It’s the Economy, Stupid: Year A, Proper 21

Exodus 17:1-7; Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32; Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16; Psalm 25:1-9; Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32

The readings for this Sunday from Matthew and Paul’s letter to the Philippians are usually construed as being about “belief” in Jesus’s power to save us from hell. The overarching theme, however, when the prophet Ezekiel’s word from God is also considered, is personal accountability in God’s realm where distributive justice-compassion prevails.

The exiled Israelites in Babylon found God to be unfair, perhaps because God refused to allow them to blame either their parents or the people left behind in Jerusalem for their plight. To add insult to injury, the promise of salvation (life and justice) is extended to anyone, including the Babylonians, who “turn away from all their sins that they have committed and keep all [God’s] statutes and do what is lawful and right.” Matthew’s Jesus presents a choice between a son who gives lip service but doesn’t follow through, and a son who first refuses to comply with his father’s request, but later does so. On its face, the story follows the lesson from Ezekiel. But Matthew’s vignette is not a parable about justice; it is a cautionary tale about shame and honor in a first century Jewish culture. The one son first honors his father by saying he will do as asked, then shames his father by reneging on the promise. The second son first shames his father by refusing to follow orders, then honors his father by obeying. The end result is conventional piety, not radical love. Matthew then compounds his error by casting the lesson in terms of the failure of some in his Jewish community to believe the apocalyptic message brought by John the Baptist.

At a time when the U.S. economy is on the brink of depression and threatens to take down the rest of the world with it, Christians should not be wasting their time on a Sunday ranting about petty sin and the threat of hell in the next life.

Wall Street employees, from the janitors to the CEOs, believed the glory days would never end. We were all living the American Dream – own your own home. No money down, no need to prove you are even employed. (I myself managed to acquire a home equity “liar loan” because of my pristine credit report.) Borrow money to make money. Buy a house and flip it before the balloon payment comes due or the ARM readjusts upwards. The rich flipped new subdivisions. The poor flipped foreclosed properties.

Now the party’s over, and the bull is hitched to the cart, hauling whoever is left into exile. Forty thousand people are in jeopardy of losing their jobs in New York City alone. The last investment banks standing (Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) have cashed in their chips and pledged to play by the rules. Wall Street will never be the same.

“O House of Israel,” Ezekiel reports God’s voice: “Are my ways unfair? Is it not your ways that are unfair?” Whoever persists in unjust policies will die, according to God’s imperial rule. “None of the righteous deeds that they have done shall be remembered; for the treachery of which they are guilty and the sin they have committed, they shall die.” This is not retribution or payback. This is not God’s version of the blood feud that involves generations. This is the consequence of failing to act with justice-compassion in one’s own life.

How quickly the conservative arch-capitalists dive for the socialist button. Who would ever have imagined that the Bush Administration would nationalize the U.S. financial system? Surely that has a much greater impact on the world economy than Hugo Chavez nationalizing the oil companies in Venezuela. But wait – who exactly is being saved here? To whom are the gold, silver, and green parachutes being handed out?

From prison, Paul writes his pastoral letter to the Philippians: “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” Jesus’s radical abandonment of his own self-interest meant he was “obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” Paul is not talking about the kind of pious obedience demanded by the fictitious father in Matthew’s sketch. Paul is talking about the kind of obedience that comes from total commitment to distributive justice-compassion. He is not talking about leveraging debt in order to amass fortunes that seduce others into debt they cannot afford. Paul is talking about creating the realm of God on earth by letting “the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who . . . emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.” In such a realm, greed has no place, and debt has no power.

“Only the person who sins shall die” – no more serial retribution, says Ezekiel’s God. But the heirs to this promise are not restricted to the people of Israel. Anyone who turns from sin lives. The Israelites in the 6th Century BCE said that’s not fair. In the 21st Century CE, some are calling for punishment of the speculators and managers who seem to be responsible for the financial melt-down. Others are holding individual people responsible for making poor choices, or for not having the good sense to avoid the deal that seemed too good to be true. But this is pious revenge. If justice is distributive, there is no need for punishment beyond the consequences already befalling all of us who are caught in the system. If we truly turn from our destructive, unjust habits, the old patterns will not be repeated.

Meanwhile, the Hebrew people wandering in the Sinai desert – like the exiles in Babylon and the skeptics in Matthew’s synagogue – also continue to not believe God’s promises. They complained last week that God led them out of bondage in Egypt so that they could die of hunger. This week they moan that they will die of thirst in the desert. In neither case are they able to trust the Covenant. God brought them manna from heaven that magically appeared overnight. Moses produced water from a rock. What’s next? Is there any miracle that will convince us to trust in the power of the Covenant?

This metaphor risks getting stretched beyond recognition, but the point still stands: God’s realm includes all of humanity. As soon as we abandon justice-compassion, or ignore the consequences of our actions that lead to unjust systems, we are caught in the powerful currents that propel civilizations into empires. This is not an indictment of human nature, as John Dominic Crossan is careful to make clear. Empire can happen when people begin to organize themselves into societies, but Empire is not necessarily inevitable. The primal myth of the Hebrew people tells us not to abandon hope. Sign onto the Covenant. Pick up your Blackberry and start making sustainable deals that insure that no part of the interdependent web of life on this Planet is compromised. “I have no pleasure in the death of any [life form], says the Lord God. Turn, then, and live.”

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