Wednesday, March 4

Scripture: Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought, thinking, “The seventh year, the year of remission, is near,” and therefore view your needy neighbor with hostility and give nothing; your neighbor might cry to the Lord against you, and you would incur guilt. (Deuteronomy 15:9).

Observation: Deuteronomy 15 prescribes the sabbatical year. Every seventh year, the Israelites were to proclaim a sabbath for all persons in debt, including those who had to sell themselves or a family member into indentured servitude (a form of slavery) to pay off a debt. Because there were no banks or government-funded safety nets in the cultures of the Bible, when a family fell into economic peril - maybe due to injury or sickness resulting in the inability to work, the ancient equivalent of worker’s disability; or after a poor harvest; or because of the tragic death of family members, literally “bread-winners,” who would otherwise have harvested grain for the family’s daily bread - the only means of credit for borrowing money, food staples, or livestock for putting food on the table was other Israelite families. Families that were more well-off could choose, or not, to lend to families that were less well-off. If a debt agreement was reached and the indebted family could not pay off their debt with money, food, or livestock, then they could work off the debt; in lieu of payment, the family was compensated in personal debt reduction. But to avoid a potential macroeconomic catastrophe where thousands of families are carrying debt they cannot pay off in their lifetime and must resort to selling off the family farm land to cancel their debts, which would spell almost irreversible poverty for all the descendants in the family, including those yet to be born, Deuteronomy programs a safety feature in Israel’s life together: every seventh year, Israel is to cancel all debts and release indentured servants. Deuteronomy 15:9 assumes a scenario where a family is contemplating not lending money to a poor family because the sabbatical year is approaching, and when it does, the lending family would have to cancel the debt and in essence “eat” the value of the money that was lent, because it will never be returned to the lender; the loan will lost, a “sunk cost.” Deuteronomy is saying, “Go ahead and lend the money anyway, even though it’s almost guaranteed that you’ll never see the money again.”

Application: Here is an example of a repeated virtue in the Old Testament: provide for the poor. More than “protecting” the poor or a mere “be nice” to the poor, the God of the Old Testament would have Israel go out of their way to provide for the poor, even to the point of taking a personal financial loss if it meant another family could escape the almost escapable jaws of poverty. No one could force the families of Israel to provide for the poor; no one could make them or compel them to be generous, just as there is no human force on earth today that could compel the modern family to be generous. Providing for the poor is a free choice, a virtue, and virtues are unforced, freely chosen or freely ignored. The shadow of the virtue of providing for the poor is another choice, this time a vice: greed. The God of the Old Testament would have us refuse greed. No one can force me (now I’m talking to me) to run from greed; no one can force me toward or away from greed. Will I choose the virtue of providing for the poor or the vice of greed for the self? God hands me the ball and says, “Your call.”

Prayer:

God who made bread rain from heaven, God who sent good calories on the wings of the wind to the hungry, God who broke mathematics to feed thousands of people with a poor boy’s lunch (and we’ll never forget it), God who wired the human brain to feel cheerful when we connect the dots of “food” and “hungry,” God who detests (I think you’d be okay with that word here) everything that smells like greed, God who hands me the ball of the virtue of providing for the poor and says, “Your call”: lend me your courage knowing I’ll never be able to pay off the loan, so I may choose open-handed cheerful self-giving brave generosity, for when I choose to keep the ball to myself, someone somewhere will go hungry and know sadness because of me, but when I pass on the ball, someone somewhere will be fed and know joy because of me, and second-happiest in this arrangement will be me, and the first-happiest will be You, for generosity makes You smile and greed makes You shake your head in disappointment, and being the shape of a human life that makes God smile is the first purpose of my living. Onward we go: amen.