You Shall Not Steal

      A woman was sick so her husband went to church by himself.  When he got home she asked, "How was the sermon?"  He replied, "Well it started out good — but then, about half way through he stopped preaching and started meddling."

      Obviously the pastor had somehow hit too close to home in this guy’s life.  Maybe the pastor started out talking about the importance of honoring the Sabbath – that’s preaching -- but then said something specific about the not worshipping sports or not being a Sunday workaholic – that’s meddling. 

       I’ll let you decide if I’m preaching or meddling this morning. 

       The eighth commandment is "you shall not steal."  

       Between people and things is a bond that we call ownership.  In this commandment, God tells people to respect that bond.  

       God isn’t a Communist.  God says there is a wrong of taking because there is a right of keeping.  That makes sense to us.  We can only live openly together where most of our relationships are built on trust.  Stealing destroys trust.  So God says, “You shall not steal.”

      That’s clear.  So far I’m preaching.

      But that’s not all God says on the subject of ownership.  God also says that ownership is not absolute.  So even a capitalist like me has to recognize that there are biblical and legal limits to what we can rightly call ours.

      For example, my person's right to a thing depends on how I got it. An African strongman like Robert Magube of Zimbabwe or Daniel Moi of Kenya can stuff millions of dollars into a Swiss bank account.  But that does not mean that he has a moral right to what he stole from the people in the first place. 

       In the same way my person's right to a thing also depends on how I or she cares for it  — especially if a living thing or a person is involved.  You can leave your mower in the rain and if it rusts that's your problem and your loss. But the owner of animals cannot claim a moral right to them if he mistreats them. 

       This eighth commandment gets real hard as we try to apply it to the world today.  The commandment was given about 1280 B.C. to a simple pastoral people.  Everyone knew when someone rustled a goat.  “That’s my goat.  You stole it.”

       But now we need to apply the eighth commandment here in a modern culture where the economic systems are so complex that it is sometimes hard to recognize the difference between stealing and dealing.  We know that when a thief snatches a woman's purse, he is stealing.  We are not so sure whether or not a creative ad writer who causes people to pay too much for what they don't need is stealing.  We aren’t sure if a person takes a mortgage they know they can’t cover and then defaults is stealing.  We aren’t sure if the bank that gave them the loan in the first place is stealing when they seek taxpayer bailouts.  We aren’t sure if an executive who runs a company into the ground and than takes a golden parachute is stealing. We aren’t sure if running up a huge national debt and under fund Social Security System is stealing from our children and their children.   This is hard stuff!

       When I originally scheduled this sermon for this Sunday some months ago, I had no idea of the applications from this last week’s news.  It makes it real hard not to meddle.

       God says, "You shall not steal."  That is a word to the poor and the rich, the weak and the powerful, the individual, the corporation, and the government.  But we wrestle with how we can apply this command to the complex way in which things are now distributed among the people of our world.

       The Bible, and especially the Old Testament prophets, raise question about stuff we might prefer to leave alone. 

       The prophets remind us that one biblical limit to the right of ownership is simple justice.  My moral right to a slice of bread, even one I have bought and paid for, depends on how large the loaf is and how many people need to eat – how much food is available and how many people are in the life boat with me.

       It's not whether I have more or less than other people that raises the moral issue. It’s the size of the gap. 

       Some years ago, through the Presbytery Impact Program, I was in a slum in Mexico City called the Ajusco.  The people there are poor --much poorer than the worst poverty in the U.S.  I stayed for two nights in the small one room home of a family of four that was built over a bicycle shop.  This was a great family.  They were working together to climb out of poverty.  But they weren’t there yet.

        As I sat there with this family, my host, Magdaleno Miguel, asked if I would like to watch T.V.   He turned on a small black and white portable to "Los Anos Marvelosos" -- the old American series "The Wonder Years."

       Now I couldn't understand most of the dubbed dialogue so I just looked at the images on the screen.  And as I looked, I started to squirm.  For the first time, in stark contrast to the poverty around me, saw my own culture through other eyes.  I saw the large houses, the shiny new cars, the table loaded with food and the food being thrown away.  I felt like the representative of a society that is flaunting great wealth next door to a starving neighbor. 

       If taking is wrong then having is right.  We get that. 

       But if having things is right for those who have, it must also be humanly wrong for others to have nothing.  Property is not something that is merely around us for us to hold or sell like shares in a company we don't know or care about.  Property has a more important purpose in God’s plan.

       We human beings were created to take care of something.  We see this in the Book of Genesis in the story of the Garden of Eden.  Caretaking is part of the human core.  We are placed here to take care of the things of earth.  It is from this fundamental fact of our humanness that the right to own things arises.

      And God calls us as His people to much more than a minimal live and let live relationship with each other. He calls us to actively seek each other's good. 

       Jesus said, "Love your neighbor as yourself."  So "you shall not steal" gains a new dimension.  It compels us to help those who have nothing to get something — for no person can flourish as the image of God without something to call, to shape, and to make his or her own.

       Now that may sound like old fashioned liberalism to some.  But if it is, it is very old fashioned.  It comes from the Westminster Larger Catechism of 1643 which says that one of the duties called for in the eighth commandment is to "endeavor by all just and lawful means to further the wealth and outward estate of others, as well as our own.”   Paul says the same thing in Ephesians 6 where he writes:  "Let the one who steals steal no longer but rather let him work in order that he may have something to share with the one who is in need."  That is the positive purpose of our work -- not just to have but to give.

       It is sad that a concern for the poor has fallen into such disrepute.  It's also sad that the issue of a human response to poverty has been co-opted as a social issue by people who often demonstrate no personal concern for the poor they know.  I believe that one of the problems with the way welfare has been done is that it demeans the human spirit instead of ennobling it -- but now I'm meddling again.

      It’s not a political issue.  It’s a God issue.  Our relationship with things is meant to express creativity and care — as good stewards of what God has given us.  So when we use property as a way to drive a wedge between ourselves and others, property is used improperly.

       God wants the powerful to do more than "live and let live."  He wants them to turn themselves around and go into action for the neighbor.

       Some years ago, a man named Macarthur Wheeler was sentenced in Pittsburgh to twenty four years in prison for robbing a bank.  The conviction was made possible by clear photographs from a bank's surveillance camera.  Wheeler and his partner did not wear masks.  They were not concerned about the camera at all because they had rubbed lemon juice over their faces before the robbery in the belief that the juice would blur their on camera images.

       It didn't work for them and it doesn't work for us here at the Lord's Table. In the words of Malachi, many of us have “robbed God” in our tithes.  We’ve treated our giving to God’s work as discretionary spending.  We’ve all failed to show care for the neighbor.  I know I have.  God sees who we are no matter what we try to cover ourselves with.  He knows our hearts.  He knows our failures of love.  He knows our places of hardness to people that He loves. He knows all of this and He invites us anyway — because we need a Savior to free us from the past and to set us free for the future — for our own good and the good of the community around us.