Sunday, September 19, 2010

Financial Crisis: What Can We Do Now?

This was a tough sermon to preach.  More accurately this was a tough text to study.  Luke 16:1-13, the parable of the dishonest manager, is really hard to understand especially starting at verse 9.  Plus we hear a story about a guy who was dishonest with another's wealth in order to make sure that he would be okay and he was praised for doing so.  That sounds a lot like what some financial advisors and investors were doing on Wall Street which is a big reason why we had the financial meltdown.  Plus on top of a tough text, it was Rally Day.  


I ended up basically ignoring Rally Day other than a reference at the end of the sermon as we collected food for Redding Social Services.  Our goal was 102 food items, as of the end of the education hour we had 117 items, though more may have been brought in after the "official" count.  


Now onto the sermon.  I hope it has meaning for you in light of were our country is financially today.  


So let me summerize that gospel in case you didn’t understand it, it took me 3 times reading it to sort of figure out what is going on. There is a rich man, he has his accountant. He hears that the accountant is not doing his job so he fires him. But before the accountant gives the rich man his financial records back he calls together all the people that owe the rich man money and he reduces their debts. He did this because he didn’t know what else to do now that he was going to loose his job, but he knew that if he reduced everyone else’s debts that they would now be indebted to him and would help him out once he is no longer the rich man’s accountant.

Okay that kind makes sense, I can see this happening. Someone works for company A and hears that layoffs are a coming. In order to make sure that she will still have a job, even if she is laid off, she goes and cooks the books so that company B owes less money to company A and therefore company B will want to hire her after she is laid off from company A.

Unfortunately our parable did not end with the manager being hired by another master or even welcomed into the debtors’ homes. Instead there is this twist….there is always a twist in the parables….the rich man finds out what the accountant is doing and instead of killing him on the spot or slapping him with some huge lawsuit, he praises the accountant for cooking the books! What! The man gets praised because he was dishonest?!

Okay so I understand the first part of the parable. Each and everyday we are faced with financial decisions. Do I buy Jif, Skippy, Peter Pan or the store brand peanut butter? Should we eat at the Lumberyard or the Saloon?

Some are a little tougher. What bank should I have my accounts with? Who will give me the better interest rates, or the least amounts of fees, or has the most convenient locations and hours or has the best reputation for treating their workforce fairly and reinvesting in the community?

When needing a new car, should I just pay to have the old one fixed? Should I buy new or used? What car maker? What style of car fits my lifestyle the most? How much should MPG’s factor into my decision? What payment plan can I get?

And some financial decisions are quiet a bit bigger. Do I pay my electric bill or buy groceries? If I don’t pay my mortgage this month, is this the month that the bank will finally file for forecloser? How can I pay for gas so I can actually make it to work?

Over the last few years more Americans have been faced with those tougher financial decisions. More Americans have been in the place of this manager, this accountant, not knowing what to do now that they are loosing their jobs. They have been hit with the “what now?” question. What will I do now that my master is taking the position away from me? What will I do now that I have been laid off? What will I do now that my mortgage is worth more than my house? What will I do now that the bank has started the foreclosure process? What will I do now?

The question about “what now?” is often in the singular, “what will I do now?” and sometimes it is in the plural but about your individual family “What will my family and I do now?.” We have become individual minded people and not corporate, communal, community minded people. Because overall wealth allows us to become devoid of community. We can pay for services to come to us, groceries magically appear at our door, through the internet we never have to see anyone at a bank, or store again, much less step foot in one. We can pay to have enough land that we don’t have to see our neighbor’s house or hear them, and often that means that we then don’t know our neighbors. We can pay to join private clubs so we only have to interact with those who we want to interact with. People strive for the type of wealth that allows you to pick and choose your community. But that is not really community. And what people have discovered, what America is starting to figure out through this recession, is that it is community, real community, is what we long for, not wealth.

For many people that question about “what will I do now?” has lead them to seek out the help of community. Multi-generational living arrangements are becoming more normal as grandparents have to move in with their children or grandchildren or the children and grandchildren are moving back home into their parents’ house. Support groups and networks for the unemployed are popping up across the country. Public schools are seeing increased enrollments as parents are no longer able to pay private school tuition for their children. Community gardens and farmers markets are having a resurgence as people connect with neighbors and want to support their local growers. Bartering is becoming a more popular way to pay for some services as people trade babysitting time for a haircut or some home improvement jobs for garden vegetables. More people are volunteering their time to a variety of organizations, especially as those who were laid off or took earlier retirement try to find ways to fill their new found free-time.

Our question about “What will I do now?” is starting to become a corporate, communal, community-based question “what will we do now?” “What can we do to help those whose positions and homes are being taken away from them?” “What can we do to make sure a financial meltdown like this never happens again?” “What will we do now to rebuild our financial infrastructure, to rebuild our communities?”

But now what about the second part of this parable. What about the rich man praising the manager for his dishonest ways? What does that mean for us? Well thus far I have been fairly Pollyanna about the countries financial recovery but let’s be a little real. We are in this situation because people were acting shrewdly. People were busy looking out for their own immediate financial gain and not the long term benefits for themselves, their companies, the country and the world. Because people like Bernie Madoff, and corporations like Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, JP Morgan, Bank of America and many others were shrewd to their own generation instead of thinking about the future and the next generation we are now in this situation. And up until two years ago many of the top executives of those companies were praised and commended for what they were doing, even by the people who knew that it was all smoke and mirrors. And as we as a country, as a world, as a community of people recovering from the financial fallout that has happened, people will continue to act shrewdly. Some people will continue to think only for themselves and not the community. Some people will not learn from these past two years and try to do the same thing again.

But there is hope. I hope that many of us have learned from this financial turmoil and what looks like a long road to recovery. That in the many financial decisions that we make everyday, we ask ourselves questions like “does this company reinvest in the community or do the profits just go to the few executives at the top?” “Is my bank willing to help those in need, even if it means less profits for them?” “Do I shop at stores that treat their employees fairly and pay them a living wage?” And I still need to ask myself these questions: Bob and I have bank accounts with Bank of America and we have a Chase credit card, two companies who names have come up over and over again in the wake of the financial crisis. But by asking these questions we can make the “What will I do now?” question into “What will we do now?”

And there is hope that God is changing us. Unlike money which is finite, God’s love is infinite. God’s love knows no ending. God has entrusted us with the greatest of riches, the gift of eternal life. God has moved many people to seek out community and for communities to envelop, love and care for those who are in the most need. We as a community of faith have been called to care for the people of this greater community. This past Wednesday, I took a basket full of soap, shampoos, and other toiletries up to the Americares Clinic in Danbury. When I arrived there were out of such items and they said that even with such an amount, most of those items would be gone by this weekend. And today we have been called to gather food for our local food bank at Redding Social Services. This collection is hope. This collection is God’s work in this world. This collection is a call for community. God has given us hope. God is calling us to do God’s work in this world. God is calling us to community. God is asking “what will we do now?” We face many financial decision each and everyday, about our earning, spending, saving and giving but there is only so much that we can do. However God’s giving knows no ending. And through God’s love we can give to others as we ask “what can we do now?”

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