Sermon by Rev John Altmann
If the world were a village… [youtube video]
In the OT God has given us an object lesson. He teaches by example rather than purely by words. He has gone to great trouble to set up a demonstration of his values in the life of one nation, Israel, that he created out of nothing. He made a people for himself and he shaped and moulded their life together by giving them a set of laws to obey. And those laws create an example of his intentions for the whole of humankind in all times and places. So what we have to do as we read the OT is look at the concrete example of Israel to understand God's intentions and then reapply those intentions to our time and place.
I think the reason God has done it like this is that he knows that we learn best from a real life example. Think about your children: do they learn best to do as you say or to do what you actually do? We learn to imitate what we see in other people, don't we?
This is also the reason why when God wanted to sum up his intentions he came and lived amongst us in history in the person of his Son. He didn't write a book first. No, first he lived out his intentions and this was so impressive that his followers wrote down all they could remember about him, so that we could see his example clearly as well.
But back to the concrete example of Israel and God's people in the time of Nehemiah for us to learn from.
This morning we are looking at Nehemiah 5 and a whole series of problems of economic injustice that are brought to Nehemiah. Nehemiah demonstrated really effective leadership getting the people of Jerusalem to work together to rebuild the walls of the city and so to rebuild the security of the community. He brings all the different people who remain in Jerusalem together and unites them in this great joint work for the common good, both priests and nobles and rich and poor alike, all work together. Different families and clans all contribute and rebuild sections of the wall in cooperation with one another. But now that he has reunited the community so effectively there is someone to whom they can bring their grievances to, and maybe the things that pull them apart can be addressed by Nehemiah? So the people come to him in chapter 5 with their grievances.
And the grievances that emerge now are all about economic injustice and how the people relate to one another when times are tough and food is scarce. The people come to Nehemiah with passionate complaints. And the complaints seem to revolve around three things that have happened in order of severity.
1. The first group says: [read out verse 2] Food has been hard to grow for the community that returned to Jerusalem. There hasn't been enough and some families have far more dependents than others, so they've been going hungry while others presumably have enough but don't care.
2. The second group says: [read out verse3] the food shortage has been so severe that others have been forced into mortgaging their land to the wealthy in return for borrowing money to buy food for their families. And if times remain tough they face the prospect of not being able to repay these loans and of losing their land or homes forever.
3. The third group says: [verses 4-5] They have not only mortgaged their land and lost it for not being able to repay but they have also had to borrow again to pay taxes and this time their children have been forced into slavery with the wealthy to guarantee the debt. And they feel that without land to make a living from, they have little chance of ever paying back these debts and freeing their own children!
Now the key to understanding why this is so wrong is to read God's original laws for Israel concerning how they were to relate to each other and how they were to deal with the land he gave each family and how they were to regulate borrowing.
In Deuteronomy 15 God sets out some of his regulation of Israel: Read out verses 1-7
So debts could only last for 7 years and then had to be forgiven, with the aim that there would not be entrenched poverty in the community. Likewise land that was originally given to clans and families by God could not be sold forever. Every 50th year it had to be returned to its original family ownership. You could sell land but basically the price had to be determined by how many crops there were left to be produced from it until the year of Jubilee, when it went back to its original ownership. So you couldn't amass land in Israel in a way that took away forever the independence of families to make a living for themselves. This was because the land belonged to God and he wanted to create a certain type of model of his concern that everyone have the opportunity to provide for their own dependents and not lose that opportunity forever.
But even more than that there was a basic issue with loans. When you lent to a fellow Israelite you were not supposed to charge interest.
Exodus 22:25: If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not treat it like a business deal, charge no interest.
Deuteronomy 23:19: Do not charge an Israelite interest… you may charge a foreigner interest but not another Israelite.
So can you see what was going wrong in Nehemiah's time? The people had returned to Jerusalem but they had given up on God's design for his country and broken apart the kind of community God wanted to create by charging interest and enforcing their loans in a way that led to entrenched poverty for some that they couldn't see a way out of. Basically many in the community were hard hearted towards their fellow Israelites and they didn't care how this looked to the world around them.
Nehemiah's solution is to call them back to the original intentions and laws God had given Israel and to recommit himself and his leadership team to following these laws themselves:
Read out Neh 5: 9-11
So what should we learn for today from the example God created in Israel which Nehemiah and the people recommitted themselves to?
I think we are meant to show the world around us an example of true generosity and care.
God's clear intention was that there need be no poor people amongst the Israelites due to the blessing of abundant opportunity to create wealth in the land he was giving them. And more specifically this lack of lasting poverty was to be achieved by returning land to their families and by not taking interest on loans but being generous to lend freely. There was in God's plan for Israel, a balance between people not losing forever their opportunity to make a living for themselves on their land and others being generous towards them by way of interest free loans. What I think we need to notice is that both these things pre-suppose an equal amount of responsibility and dignity and independence between the rich and the poor in Israel. The emphasis is on land and on loans, something that your neighbour can use to work with. Nevertheless the loans are never to be a way of you getting rich at their expense. But the aim of the loan systems is that people repay but if they can't repay within 7 years then the loan were to be forgiven out of generosity.
This system of generosity was not about giving things to people without them having to make something themselves. The focus is as much on creating opportunity for people to provide for themselves and contribute to the well being of their families and the needs of others, as it is on actually giving people things. In this system, true generosity involves more than being pestered by a charity to write a cheque.
For us today we need to think about how to be generous in a way that gives opportunity to others who are in need. It is not enough to just give things away or give money to others. We have to think about how to be generous in a way that helps others regain their independence and have the dignity of providing for themselves and going on to help others.
Christians ought to be in the forefront of employment training initiatives. We need to empower others with the generous use of our excess resources. I wonder if you actually think together with your family about what excess resources you have and how to use them to give opportunity to others? That'd be a great discussion to have at home and with other Christians here at church. If you're brave enough to talk about your family finances with anyone else, that is! I'd love to talk to you about this rather than about the weather, but we find it awkward don't we, as nothing is as personal and private in our culture as what we choose to do with our money.
Let me suggest that donating to loan schemes that lend money to people in poverty ought to be supported by Christians concerned about God's example with Israel. Micro-finance loans intended to give people a hand up rather than a hand-out, ought to be heavily supported by us. One of the best loan schemes for the poor in South East Asia was founded by a Christian man with a heart for being generous after the pattern provided by God to Israel. What is now known as Opportunity International is a micro-finance scheme for the poor that operates in Timor, Indonesia, the Philippines and India lending out millions of dollars of supporters donations in $100-200 loans to help someone start up their own small business and earn an income to provide for their children.
Finally I want to say that if you would like to lend some of your excess to empower people in Africa, I have been working on good ways of doing this for the last 10 years and I quit being a full time Anglican vicar in order to pursue this goal 4 years ago. I'd love to talk to you about this as I am trying to pursue a calling to empower the poor with opportunities to create income for themselves, and I'm doing this in partnership with the church overseas as part of their mission.
Let's pray…
