I
have to tell you that I’m not a close follower of the stock market or financial
news in general. But last week, even I couldn’t
help but pay attention to the economic instability in China and its effects on
world markets, including ours. I knew it
was generating serious buzz when my 19-year-old son, who’s not exactly a heavy
investor, came back from work at Milburn Country Club talking about China and the Dow and what
it all might mean for us.
By Tuesday’s news cycle, the wild ride had
led to an 11-percent drop in value on U.S. stock indices. As I read about that on CNN’s website, I came
across what I think may be a modern-day icon of American life – maybe an anti-icon,
actually, if icons give us windows into heaven.
The article I was reading referenced CNN’s “Fear & Greed Index.” Yes, that’s right, the Fear & Greed
Index. It’s a composite of indices
reflecting market volatility, demand for junk bonds, stock-price strength and
breadth, demand for safe havens, put and call options, and market
momentum. I don’t even know what most of
those terms mean. But put them all
together, and apparently you get a metric of which emotion is driving the
market at the moment – with fear at one end of the dial and greed at the
other.
So, if fear is at one end and greed is at
the other, what’s in the middle? Boredom
and ennui? I’m not sure where I’d want the needle on that dial to point,
if these are our options for what drives our economics. Neither fear nor greed seem like particularly
inviting emotional spaces to inhabit.
All of this probably explains why I’m not a broker or a market analyst.
I don’t mean to make fun of our collective
reaction to last week. A lot of people, and
a lot of us in this room, have a lot riding on the success of the market,
whether we really understand it or not.
And that’s no less true for the Church than for any other part of
American society. After all, where does
the Church Pension Fund invest my pension contributions? Not in organic berry farms. And, by the way, where do your pledge
payments come from? Some come directly
from stock transactions; others come from income that won’t be there if the
stock market isn’t healthy. So I don’t
mean to minimize the fear we feel when the market takes a dive.
And … when that happens, as all the
financial advisers said this week, it’s vital that we stop and take a deep
breath. Come on, let’s do it together. Slowly.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Now, do it again. Isn’t that better? Nothing’s changed in the market, or in our
personal lives, because we took those deep breaths, but I’ll bet most of our
necks and shoulders are looser.
So, where’s the sermon, Fr. John? What does all this have to do with the Good
News of the kingdom of God?
Actually, everything.
Go back to the Old Testament reading we
heard today. Moses, by now a very old
man, is standing before the people of God after they’ve wandered 40 years in the
wilderness. They’re about to cross over
the Jordan, enter into the promised land, and create a society that was to be all
about revealing God’s kingship, God’s authority. That was God’s whole point in creating Israel
– that other peoples around them, worshiping carvings and heavenly bodies,
might see and know that this nation of Israel was “a wise and discerning
people,” specially blessed with statutes and ordinances written by God’s own
hand (Deuteronomy 4:6). Do not let these
things “slip from your mind,” Moses commands the people, but “make them known”
– to your children, yes, but also to the rest of the people around you (4:9). For God’s people are set aside, sanctified as
a missionary presence among the nations of the world.
Well, we are the new Israel, God’s
missionary people in this time and place.
And being that missionary presence doesn’t exactly jibe with fear and
greed. I don’t recall seeing a “Fear &
Greed Index” anywhere in Scripture. A
“Hope & Mercy Index,” absolutely – that’s the index of God’s love, measured
in board-feet of a cross. But a “Fear
& Greed Index”? As followers of
Jesus Christ, we’re specifically called to witness against fear and greed as dominant forces in our hearts and in our
culture. The phrase “fear not” appears
62 times in Scripture, and that doesn’t count similar things like “be strong”
and “take courage.”1 “Do not
let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus says, “and do not let them be afraid” (John
14:27). And greed? Well, in addition to making the list of the
seven deadly sins, greed comes up 36 times in Scripture. If you add “avarice” to that search, you get
one more – in Jesus’ vice list from today’s Gospel reading (Mark 7:21-22). It’s one of the “evil things … that defile a
person,” Jesus says (Mark 7:23). So when
it comes to fear and greed, I think we’d have to say Jesus is not a fan.
What would Jesus advocate instead? Well, taking a deep breath is a good place to
start. But from there, I think he might
tell us to remember – to remember who we are.
We are the baptized, and that means more than any other mark of identity
that competes for our allegiance. As
baptized people, we are God’s own children.
As baptized people, we are born anew, freed from the bonds of sin and
death. As baptized people, we are the
head and the heart and the hands of Jesus Christ today, his body blessed and
broken and given for the world he redeemed.
As baptized people, we are inheritors of eternal life. None of those realities appears on the
evening news when the stock market tumbles.
But neither the Chinese economy nor the Fed’s Board of Governors can
take these truths away. Remember who you
are.
And after we remember, maybe our next step
is to take a small, simple, sacramental stand.
Let me offer you the last thing you came to church expecting this morning
– a wealth-management tip from your priest.
You already know the conventional wisdom: Buy low and sell high, right? Well, here’s your heavenly wealth-management
tip to go along with that: Buy low, sell
high, and give always – especially in
times of fear and greed. No matter which
direction the dial is pointing on that Fear & Greed Index, it’s a sign to stop
and give away a little something extra to remind ourselves where hope and mercy
lie.
It’s a lesson we learned from our partners
in Haiti a few years ago. When we were
about to replace the roof on our church, we shared that news in worship during a
visit to Maniche. The people of St.
Augustin’s pledged to give us their profits from a day at the market, to help
us out with our roof. Not that they had
it to give … but they found the faithfulness to offer it.
Giving something extra won’t solve the
world’s problems. But that small gift – the
intentional practice of generosity when everything around you says, “Hold
tight” – that “generous act of giving,” as the Letter of James calls it, is a
sacrament (James 1:17). It’s an outward
and visible sign of the divine reality, the reign and rule of God, just beyond
the sometimes toxic bubble of our worldly fears and sins. Like dipping your fingers in holy water or taking
the body and blood of Christ, your small “generous act of giving” is a way be a
doer of the Word in real life. That small,
generous act will remind you who you
are and whose you are. In fact, it will heal your heart because it
will remind you, when you’re bound by the world’s ground rules, that you’re
actually sealed by the Holy Spirt in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever
– that you are a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, not a prisoner in the
kingdom of anxiety. For we serve a God
who leads faithful people to what seems like certain death at the water’s edge,
only to pave their way to freedom in a promised land. We serve a God whose prophets come out of
fiery furnaces and lions’ dens, singing songs of victory. We serve a God who is whipped and nailed to a
cross but calmly stares his tormentors down, knowing the empty tomb
awaits.
If God is for us, what shall we fear? And how much more security do we really think
we need?
1.
Blacketer, Larry. Musings of a Lifetime Bible Teacher. WestBow Press, 2013. 203.
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