The Life-Giving Presence of a Debt-Canceling God

WEALTH ADVISERS TEACH us why and where to stockpile our assets and how to diminish our liabilities. “Save! Save! Save! Put away for rainy days. Establish your kid’s college nest egg now! Buy low and sell high! Get real estate to get more bang for your buck! Don’t touch your 401(k) or you’ll risk having nothing for retirement!” And of course, they earnestly urge, “Set aside enough for taxes or be bitten by Uncle Sam in the end!” Any good wealth adviser aims to cure their clients of unsound “robbing Peter to pay Paul” financial practices. Managing portfolios calls for vigilance because markets can be highly volatile and thus vulnerable to external forces beyond one’s control. For this reason, sound investment strategy requires advanced planning, goal-setting, and staying focused. This month’s gospel readings address the importance of honoring one’s faith journey by carefully calculating costs and practicing disciplined stewardship.

These themes color the pages of Luke’s gospel but also inform Paul’s eldering counsel to his young devotee, Timothy. Paul writes: “There is great gain in godliness combined with contentment” (1 Timothy 6:6), for true satisfaction is discovered at the site of contentedness, not on “the uncertainty of riches” (verse 17).

Our spiritual ledgers get out of whack when wealth accrual is decoupled from gratitude and when we forsake practical wisdom. Dialing back the spiritual appetite for hoarding temporal goods is not only good stewardship but crucial for securing tomorrow’s sacred dividends. Having an appropriate perspective on wealth is the initial deposit for moving into the life-giving presence of a debt-canceling God.

September 1

Forsaking Fidelity

Biblical storylines of God’s dealings with Israel vary little in terms of plot. The master narrative of unrequited love loops over and again in the prophetic literature. Taglines proceed in this order: “As they pursued worthless things, they forgot their first love and were forced to submit to the exacting demands of their foreign foes. Yet again, a faithful God is love-spurned by a prized people who contented themselves with serving lesser gods of their own making.” Sacred love tales of this sort get nauseating, at least I think so. One would think that a people with whom God is madly in love could get it together, right? But, because of our acts of spiritual infidelity, we humans exchange secured glory for things that do not profit us, forsaking living water in exchange for leaky cisterns that cannot hold water (Jeremiah 2:11, 13). A better conclusion to a sacred love story is praying open-heartedly: “Let not, O God, my serial disregard of the provisions you supply bring insult to your love—a love so undeserved.”

Spiritual infidelity causes believers to leave the finest wheat in the field and forsake the satisfaction of tasting sweet honey from the rock (Psalm 81:16—the source of justice-activist Bernice Johnson Reagon’s Grammy-winning acapella vocal ensemble’s name). Fidelity in faith is remembering that angels often masquerade as strangers and that following Jesus binds us to the locked up and politically locked out ones (Hebrews 13:2-3) legally subjected to, as Michelle Alexander writes, “employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote ... exclusion from jury-service” in America’s unforgiving debtors’ prisons.

September 8

Spoiled and Reworked

Except for a session of good rugged outdoor play, nothing brings Ava, my 9-year-old, greater joy after a stressful school day than flattening and twisting playdough or pulling apart “kid slime,” which she creates from Elmer’s glue, glitter, and borax. Correct apportionment of these ingredients is critical for prolonging shelf life and getting things rightly textured. Though inevitable messes come with the task, Ava takes full responsibility for what she creates and is unwilling to abandon the process until the slime’s consistency suits her purposes.

Reach back to the wisdom Jeremiah shares and gain similar perspective about humanity’s need for God-initiated mercy and reformation. Join Jeremiah at the potter’s wheel, where communal repentance stays the potter’s hands, though destroying the clay was on the agenda. Gospel singer Tramaine Hawkins lyricized this so well: “In case you have fallen by the wayside of life / dreams and visions shattered, you’re all broken inside / you don’t have to stay in the shape that you’re in / the potter wants to put you back together again / Oh, the potter wants to put you back together again.”

Making frequent trips to the potter’s house and seeing the potter at work meticulously twisting and flattening, restoring and refashioning life marred by sin would do us some good. Correspondingly, the psalmist remixes this sentiment of holy intimacy and sets it to song, “O Lord, you have searched me and known me. ... For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:1, 13-14a).

September 15

Lost and Recovered

In chapter 15 of Luke’s gospel, Jesus shares three parables. Each depicts something different about the reign of God. Three sets of circumstances, three distinctive responses, each symbolic of the human condition and how God responds to it. Each describes humanity’s great debt and each collapses into an allusion to Christ’s great payment. If these parables reveal nothing else, they at the very least show us that one does not get to joy without sacrifice. Salvation is for personal and social transformation. We humans repeatedly need deliverance from sin because it impairs our ability to fulfill our God-given covenantal obligations.

Despite the multiple meanings of the concept of salvation, according to theologian Frederick L. Ware, Christians commonly hold to three notions about salvation. While quarrelling happens over “how,” the first commonly held affirmation is that Christ saves. A second affirmation is that divine action cannot be substituted or superseded by human action, which is to say that no matter how complemented by human endeavor, salvation does not happen without God’s activity or without God acting first. And third, salvation always implies that some transformation takes place, whether this means improvement of one’s life station, freedom from spiritual malady, rejoining the fold, or being found, like the unnamed woman’s silver drachma recovered after being negligently handled. Salvation merits celebration. “Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:10).

September 22

The Poverty of Wealth

Psychologist Mardy Grothe coined the term oxymoronica, which he defines as tantalizing, self-contradictory statements or observations that on the surface appear false or illogical, but at a deeper level are true, profoundly true. For instance, Jean-Paul Sartre’s statement “Life begins on the other side of despair” or the Confucian aphorism “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s own ignorance” are each emblematic of the term.

As Luke 16 puts it, self-preservation directs the hired hand to bargain to make a cheater’s system more honest. Can we blame the alleged dishonorable manager, under indictment for squandering his master’s wealth, in an exploitative system? Has he not run out of options? Desperate times call for quick thinking and a dose of shrewdness. One-time debt forgiveness in a corrupt payday loan system, for example, constitutes a temporary fix. When systems are rigged, many people will soon find themselves indebted again if selfsame social policies persist; they will repeatedly find themselves at the mercy of the manager who will not relent. Clearing poor people’s ledgers without providing job training, wealth-building options, and educational opportunity ensures more poverty. Freedom until the next failed crop or the next needed subsidy is no security. If one must act shrewdly to beat a system that devalues honest brokering, then the system cannot be trusted to be just in the end. The best security for the “children of light” (verse 8), Jesus oxymoronically suggests in Luke, is to make friends by means of dishonest wealth in order to find welcome into “the eternal homes” (verse 9).

September 29

Storing Up Contentment

Englishman Lord Acton’s dictum “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” parallels in sentiment Paul’s wise counsel to his protege Timothy. “Beware Timothy,” Paul fervently advises, “loving money is a snare and becomes the source of all manner of evil” (see 1 Timothy 6:10). Differently put, greedy power has no end. To Acton’s credit, his knack for naming reality in the context of empire is remarkable for one whose pedigree came from a colonizing race of people. Acton writes: “There is not a more perilous or immoral habit of mind than the sanctifying of success.”

The rich man dressed in purple garb who dined sumptuously every day, signifying his immense wealth and extravagant taste, condemns himself to perpetual torment in the afterlife because he put purse before principle. Conversely, Lazarus, the poor man who had suffered greatly in his earthly life, finds consolation, contentment, and surcease after dying. In death the rich man is judged harshly not because he had acquired immense wealth. Rather, he deservingly, as the parable illustrates, is banished to Hades—the place of eternal torment—because he lacked compassion, trivialized the plight of the suffering poor, and ignored mercy extended to him while living (Luke 16:19-25). Adding “godliness” (eusebeia) or “religion” combined with “contentment” (1 Timothy 6:6-7) to one’s spiritual portfolio is a reminder for us to see that we brought nothing into this world and can take nothing to the grave with us.