Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent

A cardinal serenades the spring.

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/031312.cfm

Pay back what you owe!

I have a simple diagram for reflecting on the economy: Give, Receive, Make, Take. Give and receive are how families are supposed to live. It should be our fundamental experience of life with other people. Take and make are how sinful people live in their sinful world.

• Give: If there is hunger, I feed it. Whether the hunger is mine or another’s hardly matters. Hunger is real and it deserves both attention and generosity.
• Receive: if I am hungry I eat. Whether I eat my own food or receive it as a gift from another hardly matters. Everything is gift. 
• Take: I see that no one cares about me; I’ll have to take what I need.  I might steal the food, or force, manipulate or con others into surrendering it to me.
• Make: If I think you should eat I’ll make you eat: “
• Do me a favor and eat this food. I’ll feel better for your eating it. I want to be known as generous, compassionate and caring; and if you don’t eat this food, I am none of those things.” 
• Sometimes generosity comes with strings attached and those conditions make it unpalatable.

God’s economy begins with God’s unlimited resources and his eager willingness to share with us. “Mi casa es su casa!”  God says in Spanish. My house is your house. In the Christian world parents joyfully whisper that word to their newborn children. House, clothing, food and toys are shared according to each one’s needs. Ownership is temporary as hand-me-down clothes pass through the chain. If there are shortages they too are shared equally according to need. Children who experience life in this environment have less fear of the world around them, even as they discover its standards are different.

Today’s parable of the wicked servant contrasts these two ways of life. The protagonist is extraordinarily self-centered. He thinks only of himself and his survival. The master and the rest of his household, on the other hand, take it for granted that debts can be repaid or, if necessary, absorbed by the whole household. There is no need for callous treatment of one another. When the wicked servant is “handed over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt” it’s because he does not belong in that fellowship.

Someone might object that my diagram is simplistic. Among adults in the real economy, there are money, debts and interest. I have no problem with that. Money is how goods and services are valuated, distributed and exchanged. They help keep a system like capitalism honest.

Haven’t you noticed we have created bankruptcy to deal with overwhelming debts? For the most part we have given up on jails, poor houses and torture; punishment of debtors does not reimburse the system and it only costs more. 

With our recent experiments of credit for everyone some people will necessarily be overwhelmed by their profligate spending. Others will be caught unawares when the economy changes. Banks and credit agencies know that and are willing to absorb the costs of foolish spending. Why would they give teenagers credit cards if they weren’t? If the system needs tightening – if, for instance, we never let too many poor people buy houses on credit – the system will learn from the experience and make the adjustment.
There are inequities of course. Many in our world live to take and make; they cannot conceive give and receive. 

In the meanwhile you and I can learn to trust more in God’s bountiful goodness. His pockets are very deep; his credit is very good. With that confidence we can afford to go out on a limb for one another. We’ll get burned occasionally, of course, and learn from the experience. So long as more than two people live on this planet we will have to make sacrifices for one another. But we’ll always here God's reassuring word: “There’s more where that came from.”