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WHO IS LORD OF THE MARKET? Homily • St. Augustine of Canterbury Anglican Church • Toronto November 23, 2008 • C. Lind About that time Jesus was going through the grain fields on the Sabbath; and his disciples, feeling hungry, began to pluck some heads of grain and eat them. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him, 'Look, your disciples are doing what is forbidden on the Sabbath.' He answered, 'Have you not read what David did when he and his men were hungry? He went into the house of God and ate the sacred bread, though neither he nor his men had a right to eat it, but only the priests. Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and they are not held to be guilty? But I tell you, there is something greater than the temple here. If you had known what this text means, "It is mercy that I require, not sacrifice," you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Humanity is lord of the Sabbath.' (Matthew 12:1-8) I have chosen this passage to preach on today because I think it has a lot to say to us on this day, in the middle of the greatest financial crisis in the last 80 years. This is a story about Jesus being challenged by the authorities of his day but it is also about law, about who gets to interpret the law and about who bears the burden of obedience to the law. Let's go back and reconstruct the scene. Jesus and his friends have been travelling. They've been travelling by foot, walking, in a very hot climate. Perhaps they haven't eaten since yesterday or even for several days. They pass a grain field and decide that if they were to eat some of the grain, no one would mind. (Keep in mind that other scriptural passages record an obligation on the part of landowners not to harvest the grain at the edges of the fields because that's how the poor feed themselves.) Unfortunately, the Pharisees DO mind. They challenge Jesus on the grounds that his disciples are breaking the law. The law states that no one shall harvest on the Sabbath. How can Jesus defend his followers? Let us now shift to modern day and ask ourselves what is the most powerful law governing our behaviour - a law so powerful that it even prevents the hungry from being fed. The answer can only be the law of the market. Now this law is different from the law that Jesus refers to because it is not written down in any law book. We can't go to any one place and look up its requirements. And yet, this law is sold to us as a law as real as nature, having been discovered, identified and codified by the high priests of economic science. Indeed it is described to us as a law of a higher order. It is a law guided by an “invisible hand”. It is so insidious that our behaviour supports it even when our ideas are opposing it. Do you remember the story of the shepherd losing a lamb on the Sabbath? When Jesus is challenged by the Pharisees with this test case, he replies that of course a shepherd would rescue his lamb on the Sabbath because "the Sabbath was made for humanity not humanity for the Sabbath". This story of the grain harvesting on the Sabbath is told several times by the different gospel writers. In Mark's retelling of the story, he adds that very line which makes the identical point. Why are the laws there in the first place? They were made to be servants, not masters of humanity. When we shift to the present day, we must ask the same question of the law of the market. Was humanity made to serve the market or were markets created to serve humanity? For over 30 years we have been struggling to make sense of a new economic reality. That reality is a revolution and it is called economic globalization. It has been led by the integration of national financial markets into a single, global financial market. I say it is a revolution because it is a turning upside down. When national markets are integrated into global markets, they escape regulatory control. When that happens, the relationship between society and economy is turned upside down. Instead of society determining economic relationships, now the economy determines social relationships. Sometimes our regulatory power breaks down because it is too difficult to operate. At other tomes, we actively dismantle it because we think that is the right thing to do. In recent times we have been told that more wealth would be created by globalization but only if we became more competitive. So, we have steadily de-regulated our markets and we have conformed to the ethic of globalization, which required competition at all costs. We are now paying those costs. We are dealing with a global failure of credit markets and we are learning first hand just how much management market systems require As you will see from the insert I prepared for your bulletin, when competition becomes the only criteria by which we judge our activity, it leads to the kind of cold hearted calculation that causes us to abandon our neighbour, whether they are living on a subway grate in downtown Toronto, or in flooded New Orleans. The Gospel, on the other hand, is not about competition. It is about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and welcoming the stranger. It is about mercy, not sacrifice. When Jesus is challenged by the Pharisees about breaking the Law, he gives four responses. His first response is to quote a precedent, which justifies making an exception to the law based on need. David did it when he was fleeing from Saul and his people were hungry (1Sam 21:1-6). We were hungry so we did it. The second response that Jesus makes is a precedent based on exceptions being made to other, more powerful classes of people. The priests take bread from the temple but are not held to be guilty. We took food, we shouldn't be held guilty either. The third response that Jesus makes involves a countervailing authority. Jesus reinterprets scripture for them, the words of the prophet Hosea (6:6), specifically reminding them that "it is mercy I require, not sacrifice". In relation to the Sabbath law, Jesus is challenging the interpretation which seems to require sacrifice. It would certainly be a sacrifice, perhaps even an extreme sacrifice on the part of hungry travellers to pass a grain field and not eat just because it was the Sabbath. Jesus responds by identifying the chief characteristic of God's law as mercy not sacrifice. In relation to the law of the market, we need to ask whether the chief characteristic of this law is sacrifice or mercy. As the financial crisis rolls out across Canada, we will hear a lot about sacrifice. My question is always: sacrifice for whom? Premier McGuinty has already said that his initiatives against poverty may need to be delayed because of the crisis. Who then will pay the price? Is this the sacrifice that God requires? Jesus final response is the ultimate challenge to the authority of the law. "The Son of Humanity is lord even of the Sabbath." That is, there is no law greater than God. This is the most profound challenge to the tyranny of the market. Markets are made, so they can be unmade. They are made to be servants so they can be dethroned as masters. They can be judged if they require sacrifice rather than mercy. And they can never be absolute because only God is absolute. If we are to challenge the absolute, masterful and sacrificial power of the market, we must understand how it affects us. One of the key characteristics of a market society is that it isolates us as individuals. From a market point of view there is no such thing as society. Margaret Thatcher was famous for believing this. There are only individuals and markets. Families are only units of consumption based on economies of scale. Communities are only places where individuals come together to engage in economic activity. In lived reality we know that God is within us and between us. In our current model though, God can only exist as an interior, private concern since all public space has been devoured by markets. The isolation which results is a disease inflicted on human beings who discover true humanity as persons in community. Against this background we can see that the most radical act of Jesus was the creation of community. He started with a dozen. His promise though, was that all we required was for two or three to gather. On the back of the bulletin insert I have drawn you a little diagram to describe the role of the Church in the creation of community. We are all disciples of Jesus and we all share in a ministry. I have described the ministry using the conventional terms of pastoral, prophetic and priestly. Pastoral ministry involves forming and sustaining caring relationships – relationships of healing in a broken world. Prophetic ministry involves speaking out against injustice, naming the false value of involuntary sacrifice and calling for mercy. Priestly ministry involves symbolic action such as today, where we are remembering God’s story and representing God’s people as we struggle to be faithful witnesses. By forming community we are challenging the power and influence of the market. When we form community we fight the market's isolation. When we form community we can decide on human needs and purposes and demand that markets serve them. When we form community we create the power needed to challenge the idea that markets cannot be managed. When we form community, we substitute mercy for sacrifice. When we form community, we create a place for God in our lives.
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