FRIENDS                   The Credit Crunch……….

 

As I write this, we have just finished Sunday services thinking about a man who owed his employer a million pounds (in today’s money).  He asked for and was given forgiveness but then refused to offer forgiveness to someone who owed him a much smaller amount.  If ever there was a message for today’s society about credit and debt it is surely found here.  Jesus however chooses to couch a message about “living within your means” in a context of forgiveness.  We are not told whether the man was just a poor steward or whether he acted dishonestly with his master’s money but the usual title, the “Unfaithful Steward”, may well give us a clue.

 

20 years ago I used to manage a welfare benefits and debt counselling service in Warrington.  I saw many people in horrendous debt, but I did not see many who got into debt deliberately or flagrantly, most just did so gradually and just in an effort to “get by”.  It was a time typified by sadness rather than by fraud.  Perhaps this says something about the age we live in.  I have told people about a distressing situation regarding a man I have been close to for a number of years.  He recently died at the age of 86 with high levels of debt and the possible terrible consequences for his family.  What about the other side of the coin?  What about his building society which only 3 years ago increased the level of his mortgage without insisting on life insurance cover?  We live in a society which is based on credit and debt, and ultimately we all pay for it.

 

In the Old Testament, after the Israelites had left Egypt, God set them a new code based on fairness and justice for the poor.  It included “cities of refuge” (from which we get our words and ideas such as “refugee” and “asylum seeker”) where poor people could go to seek help.  It included a 50 yr cut off limit on all debts – called the Year of Jubilee (ring a bell? – Jubilee 2000). At the end of 50 years all debts were supposed to be cancelled.  The idea was not only to limit the amount of debt that families could get themselves into, but was to act as an incentive for people to limit credit – who would be foolish enough to offer large amounts of credit (someone’s credit is someone else’s debt) if the debt would then be cancelled?

 

Sadly the “Year of Jubilee” was never enacted – the cost to the wealthy and powerful would have been too high.

 

Several hundred years later, a poor wandering prophet returned to the town he had grown up in as a boy, opened the book of Isaiah at the passage which refers to the proclamation of the never before enacted Year of Jubilee and began speaking, perhaps in a hesitant voice.  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach Good News (i.e. the gospel) to the poor….  To proclaim the Year of Jubilee”.  Then he said, “Today this is fulfilled” and sat down.  The world held its breath waiting for a response………….. 

                                                                             Alan