To listen to this sermon, click here. (Unfortunately, there were technical difficulties last Sunday, so one must increase the volume in order to hear the sermon.)
Hebrew Scripture Reading-2 Samuel 11:26-12:9
In the 1970s and 80s, Creole pigs were a treasured possession among the peasants of Haiti. Through the local genius of peasants over the years, Creole pigs had been bred to survive and flourish upon their tropical island. The pigs could endure the heat, the disease, and the rugged conditions. They could live off of waste products and go for three days without food. For a peasant family, a pig was a true asset. Having a pig was like having money in the bank. If there was an emergency, a wedding, a school fee, or just about anything else, a family could sell their pig and have the money they needed. At the same time, pigs helped with the family gardening. They provided the fertilizer. In our community garden, we call those amendments. Given the benefits of having pigs, it is not surprising that in the rural areas of Haiti 80 to 85% of the population had pigs. For many people, Creole pigs were the little ewe lamb. They were the prize possession of those who had little else.
Then, in 1978, the rich man living to the North of Haiti had a problem. Agricultural experts from the United States feared an outbreak of swine fever in the Dominican Republic next door to Haiti. They were afraid it would harm the pig industry in the United States. To prevent this, the plan was to kill every pig in Haiti-1.3 million of them. The peasants were suspicious. They suspected that the Americans just wanted to “make money selling their pigs.” Notably, by 1982, the swine fever appeared to be gone altogether. Nevertheless, the plan was still carried out. The rich man had his way. Within 13 months, all of the pigs in Haiti were killed. This amazing feat led the Catholic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide to declare that the slaughter had “an efficiency not since seen among development projects” in Haiti. One peasant described the killing as “the very last thing left in the possible punishments that have afflicted us.”
After two years, the US sent supposedly new and improved pigs from Iowa that had been promised as replacements. To get these pigs, however, one had to demonstrate that one had the capital required to feed and house them. As it turned out, the pigs from Iowa were bred differently. They needed clean drinking water which only 20% of the population had. They also needed pig food imported from the United States that cost $90 a year in a country where the per capita income was $130 a year. Moreover, these special pigs required roofs over their heads unlike the Creole pigs. Peasants nicknamed the pigs from Iowa “four-footed princes.” In the end, these princes had trouble handling life outside the palace. They frequently died of disease. To make matters worse, they did not taste very good. Ultimately, the results of this project for the peasants of Haiti were devastating. As the rich man profited, the poor man suffered. The peasants collectively lost $600 million in livestock. The number of kids registered for schools dropped 40 to 50 percent. Merchandise sales “plummeted.” One economist declared it was “the worst calamity to ever befall the peasant.”[i]
Looking back on this, one might wonder, “Where was Nathan? Where was the prophet confronting the king in his North American palace? Where was the voice of conscience focusing our attention on the poor man and his little ewe lamb?” Some of you maybe have detected a theme in my recent sermons. On Easter, I was looking for Jesus. A month ago I was looking for Moses. And, now, this morning it’s Nathan. My basic philosophy is that we are all the richer when we find the sacred stories and protagonists of our faith in our own lives. As we look for Nathan this morning, I thought it might help if we first had a profile of him, so we know exactly who it is we are trying to spot. Our scripture for today gives us an interesting picture of him. He was different than other prophets like Elijah and Amos who were harsh and adversarial in confronting rulers. Even when David has Uriah killed and then takes his wife, Nathan still doesn’t come right out and condemn David in a white-hot rage. Instead, he uses a softer, more clever approach. He tricks David into condemning himself. He tells David the story of a rich man who kills a poor man’s pet animal, so he doesn’t have to kill any of his own. David is outraged by this, and that’s when Nathan drops the bomb and lets David know that he himself is the rich man. Nathan, in effect, becomes not so much the outer voice of judgment for David, but rather the inner voice of conscience. He is that voice urging us to get back on track.
As I was thinking about how this profile of Nathan might help us, I thought about how neuroscientists have recently been making all these breakthroughs in locating the places within the brain that are responsible for different aspects of our moral thinking. For example, a couple of months ago a group of scientists from MIT announced that the area of the brain located just “above and behind the right ear, is critical for making moral judgments.” They discovered this by using magnetic fields to create “weak electric currents” that temporarily kept brain cells in this area from firing normally. The subjects who were exposed to these fields had their moral thinking ability impaired when they were asked certain questions. One was about “how permissible it is for a man to let his girlfriend walk across a bridge he knows to be unsafe.” [ii] I am not making this up. I know it sounds like something from a science fiction TV show.
At any rate, this article gave me an idea about what was probably happening in David’s brain. When he saw Bathsheba naked while taking her bath, he probably had a number of different responses, but one of them I think was in that part of his brain that sends the self-interest message. That part of the brain all of the sudden started to work overtime when he saw Bathsheba naked. Soon the self-interest transmitters in his brain were overriding all of the moral responsibility transmitters. I am not excusing what David did. His moral responsibility transmitters should have been stronger. And, this is where Nathan comes in. Nathan’s parable diverts David’s brain from its self-interest. What’s interesting is that the story that does this is a story that would have evoked David’s younger days as a poor shepherd watching after sheep and little, vulnerable lambs. In listening to the story, David might well have remembered those days when he courageously protected the weak and the innocent from their predators. In listening to Nathan, David is suddenly no longer thinking like a self-interested king. He is thinking like a shepherd who watches after his flock. Nathan is the catalyst that gets David’s moral thinking back on track. To spot Nathan, we must find just this sort of catalyst.
Now, where might we look? Let’s look in an unlikely place. Let’s look at Haiti in more recent times. A little over two years ago I preached a sermon on the tremendous amount of debt Haiti had accumulated. At the time, I gave the analogy of an abusive, deadbeat husband to explain this. I talked about a husband who never works. He sleeps during the day and parties at night. His wife earns all the money, which he quickly spends. To make matters worse, the two of them have a joint credit card that he uses to wrack up a tremendous amount of debt. When the creditors finally come knocking at their door, he decides it is time to skip town. In technical, legal terms, the wife is indebted to the credit card company, but it seems rather unfair to say she has amassed all of this debt when she really had nothing to do with it.
In the case of Haiti, the deadbeat husband was a dictator named Baby Doc Duvalier. He diverted at least $500 million of government money to himself before he skipped town and fled Haiti. Nevertheless, Haiti was still held responsible for the debt, and its poor citizens suffered while the rich man prospered. In 2008 when I preached about this, we could have asked the question, “Where’s Nathan? Where is he? King David is getting away with murder and taking his neighbor’s wife, but no one is there to stop him.” Then, the earthquake in Haiti struck, and it looked like King David was going to get away with it again. Some of you might remember that the IMF initially responded by saying they would “help” Haiti by adding a new $100 million loan to their pre-existing loan of $165 million. In other words, the IMF’s idea of helping Haiti was to push them further into debt. It was really starting to look like David hadn’t changed at all. That self-interest part of the brain was still dominating. The TV images of those suffering in Haiti didn’t affect him, but then Nathan came along in the form of Jubilee USA and other justice advocates, and I am not sure what kind of parable they used or what kind of magnetic device they set up outside the IMF building, but soon the IMF found its moral conscience. They turned that $100 million loan into a $100 million grant.[iii] Moreover, they began working to cancel all of Haiti’s pre-existing debt.
The result today is that Haiti’s debt has been wiped away, not just with regard to the IMF but with regard to all their creditors. In total, more than a billion dollars of debt has been cancelled. And, if that isn’t enough good news, we have also witnessed 26 countries in Africa and Latin America having most of their debt cancelled. I think this is worth celebrating. Can we have a round of applause for Nathan? Yeah, Nat-baby. We can feel good about this because we were part of this success.
It’s good to celebrate our successes and the successes of the broader movements of which we are a part, but let’s not forget we need to keep on being Nathans if we want to keep on partying. The work of the Jubilee movement isn’t over yet. There is still the push to cancel the debt of 22 more countries. There is still the campaign against Vulture Funds. For those of you who have not heard about Vulture Funds, they are companies that target poor indebted countries by buying up their debt at a cheap price and then seeking to recover up to ten times that amount by suing the country. Often the Vulture Funds prey on precisely those countries that have had their debt cancelled. Typically, the countries being sued lose in court because they don’t have the resources to fight.[iv]
So, we still need Nathans. We still need Nathans to focus our attention on the poor man with his little ewe lamb. We still need Nathans to be that voice of moral conscience. We still need Nathans to call forth our better selves. We need them to divert us from our self-interest and bring us back to that part inside each of us who cares for others. Are you ready and willing to be Nathans? Let’s make a strong commitment to Jubilee USA in the year ahead. In the fall, we are going to look at what Jubilee is promoting with the Millennium Development Goals, in particular those that would benefit children throughout the world. So let’s stick with it, let’s keep those moral brain cells firing, and hopefully we’ll soon have reason to celebrate and party once again. Amen.
[i] All of the quotes and information about the slaughter of the Creole pigs in Haiti comes from two sources: Noam Chomsky, Year 501: The Conquest Continues, (Boston: South End Press, 1993), 222; Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization, (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2000), excerpted by Green Left at <www.greenleft.org.au/node/21953>.
[ii] Anne Trafton, “Moral Judgments Can Be Altered…by Magnets,” MIT News, <http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/moral-control-0330.html>.
[iii] Naomi Klein and Richard Kim, “Haiti: Small Victory for Shock Resistance,” The Huffington Post, (January 20, 2010), <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-klein/haiti-small-victory-for-s_b_430614.html>.
[iv] Jubilee USA Network, “Stop the Vulture Culture,” <www.jubileeusa.org/vulturefunds.html>.
