Deuteronomy 8:7-21; Exodus 32:1-14
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My father was an insurance salesman. In the mid-80’s the company that he worked for was starting to branch out into investment services. So, they sent him off to a few seminars to train him on how mutual funds work. For a while whenever I visited him he would strongly encourage me to try to save up my money to buy into a mutual fund. Save whatever whenever even if it was just $10 a month until I could get enough to open an investment account. I don’t remember if it was $1,000 or $5,000 you needed. It didn’t matter. I was going to university and working part-to-full-time in a restaurant. No matter how much I made, there was never enough to put any aside especially after university when I was out on my own – rent, utilities, education loans, car payment, insurance. It was hard for recent graduates to get in the game, even harder now.
But, I think back and I kick myself. I probably could have done it and I wonder what would that $5,000 investment be worth today? Even conservatively invested in stocks it would likely be worth more than $50,000. That’s an increase of ten times its original buy-in price. But don’t get too excited; when you consider cost of living into the factor it’s not that astronomical. It takes close to $20,000 today to buy what $5,000 could buy back then. I would spend over $20,000 today to buy a car comparable to the Mercury Lynx that I bought in 1985 for $6,500. So in reality, the actual value of a $5,000 investment in 1985 would really only be a growth of two-and-a-half times it’s actual worth. That’s saying that every dollar invested back then is worth in actual value $2.50 today. That’s still money for nothing, checks for free. So, who can complain?
Well, investment specialists tell us that’s the way wealth works. Wealth somehow mysteriously grows over time on its own. Wealth generates wealth. That of course is the case if Capitalism is your economic system. Capitalism tends to generate wealth quickly; particularly if you’ve already got wealth. The reason for this is that Capitalism claims that wealth trickles down, that making the super wealthy wealthier will in time raise the standard of living for everybody. So, invest your nest eggs in the very wealthy, forgive them of any tax burden, and they will cause innovation and jobs to happen and everybody will get wealthier.
But…and it’s a big one…Capitalism has a fundamental flaw; it makes its dollar on exploiting the fundamental human flaw of self-interest, a flaw that manifests itself as greed and powerlust and leads us into an idolatry of wealth which in the end comes back to bite us and I’ll give you at least three bites.
First, there will always be a great and growing disparity in wealth between those who have and those who have not. In Capitalism there will always be a percentage – between 8-10% - people who have not, and a majority percentage of people who barely have anything, a slight percentage who have it pretty good, and less than one percent – the billionaire class – who, like Pharaoh in Egypt, own everything and in one way or another everybody works for them.
Second, let’s not mention the debt that everybody is carrying. Some incur debt by just trying to make ends meet. Others incur it by trying to maintain a lifestyle that’s beyond their means. Debt is slavery and interest on debt is nothing more than money for nothing to billionaire class. It’s robbery.
Third, political power like a good murder investigation tends to follow the money. A deeply troubling thing about Capitalism is that once you are nearing the top of the food chain, the more you have wealth-wise, the more power and political influence you gain. Therefore, the people at the top of the economy are always trying to influence governments to act to their benefit because they believe that if its good for them its good for everybody. It should concern us that in pretty much all of the global democracies where everybody’s interests are to be looked after, that the majority of the elected individuals come from that slight percentage who have it pretty good. It should especially trouble us when one of those in the billionaire class becomes a national leader. There’s two much power and influence economically and politically vested in these top of the food chain individuals for whom self-interest has been financially lucrative. It means that the majority of the people like you and me who barely have anything, and especially those who have not, don’t really have elected officials who know what it’s like to be us or what our real needs are. They don’t look after us. They rather, out of self-interest, look after themselves believing it better for everyone.
But, this is not necessarily the way an economy need work. I believe God has given us a better alternative, if we are willing to consider it. Let’s look at the ancient Israelites for a moment and ponder their economy. When God led them out of Egypt, he began to form an economy for them. This economy had two forms of material assets: livestock and gold.
Let’s talk livestock. Exodus 12:37-38 tells us that when the Israelites began the Exodus and left the city of Rameses where Pharaoh had enslaved them to build monuments to himself, they were 600,000 men besides children and we can assume as many women and they had “livestock in great numbers, both flocks and herds.” This meant they had both sheep and cattle. As the story goes along, this livestock seems to be always with them, miraculously so I would say. Given the barrenness of the land where they journeyed I don’t see how it was other than a miracle that the livestock made it. God kept that basic “universal” material asset of livestock alive. Oddly, when they complained on several occasions about not having meat to eat, they still had all this livestock. Why didn’t they eat it? I don’t know but it’s likely that it was too important of an asset, like a savings account or family business, that you just didn’t eat it. Livestock could be traded, it could provide clothing. Many of us will take up a more austere lifestyle rather than burn through our savings. The livestock was needed for more than just food.
The Israelites also had gold. As they left Rameses, they asked the Egyptians for gold, silver, and clothing and the Egyptians, after those ten plagues, so wanted them gone that they were willingly very generous. Exodus 12:36 says, “In this way they plundered the Egyptians.” So, they also had some “bling wealth” when they left; superfluous wealth. So, when they left Egypt they looked like a wealthy nation, well-dressed and well-adorned. One could say this was reparation for their enslavement in Egypt.
So anyway, in God’s economy God made sure his people had a “universal” base wealth and some gold when they left Egypt. Secondly, as they wondered about in the wilderness where there was scarcity of food and water, God always provided what they needed for everyday survival so that they didn’t lose any of their universal base wealth, and nobody had to steal, and not grew bitter because some people had it really good.
Thirdly, our Deuteronomy reading pictures the Israelites as they were about to enter the Land that God had promised to give them. They still have the “universal” base wealth of livestock, but the gold was converted to something else. God tells them that as they settle in the Land he will cause their wealth to grow. He will provide them with property, houses, livestock, fields, crops, wine and figs, even mining; they will lack nothing. There will be no scarcity of anything. God will provide an abundance.
The economic principal here is that God will provide his people with an abundance for everybody. They didn’t need a wealthy class to make wealthier so that things will get better for everybody. In fact, they legislated against that. In the Old Testament Law every 50th year was to be a Year of Jubilee in which any Israelites who had to sell themselves into slavery due to economic hardship was to be set free. Also, if anybody had to sell their land for whatever reason, all lands were to be returned to the original family allotments. Thus, they weren’t supposed to have real estate moguls. Sadly, there is no record that the year of Jubilee was ever observed and a wealthy class did arise who exploited the nation and became the reason why God eventually exiled the nation to Babylon leaving behind only the poor. Regardless, the economy that God gave to ancient Israel was that he would provide an abundance for everybody and he gave them an institution of Law that was prohibitive of too much self-interested amassing of wealth in order to prevent inequality and injustice and poverty and debt.
Moreover, gratitude was an expected response from God’s people. Like we do today at Thanksgiving, the people were to gather annually to give thanks to God and to remember that it was by his hand that we all are fed. No one in ancient Israel had the right to say, “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.” God provided abundantly enough for everybody. In God’s good creation God provides abundantly enough for everybody.
But, wait a minute. We live in a world today where there’s poverty. It is not self-evident that God provides abundantly enough for everybody. Our self-interested pursuit of more wealth, of trying to live like bazillionares, has created scarcities and inequalities that make humanity look like an infected boil on God’s face. We pollute and are destroying the good planet that God made us stewards, not masters, over and this planet is the source of God’s abundance towards us. Our tendency towards self-interest, greed, and powerlust has made it so that it is not evidently obvious that God provides abundance for everybody. We can’t readily see it because of the cloud of smog we have created that obscures God.
Let’s take a quick look at our Exodus passage because I think we can gain some insight into what humans do when God is obscured behind a cloud and it involves gold. God and Moses are up on Mt. Sinai obscured in a cloud. Moses has been gone forty days and they figure he’s dead. Unable to see God and not knowing what’s going on they went to Aaron, the second in command, and asked him to build them an idol, an image of God, to go before them since they don’t know what happened to Moses, the man with the staff, who led them out of Egypt.
Aaron obliged. He told them to bring him their gold earrings that they got from the Egyptians on the way out of Egypt. Gold is a superfluous form of wealth. It’s valuable simply because we humans like shiny things and we believe that shiny things make a person look wealthy. God did not mean for the gold that the Egyptians gave to the Israelites to be used as a symbol of bling wealth for the Israelites. No, he meant it to be used for adorning the Tabernacle, the tent, in which he would live while they were travelling through the wilderness. Shinny things artistically reflect the glory of God. God made sure all the Israelites had gold when they left Egypt so that they would have something to contribute for building the Tabernacle. It was not supposed to be for their own personal wealth.
Well, Aaron says bring your earrings, you know, the gold that hangs from your ears…and what are ears used for? Ears are for listening. This is symbolic. It’s like Aaron is saying take the gold out of your ears so that you can hear what God is saying. What has God said to you? Don’t make images of me out of gold and silver. But, what do they want? An image! So Aaron takes the gold from their ears and casts this golden calf and says here’s the God who brought you out of Egypt.
The image of a calf is important. In Egyptian religion, the land from which they came, the image of the god Apis was a bull. The Egyptians believed Apis gave Pharaoh his kingly power and wealth and virility. In Canaanite religion, the land to which they were going, the image of the main god Baal was also a bull. Baal was the god of agriculture who brought rain and like Apis people believed he also gave kings their power, wealth, and virility. If Apis and Baal were still around today (and I think they are) they would exist as the image of the Bull Market and would be believed to give billionaires their power, wealth, and virility.
This whole Golden Calf thing went south when the people started to worship it in the way pagans worship their fertility gods. They rose up to play; wink, wink. Moses comes down and smashes the tablets of the Law, has the idol pulverised and mixes it with water and makes the people drink it, and a lot of people died that day by plague and sword. This sounds like some sort of Modern day parable. Take your gold, your superfluous wealth (which is not really yours) and give it towards the making of an idol that resembles rich and powerful men and worship it with immorality and be smitten with plague. I’m not trying to be funny here. Quite frankly, this scares me. Because it is the way we do economy here on planet earth and if this Golden Calf incident is any indication, God who made everything certainly cannot be pleased with us and how we do wealth.
But anyway, this is Thanksgiving Sunday. Today, we, the people of God, humbly come before him acknowledging that he has provided for us an abundance of what we need to live. We also come confessing that we struggle with this wealth thing, with our own self-interestedness. We also come as those who have open ears to what God wants. We are willing to take the gold out of our ears to listen. We come as those who know and want to know more fully the joy of generosity and the freedom that comes with just letting God in his great love for us provide abundance for everybody. We come as those whom God has gifted to know how to share. For that, let us be thankful. Amen.
