Acts 2: 41-47
Those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
There once lived a people who were struggling to stand on their own feet. They were oppressed and deeply indebted to another country. From among these people came a revolutionary. He declared that the oppressive country was worse than a brute that devoured its young. It was an abominable monster. It ruled over them for its own greedy purposes. It cared not the least what happened to its people. It dragged them into wars. It set them at odds with countries they would have rather befriended. It ruined their ability to trade. Yet, the revolutionary contended that “sooner or later” this monster’s rule would come to an end. By now, some of you might have guessed that the revolution from which this revolutionary came was the American Revolution. The revolutionary was Thomas Paine, and the people deeply indebted were the colonists. It is important to note, as scholar Robert Manning has pointed out, that many of us have probably forgotten that “part of the American Revolution was to break enslavement from financial debt” to European banks.
The debt owed by colonists to European banks was no doubt different than the debt owed by third world countries to the United States and international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. While the colonists faced adverse circumstances, their debt was real debt, whereas the so-called “debt” of many third world countries arguably shouldn’t be called “debt” at all. In order to understand this, let’s take a step back for a second…
Imagine, if you will, an abusive, deadbeat husband. He never works. He sleeps during the day and parties at night. His wife earns all the money, which he promptly 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 a similar way, we can think of the situation of a third world country like Haiti. At its birth, Haiti was the proud accomplishment of the first people to free themselves from slavery and become a nation. It is now enslaved in a new way. As the poorest country in our hemisphere, it is now enslaved to an enormous debt, but the poor people of Haiti didn’t accumulate this debt themselves. For years, they had abusive, deadbeat dictators like Baby Doc Duvalier. During just the final six years of his rule alone, according to one audit, Duvalier diverted at least $500 million of government money to himself. Over half of the country’s debt can be attributed to Duvalier and his father who was also a dictator. But it’s not the Duvaliers who get stuck paying the bill when the creditors come knocking. It’s the poor people of Haiti who get stuck with it.
While the Duvaliers spent “money on fur coats, fast cars and death squads,” Haiti now “is forced to send almost $1 million each week in debt service to wealthy banks.” Instead of having a government that can use its resources to fight poverty and provide food, healthcare, and education to its citizens, many of the poor people of Haiti are forced into a situation in which they must go without elementary school education, basic healthcare, and clean drinking water. Articles in the news tell us of “Haitians Eating Cookies Made of Salt, Butter, and Dirt.” Poverty has forced people to resort to eating dirt.
I recently read an essay about the Italian Noble laureate Dario Fo that has left me puzzled with what to say next. Fo is an ingenious comic playwright who holds the view that a play should not lead one to a state of catharsis whereby one’s emotions are aroused and then cleansed from one’s system. Fo doesn’t want to free people from righteous indignation and anger. He wants these feelings to stay with them after they have left the theatre, so that they will then join the ranks of the struggle and begin to act. He seeks “to provoke debate, to arouse feelings, to challenge received ideas and invite people to consider new points of view” in a way that agitates people to action. While I lack the dramatic skill of Dario Fo, I am tempted to take a page from his book and just end my sermon by asking you to imagine what it would be like if you and your family had to eat dirt cookies every night for dinner. Does that make you angry? Indignant? Good, I’ll sit down now.
Just joking…as you know preachers like to end on a good note, because we Christians are supposed to be a people of faith and hope. We are supposed to be not only a Good Friday people but also an Easter people. However, let’s hold those thoughts for a second just in case some of you are still wondering whether or not indignation and anger are good and proper in the first place. You might say, “Wait a minute. The Bible isn’t about those things. Well, there is that God of wrath here and there, but Jesus wasn’t about that.” Yet, is that really the case? When the disciples tried to prevent people from bringing their children to Jesus, Mark tells us that Jesus got “indignant.” And then, more relevant to Jubilee Sunday, we know that the only time the gospels tell us about Jesus becoming almost violently angry is when he entered the temple and overthrew the tables of the money changers. As one commentator points out, these moneychangers should be seen “as street level representatives of banking interests of considerable power.”
Peter certainly expressed indignation and anger when he preached at Pentecost. He accused his audience of killing Jesus. He wasn’t being anti-Semitic, because as Acts demonstrates, the apostles were still spending time in the Temple and were very much Jewish themselves. Peter rather was angry at the complicity of those who did nothing, and he himself could certainly be included in that indictment. After all, he was the one who denied Jesus three times.
But the early Christian movement did not dwell in anger and self-recrimination. Peter coupled his accusation with a message of repentance and forgiveness. Once this had happened, the believers were then prepared to live in community, and that’s where a whole new range of emotions entered into the picture. In their new community, they experienced a sense of awe at the wonders and signs being done in their midst. Those signs and wonders included people holding
“all things in common” and selling “their possessions and goods” in order to “distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”
Imagine what it must have been like to be at this exciting juncture in history. A new movement is forming. You’re a part of something bigger than yourself. You have been exposed to these new and transforming ideas about the world. You have been provoked to action. Not only that, you are seeing the practical results. People are living out their faith. They are sharing with one another. For the first time, you see the needs of the poor being met. When you look around, you see that you are part of a community that is doing the very same things Jesus did. You are a part of community doing wonders and signs. You are part of a community that is the living body of Christ.
For the early Jewish followers of Christ, what they saw must have been like a vision of Jubilee. It wasn’t a Jubilee that came only once every fifty years. It was an ongoing Jubilee way of life. Freedom from debt, freedom from poverty, equality among all. These were to be a way of life in the new community. They weren’t just ideals. They weren’t just impractical, pie-in-the-sky dreams. Living the Jubilee was something that they could put into practice in their own community. Let’s also not forget that at one point Jubilee was essentially a public policy. Leviticus tells us that for the Israelites living a holy life meant more than just following certain rules in their homes or in their worship. Living a holy life was something that encompassed even the most fundamental aspects of their economic life together.
Our church now has the exciting opportunity to be part of a new Jubilee movement, to make Jubilee an actualized part of our faith. We already know debt reduction works. From the limited debt reduction that has taken place, we have seen Uganda double its school enrollment. We have seen Mozambique vaccinate a half-million children. We have seen Burundi eliminate school fees. We have seen Zambia hire 4,500 new teachers and abolish healthcare fees in rural areas. These are the signs and wonders of today. Now is the time to become a part of this inspiring movement. Now is the time to sound the Jubilee trumpet. Now is the time to join a movement that is potentially on the cusp of a great victory with the Jubilee Act being voted on this Tuesday in the House of Representatives. This act would potentially expand debt relief to 24 countries, but let’s not confine ourselves to just this issue. There are a whole range of exciting initiatives for which the trumpet of Jubilee can be blown. There’s the struggle for a living wage. There’s the struggle against debt in our own country with our high levels of credit card and mortgage debt. Then, there’s also the broader struggle for an economy that is more participatory and less top down, more sustaining and less destructive. For all of these causes and struggles, we can blow the trumpet of Jubilee. Anger and indignation will be there at times, but we don’t need to dwell in them. We can pick up our trumpet. We can sound the clarion call. We can become part of an awe-inspiring movement, and we can live out God’s call for justice. Amen.