A slightly revised version of a homily preached at Zion Episcopal Church in Douglaston, NY for the fourth Sunday in Lent 2021.
We are rapidly moving toward the end of the season of Lent and I am here to talk about debt. And so, I want to begin by noting that Christianity frequently talks about debt as a metaphor for sin. In some translations of the Lord’s Prayer, we pray “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors,” (NIV of Matthew 6:12). The Apostle Paul writes of how the Good News of Christ has freed us from both the debt of sin and debts in righteousness owed through the law. Paul urges the Romans: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law,” (Romans 13:8). In addition, Christianity has long portrayed Christ’s resurrection as God’s cancelling of the debts that we carry for our sins.
In all those instances, debt stands in for what we come to owe to one another and to God by committing sin. But in many other instances in the Bible – perhaps even the majority – the Old and New Testament speak of debt as, well, just debt. That is, financial debt. The debt that banks and lenders and the payday loan industry deal with on a day-to-day basis. The kind of debt we are reminded of in the form of monthly bills. That’s the type of debt I am focusing on today.
Just a few moments ago, in that short passage from Luke’s Gospel, we heard Jesus say what some historians consider to be the most consequential economic statement in the New Testament. Jesus says, “But love your enemies, do good, and lend expecting nothing in return,” (Luke 6:35). “Lend expecting nothing in return.”
It’s important to remember that Jesus was poor. Like really poor. He was part of the vast majority of the Roman population that was struggling for enough food on a day-to-day basis. As such, Jesus was acutely aware of how predatory lending devastated the lives of people in his community. In prohibiting lending money with interest, Jesus is reaffirming centuries of prior Jewish thought which equated lending money with interest to the poor as sin. Psalm 15 states that the people who will enter God’s house are those who “do not lend money at interest, and do not take a bribe against the innocent.”
This one statement on lending by Jesus shaped how Christianity thought about money. For centuries after, in council after council, bishops passed church laws disciplining both lay people and clergy who were to be found engaging in predatory lending. At the Council of Nicaea in 325 – from which we get the Nicene Creed, which we’ll say immediately after this sermon – a church law was passed stating that “if any [clergy] are found to be receiving interest by contract or transacting the business of charging fifty percent or devising other contrivances for dishonourable gain, they shall be deposed from the clergy and their names struck from the roll,” (Canon 17, Nicaea).
These early Christians took predatory lending incredibly seriously and viewed any form of lending with interest as morally suspect. And we have to dig a little deeper into Jesus’ Jewish identity and the history of the Israelites in order to understand why.
In the first passage we heard today – Leviticus 25 – we hear God warn the Israelites that if and when a member of their communities fell into a time of difficulty, the Israelites were to support them and not take advantage of their vulnerability. God warns, “Do not take interest in advance or otherwise make a profit from them, but fear your God; let them live with you.” And then, as if for emphasis, God repeats, “You shall not lend (to the poor) your money at interest, or even provide them food at a profit.” And then, finally, God offers the rationale for all these warnings. “For I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,” (Leviticus 25:35-38).
If I might paraphrase God, what I think God is saying here is: “If you see someone who has fallen into hard times, it is a sin to take advantage of that person. You are forbidden from making a profit off their desperation by offering loans at interest or even by charging them for food. To do so, is to commit the sin of economic enslavement, and remember – remember, oh my people - I am the God who once freed you from slavery in the land of Egypt.”
The memory of slavery – including economic slavery – is what grounds these prohibitions against predatory lending.
I don’t want this to become an academic lecture but I also can’t help myself from sharing a few excerpts from my favorite piece of ancient writing on loans and lending. In the fourth century, Basil of Cesarea, in what is now Turkey, preached a barnburner of a sermon against the wealthy landowners and bankers of his time. “You rich,” he said. “Listen to the advice that we give the poor in view of your inhumanity. We tell them to bear any suffering than the calamity that will come from agreeing to your loans.” He continues, “Indeed, it is extremely inhuman that some have to beg for the most basic necessities in life whilst others are not satisfied with the capital they already have, but are forever excogitating new ways of increasing their wealth from the poor in distress.” “The poor ask for medicine and you offer them poison; they beg for bread and you run them through with a sword; they plead for freedom and you subject them to slavery; they implore to be released and you entrap them in your inescapable nets.”
Tragically, as so many of us know personally and from the news, this fourth century sermon could just as easily be preached today. Predatory lending, entrapping desperate people in inescapable nets of debt, the wealthy forever dissatisfied with the capital they already have and excogitating new ways of taking advantage of the poor (subprime mortgages, anyone?) – there’s nothing new under the sun. And yet, still, we are called to be followers of the God who calls us out of the land of Egypt.
The God of our faith tradition, the God described in the Old and New Testament, is intimately concerned with the wellbeing of the poor, and this God especially condemns the widespread practice of rendering a profit off of people at the most desperate and vulnerable moments in their lives. Psalm 15 called it ‘taking a bribe against the innocent’ and Leviticus 25 prohibits not just predatory lending but even offering food at a profit to someone who struggling. Through all this, we hear the deep and abiding memory of a God who lifts his people out of the land of slavery, a God who frees ‘the least of these’ from inescapable nets.
In all those instances, debt stands in for what we come to owe to one another and to God by committing sin. But in many other instances in the Bible – perhaps even the majority – the Old and New Testament speak of debt as, well, just debt. That is, financial debt. The debt that banks and lenders and the payday loan industry deal with on a day-to-day basis. The kind of debt we are reminded of in the form of monthly bills. That’s the type of debt I am focusing on today.
Just a few moments ago, in that short passage from Luke’s Gospel, we heard Jesus say what some historians consider to be the most consequential economic statement in the New Testament. Jesus says, “But love your enemies, do good, and lend expecting nothing in return,” (Luke 6:35). “Lend expecting nothing in return.”
It’s important to remember that Jesus was poor. Like really poor. He was part of the vast majority of the Roman population that was struggling for enough food on a day-to-day basis. As such, Jesus was acutely aware of how predatory lending devastated the lives of people in his community. In prohibiting lending money with interest, Jesus is reaffirming centuries of prior Jewish thought which equated lending money with interest to the poor as sin. Psalm 15 states that the people who will enter God’s house are those who “do not lend money at interest, and do not take a bribe against the innocent.”
This one statement on lending by Jesus shaped how Christianity thought about money. For centuries after, in council after council, bishops passed church laws disciplining both lay people and clergy who were to be found engaging in predatory lending. At the Council of Nicaea in 325 – from which we get the Nicene Creed, which we’ll say immediately after this sermon – a church law was passed stating that “if any [clergy] are found to be receiving interest by contract or transacting the business of charging fifty percent or devising other contrivances for dishonourable gain, they shall be deposed from the clergy and their names struck from the roll,” (Canon 17, Nicaea).
These early Christians took predatory lending incredibly seriously and viewed any form of lending with interest as morally suspect. And we have to dig a little deeper into Jesus’ Jewish identity and the history of the Israelites in order to understand why.
In the first passage we heard today – Leviticus 25 – we hear God warn the Israelites that if and when a member of their communities fell into a time of difficulty, the Israelites were to support them and not take advantage of their vulnerability. God warns, “Do not take interest in advance or otherwise make a profit from them, but fear your God; let them live with you.” And then, as if for emphasis, God repeats, “You shall not lend (to the poor) your money at interest, or even provide them food at a profit.” And then, finally, God offers the rationale for all these warnings. “For I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,” (Leviticus 25:35-38).
If I might paraphrase God, what I think God is saying here is: “If you see someone who has fallen into hard times, it is a sin to take advantage of that person. You are forbidden from making a profit off their desperation by offering loans at interest or even by charging them for food. To do so, is to commit the sin of economic enslavement, and remember – remember, oh my people - I am the God who once freed you from slavery in the land of Egypt.”
The memory of slavery – including economic slavery – is what grounds these prohibitions against predatory lending.
I don’t want this to become an academic lecture but I also can’t help myself from sharing a few excerpts from my favorite piece of ancient writing on loans and lending. In the fourth century, Basil of Cesarea, in what is now Turkey, preached a barnburner of a sermon against the wealthy landowners and bankers of his time. “You rich,” he said. “Listen to the advice that we give the poor in view of your inhumanity. We tell them to bear any suffering than the calamity that will come from agreeing to your loans.” He continues, “Indeed, it is extremely inhuman that some have to beg for the most basic necessities in life whilst others are not satisfied with the capital they already have, but are forever excogitating new ways of increasing their wealth from the poor in distress.” “The poor ask for medicine and you offer them poison; they beg for bread and you run them through with a sword; they plead for freedom and you subject them to slavery; they implore to be released and you entrap them in your inescapable nets.”
Tragically, as so many of us know personally and from the news, this fourth century sermon could just as easily be preached today. Predatory lending, entrapping desperate people in inescapable nets of debt, the wealthy forever dissatisfied with the capital they already have and excogitating new ways of taking advantage of the poor (subprime mortgages, anyone?) – there’s nothing new under the sun. And yet, still, we are called to be followers of the God who calls us out of the land of Egypt.
The God of our faith tradition, the God described in the Old and New Testament, is intimately concerned with the wellbeing of the poor, and this God especially condemns the widespread practice of rendering a profit off of people at the most desperate and vulnerable moments in their lives. Psalm 15 called it ‘taking a bribe against the innocent’ and Leviticus 25 prohibits not just predatory lending but even offering food at a profit to someone who struggling. Through all this, we hear the deep and abiding memory of a God who lifts his people out of the land of slavery, a God who frees ‘the least of these’ from inescapable nets.
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