Gordon Parks is dead. He passed away last Tuesday, at the age of 93. But his photographs, like the one reproduced on this morning's bulletin cover, live on, reminding us that God's Eighth Commandment convicts us all.
Now, "You shall not steal" seems simple and straightforward enough, no ambiguity. But it didn't take very long for the early Christian community to recognize that these words prohibit a much wider range of activities than just breaking into your neighbors' home, or workplace, and running off with their private property.
You see, as long ago as the fourth century, in Antioch of Asia Minor, we find John Chrysostom, the Greek preacher and monk who later became patriarch of Constantinople—we find Chrysostom giving voice to an already widely-held Christian belief when he says (quote): "Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours but theirs." (Quoted from Homilies on Lazarus 2.5 in Stanley M. Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, The Truth About God: The Ten Commandments in Christian Life [Nashville: Abingdon, 1999], p. 113) Yes, "Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them…"
And Chrysostom's fourth-century contemporary, Ambrose of Milan, sets forth the theological basis for this widely shared belief when he tells us: "The earth was created for rich and poor in common." (Quoted in "Wealth," The Living Pulpit, April-June, 2003, p.28) "When you give to the poor, you give not of your own, but [you] simply return [to them] what is (theirs), for you have usurped that which is comm[unal] and has been given for the common use of all." (end of quote) (Ibid., inside front cover) Yes, it is God's intention that the resources for well-being bestowed on planet Earth should be shared equitably among the many, not hoarded by the few.
Now, John Chrysostom, Ambrose of Milan, and so many others in the early church had, of course, all learned this ethical lesson from the words of their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, as recorded in Scripture.
In today's Second Lesson, we heard the Gospel of Luke's narrative of the interaction between Jesus and a certain ruler (18:18-25). In their dialogue about what it takes to inherit eternal life, Jesus cites for the ruler the second table of the Ten Commandments—the laws that have to do with loving our neighbors, the laws that include "You shall not steal."
The ruler replies by assuring Jesus that he has been keeping all these commandments since his youth. But Jesus doesn't accept this reply of his at face value. Rather, Jesus calls to the man's attention that when it comes to fulfilling these laws he is still lacking one thing. And from the words that Jesus goes on to speak, I take him to be implying that the thing the man is still lacking has specifically to do with his imperfect keeping of God's Eighth Commandment, "You shall not steal." For what Jesus says to him is this: "Sell all that you own, and distribute the money to the poor."
Yes, I believe that here Jesus is telling the man something like this: "Until you've shared the wealth you've accumulated with others, in an equitable manner, you will not become part of the reign of God; you will not inherit eternal life. For the poor, the strangers, the widow, the children—all these have a special place in God's heart and within God's care (Luke 6:20). And those who would inherit God's reign must share God's commitment to caring for such as these (See R. Alan Culpepper, in New Interpreter's Bible, vol. IX, p. 347) So you may think you've fulfilled the commandment not to steal, but until you sell all that you have and use the resulting money to support the poor, you really will not have fulfilled this commandment."
Whoa, there! Can it really come to us as any surprise that, upon hearing Jesus speak such radical words as these, the man decides not to part with his wealth, that he instead turns very sad?
Yet note that Jesus yields no ground whatsoever to this man's sorrow. No, Jesus instead brings their dialogue to an end by speaking to him an even more discouraging set of words. Jesus says, quite memorably (quote): "...it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."
So you see, it's not some modern wild-eyed, pinko-communist "liberal" who has framed the moral argument I'm presenting to you today—the argument that the commandment "You shall not steal" encompasses the much wider ethical issue we call "distributive justice." No, it is Jesus himself who has directed us to distribute equitably the Earth's resources and who has taught us that failing to do so violates God's intentions for the human community, thereby jeopardizing the coming of God's reign on Earth. Yes, it's Jesus himself who has framed for us this moral argument, as we learn quite clearly from listening to John Chrysostom, Ambrose of Milan, and the countless other theologians and ethicists who have wrestled with Jesus's message through the centuries—including, of course, such classical thinkers as Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and John Calvin.
Martin Luther, in particular, understood this commandment to be a sharp prophetic rejoinder against the inequitable distribution of wealth. And Calvin, as he was wont to do, clearly interpreted this commandment as directing us Christians not only to the duty of stopping all harm to the poor but as also directing us Christians to the duty of caring proactively for the poor by redistributing to them our wealth.
All of which brings us back to Gordon Parks and his image of cleaning-woman Ella Watson—the image captured for us so unforgettably by his lens in this 1942 photographic portrait, "American Gothic." Or I could substitute for this photo any one of the many other images of poverty and racism with which Parks has confronted us middle- and upper-class Americans, the poverty and racism that Parks himself had experienced firsthand much of his life, a poverty and racism resulting not from any scarcity in nature, but from the set of priorities and systems imposed on society by the wealthiest among us and tolerated in society by the many of us who have gained even the smallest advantage therefrom.
Don Marquis once said in the newspaper The Sun (January, 2003), "When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him 'Whose?'" (Quoted in "Wealth," The Living Pulpit, April-June, 2003, p.29) Well, in Parks's photograph, you can see the answer to that question.
For Ella Watson may be a figure from the America of 1942; but, as an iconic image, this woman in Parks's photo could just as well represent the "nickled and dimed" Wal-Mart associates in the year 2006. Or she could just as well represent the former Enron employees and shareholders who were robbed of their jobs, their pension funds, and their life-savings when the company imploded at the end of 2001 amidst obscene managerial greed. While the stock price was plunging from $85 per share to 26¢, twenty-nine top executives were carrying off from that bankruptcy mega-millions of dollars, making out like the veritable "bandits" they really were!
Or the woman in Parks's photograph could represent the thousands of medical patients who've been deprived of reasonably-priced prescription drugs through powerful pharmaceutical companies' intense lobbying of congresspersons. Or she could represent the many workers fired from their livelihoods after they ventured to lead quite legal unionization campaigns. Or she could represent the countless numbers of hungry persons who've lost their food stamps through the action, or inaction, of our political leaders.
One of the modern prophets among us, reflecting on what's currently going on in Washington, D.C. and corporate America, has dared to speak out, following the lead of Jesus and John Chrysostom and Ambrose of Milan and Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther and John Calvin. Hear these words from the Reverend William Sloane Coffin, who says: "How [Jesus] would scorn an economic theory that says we must heap more on the platters of the rich, for only [in that way] will more crumbs fall to the poor.... Never in recent history have we had so blatant a plutocracy: a government of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy." (end of quote) (Coffin, Credo [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004], p. 53)
Coffin puts me in mind of one of President Bush's off-hand remarks that was intended as a joke but actually spoke the truth. He said that his political base consisted of "the haves and the have-mores."
And apropos of these thoughts from both Coffin and Bush, yet another modern prophet, the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, has spoken in a way that returns us directly to the moral theme that John Chrysostom and Ambrose of Milan sounded so long ago. Brueggemann says (quote), "Justice is to sort out what belongs to whom, and to return it to them." (Quoted in Coffin, Credo, p. 63)
Now, a congregation like ours—where, whether or not we are part of President Bush's political base, we are nevertheless still a group of "the haves and the have-mores"—a congregation like ours stands convicted by Jesus's extension of the meaning of this Eighth Commandment to include God's insistence on our personally practicing a distributive justice. And we stand convicted by Gordon Parks's graphic depiction of America's failure to set distributive justice as even a "long-term" goal.
Yes, as John Chrysostom said, "Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them…" And being guilty of having failed to enable the poor to share in our goods, each of us who are "the haves and the have-mores" can now hear Jesus directing to us this implicit cry: "Stop, thief!"
Yet, we may well ask, "What are we to do? For we are embedded so deeply in this capitalist free-market economic system of ours"—a system which holds as a fundamental tenet that distributive inequality is both inevitable and necessary within a society.
So Jesus is saying, "Stop, thief!" But how is it possible for us to stop? How is it possible for us to share God's concern for the poor when we are so thoroughly enmeshed in this alien economic system of ours?
Well, that's certainly the topic for a lively discussion that we'll need to engage in over quite a period of time! But meanwhile, a place to start is this: let's move past our denials of guilt; let's repent of the part we have played in the exploitation of Earth and its peoples; let's try to view the world as God sees it; and let's pray that God will show us day by day more and more specific ways by which we can work toward the goal of distributing Earth's resources equitably.
Well, time is up for today! But in a future adult study series we can continue to struggle with how we can become more fully obedient to God's not-so-straightforward-after-all Eighth Commandment.
Let us pray:
O God, help us both individually and collectively to begin to identify ways in which we who are "the haves and the have-mores" of this society and the world can enable the poor to share in our wealth. In the name of Christ Jesus, we pray this. Amen.