Let’s Talk About Debt
Romans 12:8-14 September 4, 2005
“Don’t run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other. When you love others, you complete what the law has been after all along.”
Romans 12:8
Tell me, does that quote sound quaint to you. “Don’t run up debts, except the huge debt of love you owe each other.” Surely Paul was not speaking to us. After all, debts are a part of the American landscape. At 9:21 pm last night, it is estimated that the national debt stood at $7,946,376,733,206.46 and growing at a rate of more than 1.5 million dollars a minute. As citizens we have learned well because US Consumer debt, as of May of this year, not including mortgages, stood at 2,127,400,000,000.00, or to put it into perspective, 28,706.82 per household in the country. We are a people in debt. And the cost of that debt is far more than the trillions of dollars mentioned. In 2003 Twenty-three percent of the average person's take-home pay already is committed to payment of existing debt. And fifty-six percent of all divorces are a result of financial tension in the home. (Parent Life (March 2003)). Debt, it’s cost is beyond our understanding. I will not ask you to raise your hands, but I imagine that at least of 98% of us carry debts that we have committed ourselves to repay. When handled properly, credit and debt can be a powerful tool, when abused, as so many of us are now doing, it will destroy us.
And Paul writes: “Don’t run up debts , except the huge debt of love you owe each other.” That does not fit with our lives. In fact people who suggest that debt should be eliminated are laughed at. For years now, Bono, the lead singer of the group U2, who is a wonderful testimony to the power of the gospel has been suggesting that the United States and other Western nations take this verse seriously and help others nations live by it, by canceling the debts they owe to us. Bono has been ridiculed, but his message is beginning to be heard.
But we know, our debts are not limited to finances and our creditors are not limited to financial institutions. We carry many other debts that can be disabling. There are emotional debts that are often even more burdensome than the financial debts. These often take the form of revenge. We have been hurt and we have a right to repay that hurt. The other party owes it to us, and it is up to us to remind them that they owe us as we extract the debt. Sometimes the debt of revenge looks quite silly. According to an article in the June 4, 2001 Chicago Tribune, “it all started in 1998 when Michael Zwick of Glenview, Illinois, complained about his neighbor's new fence. It left a dark area behind the garage where gang members might hang out, he felt. In response to his complaint, the neighbor, Jean Craft, according to The Chicago Tribune, told Zwick not to put his recycling bins on the public parkway in front of her house because they were killing the grass.
In retaliation, Zwick "blew leaves back onto her property, let his weeds grow 12 inches high, and aimed a fake security camera at her yard." Then she "moved his recycling bins, complained to police about snow plowed onto her land and bought new shades and drapery to cover her windows."
The village of Glenview finally wrote an ordinance that prohibited Zwick from putting his recycling bins close to his neighbor's house. Zwick defies the ordinance and has been given 10 citations and charged $1,000 in fines. The case has now gone to Cook County court.
Says Zwick, "We're digging in."
Source Kevin Miller at PreachingToday.com.
Yes, the debts we try to collect can look pretty silly, but they are still destructive.
Other times there is nothing silly about the debts we carry, rather they are deeply painful. When my Grandmother was 90, she talked to Sheryl and me about her childhood. She was born in Trieste, Austria, the oldest in her family and at the time, her father was a vicious man who drank all the money he earned and was terribly abusive to his family. The situation was so bad that, while she was yet a young child, her mother had showed her where a pistol was stored so if necessary she could defend herself. After immigrating to the US and settling in Pittsburgh, a neighbor led the family to the Christ, and my Grandfather was gloriously saved. His later life was lived for Christ. However, at 90, my grandmother’s eyes filled with sorrow, when she said, “I think he was sorry, but my Father never apologized for the terrible things he did to us as children.” That regret became an emotional debt that was never settled. Often the emotional and social debts we carry can be even more damaging than financial debt.
That is why Paul says, “Don’t run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other.” When we run up debts, our lives and the lives of people we care about can be destroyed. When we carry debt to our graves, it is those who are left who suffer.
And folks, this week we have been and we will be reminded of the frailty of life. Last Sunday two dramas unfolded: At 4:00 am, 15 year old Jessica Wrona died when the driver of the car she was riding in lost control, crashed, and she was killed. All week and for a lifetime to come those who knew Jessica will struggle with the debts they felt they owed her. Life is fragile. At the same time Hurricane Katrine made landfall to the east of New Orleans and within 48 hours this nation was facing the most devastating natural disaster in our history. Even now, a full week later, the number of dead is not even being estimated. Life is fragile. And next Sunday at 8:45, 9:03, 9:43 and 10:10 we will remember the day our nation was attacked and passenger planes used as weapons. Life is fragile. And so Paul says, “Don’t run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other.”
What is that Debt of Love? It is the outflow of life. Often we look at the bad or terrible things we face and ask why? But our lives are also filled with joyful moments, and healing moments and lifegiving relationships. These are the currency in the debt of love we owe.
Earlier Kitty Perkins read our call to worship from Philippians 2 which began, “If you've gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care-- 2then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends.”
During Jesus ministry, one woman with a reputation for sin understood the debt of love. Listen to the story from Luke 7:36-48. “Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table. 37When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, 38and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.
When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner."
Jesus answered him, "Simon, I have something to tell you."
"Tell me, teacher," he said.
"Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii,[a] and the other fifty. 42Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?"
Simon replied, "I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled."
"You have judged correctly," Jesus said.
Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. 45You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. 46You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. 47Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little."
Then Jesus said to her, "Your sins are forgiven." The debt of love is found in the currency of forgiveness.
This event angered the people around Jesus. In Matthew’s gospel, a similar event was the breaking point for Judas to begin planning for the betrayal of Jesus. Yet the words of Jesus set the stage for the debt of love we owe one another. “Her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.”
But before you let that debt become a burden, look at the joy it brought the woman. When we love much, the result is a peace and joy to which nothing can compare.
For most of us, the debt we live under in our relationship to God, is guilt and fear. The law is clear, and we know we have broken that law. In Jesus’ day, to help clarify the law, thousands of interpretations and refinements were added. However, Paul is right when he says, “When you love others, you complete what the law has been after all along.” All the don’t’s from the commandments, are summed up in the law of Love, the command to love one another as we would be loved.
So what do we do? Well, debt can be resolved in one of three ways. You can pay it off. Or, someone else can pay it. Or the debt can be forgiven by the creditor. And I believe that I the relationship with God and one another that is what has happened. God has forgiven the debt of Guilt and shame. Jesus Christ has payed the debt of sin on the cross. And now we are left with the debt of love that we pay as we serve one another. What does your account look like? Having been forgiven our sins, and having been given new life, we each now have the opportunity to respond in love. But don’t wait, while the debt of love will never be paid in full, it is in the paying of it that we find meaning and purpose in life.
Not long before his death, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to the congregation at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church:
“If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don't want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. Every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize; that isn't important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards; that's not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school. I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody.” And may that be our desire as well.
