesus in a parable tell us about a manager of a large farm who has engaged in some sort of dishonest business practice.

But with Amos there is more than deceptive pricing and packaging and false weights. We also hear Amos condemn:

buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals

In ancient Israel, if a person could not pay off a debt, he or she would have to enter into debt slavery to work off the debt. Buying the poor for silver was allowed. Buying a person for sandals "suggests that people were being impressed into debt slavery for relatively small obligations." (Sweeney 2000, 264) Amos condemns both as "trampling on the needy" and "bringing to ruin the poor."

And, as with the deceptive trade practices, debt slavery is not something practiced then and not now. It, too, is contemporary. Bonded labor exists in Southern Asia. Children are born into slavery and spend their lives working under unimaginable conditions to pay off their parents' debt. Check out the International Justice Mission website (www.ijm.org). The cases are appalling. In releasing the State Department's 2003 annual report on human trafficking, then Secretary of State Colin Powell recounted one such case. Khan was 11 when she was kidnapped from her home in the hill country of Laos and taken to an embroidery factory in Thailand. There she and dozens of other children were made to work 14 hours a day for food and clothing. They received no wages.

"We're talking about women and girls as young as 6 years old trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation, men trafficked into forced labor, children trafficked as child soldiers," Secretary Powell said. "This is slavery."

It is not only slavery, but slavery on a massive scale. The International Labor Organization released a comprehensive report in 2005 in which, for the first time, it estimated the number of women, men, and children working involuntarily under the threat of penalty. Globally, 12.3 million people are in such forced labor, 9.5 million in the private sector.

As it was for Amos, this, too, is "buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals." For us, as for him, it is a justice issue.

Having cataloged the deceptive practices and the enforced slavery, Amos goes on to tell of God's anger and judgment on those who trample on the needy and bring ruin to the poor.

That judgment is not just then but now. And it applies to practices that are not only deceptive but discriminatory. Practices that lead to inflated lending rates, inadequate schooling, job discrimination, and hopeless poverty. These are justice issues -- justices issues that Anna, Emily, Sarah, and Emily will each address in different ways this coming year. In the words of the psalm that we sang this morning, ours is a God who

takes up the weak out of the dust

and lifts up the poor from the ashes.

It is God's work they will be doing. Amos is clear.

But what about Jesus this morning? What about the parable? Remember the owner has discovered the manager -- someone who has great power and is the owner's agent in relation to the tenants -- has done something shady in managing the property. Dismissed by the owner, the manager scrambles to figure out some way he will not be reduced to manual labor or begging.

The manager comes up with the brilliant idea of forgiving large chucks -- 50% in one case, 20% in the other -- of the debts owed the owner. This leaves the manager with places to stay and friends to pay. While the manager has met his objective, the owner is seriously out of pocket. Nonetheless, the owner commends the manager "because he had acted shrewdly." (This, by the way, is where the original parable told by Jesus ends. The sayings about wealth were appended by Luke.)

So what's going on? Does this make any sense? A lot of people have tried to answer that question.

One of the better attempts has to do with commissions. The manager's fees would have come out the tenant's payments. We don't know the nature of the manager's initial dishonesty. If it was that he was taking usurious fees, then maybe what he is doing in cutting the amounts owed is simply cutting his own commissions. The owner would have lost nothing and the manager would have acquired new patrons. Everyone wins.

There are two problems with this theory. One is that the amount of commissions was a matter of a public contract. The second is that the tenants would not have allowed usurious fees to go unchallenged. They would have immediately complained to the owner -- or rioted if the owner were in collusion on the extortion.

So what is the answer? Why does the owner -- the Lord -- commend the manager?

The most likely explanation has to do with the importance of honor in first century Palestine. As mentioned, the manager was the owner's agent. He acted on his behalf.

Under the law the manager was required to repay the owner for any money he had lost. When the owner discovered the dishonesty, he had every right to have the manager fined or imprisoned. But he didn't do either. Instead, he dismissed the manager. Before the tenants could find out, the manager cut the amounts owed the owner. The tenants did not know he had been dismissed (he was actually without legal authority to do what he did!). The tenants credited the owner with the manager's largesse and the manager for arranging the deal.

In the words of one commentator:

The master applauded the shrewd [manager], and everyone in the story truly lived "happily ever after." In the Mediterranean world honor is wealth. Though deprived of surplus this year, the master has gained greater honor. The [manager], even though unemployed, can now turn to his former clients and make claims on them for favors as he needs them. Everyone knows that the [manager] "arranged" these excellent deals. (Pilch 1997, 140-41)

But it is in the outcome for the tenant farmers, the peasants, that the manager's business dealings reverse the trampling of the poor and the ruin of the needy. As the same commentator concludes:

[T]he peasants are happy as clams. For at least this one harvest season, they might be able to live slightly above or at least at but definitely not below the subsistence level, which is where they usually found themselves. (Pilch 1997, 140-41)

It is probably not possible ever to know what Jesus had in mind when he first told this parable. The sayings added by Luke and his late first century church are difficult to relate to the parable. But to the extent the story of the parable relates to how we, as Christians, might handle issues of social justice, it speaks volumes.

The self-interest of 20^th and 21^st century community organizers is certainly there. Both the owner and the manager are acting in self-interest in helping the tenants. Everyone gains. But even more, it is the inexplicable grace of the owner in not fining or arresting and imprisoning the owner that makes that exercise of self-interest possible.

And so it is for us as Christians. We are here this morning because of grace. The God who "stoops to behold the heavens and the earth" comes to us so we can go to others. With Anna, Emily, Sarah, and Emily, we are commissioned and empowered to empower others. To be the Body of Christ here and now. In the world. May justice abound. Amen.

September 23, 2007

Ruth VanDemark, pastor

Wicker Park