Text: Deuteronomy 15:1-2, 7-11; Matthew 19: 16-22
Over the last week or two, my husband and I have watched the first season of Netflix’s immensely popular Korean drama, Squid Game.
It isn’t a show I would recommend you run home and watch… it is incredibly and senselessly violent… but as I thought about our texts for this morning, I kept going back to the show’s premise.
456 players are invited into a game.
They are all drowning in debt.
Overwhelmed by what they owe.
And if they play and win six games, children’s games, they will receive the equivalent of $38 million dollars.
If they lose, they forfeit their life.
In an AP story about the series, Kim Tong-Hyung notes that the story is striking nerves in South Korea where debt is soaring:
“Many South Koreans despair of advancing in a society where good jobs are increasingly scarce and housing prices have skyrocketed, enticing many to borrow heavily to gamble on risky financial investments or cryptocurrencies. Household debt, at over… ($1.5 trillion), now exceeds the country’s annual economic output.”
You can’t help but notice those underlying concerns for a society on the brink because of debt as you watch Squid Game… televisions in the background of scenes echo these kind of sobering statistics.
And it isn’t just South Korea. Household debt in the United States just reached a new high at $15 trillion; the average debt among consumers is $92,727. This includes mortgages and student loans, as well as credit card balances… not all of which is unhealthy debt to carry. And yet the weight of those bills looms over us.
The players in the Squid Game are given a choice. They could live with the consequences of their debt or they could take a chance on a life where they would never have to worry about debt again.
But they would have to fight, and kill, and scheme their way to the top.
Unlike the show, where players are given a choice between life and death, scripture shows us a third way.
What if we were set free from the burden of debt… without having to harm or sacrifice or step on the lives of others?
If we go back to our text from Deuteronomy, that was God’s intention for human community.
Moses lays out what the ten commandments mean for their practical life with one another. We find instructions, laws, intended to help us love God, love our neighbor, and trust in God’s blessings.
And one of those rules is that every seventh year, the people were instructed to cancel all debts. Forgive the loan. Release the debtor. And if we read on through the end of the chapter, the call to set free any indebted servants or slaves.
This is because the burden of debt impacts not just the person who owes money, but their family for generations to come.
It impacts their dignity and their worth as a human being.
It creates classes and distinctions between us as people that are unhealthy.
As Lisle Gwynn Garrity writes in her artist statement, “the scheduled practice of releasing debts every seven years was designed to be both preventative and restorative. It prevented the wealth gap from growing beyond repair. It prevented systemic poverty from becoming strategic enslavement. It softened hearts turned cold and loosened fists clenched too tight. This practice of release reminds us that net worth is not synonymous with self-worth.” (A Sanctified Art)
I can’t help but think about the UAW strike at John Deere as I read those words. The reality is that there is a growing gap between the wages of workers and management. One of the primary concerns of labor right now is how to fairly share record earnings with employees and criticism over the drastic salary increases of the CEO.
Rules like these were intended to care for the dignity of each person and their relationship to the larger community.
But they were also a way to experience the continued blessings of God.
Just as God had set them free from the land of Egypt, so they were to set one another free.
Their communal economic life is to be rooted in freedom and stewardship and generosity. Rev. Pamela Hawkins writes, “Women and men are to embody God’s love for neighbors through practical, timely forgiving of debts and freeing of slaves, practicing a theology of liberation.” (CEB Women’s Bible, page 226)
And likewise, the people were called to be generous to those in need, lending freely to the poor. No matter if the person could repay. No matter if the year of jubilee was coming near.
The Israelites were called to freely give of their possessions, because as Elizabeth Corrie notes, “the land – and the wealth it provided – belonged to God. We show ingratitude when we refuse to share what was never ours to keep.” (CEB Women’s Bible, page 226)
We show ingratitude when we refuse to share what was never ours to keep.
Stewardship is the awareness that everything we have and everything we are is a gift.
A precious, precarious gift.
Not something to be hoarded but meant to be freely shared so that everyone we meet can receive these blessings of God as well.
But when we choose to play economic games that create winners and losers, the rich and the poor, slaves and owners… we have turned to a life of sin.
As Liz Theoharis puts it, it is, “…a sin against God if your brother or sister has to call out against you because you’re robbing their wages or because you’re not releasing their debts or because you’re making them slaves… the way you honor God is by how you care for yourself and your neighbor… There’s no way to be right with God if your neighbor is being oppressed.”
Which brings us to our text from Matthew.
A rich man approaches Jesus, searching for how to experience eternal, abundant life with God.
“Keep the commandments,” is Jesus’ answer… specifically all of the commandments that have to do with loving our neighbor.
Jesus doesn’t tell the man to say a particular prayer.
Or to focus on his own personal relationship with his Savior.
Jesus invites the man to take responsibility for the lives of his neighbors.
And while this man with many possessions replies that he has done this, Jesus pushes him further: “If you want to be complete, go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor. Then you will have treasure in heaven. And come follow me.”
You see, I don’t think we can separate this story of the rich man from our text in Deuteronomy.
He is living in a day and a time when the practice of Jubilee… the seventh year releasing of debts was not being practiced.
And yet, the reality of God’s intention for our human community remains the same.
Our economic lives and our spiritual lives are one in the same and we honor God by how we care for ourselves and our neighbors.
We honor God by being generous with the gifts we have received.
We honor God by being responsible stewards of what was “never ours to keep.”
We honor God by letting go of what we think belongs to us so that others might have life and life abundant.
And this man didn’t know if he could let go.
In preparing for today, I came across a wonderful piece by Leah Schade called “I want Jesus to Let Me Off the Hook: The Rich Young Man and Me.”
She describes what she wishes she found in this text:
“I can follow Jesus’ prescribed sequence in reverse! 1) Follow him. 2) get my heaven-treasure. 3) Give some money to “the poor.” 4) Sell off a couple of things I don’t want at a yard sale. 5) go happily on my way…
But it doesn’t work that way does it?” Schade writes. “Jesus was specific about the order of those verbs: go, sell, give, receive, follow.”
It is in letting go, in giving, that we receive.
It is in holding our wealth and our ways loosely, that we discover immense riches.
When we focus our lives on the needs of others, we will discover the path to God.
Or as Theoharis put it, we can’t forget the content of the good news Jesus came to preach: ” and that is release of slaves, remission of debts, and the year of the Jubilee.”
As we studied this summer, the first Christian community tried to live this out. They sold their possessions and gave it all to the community and there was no one in need among them.
They came to experience the joy of a life where the blessings of God were shared by one and all. A life where they truly loved God and loved their neighbors every single day.
They let go of class distinctions between the wealthy and the poor.
They let go of the power that money holds over their lives.
They let go of the shame of having too much or too little.
They let go and released it all and they rested and trusted in God’s blessings that poured into their lives.
Where do we find ourselves in this story?
We find ourselves in a world filled with debt.
A world with huge economic and social disparities between the wealthy and the poor.
In the final episode of Squid Game… and don’t worry, it’s not a spoiler… one of the characters ponders a life of poverty and a life of riches:
“Do you know what someone who doesn’t have any money has in common with someone with too much money to know what to do with?” he asks. “Living is no fun for either of them.”
But honestly, it isn’t just about the rich and the poor. We find ourselves in a world in which we do believe our self-worth is tied in with our net worth and so we have leveraged our lives to gain an illusion.
Or as Leah Schade points out… “most of us are just ‘desperately faking middle class.’ Many of us are just one disaster, one health crisis, one pink slip… away from losing everything…”
Because that is the thing, right… the lesson from Deuteronomy… whether we are rich or poor, the debtor or the collector, the slave or the owner… is all a twist of fate.
We find ourselves in a life and death struggle to keep moving up, everyone so desperately clinging to what we have, and frankly, it isn’t fun for any of us.
But there is another way.
What must we do to have eternal life? Real, true, abundant living?
A life filled with joy and treasures and community and grace and love?
e need to let go of the power that money holds over our lives.
We need to let go of our shame and our anxiety, our guilt and our greed.
We need to let go of the idea that the stuff we have will save us.
And while it isn’t going to be a popular idea… we need to release the people around us.
We need to let go of the idea that another person deserves to be poor or that someone has earned their wealth.
We need to set one another free from our debts and labels.
We need repent of how our economic practices have kept folks in generational poverty and have created divisions between us.
Because we were all slaves in the land of Egypt.
We were all formed from the dust of the earth.
We all have the breath of the living God within us.
We need to discover what it means to truly let go and love our neighbors.
Maybe then, we will discover once again the blessings of God that are so richly poured out upon us all.
For when we go to the world…
When we give all we think we possess away…
We will find the joy of abundant life.
Not just for ourselves, but for everyone we meet.
Amen.
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