Kleptocracies, Fear, Faith and Investment

22 Pentecost, Cycle A Proper 28,  November 13, 2011

Judges 4:1-7 Psalm 123
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 Matthew 25:1-13

Lectionary Link

God be in our heads and in our understanding; God be in our eyes and in our looking; God be in my mouth and in my speaking; God be in our hearts and in our thinking; God be at our end and at our departing.  Amen.

  Each day we are given an update on what is now just reduced to three letters: OWS, or occupy Wall Street.  In the complexity of our postmodern world, we are not really sure about cause and effect of a general resentment growing amongst diverse populations of people around the world.  One can note what is called the Arab Spring in the Middle East.  There have been worldwide movements against governmental and economic elites sometimes called kleptocracies, or social orders established that results in the few to be able to steal from the many.  We’ve seen kleptocrats fall in Algeria, Egypt and Libya.  And now with the rising influence of lobbyists in our political process, it could be that the so-call developed Western World is now experiencing their own varieties of kleptocracy.  Or at least that is how lots of people are beginning to characterize the situation.

  Now why would I as a preacher and not an economist want to wade into this volatile topic at all?  Well there is certain biblical permission given to a preacher, even in the lessons for today.  The people of the Bible were not strangers to oppression.  Deborah the famous judge came to prominence in a time of oppression.  This hopelessness of economic oppression is expressed in the Psalm for today: “Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy, for we have had more than enough of contempt.  Too much of the scorn of the indolent rich, and of the derision of the proud.”   O God, too many people have been losing for much too long; please deliver us.

  But then we arrive at the Gospel of the day, and this wisdom teacher Jesus who we know to use nature metaphors, fishing metaphors, and agricultural metaphors in his parables, also uses a sort of Wall Street metaphor of investment.  And his parable does not seem to be very favorable for the timid investor.  There is a phobia called Plutophobia, the unhealthy fear of wealth. (I think my wife and children believe that I’ve had this phobia for years).   A related fear is Chrometophobia or the fear of money.  And so the poor soul who took his one measly talent and buried it in ground ends up having his talent taken away from him and given to the adventurous and successful investor.  And he did so because of his fear.  But was his fear, a fear of money or the fear of his master?  One might say that he suffered from tyrannophobia, an unhealthy fear that  his master was a tyrant.

  Can we take from this parable that Jesus would be on the side of the hedge fund managers of Wall Street?  After all, they are successful investors.  When we read this parable with the predominance of the words of Jesus on behalf of the poor, it seems that there is another meaning in this investment parable.  Remember Jesus said it was hard for the rich to inherit the kingdom of heaven.  He also said that one could not serve God and Wealth.  In various places he encourages people to give away their possessions to those who need them.  He also taught us to build up treasures for ourselves in heaven and not on earth.

  So what are we to make of this parable?  Does the parable make transparent the cruel dynamic of life known as the principle of atrophy?  Use it or lose it?  Natural and spiritual gifts are distributed in various forms to everyone and each person has the choice to go the path of development or atrophy.  Each community has the choice to go the path of development or atrophy.  In parish communities one often hears about the 80/20 rule.  And what this means is that 80 percent of time, talent and treasure are given and performed by 20 percent of the people.  This means those who do not exercise their time, talent and treasure lose their portion of grace to minister. The ministry ends being done by those who are willing to fully invest their time, talent and treasure.  That is often the how the investment dynamics happens within a community.

  We might want to look for the source of motivation in the development of our spiritual gifts.  In the parable we are told that the man who hid his talent did so because he feared his master.  That might point us to the ambiguous use of the word “fear” in the Bible.  In short there is good fear and bad fear; there is a paralyzing phobia fear or forms of anxiety that inhibit positive actions.  When it is written in the Bible, “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” this kind of fear is a reverential awe based upon a deep respect of God.  In the development of our gifts, we need to convert our negative fears of life in order to take the risks needed to develop our gifts.  When religion promotes a fearful image of God that inhibits development then religion is misrepresenting God.  The opposite of fear is faith; faith is that attitude in living when we know that God is a loving investor in humanity.  If we can believe that God is a loving investor in us, we can with faith develop our gifts to their full capacity.

  I do not think this parable give carte blanche to those who use tyranny or laws to preside over kleptocracies to concentrate the majority of wealth into the hands of the few.  The gifts or talents are the heavenly treasures that we are given to develop so that we can bring things from the inner kingdom of love into our outer world.  If we are growing in love, joy, peace, faith, self-control and kindness, surely at the very minimum it means providing a fair access for everyone to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the basic forms of happiness that includes food, clothing, shelter, safety, health care and human dignity.  The rising of resentment around our nation presents us with the further challenge of Americanizing capitalism to further fulfill our own basic American ideals; but beyond that we are to develop our spiritual gifts to Christianize our economic system to be expressive of love, faith and kindness.  If we perform the free market system as an amoral  survival-of-the-fittest system where only the strong are allowed to survive; this is not the Christianity of Jesus Christ.  A system that has misanthropic effects ultimately plants the seeds of its own demise.

  Let us in our worship and faith know God as a loving God who has invested in the likes of you and me and who asks us to invest in each other for our common good.  Let us use the signs of our current public discontent to be the opportunity for us to become more Christ-like in the development of all of the gifts that God has given to us and to the people of our world.  Amen.