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Sunday, November 16, 2008 | 8:00 a.m.

Beyond Bailout

John W. Vest
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 123
Judges 2:11–23
Matthew 25:14–30

“To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one,
to each according to his ability.”

Matthew 25:15 (NRSV)

But here’s the bad news. From charity to justice, the good news is yet to come. There is much more to do. There’s a gigantic chasm between the scale of the emergency and the scale of the response.

Bono
Remarks at the 2006 National Prayer Breakfast


In the midst of our current economic troubles, which impact us as a nation and as individuals, it is sobering to remember that, like our gospel text this morning, quite a few of Jesus’ teachings and parables involve economic metaphors and images. What does it mean to read these teachings now, in light of our current economic situation? At the very least, it adds some gravity to our discernment and interpretation. No longer can we consider these things abstractly in the privileged comfort of economic security. What Jesus had to say about money and resources suddenly becomes very urgent and very timely.

The headlines this past week were dominated by talk about government bailouts. Some commentators and political leaders are concerned about oversight and accountability for the $700 billion bailout plan that was approved last month. Early in the week, AIG came under fire for hosting an expensive conference for financial planners after accepting an $85 billion bailout, which has since grown to $150 billion. And now lawmakers and our president-elect are debating whether the government should bailout the auto industry as well.

Now I’m a theologian, not an economist, so a lot of this is beyond my understanding. And I know that these are controversial issues that are easily politicized. So I don’t want to make statements that I can’t substantiate or will get me in political trouble. But it sure does seem to me that at the heart of our economic woes are the consequences of years and years of unchecked greed and questionable business practices among our financial institutions and corporate leaders. And it seems to me that these bailout plans—as necessary as they may be to prevent catastrophic economic collapse—don’t really address the underlying problems of our economy. It’s like what German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace,” by which he meant salvation that doesn’t cost anything or demand any true change on the part of the one being saved.

As I was reflecting on these things this week, it occurred to me that even our Bible has within it a bailout tradition of sorts. In a sense, the flow of the book of Judges is like a recurring bailout package. We heard a general summary of this in our first scripture lesson this morning. The basic pattern goes like this: The people of Israel have been given God’s law and know how they are supposed to live. Yet they invariably veer from the path of righteousness and get into trouble. When this happens, God bails them out by raising up a hero to save the day and set the people back on course. But eventually the people slip back into their old ways and the cycle repeats itself: failure, bailout, relapse; failure, bailout, relapse; failure, bailout, relapse. In the story, this goes on and on for generations.

In its final, edited form, the book of Judges is ultimately an argument that this system needed to change. The overall theo-political claim is that this bailout cycle is not sustainable. And though this was controversial at the time and part of an inner-biblical debate about what constitutes legitimate leadership, the book of Judges moves toward arguing for the institution of a monarchy to rule Israel on God’s behalf. This, they thought, would provide some consistency and stability for the people. Along with priests and prophets, the king would work to keep the people on a more steady path. We all know, of course, that this too was an imperfect system that was just as susceptible to the bailout cycle of the judges. But one way of reading this call for kingship is that it was a call to move beyond bailout.

I sense the same kind of move in Jesus’ teachings. To me there is something about the finality of Jesus’ teaching that seems to move beyond the bailout cycle as well. To be sure, Jesus was well aware of Israel’s history, with all of its ups and downs. But Jesus too was trying to put an end to the old cycle. He taught that the kingdom of God was at hand, that it was coming into being through him and through the community that grew around him. The way of life in this kingdom is different. It isn’t passive. It asks much of those who seek to be a part of it.

It’s possible, I suppose, to interpret Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection as one big and final bailout. There are certainly Christians who take this kind of approach. But it seems to me that what Jesus is doing is different than that, because he is putting so much responsibility into our hands. This isn’t a bailout. This isn’t cheap grace. This is a call to action. This is a call to real and true change.

It’s ironic, given our situation, that the parable of the talents is ultimately about making investments. In the parable, a rich man goes on a journey and gives three of his servants incredible amounts of money, clearly expecting them to make more money with it. Two of them invest the money and double their investments, which greatly pleases the man. The third servant is afraid to risk losing the money and angering his boss, so he simply hides the money he is given and returns it when the man comes home. This lack of investment is, in fact, what angers the man. He curses the servant and expels him from his household.

I don’t think that the point of this parable is to justify and support capitalist enterprise or investment banking. The point of this parable is that we are each given gifts by God and are expected to use those gifts to build up and maintain the kingdom of God. If we follow Jesus’ example and teaching, we do this by emptying ourselves and serving others. We do this by loving God and loving our neighbors as ourselves. In this way, we will build on the gifts we have been given and expand the kingdom of God’s love and grace.

While there is much about this that we could think about this morning, the piece of this parable that I find most interesting today is at the very beginning. There is a parable very similar to this one in the Gospel of Luke. We typically call it the parable of the ten minas or ten pounds. In contrast to the servants in Matthew’s parable of the talents, the servants in Luke’s parable are each given the same amount of money while in Matthew the servants are each given different amounts, “each according to his ability.”

This I find fascinating. It recognizes what we can all see in the world around us: when it comes to gifts and abilities, we are not all the same. This doesn’t mean that some are not given gifts, just that those gifts are different. We’re all given something and expected to use it. But from those to whom much is given, much is expected.

In our popular culture, I think this truth has been most faithfully explored through the superheroes of comic books and movies. For example, when Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive spider and develops remarkable powers, a series of mistakes and tragedies teaches him that “with great power comes great responsibility.” He takes this to heart as he transforms himself from a selfish teenager with incredible powers to the selfless servant of the people known as Spider-Man.

This may seem trivial to you, but I assure you that comic books deal with serious issues. Author Greg Garrett has written about faith and comic books, and he devotes an entire chapter of his book Holy Superheroes! to this theme of power and responsibility. “This isn’t, by the way, just some sort of abstract intellectual exercise,” writes Garrett, “because although none of us is going to be bitten by a radioactive spider, many of us have or are going to receive power of some kind and have to decide how to use it” (p. 30). He goes on to explain the kind of power we Americans have in the world. “When a nation that represents only one twentieth of the world’s population has the wealth to consume one fourth of its resources, each one of us partakes of a power that billions of people in the world can only imagine” (pp. 30–31).

Friends, regardless of our wealth relative to each other and regardless of our fortunes in the midst of this financial crisis, compared to the majority of the world’s population we are extremely wealthy and extremely powerful. This is even more so because of the collective wealth and power we control through the democracy of our society.

In his sermon at the 2006 National Prayer Breakfast before President Bush and other leaders in Washington, the rock star and activist Bono delivered a prophetic critique of America’s use of power and resources, especially with regard to charity. What bailout is for the rich, charity is for the poor. And while it is true that we are pretty good at charity and patronage, our record on real justice is less exemplary. “But justice is a higher standard,” Bono said. “Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice; it makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties, it doubts our concern, it questions our commitment. 6,500 Africans are still dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease for lack of drugs we can buy at any drugstore. This is not about charity, this is about Justice and Equality.”

Bono is right. We have been given so much, yet we are only willing to go so far to use it. We give aid and provide charity—which are worthy yet ultimately temporary remedies—but seem to lack a critical mass of collective will to truly address the justice issues that underlie poverty and hunger and disease and violence. For perhaps the first time in the history of humanity, we have the resources to end these destructive patterns and return life to the lifeless. That’s liberation hope. That’s restoration hope. That’s resurrection hope. That’s kingdom of God hope.

This is what the kingdom of God is all about. This is what Jesus was trying to teach us. This is what Jesus teaches us still.

We are the servant who is given five talents, but so often we act like the faithless servant who is only given one. Why is that? What are we afraid of?

I think we are afraid that we might have to suffer a little for the common good. But friends, we follow in the way of a child of God who suffered the ultimate cost for the good of all.

We live in a world with a lot of need. And into this world God is creating a world beyond charity for the poor. God is creating a world beyond bailouts for the rich.

And God is calling us to be a part of this new world. We are the servant that is given five talents. For those to whom much is given, much is expected.

Amen.

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