CONFOUNDED INTEREST
Luke 16:19-30
The Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart

The recent mortgage crisis, international calls for worldwide debt relief, and controversial lending practices in the rebuilding of Iraq and the Gulf Coast have placed questions of debt in the headlines and on our hearts.  Debt is not accidental ... one person's debt is another's profit.  The plumb line of God's justice is set in the midst of confounding and confounded interest.

U.S. citizens now owe over $2 trillion in credit card debt alone. In 2006 the credit card industry earned $36.8 billion in profits ... an 80% increase in 6 years.  (ACCC)

In his book titled American Theocracy, former Republican political strategist Kevin Phillips writes of what he calls "the peril and politics of radical religion, oil, and borrowed money in the 21st century."  In describing the dimensions of our debt-based economy, he notes that in 2004 the automotive production arm of Ford Motor Company made $850 million producing cars, while, during the same year, the lending arm of Ford... Ford Credit ... made nearly $5 billion. (p. 28).

We are co-creators, beneficiaries, as well as servants of the debt structure and cycle of our lives.  We are called to unmask a system that helps perpetuate and deepen the divide between those who have and those who do not.  Jesus teaches that the distance between us and our neighbor and our God is one.

Sonia flew to Iowa to be with her dying mother.  She used her credit card to pay for the trip.  She was never late with her payment, and never exceeded her credit limit, so Sonia was shocked upon her return home, to see that the interest rate on her credit card had jumped from 7.9% to 22%.  The credit card company informed her she had "used her credit too much."      (ABC News)

Unfair practices in the credit industry may include:  changing the terms of the debt at will and at any time; even doubling or tripling interest based on factors outside of the agreement; hidden rates and fees, deceptive and misleading offers of 0%. interest.., and denial of the right to sue.  

**Jim and I just received one "change in terms" notice from one credit card.  Here it is.  (unfolds 22 pages of small print)... I've learned that these are written at a twenty-seven grade reading level.....

In 2006 the Department of Defense reported that predatory lending, "undermines military readiness, harms the morale of troops and their families and adds to cost of a volunteer fighting force."  The Dept of Defense urged a 36% cap on interest rates for loans that target military families, especially payday loans.

USURY is defined as, "The practice of lending money and charging the borrower interest, especially at an exorbitant or illegally high rate."  

It is forbidden in the Koran, as well as Jewish and Christian scripture.  Over the centuries, practices of lending in the money economy changed.  First lenders sought to cover "costs" of lending, then to profit in lending (within interest caps,) then to raise interest "caps", and then seek the removal of caps. Today, lenders shape the national and international laws and our lives are shaped and often controlled by runaway debt.  DA, 12 step Debtors' Anonymous Groups are multiplying across the country.

When Dr. Olin Robison was president of Middlebury College, a young woman came into his office who had already confessed to cheating on an exam. She argued that she shouldn't be suspended because she hadn't meant any harm.  He told her that the school had standards and that he would have thought that she had standards too.  She replied, "Dr. Robison, I'm sure I have standards.   I just don't know what they are."  (Christian Century)
          

                                                                     
We live everyday in a world in which money is mobile, workers are expendable and the chasm between rich and poor grows at an ever-accelerating rate. I believe it is time, dear friends, to claim and proclaim a pervasive Biblical standard that exposes the lie of individual self-interest and the divide between rich and poor, even, especially, in the midst of confounding and confounded interest.

In Biblical times and today, in the U.S. and in the poorest nations, through globalized free trade, an outcome of debt-based economy has been... involuntary servitude, even slavery.  Unpayable and unpaid debts often subject the debtor to unspeakable abuse.

Dr. Luise Schottroff, New Testament scholar and dear friend, has written, "the work of making visible the structures of the present-day money economy, critiquing them, and taking small or large steps toward changing them, is the task of those who follow Jesus."    (Parables of Jesus)

"Once there was a rich man..."  The rich man described in Jesus' parable no doubt had standards ... personal standards of piety and morality that guided his days and ways.  He no doubt meant no harm.  But he did not even take into account the life and suffering of Lazarus ... the poor man ... who was as invisible to him as was the source of his own privilege.  
 

A vast gulf existed between the man of privilege and the man of poverty ... even though they were in close, daily, physical proximity to each other.  A vast gulf therefore existed between the rich man and God.  When the Rich Man dies and suffers the torments of hell, even Abraham, with Lazarus by his side, cannot help him.  Abraham says, "Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us." (verse 26)

Here and now, in this life, is the time for crossing the chasm, for reconciliation ... bringing together that which has been divided, restoring right relationship, repairing the breach.

Church is a laboratory for exploring and expressing our experiences and assumptions about ourselves and about others ... for expecting and receiving God's forgiving and saving grace, and for practicing those things that build and deepen right relationships.

Martin Luther King Jr. said,  "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it understands that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." ("Beyond Vietnam")

Builders use a plumb line ... a string from which is suspended an arrow shaped weight called a plumb bob ... to assure that structures are built in true vertical alignment.  God spoke to the prophet Amos, "I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel." (chap. 7)

We are called to view each other, ourselves and our structures of community alongside the plumb line of God's justice and love, that is set in the center of our being, that is set in the midst of the people. The work of the church has to do with closing gaps ... of achievement, access, care, public safety, homes, health, and hope between the world of the privileged and the world of the poor.

The name of the poor man, Lazarus, means "God helps."
Oscar Romero said, "That world of the poor, ... is the key to understanding the Christian faith...the poor are the ones who tell us what the world is and what the church must offer to the world."

This morning we have hung by the pulpit a plumb line ... a visible reminder of the importance of unseen truths ... a visible reminder that true alignment with God and neighbor... right relationship... is at the center of abundant life.  

Jesus' story of the rich man and Lazarus helps us to see and reflect on our reality and reminds us that in the Torah and the prophets and in the person of Jesus we have everything we need to live our lives with our eyes open ... to see God's people around us ... to make visible the practices that deny humanity to some ... and to work to restore right relationships that will save our souls.  Amen.