Reading: Exodus 20:15, Easter 7B – June 4, 2000
By The Rev. Karen Siegfriedt
St. Jude the Apostle Episcopal Church, Cupertino CA
How can we live together on this crowded planet in a way that enables all people to live a life of dignity, justice, and peace? How can we work together now, so that our young children do not have to face the scourges of war that come about when groups of people who are oppressed rise up and say "no" to their immeasurable suffering and inequities? How do we share the resources of this planet in a way such that all human beings are guaranteed a future? Today I would like to continue my sermon series on the 10 Commandments and focus my remarks on the 8th commandment: "Thou shalt not steal".
We must remember that the 10 Commandments were not given to a group of Sunday school children on an afternoon outing nor were they separate moral commands to be kept by individuals. The 10 commandments were a group of laws that guided the people of Israel to live together in harmony, teaching them about their duty towards God and neighbor. It was a way of life.
I have already talked about the commandments against killing and adultery. Today's focus is on stealing. Killing, adultery, and stealing have something in common. They are the ways in which vulnerable persons in the community are assaulted, diminished, and destroyed. These actions are acts of uncurbed power, which fail to recognize that all people are loved by God. Thou shalt not steal! On the face of it, this commandment is concerned about the respect for the property of another. The people of Israel were an agrarian society. Their land, cattle, farming implements, and children were absolutely necessary for their survival. If theft occurred in any of these areas, hunger or even death would be knocking on the door. This commandment not to steal meant that nothing should be done to whittle down or eat away at the selfhood of individuals, families, or the community.
So how do we apply this commandment (that was given to the people of Israel some 3500 years ago) to ourselves; we who live in a society that has become global? The Jubilee material given to us by the Church offers us some guidance. God wills that there should be enough for everybody in the world. In a just and compassionate world, nobody would need to take anyone else's goods, for God has given the planet enough resources so that no person should be deprived of the necessities of life. These necessities are food, clothing, shelter, and fuel. If these basic necessities are denied to a less powerful group of people because of the overindulgent appetites of a more powerful group of people, then we can say that the overindulgent people are stealing even if they are operating within "the law".
When I was young, living in Boston, our family of seven shared one sled. After it snowed, my four brothers and I would trudge up to a hill in the neighborhood where hundreds of other kids were sledding. Although we would share the sled, being the only girl meant that I waited long and hard for my turn. One of the ways that I dealt with this inequity was that I would wait for someone who had lain down on their sled and was heading downhill. I would then hop on top of them and enjoy the ride down. We called this methodology "hopping". How I wished for my own sled. One Christmas morning, (next to the stockings that were hung by the fake chimney with care), there was a brand new sled with my name on it. I couldn't wait for the next snowstorm. When snow came, I took my new sled to the top of the hill and enjoyed a great afternoon. I didn't need to "hop" anyone that day although a lot of kids hopped me. That evening, my mother placed the wet sled out in the hallway of the apartment building to dry. The next morning, the sled was gone. It had been stolen.
Now many of us might think that the 8th commandment refers only to acts of theft as described above but it actually means a lot more. While I was in great sorrow over my loss, I still had enough to eat. Losing a sled did not rob me of my future nor of my dignity. Probably the person who stole it needed it a lot more than I did. However, there are other examples of stealing that do rob people of their future and their dignity. This kind of stealing is tied up in our current economic practices. The word economics comes from the Greek word meaning the management of the household. Current economic practice has moved from the management of the household to the art of making money. Current economic theory is not based on human relationships but on making money. It is not based on compassion or need but on self-interest. One of the basic assumptions of economic theory is that continued economic growth will overcome poverty. On the surface, this seems to be a good assumption. Taken to its logical conclusion, as the wealthy accumulate more and more wealth, they will need to re-invest or spend this money, thus providing an outlet for goods and services, which create jobs, and thus money for the working class. This is called the trickle down theory.
There are two problems with this theory. First of all, although money trickles down from the wealthy to the less wealthy, it is not a linear process. It takes money to make money. Over time, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We are seeing this widening of the gap even in Santa Clara County. The second problem with this theory is that we have a limited amount of natural resources. Already, we have stretched the use of the planet's natural resources. In order for the poor to have the basic necessities of life, economic development would have to increase 5 to 10 fold. Can you imaging having 5 to 10 times the amount of goods and services that you now have? Do you think that there are enough resources to sustain this kind of development and if so, for how long?
In response to the eighth commandment, the Church has called us to pause and to take a look at the great suffering in the world that has come about because of unjust economic practices. This pause is called the year of the Jubilee. The year of the Jubilee is proscribed in scripture. According to the book of Leviticus, every 50 years, those who had sold themselves into slavery or sold their property in order to survive economic disaster, were to be freed and their property returned. The year of the Jubilee was about debt forgiveness. It is this forgiving of debts, particularly as it refers to the third world countries that our Church has asked us to consider. Forgiving debts is a way of ensuring that a family, community, or nation, will have a future.
Often times when the subject of debt forgiveness or redistributing the wealth comes up, people become possessive and say, "well I worked hard for my money. Why should I give it away to them?" In times like this we need to remember that the focus of the Christian life is about compassion and sacrifice, not about making money. In times like this, we need to remember today's gospel where Jesus prays for the oneness of the human race; for a time in which there is no "them and us." In times like, this we need to remember that everything we have is a gift from God and that nothing ultimately belongs to us. Let's take the new rectory as an example. We paid $605,000 for the rectory. The person, who bought this house some 25 years ago, paid around $60,000. The land that this house sits on belongs to God. The value of this land has increased 10 fold in 25 years, not because of hard work, but because of supply and demand. What a gift of over 1/2 million dollars that the seller of this house received from God just because she was fortunate enough to have had some money to invest in property!
God said: "Thou shalt not steal", so that our world would not be one of fear and uncertainty. If we as a society are experiencing a lot of fear and uncertainty, perhaps a lot of stealing is going on. May God help each one of us to work for a future that is more loving, more generous, and more just.