Some time back CNN reported on the economic hard times of many in America. One such story was about Dan Kostrikin who at age 44 was having to look for a roommate to help make his home mortgage payment. The Torrance, California, executive recruiter had been enjoying success and all the freedom his single life afforded him. He remodeled the home he bought in 2008 just as he wanted it. He traveled outside the country a few times a year. He ate out for almost every meal, treated himself to the pricier cell phone plan and belonged to a really posh gym.
Those comforts, however, slipped away as many companies stopped hiring, making his commission-only job next to impossible. With only one executive placement in four months, Kostrikin says he's only eating at home, changed his cell plan and gym membership, suspended cable television service and his only travel plans amount to walks on the nearby beach. While all of these changes have been adjustments, the biggest one is yet to come. Dan, who hasn't had a roommate since college, is now desperate to find one to help make ends meet. "I'm a little bit leery -- actually a lot leery," he said. "But I don't really have a choice."
So what might God have to say on this subject of economics? What might God’s plan be or does he even have a plan. The OT and NT are not separate stories. The OT does not end with Malachi and then pick back up in Matthew. In fact one could say that the NT is the climax of the OT. So before we jump into the NT we need to stop off in the OT for just a moment. In the book of Exodus we find God’s people being used a slave labors. They are being mistreated. Pharaoh views them as the threat to national security. They are going in number and Pharaoh fears that they might revolt or attempt to leave. Pharaoh orders the killing of innocent baby boys in order to hold down the growing number of Hebrews. He places harsh task masters over the people and makes their work even harder. Skip over a few chapters and a guy named Moses shows up.
God uses Moses and the 10 plaques to demonstrate the Egypt’s gods are nothing. You think that Nile is a god because it brings futility to the ground. Well watch me (God) make your god bleed as I turn the river from water to blood. Eventually the people leave Egypt and somewhere between leaving Pharaoh’s empire and reaching the Promised Land and before the BIG 10 where handed down the people get their first command. In Exodus 16:16 the people are told to gather only as much manna as they needed. The people were hungry so God feed his people. God rained down manna from heaven. Every morning the people could go and collect what they needed. However, if they attempted to store more up then it would go bad. If they stored more than was needed God sent maggots to destroy the stockpile. There is enough for everyone. There is enough for everyone’s need just not enough for everyone’s greed. God is teaching this new nation to share. In Leviticus 25 God tells his people that there should be no poor among you. God sets up the Jubilee to ensure that the poor would get treated fairly. During the Jubilee slaves were to be set free, debts were to be canceled and land returned to its original owners. This is God’s plan of reconstructing the community’s assets to remind Israel that all property and land belonged to God. They were the people of the Exodus who must never return to a system of slavery. The oppressed must never become the oppressors. God did not mess stuff up and make too many people and not enough stuff. By establishing the Jubilee God is saying that there is enough for everyone yet greed and injustice will always interfere with the community’s responsibility to love ones neighbor. God sets in a place the Jubilee when at scheduled times inequality is dismantled.
This brings us to Jesus in Luke 4:18-19. The stories told in the Gospels are more than just cute little stories to spice things up. These stories seem to have been written by their authors to remind the church in their day and time who they were and what they were about. In Matthew 6:25 Jesus teaches his disciples to relinquish anxiety about their own economic security and to seek God’s justice. Also in Matthew 6:11-12 the disciples are told to pray for their daily needs and forgive those who may owe them debts. We call it the Lord’s Prayer. In Matthew 17 Jesus lampoons’ Caesar by having a fish show up with coin in its mouth. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Well, Caesar can have his coins, but God created all things and Caesar can’t do that. If everything belongs to God then let Caesar have his little coin – it belongs to God anyway. Caesar Zacchaeus exemplifies the authentic response to the coming of God’s Kingdom by giving half of his goods to the poor.
In Luke 4 Jesus states that he has come to proclaim the year of the Lord which is reference back to the OT concept of the Jubilee. Jesus is saying that God’s Kingdom is a different kind of kingdom. Jesus is announcing Jubilee has come. One in which Jubilee is celebrated where the rich are poor and the poor are rich. This is the example that the church is to model. Jesus is stating that giving is to be more contagious then hoarding. Our concept of tithing is probably much to narrow when considering these stories. Sharing is to be a sign of the saved. If you claim Christ and seek to follow after him then you have been called to practice sharing. One of the expressions of the early church in found in Acts 2:45 is that the church sold their possessions and gave to those who had need. They were living out what Jesus had demonstrated. They were enacting the day of Jubilee. They were practicing God’s economics. They were sharing. Giving. This is not health and wealth, Joel Osteen stuff. God is not an ATM machine. Nor is wealth or poverty a sign of God’s blessing. God’s economy is one of abundance because the community shares.
That is the miracle of the story of the fish and loaves. When the disciples point out that the people are hungry, he tells them to feed them. When they complain about the price, still thinking with the mindset of the market economy – Jesus tells them to take what they have a little kid’s lunch of fish and loaves and there a miracle is done. So what is God’s economic plan? Well here are a few hints in that direction:
1. The Bible never views material poverty as good. God wills his people, the church, to distribute their wealth more equitably. Jesus’ vision of the kingdom of God contains a focus of alms giving or sharing. God has repeatedly stated in the OT and NT that he has a heart for the poor. Again and again from the OT to the NT there is an emphasis on being generous towards the poor.
2. Material possessions are a good gift from God meant for his people to enjoy. When God created the world he called it good. In the OT we see God allow for all people to have access to property as well as bless the nation with material possession for obedience. In the NT we see that wealthy Christians hosted churches, funded missionary trips and ministries. Christian leaders such as Barnabas did not consider their possessions “theirs”. They were willing to generously share. It is not too far fetched to think that Jesus and his disciples benefited from donations given by those with means. The community of the early church shares its material resources to so that there is “no needy person among them” Acts 4:34.
3. Material possessions are a means of turning human hearts away from God. Adam and Eve coveted the attractive but forbidden fruit of the garden. Possession of, or desire for, too many material goods leads to a rejection of God as well as an exploitation and neglect of the poor. In James 3-5 we read of Christians who have hoarded up material goods yet they are holding back certain wages for their workers. They have, according to James, condemned the innocent poor to death by taking away their livelihood. By not paying a fair wage James suggests that the wealth have consigned the poor to a kind of slavery, debtors prison or in some extreme cases left them for dead. They do this all the while they are living self-indulgent and luxuries lives on the backs of the workers. They are living out a kind of atheism that leaves no room for God’s will to be done.
4. Sharing, giving, stewardship is a necessary sign of a believer in the process of transformation. A Christ followers life should be dedicated to God but a telling area of one’s commitment involves one’s finances. Throughout the NT the example of sharing one’s possessions is to be done without the expectation of getting anything back in return. In the Christian community sharing is not just a teaching it is expected.
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