Homeowners' Shame

Since the foreclosure crisis began to be named in 2009, I have been noticing a pattern among homeowners facing hardships.  They are ashamed, so they keep their problems to themselves.

This speaks to certain moral convictions that form the bedrock of what many would believe makes a good U.S. American.  Because in the U.S., the concept of what it means to be a Christian is largely derivative from, or a corollary to, what it means to be a good U.S. American, these moral convictions find their way into the character and lives of good, church-going people.

Self-reliance is one of the moral convictions of which I am speaking.  Christians are likely to cite Paul's remarks to the Thessalonians in support of a belief in self-reliance:  those who will not work, shall not eat.  Again in Galatians, just after telling the church folk to bear one another's burdens, Paul turns around to say that each one should carry her own load.  Thus it is not outside of Christian faith to believe in the goodness of carrying one's own weight. 

Yet for faithful biblical and theological teaching, self-reliance is always tempered by being set in the context of community mutual responsibility.  Isolated from the communal context, self-reliance can become arrogance and blind optimism in times of good fortune, or it can transform into self-hatred in times of bad fortune.  "Fortune" is a key concept here, but one that self-reliance likes to ignore. 

Contrary to the self-deceptive claims of the Romantic/Progressive era, which led poets to wax eloquently about being "the master of my own fate," human beings are not individually in control of their own destinies.  First of all, human society is a complex, dynamic system in which many people are engaged in non-coordinated activities and agendas.  What I do may effect you, and vice versa.  Second, many powerful forces can affect the lives of particular people, completely without their own knowledge and participation.  The housing bubble, the house of cards called credit default swaps, and the entangled labyrinth of mortgage-backed securities were mostly invisible to average people.  Yet when these huge economic systems began to implode, they took away jobs, home values, credit availability, health insurance, and hope for many people.

Under new circumstances, people formed by self-reliance and the assumption that it mechanically leads to success, found themselves in a pit of shame.  They should have known, they thought, not to buy that much house, get that big a mortgage, borrow against their equity, etc.  Certainly there was a time, in another generation, when many people would have been more cautious.  Yet fed by a steady diet of "the rules of the old economy no longer apply" and "low downpayments are the new norm" and "housing values never go down," plenty of people were pointed, urged, or lulled into believing that extending more credit and taking out more debt would be an excellent plan, even a good example of self-reliance.

Closely related to self-reliance is the moral conviction of individualism.  This more encompassing concept asserts that knowledge, value, and action originate in the individual person.  Thus, individualists make up their own minds for themselves, adopt their own values, and do what they decide to do.  The myth that individualism perpetuates is that "doing it my way" is both a good idea and an actual practical activity.  The outcome is that people who do not have all the information that they need, have not experienced the pitfalls of certain activities, and may not be reasoning with full clarity, become convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt and "know that they know that they know that they know" what they should do.

Individualism linked with positivity can be a dangerous combination.  Many people think that if they do not think bad thoughts, entertain bad consequences as real possibilities, or say out loud what might go wrong, then everything will be fine.  This ignores that one person's thoughts and words operate without any relation to the risky, careless, and unjust actions of others who may be controlling millions and billions of dollars of economic power.

Individualists, counting on self-reliance, operating with positivity, expect that their efforts will lead to satisfying results.  They don't deny risks, but they have done what they should have done and things should go well.  If things don't go well, the self-reliant individual has trouble avoiding the conclusion, "I have no one to blame but myself."

Thus, shame has a powerful role in an economic crisis.  It protects the wealthy securities traders from a mass uprising against them because the average people blame themselves for their economic problems.  Many keep the problems to themselves, ashamed to admit that something has gone wrong. 

People who lose their jobs, have their homes foreclosed, and fall into medical debt may stop going to church, or even leave their churches, ashamed to admit that they are not prospering.  They theologize the problem to believe that they have sinned or failed God, interrupting the input-output machine of being a good person in order to get blessings from God.  They must be bad, for the blessings have stopped.

This shame makes it hard to organize people harmed by the economic downturn.  Some simply give up.  Others keep trying the same thing over and over, sure that if they just try harder the system will work.  Only a few get so fed up with the way that powerful economic institutions abuse and oppress them that they start to fight back.

What got me to write about this was a personal experience.  I am not facing foreclosure.  For now, my wife and I both are holding our jobs.  We are not in economic distress, as compared to many people.  We are, however, making lots of big financial decisions because we are relocating from North Carolina to Texas, while I still work in North Carolina.  After a year and a half of transition, we are finally preparing to sell our house.

Credit is tight, so even with a respectable credit rating, borrowing may not be easy.  Optimistically thinking that the process of getting a construction loan would not be hard, I was awakened repeatedly to realize there are many hoops to jump through and obstacles to overcome.  I can take that--life is not easy.

What caught me by surprise was a powerful emotional hit that came when a lender suggested that there were undisclosed details that would hinder the loan process.  Along with dread, there was a deep feeling of failure and inadequacy that welled up.  The dread was that feeling of wondering if there would be anything I would be able to do to solve the problem.  My self-reliance had not worked.  I was ashamed.

Now frankly, it was a very minor setback.  We continue to make progress on remodeling and getting credit to put our house in order.  It is not all worked out, but I'm not in the kind of mess many people are in.  But the reason to write about it is that I had a temporary and partial glimpse of what is multiplied millions of times over in this country with people who have lost jobs, lost homes, face foreclosure, face medical costs they can't pay, and feel ashamed.

If there is any truth in the Christian faith, then the teachings of the Bible should make it clear that the winners and losers of economic life do not equate to the ones God loves and hates.  Economics is rough in its sorting process.  Leverage, muscle, cheating, and injustice have inordinate power over people's destinies.  That is why the Sabbath Year and Jubilee systems were put into place in the biblical economic teachings. 

No economic system can claim to be just if it allows and promotes permanent indebtedness, homelessness, poverty, and joblessness.  There has to be a reset system to get people back into the economic game.

Moreover, our wealth is not our own.  It is for all of God's children.  Churches must find a way to leave behind their accommodation to modern economics and recommit themselves to be communities in which "there is no one in need among you."  We don't have to be ashamed to love one another enough to share our lives with one another.  That is the way of Jesus, who said, "Follow me."

From the Jubilee File--Hon. Rt. Rev. Dr. Willie James Jennings

I have a file buried several layers down in my Documents file on the laptop.  I have visited it often in the past two years to save or retrieve documents relating to community organizing work on the economy.  I named it when I was working on a theological reflection on the economic crisis with a group of colleagues.  Since so much of the biblical discussion of usury kept taking us back to the Jubilee practices of the Israelite society.  So I called the file "Jubilee."  A big part of my life and creative work for the past two years gets documented in the Jubilee file.

It's been a Jubilee year, and in the past few days I have been reminded to count my Jubilee blessings.  Willie James Jennings, my younger brother, turned 50 last Friday.  I was in Texas, fittingly grading papers, on the birthday of my brother in the professoriate.  I lift an analytical reading report in your honor, my brother, to toast your Jubilee Day.

Willie has worked as hard as anyone has to be my friend.  I take it that some of my professorial instincts and habits--absorption in private study, narrowly focused thinking, lack of awareness of the passing of time, occasional absent-mindedness (to put it lightly), aversion to being told what to do and when, being enamored by my own words--make it a bit harder to be my friend.  I hope I have other qualities that compensate.  But Willie thought it worth his time to keep a friendship going.

Although we met as students, it was after marching for graduation in 1994 that we stoked the fires of friendship.  Willie and I shared Saturday morning coffee for many weeks while our daughters (my youngest and his oldest) hopped and skipped and leaped with joy in the little kiddie's dance class.  We talked through some hard times and some good times.  He put a black man's mirror up for me to look at my white man's life in a racialized world.  I knew that something bigger than I could handle was happening to me.  I had no idea that he was finding in me some hope for the church's deliverance from its demons of malformed desire and imagination. 

I did not know this because as a scholar-friend, Willie kept his cards close to his chest.  I understand this a little better now that I've seen him in action recently on a panel to discuss his book, The Christian Imagination.  Some people in the gathering raised questions which begged for a polemical response.  They either did not understand his arguments from the book, or they just wanted to see if they could get a rise out of him. 

But Willie did not take the bait in his Jubilee year.  He generously referred to the antagonistic comments as "matters of deep importance," or something to that effect.  I was ready to pounce, but Willie gave his winning smile.   It may be that he was simply being political, having learned such skills as a faculty dean for so many years.  But I think it was also a commitment to listen and remain in a friendly conversation with people who are sure that he has gone off on a fool's errand.

This Jubilee year I was blessed to read The Christian Imagination with a class of Shaw students taking Systematic Theology.  As with J. Kameron Carter's Race, in reading Willie's book with my students I continuously found ways that it could challenge my previous theology lectures and supplement the textbooks with which I have become so familiar.  The Christian Imagination opened doors for me and for my students that made theology more alive. 

So often when we take theology to be the gleaned gems of a long [tired] tradition, we find it hard to get a lever on how Christian faith, its leaders, its institutions, and its social productions could become so corrupted and contrary to the ways of the one from whom they take their name.  Books like Willie's give us hope that theology does not have to be merely the crusty oozings from the cracked plaster walls lining the edifice of Euro-American World Domination.  Can there be life within those walls of ageless stone?  Could the academy have a heart of beating flesh?  Or are we destined to have hearts of stone?

So it is that in this Jubilee year, Willie opened the floodgates which had held back a deep lake of theological reflection, fed by mountain streams and woodland springs, flowing through the dark places of middle passage, bottom lands of enforced toil, and the hopeful self-direction of a Second Great Migration.  Along the way, a few droplets from the deeps had come my way, but the halls of Duke and Shaw, only thirty miles apart, are worlds away from one another.  If there were open conversations in Durham, I was out of that loop. 

Moreover, the fast scholarly pace of read, reduce, destroy that makes up hyperacademia is not on the menu at Shaw.  I don't mean to be "hatin' on" Duke, but they really are caught up in the university-military-industrial complex, on a high-speed train toward producing the next world, and the next, and the one after that.  Surely, Willie wisely let only a few droplets out so that when the flood arrived, it would be a season of reckoning.  Folks on the train would have to stop and get off if they were going to have a word to say about it.  He gave us far more in this Jubilee year than we could chew quickly, unless we want to choke on it.

So the back and forth clicking to the Jubilee folder was more than I realized.  In his year of Jubilee, my friend ripped open a place in my heart through which the Holy Spirit may shine to make me a better man than I was, burn away the malformations of desire, and kindle an imagination of another way of being Christian, of being a community that longs to know one another as God's bountiful creation and election.

Happy Jubilee, Willie.  Love that house full of women with all that you have in you.  And save a minute for me so we can plot the revolution.

Haiti's Debt

The ONE Campaign delivered again on what they are very good at.

They mobilized the masses influence world leaders concerning a critical issue affecting the poorest people on the globe. Many of us join them in the prayer and hope that wealthy nations and institutions will contribute to Haiti's recovery by forgiving debts.

Keep up the good work.

Economic Recovery for All 6: Faith Perspectives, Pt 3

THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION ON THE ECONOMY
A Working Paper for North Carolina United Power
from an Interchange Among Theological Educators
July 2009

III. Faith Perspectives on Responding to the Crisis

B. Biblical, Theological, and Ethical Principles Guiding NCUP Actions and Campaigns in Response to the Economic Crisis

3. No permanent debtor class; no propertyless, hopeless poor

If there is to be a new beginning, a second chance, then the community must make a way to deal with debilitating debt and generational, propertyless poverty. The Lord's Prayer makes it plain that the Jubilee formula is the norm--we must forgive our debtors. In Jesus' parable of the unforgiving servant, the wealthy king says to the hypocritical man who had received mercy but refused to pass it on to his debtor, "I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?" (Matt. 18:33-34). Mercy demands that past misfortunes, mistakes, and failures ought not determine the entire future of any member of the community. Augustine of Hippo wrote, "From those things that God gave you, take that which you need, but the rest, which to you are superfluous, are necessary to others. The superfluous goods of the rich are necessary to the poor, and when you possess the superfluous you possess what is not yours" (quoted in Justo Gonzalez, Faith and Wealth, 216).

When economic prosperity shifts too far toward the benefit of a few, the ensuing shift in power allows the fortunate to maintain their advantage through a variety of means: low wages which prevent economic improvement of the wage-earners, high interest charged on loans, and systems of tenancy or share-cropping style arrangements. In such systems, the landlord claims first right to the products of the tenant's work. The landlord, or factory owner, can exploit the unequal power by "balancing the accounts" in such a way that prevent the tenant from making enough to get ahead. A just economic system would allow them to work and accrue sufficient income, so that they might eventually regain their land and livelihood rather than remain in perpetual peonage.

Families falling on hard times may have to sell their land to a wealthy neighbor and become tenants or share-laborers. Justice entails finding ways to make it possible for all who become impoverished to recover from an economic crisis. The words of the spiritual song say, "I'm so glad trouble don't last always." If God's compassion and justice can inspire this kind of hope among slaves, then God's people must learn to share in the divine mission of hope for the downtrodden. We ought to make this song's affirmation a reality. The community's responsibility includes sustaining the conditions for opportunity and flourishing for all of its people.

4. Limitation on interest charged—prohibition of usury

Biblical economics prohibit charging "points," or advance interest, and charging long-term interest to those who must borrow to eat, find shelter, and survive. Those practices perpetuate a permanent debtor class. Biblical teaching consistently condemns usury—the practice of charging exorbitant interest. When the poor are desperate, the power of the lender may coerce them to accept disadvantageous terms for a loan. Under such conditions, they may never be able to reduce the debt. A just system of lending recognizes the dangers to an economy when a permanent underclass is forced to pay their entire livelihood to a small class of wealthy lenders.

Usury, sometimes taken to mean any interest charged on a loan, is more usually understood as excessive or predatory interest. Many of the references to usury in the Jewish and Christian scriptures come in the context of how one treats the poor. Jean Calvin concluded that the Scriptures do not condemn all possible charging of interest, but that equity and justice require reasonable limits. He wrote in a letter to a friend, "[U]sury almost always travels with two inseparable companions: tyrannical cruelty and the art of deception. . . . [N]o one should take interest from the poor, and no one, destitute by virtue of indigence or some affliction or calamity, should be forced into it. The second exception is that whoever lends should not be so preoccupied with gain so as to neglect his necessary duties, nor, wishing to protect his money, disdain his poor brothers and sisters" (Calvin's Ecclesiastical Advice, 140-142).

Economic Recovery for All 5: Faith Perspectives, Pt. 2

THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION ON THE ECONOMY
A Working Paper for North Carolina United Power
from an Interchange Among Theological Educators
July 2009

III. Faith Perspectives on Responding to the Crisis

B. Biblical, Theological, and Ethical Principles Guiding NCUP Actions and Campaigns in Response to the Economic Crisis

1. Interdependence of creation and humanity's birthright to share in God's gifts

Gratitude toward God, communal interdependence, and mutual accountability are at the core of a biblical understanding of economics, grounded in the Jewish scriptures and reaffirmed in the Christian scriptures. In the parable of the "rich fool," a man reaches the apex of prosperity because of bumper crops on his farm. He congratulates himself as if it were all his own doing, only to lose enjoyment of his success when he dies in his sleep (Luke 12:13-21). Human beings share a mutual obligation for the well-being of all. Cyprian of Carthage taught, "Whatever is of God is common in our use; nor is any one excluded from God's benefits and God's gifts, so as to prevent the whole human race from enjoying equally the divine goodness and liberality." One "who, as a possessor in the earth, shares his returns and his fruits with the brothers and sisters, while he is common and just in his gratuitous bounties, is an imitator of God" ("On the Unity of the Church," Ante-Nicene Fathers 5:25).

Indeed, if we are to flourish or even survive, we must act in love. We must receive what we need from others and we must share what they need from us. If we don’t receive from others, we will die. If we do not share what we have, then they will be less likely to share what we need from them; we both will die. We must act in love or face destruction.

According to Howard Thurman, “Human beings, all human beings, belong to each other, and anyone who shuts themselves away diminishes themselves, and anyone who shuts another away from themselves destroys themselves” (The Search for Common Ground, 104). Because of the way God created the world, our own, truest self-interest is inextricably tied to that of others. So, pursuing God’s kingdom, or righteousness, is to participate in and contribute to the great exchange, by which we all survive and flourish. It is to honor others by receiving their goods and virtues and, then, sharing our own goods and virtues vital to others. “We are,” as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny” ("Letter from Birmingham Jail").

2. The unconditional protection of those vulnerable to loss of food, shelter, clothing, and other basic goods of life

The divine plan for humanity's flourishing requires that societies and communities manage their wealth toward this end: "There shall be no one in need among you" (Deut. 15:4). In the story of the fledgling church after the Spirit of God moved at Pentecost, the writer states the budding fulfillment of this teaching, "There was not a needy person among them" (Acts 4:34). The teachings of Christian theologians through the ages have reinforced this view of wealth. Martin Luther wrote of Deut. 15:4, “Now if God gave this commandment in the Old Testament, how much more ought we Christians be bound not only to allow no one to suffer want or to beg” (“A Treatise on Usury”).

The Year of Release, also called the Jubilee, offered a new beginning, a second chance, and a path to keep the entire economy flourishing for the long term. There must be no irreversible poverty, no unlimited acquisition of houses and lands, goods that should be distributed among all the community. Houses give shelter; fields provide food. Both are essential to making a livelihood.

The prophet Isaiah condemned those "who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land!" (Isa. 5:8). The prophet Micah denounced those who “. . . covet fields and seize them, houses, and take them away . . . who cry “Peace” when they have something to eat and declare war against those who put nothing in their mouths” (Micah 2:2; 3:5). Nehemiah chastised the wealthy landowners who had accumulated numerous houses and fields because of the misfortunes of their neighbors, and he publicly denounced them for their selfish greed. The very identity of the people depended on their returning houses and lands to all the families in the community (Neh. 5:1-17). In that case, Nehemiah and the people managed to reverse the growing gap between the rich and the poor.

Will people turn again toward the common good in our time? Will this society make a path for recovery to all classes of people who have suffered losses? Or will the economically powerful tighten their grip, leverage their advantages, and make recovery difficult or impossible for the unemployed, the foreclosed, and the uninsured? Basil of Caesarea preached, "If one who takes the clothing off another is called a thief, why give any other name to one who can clothe the naked and refuses to do so? The bread that you withhold belongs to the poor; the cape that you hide in your chest belongs to the naked; the shoes rotting in your house belong to those who must go unshod" (“Homily on Luke 12:18”).

Economic Recovery for All 4: Faith Perspectives, Pt 1

I want to acknowledge Andrew Mbuvi, Amanda Mbuvi, Dan Rhodes, and Eric Greaux, who brought their insight into editing meetings at various steps of producing this document.

THEOLOGICAL REFLECTION ON THE ECONOMY
A Working Paper for North Carolina United Power
from an Interchange Among Theological Educators
July 2009

III. Faith Perspectives on Responding to the Crisis

A. Introduction

Among the most cherished biblical texts in the Christian scriptures is Jesus' teaching to his disciples concerning prayer in Matthew 6. Verse 12 says, “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” The same Greek word in this passage has historically been translated by both the English words “debts” and “trespasses.” The first translation affirms an economic obligation; the second implies a broader, metaphorical one. While both are theologically significant, the first has been underemphasized.

The background of this economic obligation appears in Deuteronomy 24:10-13. A lender must not take away a borrower’s essential items for survival as a pledge for a loan. A loan must serve the good of the whole community, both borrower and lender. When a family member or neighbor is in dire economic straits, biblical economics deems it wrong for a relative or neighbor to make a profit on their misfortune. If someone needs assistance, the command of the Torah affirmed by Jesus is that our hands ought always to be open to help the poor (Deut. 7 and John 12). The Sabbath Year and Jubilee Year laws insist that there is a limit to what a lender can demand from those who have fallen on hard times. This kind of mutuality is what God blesses and it is to be the material and economic shape of our earthly lives if they are to reflect existence as it is in heaven.

However, far from taking reasonable steps to assure the safety and security of borrowers in need, many banks (and hence, many businessmen and women of faith) currently are forcing people out on the street, refusing to share the impact of the loss of real estate values. In contrast to this scenario, Biblical economic principles demand shared risks and as shared opportunities for lenders and borrowers as well as limitation on lending so as to prevent usury.

Bailout 16: Thoughts on Describing the Problem

As mentioned earlier, I am working on the problem of analyzing the current economic situation in light of biblical and theological concepts related to Jubilee, the Sabbatical year, the denunciation of usury, etc. Below are a few short paragraphs in which I have tried to describe the problems of the economy in order to begin this sort of analysis. Obviously, this is a work in progress.

1. Hard economic times place people and institutions in jeopardy. In 2009, there is plenty of pain to go around. People are losing their homes. Banks are closing. Businesses are failing. Workers are losing jobs. Families are uprooted.

2. Some call the economic woes a credit crisis. Some focus on the housing price bubble. Others emphasize the irresponsibility of financial institutions eager to sell “creative” investment products. Still others highlight the complexity of financial instruments divided, bundled, and resold again and again so that no one is sure who owns what. Many recognize that consumption had outpaced income, and too much of the economy depended on overextended debt. Others criticized the deregulation of financial institutions which allowed them to take inordinate risks with other people’s money.

3. A major part of the problem had to do with a collapse of home prices. Loans had been written with the assumption that housing values would rise steadily and without interruption. Some people borrowed more than they could afford, but others who could afford their mortgages found that they were making payments on a mortgage for an amount that was up to twice the new value of their home. They could not afford to keep paying double for a house that had originally been priced in an inflated market. In a weak economy, workers losing jobs also could no longer meet their mortgage payments.

4. All these mortgage problems led to a crisis of confidence in the mortgage-based securities and the financial institutions investing in them. As the seriousness of the mortgage problems became apparent, the more people became concerned about many other forms of debt, including credit card debt which has grown exponentially. A crash in the stock market followed up the crash in home prices, and many people who had thought they were in good financial shape now saw their pensions, their homes, and their investments lose value dramatically. People losing health insurance coverage were building mountains of debt for medical care.

5. When the economic situation became too severe to avoid, former Treasury Secretary Paulson and Federal Reserve Chair Bernanke recommended a massive bailout of major financial institutions. With only a bare sketch of a plan, the engines of government shifted into high gear to authorize transferring hundreds of billions of dollars directly to banks and other financial institutions to prop up their endangered portfolios of assets.

6. Their idea was to stabilized the financial system by providing cash to banks and other financial institutions who owned securities based on delinquent loans. They said that this would set things in order so that banks would be willing to lend money to grease the wheels of commerce. However, the banks and financial institutions took the money and held it. It did not slow down the pace of foreclosures of mortgages. It did not pump up the economy. Homeowners kept losing their homes with no relief. Credit card companies pressured small borrowers with tightened terms and higher interest rates.

7. What kind of a solution leaves giant banks standing while the average worker’s life gets harder and harder? That is not a solution. It smells like collusion. Whose money bailed out the banks? Who is an economy supposed to benefit? Who says billions can bail out executive jobs but nothing can bail out labor jobs? Who says tax dollars can pay off banks’ bad debts, but the average taxpaying citizens are on their own? Debt relief for millionaires and homelessness for working people—that’s not the kind of economy we believe in.

Good Friday Meditation

I was listening to the prayers and readings today at the Good Friday service, and I was reminded of the words of Jon Sobrino and others who speak of the poor being crucified every day. Jesus, a poor man who became a threat to the ruling powers, was executed on a Friday. Crucifixion is a method of execution. To crucify is to put someone on a cross in order to kill them. It was done to punish criminals and exterminate enemies of the regime. Maybe we would be clearer on what happened that day if we changed to the word execution.

The "Jews," by which the gospel writers mean the rulers and elders of the Jews, were aligned against him with the Romans who were always eager to keep conquered peoples in their place. (It is a misreading to take this text as an attack on all Jews. Jesus' defenders and his accusers were all Jews, and he himself was a Jew.) According to John 19, they had a back-and-forth exchange with Pilate about what to call Jesus. Pilate said he was their king. They answered, "We have no King but the Emperor." Both Pilate and the Jewish power elite--the Sanhedrin, the Chief Priests, the leaders of the Pharisees, the lackeys of the Idumean king--disavowed Jesus as King.

Yet the gospel goes on to say that Pilate had a sign made to post on the cross, which said "The King of the Jews." The Jewish leaders were angry about it, but Pilate would not change it. The sign prophesied what neither of them believed. Jesus was crowned King of the Jews, a covenant people. This covenant people, signified by the vine, was not welcoming all nations to be grafted into the vine of Israel. So if Jesus was not the king of the Roman and Jewish powers, then whose king was he?

Jesus was lifted up on that day as king of those who are poor and suffer. Those whose wealth and power he challenged had rejected him. He was lifted up as the one who resists the torture and oppression of the powers in the name of the ones who suffer. He was the second Adam who overcame the failings of humanity. He demonstrated God's love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, he died for us.

The atoning work of Jesus is sometimes portrayed as a metaphysical, otherworldly accomplishment. Jesus, it is said, came into the world to die. But a critical turn has been made in theological reflection in the last part of the twentieth century. A renewed conviction has emerged that Jesus came into the world to live. Above all, Jesus came into the world to save. Jesus' life was an atoning life. His death interrupted that life without defeating it. Even facing and enduring death, Jesus' life of doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly persevered.

Rather than an inevitability, Jesus' death was a contingent event in history. God's incarnation into the historical life of humanity did not somehow exist above or outside of history. Within real historical events, a real human being was caught up in the agendas of real people and real powers. The ruling parties of Jerusalem tortured and executed Jesus in a willful act of violence to terrorize his followers and to silence his voice. Jesus suffered execution in a willing act of submission and obedience to the law of love. He refused to join a violent system and perpetuate the chain of violent acts. He refused to renounce the Jubilee revolution he had proclaimed. Thus, he received the verdict of his hell-bent persecutors.

From the foundation of the world, God has willed that humanity's story be the extension of loving community in mutual submission one to another. Jesus, as the incarnation of the eternal Word, from the foundation of the world has willed this incarnation of loving servanthood, pouring himself out that creation may fulfill its destiny. This atoning work, his embodiment of the Reign of God in justice and love no less than his willing submission to execution and his victory over sin, death, and the grave on Easter, reaches to all of God's creatures, and especially to those who continue to be ground under the feet of oppressive power. For this reason, we call the remembrance of this terrible day Good. May the grace of Jesus' sacrifice bear you through to the celebration of his victory.

Bailout 14: Thinking About Jubilee

Last Monday I was in an interesting meeting at Wake Forest Divinity School. The Wake Forest folks and some of their ecclesial friends from Winston-Salem CHANGE showed up in force. I was there as a faculty member of Shaw Divinity and as a leader in Durham CAN. No one from the other invited divinity school was able to attend.

There were two purposes for the meeting. The one I was most aware of was an effort to bring together divinity faculty to discuss ways for community organizing to be taught to their students. The second purpose, which turned out to dominate the meeting, was the idea that North Carolina United Power (NCUP) should consider a campaign relating to the economic situation.

Gerald Taylor, who called the meeting, is the regional organizer for IAF, the oldest of the national institutions which promote Alinsky-rooted community organizing. Gerald discussed the current economic situation and what he sees as the wrong-headed direction of the governmental responses. In that context, he brought up the biblical concept of Jubilee.

The most significant thing said at that meeting was that biblical Jubilee is not merely about solving the economic problems of the wealthy. Forgiving debts of the poor and setting the oppressed free are its central concepts. Thus, a bailout which attempts to benefit everyone by clearing out the debts of the banks and financial instututions contradicts the wisdom of the Jubilee tradition.

Taylor argued that the way to help the economy, including the banks and other financial institutions, would be to help the average person who is deep in debt. Provide debt relief to everyday people, and they will pay off credit cards, pay and restructure mortgages, pay for higher education, and purchase goods. For those persons who are not in debt, the same financial stimulus would provide economic opportunities that would strengthen economic activity, bolster retirement funds, and stabilize families and businesses.

Taylor also went on to discuss the ways that credit card companies and other lenders are sticking it to common people at the same time that they are able to borrow at the lowest rates in history. This is what the Bible condemns as usury, and the state of usury laws in the U. S. is such that the credit companies can locate in one or two of the fifty states which give them the greatest freedom to charge whatever they want in interest. The situation calls for a national policy.

What kind of bailout would a jubilee call for? It is about fifty years since the Civil Rights Movement. It is about fifty years since the Nixon government began to institutionalize the backlash against progressive reforms. It may be time to proclaim a Jubilee.