“How to Change the System!”

Karen Sloan 21/09/2022

Readings - Luke 16: 19-31

I have been touching base with my friend Nazar in Pakistan quite regularly in the last few months.  Many of us have been supporting him, his villagers and the people seeking shelter and care from the massive floods that have inundated the whole country.

I have been shocked and humbled by his commitment but also about the level of poverty and the lack of resources in his country.  I know you could say the government is corrupt or the civil servants are corrupt or the local officials are corrupt, but the people who suffer are the poor! And on a level that to us in Australia, is unimaginable, unless you are homeless or indigenous.

It’s a sobering reminder of how rich we are, and how poor others are.

But why is it that sometimes we forget this truth?

Maybe it’s because of the subliminal messages we receive every day.  Messages that encourage and cajole us into believing that life will be better and more fulfilling if only we had a bigger house, a more expensive car, a bigger television or better more exotic holidays. 

I think it’s easy to be seduced by the idea that greed is good.  Good for us and good for others.  That somehow it will trickle down and help all those in society without us having to do anything. 

As Walter Wink, in an article for the Sojourners magazine, suggests, maybe it’s because we have been systematically trained in greed from birth here in the west. Consumerism is our middle name. Just look what we get put into our letter boxes every day, piles of magazines wanting us to buy more things.  He suggests our economic system is greedy on our behalf, a giant machine of production.  We have made economic growth the primary social god passing off the problem of poverty as an outstanding debt to be paid off by further economic growth.  Even though by now we should have learned the increased productivity does not in fact resolve inequalities of the distribution of wealth.  We in fact know that money ends up the hands of a few, who will then do anything to keep it.    So it’s definitely not neutral. Whether it’s’ about justice, climate change or the use of welfare and support, it makes us, our society and our world divided, fearful and less compassionate.     

But all this talk raises a very salient point, one that is central to the expression of our faith in the world.  Money has become another god and economics a type of religion.  So how we respond to it shows whose side we are on. And I know that when called upon so many of us are generous with our money.  But maybe it’s not enough.  For if we are really on the side of Jesus then we all have changes to make, and maybe they are bigger than giving money, regardless of how wonderful that is. And it’s as much a message to myself as anyone else.

For Jesus wasted no time in the New Testament declaring himself on the side of the poor.  There are numerous places where it is very clear, what is at stake, in about 200 places actually. Siding with the poor was the mark of being one of his disciples in a time when the Roman Empire ruled and when the poor suffered at the hands of landowners, bankers, creditors and even priests.

As Walter Wink again says, Jesus identified the world’s great idol as mammon, by which he meant money or property in general.  He saw it as a power no longer under human control and no longer in the service of human needs.  The chief manifestation of the God mammon is accumulated wealth.

Today we heard one of the many parables he used to make it very plain what he thought about it and what he believed God required of us.  And its super powerful, so much so that I have to speak longer than 3 mins on it.

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus is like all the parables, on the one hand an exaggerated story and on the other quite subtle.  Many scholars believe it originated as a folk story which Jesus himself adapted, although most would say verses 27-31 are additions by Luke.  The rich man feasted sumptuously every day, while poor Lazarus was lucky to beat the dogs to the garbage.  When Lazarus dies we discover him safe in the bosom of Abraham at a banquet table, while the rich man cries out in torment from hell.  But there is more to the story.  As David Buttrick, in his book on Parables points out, the rich man has no name, while Lazarus’s name means “God has helped”.  Interestingly by the time of Jesus beggars were seen as sinners being punished for their sins. Lazarus lies outside the wall, but just near the gate to the rich mans estate.  He is too weak to beg but lies hoping for table scraps from the rich man.  The contrast between the two is carefully drawn.  Then the tables are reversed.  Lazarus who hoped for scraps now feasts in the afterlife.  The rich man dies, is buried, and ends up in Hades. Once he partied every day, now he cries out for a drop of water.  Still the rich man is arrogant and refuses to address Lazarus directly.  He sees Lazarus as a low class slave and asks Abraham to order Lazarus to moisten his lips. 

This parable hits us between the eyes.  Poor and rich are extremes and Luke uses it in a not too subtle attack on the rich.  But as I said money is not neural, it has social meaning and to have an abundance while others are starving is, impossible to condone. 

But what to do…

Brandon Scott suggests the rich man could have walked through his gate and served the poor man but he chose not to and even in the afterlife  doesn’t acknowledge Lazarus as a fellow human being.  As a result a wall that separated the two in life becomes a chasm.

And walls become permanent chasms unable to be breached.  Human carelessness hardens.  A great statement from David Buttrick about what happens.

So this is a message that’s pretty hard to hear today, just as much as it was in Jesus day.

Because unfortunately we are the rich man and the poor are at our gates, and our common destiny and survival is in our hands.  Because climate change more than anything  will have the greatest impact on the poor, just as we have seen in Pakistan.

But all is not lost!  If we wake up, fully.  For its not enough for us to continue with a lifestyle of the west, justifying our position by being generous, although that helps.  As Wink suggests, we cannot just treat people well, raise our families, live in nice homes and work hard, and give money away when we are part of the institutionalised greed that leads to injustice.  For as we accumulate more and more, we build a wall back up between those of us that have and those that are the have nots.  A wall that once built is hard to tear it down.   We have to change our lifestyle, to see that what we desire affects others just as much as what we do.  Not easy but essential. 

 In recognising this dilemma Walter Wink suggests that,

“Our personal transformation will not change the system, but it is the indispensable prerequisite to systemic change. We can alter our own patterns of consumption, less fuel, less junk food, less litter, less detergent, less beef; more recycling, more conservation, longer use of clothes and products, rejection of style fads and the mania for newness. Our very values can change: we can slough off the spell of bigness, the love of luxury, the bogus security of owning things”.   

The myth that consumerism will solve everything. 

But there is more.  We can also find ways to hold politicians and global companies responsible to the general public, and defeat those who are working against the public interest.  The power of the internet to find out this information and then engage with groups who are questioning the activities of some of these corporations is with us all.

Finally, it is time to overhaul our national theology of wealth which Wink identifies, and the heresy that we are rich because we are righteous and righteous because we are rich. We are rich because the system perpetuates it, the rich get richer and the poor poorer unless we do something about it.  The church is called to waken those within it to the wall that is building between the have and have nots and tear it down.

As Wink concludes no one really knows how to construct a perfect economic system in the West which greedy people will not subvert to their own gain. But we, as people of faith, are free to risk moving toward a way that is more equitable and just, knowing we are grounded in a God whose love is for all people.  It is this love we find in Jesus and whose way we follow.   So while we can be countercultural with our money and how we use it, it is with our lifestyle we can truly reflect the call of Jesus and the need of our fellow brothers and sister. 

Changing the system starts with us, scary but true.

Sorry but a parable like this needs a heavy duty response!

Karen