"The Holy Thief" - A Sermon by Steven Paulson
Texts: The 7th Commandment ("Thou shalt not steal") and 2 Peter 3:10: "the day of the Lord will come like a thief"
Well what have we here? In the second table, the Creator has announced that he is going to protect parents (and others in authority) against the attacks of the world, including your own. Then, he is set on protecting your wife or husband—mainly from you! And now in the seventh commandment God informs us that he is set on protecting the marketplace. The marketplace of all things! How materialist and mundane! For you have come to think of the market as the place of greed--Gordon Gecko and Bernie Madoff--often due to years of bad Christian teaching (likely at a church college at great expense to your parents) that holds itself above the fray, and will not risk life for the neighbor. Instead, what we actually find in God’s market is necessary risk, and a whole bagful of good works waiting to be done.
I have people nipping at my heels constantly saying: “Its too much gospel, Dr. Paulson, you’ve flooded the market like Bernanke’s Fed, and grace is getting cheap! Please give us something to do!” Well, let me oblige:
· Do not steal your neighbor’s property
· Further all your neighbors’ interests
· help in need
· share and lend.
Yes, lend (even at interest). Enter the market. How else will you learn the difference between predatory lending (whether its your brother-in-law or some fat cat on Wall Street), and lending that risks your property for the sake of joining in your neighbor’s bounty? You may assure yourself that you withdraw from God’s market because it is infested with Greed. But then you are covering your secret sin, which does not trust the Father to give daily bread.
Here, in this seventh commandment, God becomes distasteful for you who seek holiness in poverty or in the utopian dream of equity by law. But this God is not champion of equity in life. His way of protecting the economy starts at the bottom, with property. Property means ownership, temporary goods, and so material things. God likes these and so uses them for the manufacture of good works. Who cares if it makes your going through the eye of a needle impossible? The eye of a needle isn’t the way to heaven anyway.
But then, not only does God enthrone property in what seems a shameful exoneration of earthly goods against the high morality of fanatic utopian dreams, but he encircles and protects that property with a universal law that even the pagan Aristotle understood: do not possess what belongs to your neighbor—do not take his property. God upholds what is called “distributive justice”—to each his own.
“But,” you say, “What if my neighbor has more?”
“Listen Master Jack, you picklock you sneak-thief, your neighbor is there to give to, not to take from.”
“Even if she is of the 1%?”
Indeed, God is not a progressive taxer: “Them that’s got shall get, so the Bible says.” Who cares how much property you’ve been given? Be glad you don’t have to set up the Hilton trust and watch Paris ruin the estate. God bless Warren Buffet and Bill Gates trying to figure out how to unload their abounding stuff to the undeserving. Of course, the worst are the sneaky bankers and hedge fund managers who are too big to fail—slimes in suits. And the politicians who bailed them out aren’t much better. Yet, before I get myself and you lathered up in a holy fit, lets face it, if tomorrow we removed all thieves we would ruin the market, and find ourselves in caves around a fire exchanging mastodon tusks for arrowheads—so we pray in a strange twist on Augustine: “God punish the thieves…but not yet.”
My Goodness, what a world God has made with such economy--can it get worse? Parent’s procreating everywhere? Marriage between a man and a woman? Owning property, increasing it, lending! Disgusting. Against ELCA policy! If any of you ever wondered what fearing God meant, this is it. “O Lord, You aren’t going to make me into one of those, are you?” What’s next, the tea party?
For once, it isn’t me, your preacher, that is offensive, its Him, our God who offends this way, since I, your preacher, could not sell a fat pig to a butcher. Why do you think I am a teacher? I’m the one who pleads, “Not everything is for sale!” But here we learn our Lord wants us to enter the market, and make it work to the advantage of our neighbors—not merely to accept liberal generosity that makes slaves of our benefaction. Stewardship enters the filthy market as the primary way to help free your neighbor. Who knows?-- maybe even as a Wells Fargo banker! A merchant of cigars or ——God forbid, a greeter at Wall Mart! (Or maybe even a Calvinist!).
Now, how do you pure Christians do this without sullying yourself with filthy lucre? You don’t! Instead, sully away. Enter the filth. And what do you find upon entering! Thieves everywhere! People selling shoddy merchandise, deception, swindling, taking advantage of the weak. Goodness! At this rate you’ll need forgiveness at least once a week. Thieves are so thick if we hired hangmen for the lot we would finally reach full employment, and still we would not have enough. Come to think of it, maybe that is the president’s secret plan. Or if we adopted a certain sharia law, we would cut off so many hands none of you would ever have to share the peace again—Hmm, a thought! At a certain point it got so bad, God mastered the art of limiting evil in the market by unleashing thieves upon other thieves—these we call politicians, regulators, or Dodd-Frank. What a gruesome task for God to stoop so low because of original sin when from the beginning he meant the market to be the place of joy where we meet and have fruitful exchange. Some of my most cheerful friends for the week are grocery checkouts.
So, stop selling shoddy merchandise—make it valuable to your neighbor. Figure out Craig’s list. Invest. Lend. Make the system work better, as this is God’s will. If it is an ice auger-- for those of us who must fish in January--make it work! Back it up with guarantees that mean something. Improve it. Set a decent price, which means affordable, yet profitable.
Then with the excess help those who cannot enter the market (the poor, widows, orphans), and give freely--not as if the market were the sign of divine blessing assuring you of your personal predestination. It is not. Indeed you will often give to the very scoundrels who have ruined the market by greed and deceit.
But why all these thieves? Is God’s marketplace to blame? Shall you recuse yourself and become an occupier or a monk, who practices her chosen poverty? Is the inequity of material goods itself the ground of evil so that you Seminarians are righteous in your indignation who only drive a Ford Fiesta or Kia? Goodness, what are you going to do when you fly the coop and realize people in your own congregation are much better off in the market than you—and a good many worse? Why, you can’t even ask for a raise from the church council without thinking you have despoiled your holiness. Instead, learn to be abased and how to abound.
All these thieves are in the market because they refused the first commandment. Like sheep without a shepherd, they have no preacher, no fear, no trust of God. They run about as if they had to secure their own bread. Instead, we pray for daily bread to the one who actually gives it, and trust this includes all the things needed—house, spouse, work, farm, food, clothing--something to play music on, a little red corvette and the like.
Now, even churches and Seminaries are pushed by God into the market—and refused monastic shelter. And, for what it’s worth, I don’t like that either. If it were not for my wife it would be the monastery for me! But such is our God, he wants us at risk, trading and lending. And by the way, we are selling some pretty shoddy merchandise at Luther Seminary to congregations who trust us. Its time to get to work, learning your distinction between law and gospel, and improving the product.
But with all this, there is a difference between a preacher and a salesman. If you don’t know what that is, read Flannery O’Conner’s Good Country People, and learn about the Bible salesman Manley Pointer, who sells a Bible to a one legged woman named Hulga. Then at the moment of his conquest, steals her wooden leg and runs off.
Thank God I am not your coach or salesman. So let me tell you about the strangest theft ever perpetrated. One day, the Son of God entered the market, not counting the property of divinity something to be possessed. And not only came in, which is quite a feat by itself deserving its own doctrine, the incarnation, but then the One who knew no thievery became a thief. -------Watch it now, Watch it! This is God we are talking about!
But it happened. Amid a market full of thieves, there is one theft overlooked— till now. What happened was this: Jesus Christ entered, and offended, his own market by stealing your most prized possession—your self-righteous sin that justifies itself.
“Well,” you say, “at least I could claim that sin was my own. Hands off, Jesus, it may not be pretty, but at least it is mine.” You might even say: “I built it!”
Economy is trust; money is trust. But you have put that trust in the wrong place. Jesus’ kingdom comes as a thief to steal that sin from you. --- But watch it now! Watch it!-- First he steals your property, then without thinking, gives you His, which property is truly spiritual: I forgive you. Your sin is now mine.
Ah Hah!…right there, you caught him red handed! Did you hear the thief? The picklock? He just stole from you, and what he took was your best part. Now, what are you going to do about it? Revolt? Demand your sin back--with interest? No. Just let the thief go--Who cares? Truly, truly I tell you, this Christ has a new marketplace where he gives all needed for life—where no thief robs and no rust despoils. And he has now given this to you.
So, now what, once you have gotten your divine thief? Well, it’s back to the marketplace to see what help you can be in making capitalism work. Meanwhile, you will enter that old market without jealousy for those with more, and with true generosity for those who have less than you—so give freely. Risk your property wisely. What have you to lose, but this life?
And, oh yes, one more thing, give gifts to your teachers, as Paul says.
Steven Paulson
Luther Seminary Chapel
Well what have we here? In the second table, the Creator has announced that he is going to protect parents (and others in authority) against the attacks of the world, including your own. Then, he is set on protecting your wife or husband—mainly from you! And now in the seventh commandment God informs us that he is set on protecting the marketplace. The marketplace of all things! How materialist and mundane! For you have come to think of the market as the place of greed--Gordon Gecko and Bernie Madoff--often due to years of bad Christian teaching (likely at a church college at great expense to your parents) that holds itself above the fray, and will not risk life for the neighbor. Instead, what we actually find in God’s market is necessary risk, and a whole bagful of good works waiting to be done.
I have people nipping at my heels constantly saying: “Its too much gospel, Dr. Paulson, you’ve flooded the market like Bernanke’s Fed, and grace is getting cheap! Please give us something to do!” Well, let me oblige:
· Do not steal your neighbor’s property
· Further all your neighbors’ interests
· help in need
· share and lend.
Yes, lend (even at interest). Enter the market. How else will you learn the difference between predatory lending (whether its your brother-in-law or some fat cat on Wall Street), and lending that risks your property for the sake of joining in your neighbor’s bounty? You may assure yourself that you withdraw from God’s market because it is infested with Greed. But then you are covering your secret sin, which does not trust the Father to give daily bread.
Here, in this seventh commandment, God becomes distasteful for you who seek holiness in poverty or in the utopian dream of equity by law. But this God is not champion of equity in life. His way of protecting the economy starts at the bottom, with property. Property means ownership, temporary goods, and so material things. God likes these and so uses them for the manufacture of good works. Who cares if it makes your going through the eye of a needle impossible? The eye of a needle isn’t the way to heaven anyway.
But then, not only does God enthrone property in what seems a shameful exoneration of earthly goods against the high morality of fanatic utopian dreams, but he encircles and protects that property with a universal law that even the pagan Aristotle understood: do not possess what belongs to your neighbor—do not take his property. God upholds what is called “distributive justice”—to each his own.
“But,” you say, “What if my neighbor has more?”
“Listen Master Jack, you picklock you sneak-thief, your neighbor is there to give to, not to take from.”
“Even if she is of the 1%?”
Indeed, God is not a progressive taxer: “Them that’s got shall get, so the Bible says.” Who cares how much property you’ve been given? Be glad you don’t have to set up the Hilton trust and watch Paris ruin the estate. God bless Warren Buffet and Bill Gates trying to figure out how to unload their abounding stuff to the undeserving. Of course, the worst are the sneaky bankers and hedge fund managers who are too big to fail—slimes in suits. And the politicians who bailed them out aren’t much better. Yet, before I get myself and you lathered up in a holy fit, lets face it, if tomorrow we removed all thieves we would ruin the market, and find ourselves in caves around a fire exchanging mastodon tusks for arrowheads—so we pray in a strange twist on Augustine: “God punish the thieves…but not yet.”
My Goodness, what a world God has made with such economy--can it get worse? Parent’s procreating everywhere? Marriage between a man and a woman? Owning property, increasing it, lending! Disgusting. Against ELCA policy! If any of you ever wondered what fearing God meant, this is it. “O Lord, You aren’t going to make me into one of those, are you?” What’s next, the tea party?
For once, it isn’t me, your preacher, that is offensive, its Him, our God who offends this way, since I, your preacher, could not sell a fat pig to a butcher. Why do you think I am a teacher? I’m the one who pleads, “Not everything is for sale!” But here we learn our Lord wants us to enter the market, and make it work to the advantage of our neighbors—not merely to accept liberal generosity that makes slaves of our benefaction. Stewardship enters the filthy market as the primary way to help free your neighbor. Who knows?-- maybe even as a Wells Fargo banker! A merchant of cigars or ——God forbid, a greeter at Wall Mart! (Or maybe even a Calvinist!).
Now, how do you pure Christians do this without sullying yourself with filthy lucre? You don’t! Instead, sully away. Enter the filth. And what do you find upon entering! Thieves everywhere! People selling shoddy merchandise, deception, swindling, taking advantage of the weak. Goodness! At this rate you’ll need forgiveness at least once a week. Thieves are so thick if we hired hangmen for the lot we would finally reach full employment, and still we would not have enough. Come to think of it, maybe that is the president’s secret plan. Or if we adopted a certain sharia law, we would cut off so many hands none of you would ever have to share the peace again—Hmm, a thought! At a certain point it got so bad, God mastered the art of limiting evil in the market by unleashing thieves upon other thieves—these we call politicians, regulators, or Dodd-Frank. What a gruesome task for God to stoop so low because of original sin when from the beginning he meant the market to be the place of joy where we meet and have fruitful exchange. Some of my most cheerful friends for the week are grocery checkouts.
So, stop selling shoddy merchandise—make it valuable to your neighbor. Figure out Craig’s list. Invest. Lend. Make the system work better, as this is God’s will. If it is an ice auger-- for those of us who must fish in January--make it work! Back it up with guarantees that mean something. Improve it. Set a decent price, which means affordable, yet profitable.
Then with the excess help those who cannot enter the market (the poor, widows, orphans), and give freely--not as if the market were the sign of divine blessing assuring you of your personal predestination. It is not. Indeed you will often give to the very scoundrels who have ruined the market by greed and deceit.
But why all these thieves? Is God’s marketplace to blame? Shall you recuse yourself and become an occupier or a monk, who practices her chosen poverty? Is the inequity of material goods itself the ground of evil so that you Seminarians are righteous in your indignation who only drive a Ford Fiesta or Kia? Goodness, what are you going to do when you fly the coop and realize people in your own congregation are much better off in the market than you—and a good many worse? Why, you can’t even ask for a raise from the church council without thinking you have despoiled your holiness. Instead, learn to be abased and how to abound.
All these thieves are in the market because they refused the first commandment. Like sheep without a shepherd, they have no preacher, no fear, no trust of God. They run about as if they had to secure their own bread. Instead, we pray for daily bread to the one who actually gives it, and trust this includes all the things needed—house, spouse, work, farm, food, clothing--something to play music on, a little red corvette and the like.
Now, even churches and Seminaries are pushed by God into the market—and refused monastic shelter. And, for what it’s worth, I don’t like that either. If it were not for my wife it would be the monastery for me! But such is our God, he wants us at risk, trading and lending. And by the way, we are selling some pretty shoddy merchandise at Luther Seminary to congregations who trust us. Its time to get to work, learning your distinction between law and gospel, and improving the product.
But with all this, there is a difference between a preacher and a salesman. If you don’t know what that is, read Flannery O’Conner’s Good Country People, and learn about the Bible salesman Manley Pointer, who sells a Bible to a one legged woman named Hulga. Then at the moment of his conquest, steals her wooden leg and runs off.
Thank God I am not your coach or salesman. So let me tell you about the strangest theft ever perpetrated. One day, the Son of God entered the market, not counting the property of divinity something to be possessed. And not only came in, which is quite a feat by itself deserving its own doctrine, the incarnation, but then the One who knew no thievery became a thief. -------Watch it now, Watch it! This is God we are talking about!
But it happened. Amid a market full of thieves, there is one theft overlooked— till now. What happened was this: Jesus Christ entered, and offended, his own market by stealing your most prized possession—your self-righteous sin that justifies itself.
“Well,” you say, “at least I could claim that sin was my own. Hands off, Jesus, it may not be pretty, but at least it is mine.” You might even say: “I built it!”
Economy is trust; money is trust. But you have put that trust in the wrong place. Jesus’ kingdom comes as a thief to steal that sin from you. --- But watch it now! Watch it!-- First he steals your property, then without thinking, gives you His, which property is truly spiritual: I forgive you. Your sin is now mine.
Ah Hah!…right there, you caught him red handed! Did you hear the thief? The picklock? He just stole from you, and what he took was your best part. Now, what are you going to do about it? Revolt? Demand your sin back--with interest? No. Just let the thief go--Who cares? Truly, truly I tell you, this Christ has a new marketplace where he gives all needed for life—where no thief robs and no rust despoils. And he has now given this to you.
So, now what, once you have gotten your divine thief? Well, it’s back to the marketplace to see what help you can be in making capitalism work. Meanwhile, you will enter that old market without jealousy for those with more, and with true generosity for those who have less than you—so give freely. Risk your property wisely. What have you to lose, but this life?
And, oh yes, one more thing, give gifts to your teachers, as Paul says.
Steven Paulson
Luther Seminary Chapel
