[Date Prev][Date Next][Date Index]
Proper 19-A Pentecost XVII Sept 11, 2005
H O M I L Y G R I T S
Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost
Proper 19 - A
September 11, 2005
¶ Book of Common Prayer Lectionary -
Ecclesiasticus (Wisdom of Jesus Son of Sirach) 27:30-28:7 The
vengeful will face the Lord's vengeance.
Psalm 103 Benedic, anima mea - Bless the Lord, O my soul
Romans 14: 5-12 We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to
ourselves.
Matthew 18:21-35 The parable of the unforgiving debtor
____________________________________________________________________________
The charging of interest on loans is the lifeblood of Christendom's
bed mate, Capitalism, ' though it is strictly forbidden in the Bible
it inherited from the Jewish Church. "Usury" and "Biting" it is
called in Scripture, and all the monotheistic religions forbade its
practice as a form of theft. Jews were forbidden to lend money to
other Jews at interest, and Christians were forbidden to lend money
to other Christians at interest, so the Jews built great Shylock
banks to lend money to Christians without incurring Yahweh's wrath,
for he was concerned only with his own household of Israel, and
Scrooge Christians could lend to Jews with impunity, for their
version of Jehovah had converted his currency. Islam, which
inherited the prohibition from our Bible, invented ways of servicing
debt without calling it interest, which they persist in using today.
The "oil rich" Saudis know how to do it. The Calvinists of the 16th
century redefined usury to mean not lending money for interest, but
only the charging of exorbitamt rates of interest, which they left
adjustable, and made capitalism levitate. Catholic moral theologians
fell into line, and that opened the floodgates of usury to all the
bankers of Europe to oppress the poor forever, and rob the world's
wealth in the mercantile centuries. Poor people in Nicaragua have no
access to the dozens of banks that have sprung up and been robbed by
their owners since the Sandinista Revolution was squelched by
imperial intervention here. They had nationalized the banks for the
single decade of their government, and turned the Bank of America
into the seat of the National Assembly, which had not much money as
the foreign banks and the Somozas had sucked out of the land. I
asked our empleada, Maria Palacios, what poor people did now when
they had to borrow money; she replied that they went to a
Prestamista, a money lender, and for a loan of 500 cordobas ($30
U.S.) they would have to pay 20% interest for the first month, and if
they could not pay the money back in a month, the charge would be
doubled for the next month, and they would have to put up an article
of furniture, a watch, or their jewelry, as surety. Even the family
refrigerator could be pledged for a loan of 1000 cordobas ($60 U.S.).
In default of payment, the pledged article is lost. And I know of
several folks who have wetbacked their way to Gringolandia to escape
a prestamista's enforcer. The Church is silent and does not remember
when it excommunicated practitioners of usury. In the Chicago
ghetto where I lived for 30 years, poor people frequently lost homes
they were buying on "contract-to-purchase," when they failed to make
a single monthly payment. All of this was done by either professing
Christians or Jews, all Covenanted believers, who had learned to
calculate interest and oppress the poor.
The criminality of the Church arises from the mists of its
hermeneutic, and it has attempted to excuse if not justify the
Shoah, the holocaust of European Jewry, gypsies and gay people by the
Nazis and their faithful Church of German Christians, their
Reichsbischofs, and their Catholic Pope who turned his thin and
pious face away from the blasphemy to attend to his prayers. The
American churches with few exceptions
applauded the miraculous end of World War II, brought about (they
solemnly believed) by the Holocaust of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
administered by a church-going Baptist president and his Episcopalian
cabinet. The Reformed Churches do not get off the hook, for they
invented and published the heresy of apartheid in the name of their
Elect
People, chosen by their Calvinist Jehovah, and it plagued Africa for
a century before it had to be redesigned for 'democracy' to accept
it. Beyers Naudé, a Dutch Reformed pastor, who had been a member of
the Broederbond, heard the cry of millions of Africans trying to
throw off the yoke of colonialism, and was converted. "There was no
way I could subscribe to the interpretation which they gave to
certain passages of
the Old and the New Testament", he wrote finally. "But I was afraid
to make this known because I knew, with my position of leadership in
the church with my position in the Broederbond, that if I started to
express these new convictions in public, it would lead to a
tremendous storm, reaction, protest, anger and rejection." Dorothy
Sölle, a German
theologian, responded to him that in Germany "The Deutsche Christen"
justified National Socialism and tried to ground their racism and
their Führer principle on some misinterpreted Chrisian tradition." 1
In the Black ghetto on the West Side of Chicago, through the
uprisings and the so-called 'riots' of the sixties we saw some of the
churches--and even some super-patriotic Black preachers--struggle
ardently against Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights
Movement. In the South, it was noticed that "the Negro could get as
close to white people as he wanted, as long as he didn't get too
big" and in the North "the Negro
could get as big as he wanted, so long as he didn't get too close."
Chicago's suburbs and some of their churches struggle to maintain
apartheid till this day. The apartheid ("apart=hate") with which New
Orleans has been swamped for centuries was revealed in the wake of
Hurricane Katrina, when the prosperous Whites fled early via
airplanes and
motor vehicles while poor Blacks were left behind to be inundated.
Many of us pastors preached in USA churches and denounced the
imperialism to which they are committed in their relations with
Central America. We have always been heard politely and politely
ignored. Now, after thirty years of ministry in Chicago's West Side
Black ghetto, and the last sixteen in battered Nicaragua, I have
come to the view of Sören Kirkegaard who said of the Church he knew
that it was "an attempt to make a fool out of God."
At the time of his arrest, the disciples seemed to make a fool and a
sucker out of Jesus, for they all forsook him and fled. Peter, the
disciple who would learn from Jesus more than any other what the
depths of his friend's forgiveness were, for his repeated failures
and betrayals, comes to Jesus in today's gospel with a disciple's
question to his rabbi, and it does not seem to be a theoretical
question, but one that has sneaked out of his bad conscience: "How
often shall a friend sin against me and I forgive ? " Most of us, if
we were asked how many times we would put up with being messed over
by another, would perhaps say, "give them another chance." Some of
us, informed by the baseball
theology of Sunday afternoon America, or the hanging judges of the
land, would declare, "three strikes and you're out." That's the
extent of their moral theology. Oddly, most of the rabbis
anciently said, "three times"--that was the common judicial rule
The more enlightened and humane rabbis would say "seven times". So
Peter no doubt thought he
was on the safe side with his indulgent friend Jesus by offering the
lenient rule. "As many as seven times, Señor?" And Jesus' answer
is silly. It's overwhelming. I's unreasonable, it's ridiculous.
For he overthrows moral theology by declaring "not seven times, but
seventy times seven." Now it takes more than days in the week or
fingers and toes to calculate that, and neither Peter nor we intend
to start the countdown from four hundred and ninety . Because it
does not occur to us that this is what Jesus meant. Instead we know
very well what he means when we then hear his parable about financial
debt. Matthew says Jesus began the parable by citing this rule, and
saying "for this reason the comparison with the Rule of God
follows". Debt! the power trip that money has over people, the
oppressive nature of title to property and the appropriation of its
power--listen to the vocabulary in the parable: "settle accounts",
"slaves", "reckoning", "debt ran into millions of dollars", "no means
to repay", "sold toward the payment of the debt", "Give me time and I
will pay you every cent", "the master cancelled the debt" "a fellow
servant owed a few dollars", "Pay me what you owe", "the fellow
servant begged ' Have patience with me', "But he cast him into
prison." Jesus uses in this parable all the imagery that making
debts and owing money exercise in human relationships, the
oppressive nature of title to property and the appropriation of its
power. In one of his homilies, Bishop John Chrysostom of
Constantinople, in the 4th century, hypothetically addresses a rich
man: "Tell me, where did your wealth come from? From whom?" The
reply was "My grandfather and my father". "Would you be able to go
back in your family," retorts Bishop John, "and show that the
acquisition was just? No, you could not. The beginning, the source
must be someone's injustice. From the beginning did God make one
rich and another poor? Did he guide one and show him many treasures
of gold, but deprive the other of the search? No, he provided the
same earth for all. Since it was common property, how is it that you
have so many acres, while your neighbor has not a spoonful of earth?"
John, who won few friends by his preaching, died in exile, and not
many bishops since have spoken so forthrightly on the matter of
capital and property rights. 2
What we think of as the closest we have to a royal family in the
United States--the Kennedys of Massachusetts--are a family of
millionaires and politicians distilled in the whisky traffic of
Prohibition days. The founder of the dynasty, Joseph P. Kennedy, was
a Wall Street insider who crookedly manipulated his way into
millions, finagled from a
reluctant FDR an appointment as U.S. Ambassador to England,
sympathized with the Nazi ascendancy in Europe, was virulently
anti-Jewish, and "always identified his private interest with the
nation's welfare". Teddy, the last of them now, has become "the
conscience of the Congress" and has done much to redeem the family's
flawed foundations and rumpled reputation. Ronald Steel writes that
"his example is being followed in the successor generation of
Kennedys. That Joe's sons have established a
family tradition of liberation may be the greatest irony of his
extraordinary career." 3
Once when I was travelling on a train somewhere, I noticed two men
handcuffed together in an adjacent seat. One of them I was sure, was
captive, and the other was captor. One was a cop, the other a
robber. One was the good guy and the other the bad guy. But in the
absence of black and white sombreros, I did not know which was
which. The Nicaraguan word for handcuffs is "esposas". These folks
were married up
in their captivity to the cuffs. Who was espoused to whom? Whose
sins bound him by chains to another's orders? Whose past was in
hostage to whose future? Who had the key to liberty? "I can't
forgive you unless you're sorry" is not Jesus' way, or the way to
liberty. Jesus' way is to forgive so that you may be forgiven, to
unlock the prisoner so that you may be free of the handcuffs
yourself. This is not to ignore the offense,
for when we ignore the offense we do no honor to the human future.
But we can only name the sin in order to forgive it; call the demon
by its name to cast it out. Naming the sin gives us the jurisdiction
to forgive it. It is therefore that which is exhilarating in that
the sinned against regains the confidence needed to deal with the
future. The nforgiving debtor in our parable from Jesus was himself
a slave, espoused to oppression, an enslaved enslaver. In the Nazi
concentration camps of World War II in Poland, the worst oppressors
were the unforgiving, merciless hirelings called CAPOS, chosen from
amongst the prisoners themselves, and put in charge of fellow slaves.
They, who had themselves been spared the gas ovens were often
merciless to their underlings.
Now where is liberation theology here? Where is the golden ring of
the social gospel in this merry-go-round of personal forgiveness? I
think of Solentiname. The campesinos of Solentiname were a
revolutionary community under the guidance of Padre Ernesto Cardenal
in revolutionary Nicaragua in the seventies and eighties. They
discussed the weekly gospel in the context of their revolution. So I
looked for their comments on Matthew 18. 4 "This Gospel is silly",
said one named Laureano. Several others say, "Why is it silly?"
Laureano says, "Several people have talked but nobody has said
anything good. And I haven't found anything good to say either. All
you' ve talked about is forgiveness and forgiveness. I don't see
anything in this gospel against injustice." But I read onwards to the
next paragraph in the campesino's commentary, and Julio Mareina, the
defender of equality, says: "I think this Gospel is revolutionary,
because it deals with the poor and the rich. And I see here a lesson
for the rich, because the first to be
pardoned was rich, and the second, who couldn't pay such a tiny
amount, was poor. . . the Lord puts rich and poor on an equal plane.
He says that just as the rich guy was forgiven, the poor guy must be
forgiven, too. But it happens that in this society the rich are
forgiven for the evil things they do but the poor are shoved into
jail because they're
poor. In this example Jesus is showing us the poor and rich as
equals. The millionaire was forgiven through charity, through love,
and just as he was forgiven he should also forgive the other weaker
person and have for him also charity, love. And we can give an
example using the words of today: at present we see that the rich
have no compassion for the poor. If the rich had love for the poor,
and the poor for the rich, that would mean there wouldn't be rich and
poor any more. That's love. So let everybody live equal. And then
we wouldn't have that stuff about selling the poor man with all his
family to pay what he owes. And God can't forgive the sins of the
rich then, until they stop exploiting."
The nations of Latin America owe gigantic debts to the bankers of the
U.S.A. and other Me First World countries. The debts are unpayable.
This has been the way for USers to control their "economic
colonies", shouting to them "Pay me what thou owest!" Dr Fidel
Castro-Ruz has proposed that the rich and powerful countries, now
throttling the throats of the debtor nations, simply cut their
military spending by 12% and use it to service the debts to their
banks. Trillions of dollars are spent for their military projects by
the rich nations like the United States, France, England, and
Germany, the banking and warring civilizations. The debts must be
cancelled, the funding of slaughter stopped.
It is Dr Fidel Castro who offered immediately, in the wake of
Hurricane Katrina, to send over a thousand medical personnel to heal
its victims, while the Bush league was on the golf course. Hugo
Chavez also offers help to the poor victims in the U.S., while Bush
scorns their compassion.
But their compassion is revolutionary forgiveness. This is the way
for the Me First World to be forgiven its sins of cruelty to the poor
and self indulgence for the rich--for we live on far more than our
share of the world's bounty. We need to think beyond personal injury
and personal slight when we say we accept the formula: we forgive
in order to be forgiven. We cannot escape responsibility for what
our U.S.A. is doing in the world, and the condemnation of history and
its God has already fallen upon us. May the peoples of the world
rise up and take over the decision making, take over the ministry of
the keys and teach us the meaning of "Forgive us our debts as we
forgive our debtors."
GRANT GALLUP
Apartado RP-10
CASA AVE MARIA
Managua, Nicaragua C.A.
Tel. 011-505-2662165
gallup@tmx.com.ni
GRITS 4th series now on-line:
http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits
1 C.F.Beyers Naudé and Dorothee Sölle, Hope for Faith: A
Conversation. Eerdmans,WCC publications. Geneva and Grand Rapids,
1986.
2 W.H.C.Frend, The Rise of Christianity, Fortress Press, 1984.
{p.749, John Chrysostom, Homily on Timothy}
3 "Big Daddy" [a review of Hostage to Fortune: The Letters of Joseph
P. Kennedy, ed. Amanda Smith. Viking.]
by Ronald Steel, in the New York Review of Books, Oct 18, 2001.
4 The Gospel in Solentiname, Vol. III, p. 150, "the Brother's
Pardon'"by Ernesto Cardenal, translated by Donald D. Walsh, Maryknoll
NY:
Orbis Books, 1982, originally published as El evangelio en
Solentiname. Ediciones Sigueme, Salamanca. 1977.
Homily Grits Copyright 2002, 2005 by Grant Gallup