Liberation Theology, Wealth and the Words of Jesus

18 Pentecost, C p 20, September 22, 2013  

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1  Psalm  79:1-9

1 Timothy 2:1-7   Luke 16:1-13

Lectionary Link

     Perhaps you have heard the phrase “liberation theology” in the media.  Liberation Theology is more generally associated with the Roman Catholic Church and liberation theologians did not have the favor of the two previous popes but there is some indication that Pope Francis, being from South America, the seed bed of Liberation Theology, is bringing the themes of liberation theology back into public view.  Pope Francis is indeed raising eyebrows by suggesting that Roman Catholics not make side issues the main issues and by suggesting that poverty and social justice are more important issues of the Gospel.

  What is Liberation Theology and why has it been controversial?  The controversy of Liberation Theology is due to the fact that theologians borrowed the social theory of Karl Marx to analyze wealth and poverty in society.  Since Marx was an atheist and his theory morphed into State Communism, some have disapproved of any use of Marx’s social analysis.  In Marx’s social analysis, the public propaganda and even the laws of a society function best for the advantage of persons with wealth and power.  The public beliefs statements are called ideology and ideologies were seen by Marx as the justifying reasons that are given for the wealthy to maintain and expand their wealth.

  Roman Catholic priests and religious in Latin America found themselves working among the poor .  They found that the laws worked against the poor.  They found even unhealthy alliance in places between the church hierarchy and the people with political power, the dictators.  When the compromise of church hierarchy with dictators supported the suppression of the poor, those who worked with the poor wanted to expose these conditions.  The liberation theologians did not believe that the church practices could be used to take the side of the wealthy against the poor.  In their theology, they agreed that all theology was ideology on behalf of some group with power.  So they asked the question what is the preferred ideology?  They answered, “The safe and preferred ideology is the ideology of Jesus Christ, and his teaching was overwhelmingly on behalf of the poor.”  Liberation theologians chose to read the Gospel as the infallible teaching of Jesus Christ on behalf of the poor.  And the Gospel of Luke is perhaps the favorite Gospel of liberation theology since there are poignant teaching upon wealth and poverty.  The writer of the Gospel of Luke was also the writer of the Acts of the Apostles and he depicts some of the early communities as living communally; holding all things in common.

  The punch line of the appointed Gospel for today is: “You cannot serve God and wealth.”  One can seek to know in an intuitive way the conditions in which the Lucan Gospel writer was writing.    One could cite the separation from the synagogues of early Christian communities.  Separation within families for loyalty to synagogue or to the Jesus Movement had attending socio-economic consequences.  Many people who were used to flesh and blood family support had to accept their new Christian communities as their extended families.  They had to choose to leave wealth and inheritance.  The writer of Luke is recalling the poverty life style of Jesus to give members of the community support in their choice to continue with the Christian community.

  And as I said before, Gospel writings are context specific, that is, their most telling significance was in their original settings.  The details of their setting cannot be absolutized or literalized to any future setting, including ours.  If we dismiss the literal significance of the Gospel, we do not dismiss the inspired meanings that derive from the Gospel situations but with our appreciation of Gospel meaning we add to that a request for God’s grace to help us apply the corresponding and relevant meanings in our own situation, here and now.

  You cannot serve God and wealth.  That may be true but does that make God totally opposed to any notion of wealth?  How can the wealth of this world be re-appraise as the gifts of God to us to be used for Gospel outcomes?  It need not be a matter of serving God or wealth but how do we make our wealth, our gifts, serve God and divine purposes in our world.  How do we make earthly treasure into heavenly treasure?  This is alchemy of our Christian faith today.  How do we make the wealth of our lives serve higher purposes for our own benefit and for the benefit of the people in our world?

  This is the stewardship question of our lives.  The parable about the dishonest manager is a parable about the adage, “Possession is nine tenth of the law.”  Even though the manager knew for whom he worked, he treated his boss’s assets as his own and used them for his own selfish purposes.  This “apparent absent boss” who trusted his manager so much that he did not do regular audits of his holdings eventually caught the manager red-handed, and the clever manager quickly prepared for  his firing by doing favors to creditors to ensure him future employment.  Jesus wished that people who could be such expert at greed would convert that energy to be equally diligent in their stewardship excellence for God.

  Today, we can come here and pretend that Gospels have salutary teachings about wealth and being wealthy.  We can come here and make saints out of poor people assuming that they do not have problems with wealth and money.  The reason poor people do not have problem with wealth is only because they don’t have as much practice but in their own way poor people also have problem with wealth and money.  We could even use the Gospel to insist that only true Christians are monastic persons adopting the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Or we can accept ourselves as belonging to God and that all of our belongings also belong to God.  We can accept ourselves as gifted people, as wealthy people but as those who are charged with using our wealth in the service of love and justice.

  Today, we can accept the wisdom of the right relationship to wealth as being generosity.  Generosity is expressed in our lives as bubbling with gratitude and such esteem that we believe that we have something to give to the people and situations of our lives.  Faith is expressed as generosity in our relationship to wealth.

  There are many worthy recipients for our generosity in this world.  Our generosity has many forms of wealth: our time, our talent, our treasure in many places of deployment.  At St. John’s we hope that you believe enough in our mission and what we are trying to do to build a vibrant Gospel community to deploy your generosity for our mission and ministry here.  Our needs change and our needs are real and we hope to inspire generosity because we depend so much upon generosity for our ministry.

  You cannot serve God and wealth.  Are you worried about the words of Jesus making you feel guilty about wealth?  We need not feel guilty about wealth if we convert wealth to heavenly treasure through the practice of generosity and gratitude  for the wonderful gifts of God.  The practice of generosity is the most liberating theology of all.  Amen.