The Neighborhood Podcast
This is a podcast of Guilford Park Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, North Carolina featuring guests from both inside the church and the surrounding community. Hosted by Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Fearing, Head of Staff.
The Neighborhood Podcast
"Sacred the Body: Never Coercing" (January 19, 2025 Sermon)
Imagine a world where the crushing weight of debt is lifted every seven years. What if ancient scriptures hold the key to a more equitable society today? This episode uncovers the revolutionary financial practices outlined in Deuteronomy 15, delving into the implications of debt remission and how these age-old teachings could inform our modern fight against economic inequality. By examining how these commandments aimed to prevent the creation of a permanent debtor class, we draw parallels to the pressing issue of medical debt in the United States, urging listeners to reflect on how faith can guide us toward a more compassionate and fair society.
We also explore the powerful intersection of faith, healthcare, and social justice, highlighting the role of religious communities, like the Moravians, in advocating for change. Despite the historical absence of the Jubilee year's practice, faith communities are encouraged to strive for seemingly impossible ideals. Through inspiring stories of grace and service, we emphasize the transformative impact of embodying generosity and justice. As we consider these teachings, we invite you to envision a society where hope and purpose are fostered through divine disruption and gratitude, reminding us of our shared commitment to a just future for all.
Follow us on Instagram @guilfordparkpresbyterianchurch
Follow us on Facebook @guilfordparkpc
Follow us on TikTok @guilfordparkpreschurch
Website: www.guilfordpark.org
Scripture lesson today is Deuteronomy 15, 1 through 11 and 15. Every seventh year, you shall grant remission of debts, and this is the manner of the remission Every creditor shall remit the claim that is held against a neighbor, not exacting it from a neighbor who is a member of the community, because the Lord's remission has been proclaimed From a foreigner. You may exact it, but you must remit your claim on whatever any member of your community owes you. There will, however, be no one in need among you, because the Lord is sure to bless you in that land that the Lord, your God, is giving you as a possession to occupy. If only you will obey the Lord, your God by diligently observing this entire commandment that I command you today, when the Lord, your God, has blessed you as he promised you, you will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow. You will rule over many nations, but they will not rule over you.
Speaker 1:If there is among you anyone in need, a member of your community, in any of your towns, within the land that the Lord, your God, is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted towards your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be. Be careful that you do not entertain a mean thought, thinking the seventh year, the year of remission, is near, and therefore view your needy neighbor with hostility and give nothing. Your neighbor might cry to the Lord against you and you will incur guilt. Give liberally to be begrudging when you do so, for on this account, the Lord, your God, will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake, since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth. I therefore command you open your hand to the poor and needy nations.
Speaker 2:Friends, let us pray, o Lord. May the words of our mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, o Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen, amen, all right. 613. I counted each of them and those are the number of laws in the Hebrew Scriptures. I did not actually count all of them. I trusted Google to give me that information. And no, there will not be a quiz at the end of this sermon on all 613. But many of them I know, or I suspect you know well. You shall have no other gods. You shall not take the Lord's name in vain. Thou shall not commit murder. I hope we all know those don't follow, but might still know, such as the commandment not to eat the thigh muscle of an animal in remembrance of the story of Jacob dislocating his thigh in that all-night-long wrestling match with God. Then there are other laws that I'm betting you've never heard a sermon on, like the law forbidding the cooking of meat and milk with one another or the law against muzzling an ox while it's plowing.
Speaker 2:613. That is the number of laws in the Hebrew scriptures, what you and I call the Old Testament. In fact, if you've ever seen one of our Jewish neighbors wear fringes on their garments. These are done to symbolize the number 613. The word for these fringes are called tzitzit I'm probably butchering that pronunciation, but that's as close as I can get it and the letters of those words numerically add up to 600. And each of these fringes has eight threads and five knots. So 600 plus eight plus 5 is 613.
Speaker 2:So for our Jewish siblings, those fringes are a constant reminder of what they call the mitzvot, or the laws that God gave, as it's sometimes called. They primarily show up in Leviticus, chapter 25, and in the passage that Maria read for us today, deuteronomy 15. Both of them, in slightly different ways, instruct the Israelites to build into their rhythms of life certain financial practices that break endless cycles of debt. And the Israelites, I think we can safely assume, knew a thing or two about deadly harmful cycles. You see, these radical financial policies were given to the Israelites after they escaped Egypt. There they were not seen as human. Instead they were seen as commodities to be bought and sold. As commodities to be bought and sold, their worth was inextricably tied to the level of their productivity, to the amount of wealth that they brought Pharaoh and the oligarchs of his inner circle and, in response to this cruel and callous economy, god, as we know, saved the Israelites, led them across the divided Red Sea and then, on the other side, gave them laws to assure that no such callous economy ever happened again.
Speaker 2:If you want to summarize the 613 laws of the Hebrew Scriptures, you could do so by imagining God simply saying to God's people. Though by imagining God simply saying to God's people, we do things differently. We do not benefit from the poverty of others. We will not be known as the people who are at each other's throats in some sort of zero-sum game where most have to lose in order for a very few to win. God said this 613 different ways throughout the Torah, but, as I said, few of those 613 cause more consternation or offense than those that proclaim the year of the jubilee when debts are to be cleared and financial slates wiped clean.
Speaker 2:There are few verses in scripture that threaten the status quo more than these financial policies that are intended to prevent some sort of permanent debtor class. Or, as Walter Brueggemann puts it, these regulations assert a limit to a predatory economy in which creditors enslave debtors in perpetuity. The matter is immediately contemporary for us, because our economy readily preys upon those who remain hopelessly and forever in debt among us and y'all. There's perhaps no greater example in our time of this truth than the plight of medical debt in our country. Currently, I'm told, more than 100 million Americans owe a collective 22020 billion billion, with a B dollars in medical debt.
Speaker 2:Medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy in our country. Six in ten uninsured people defer important medical procedures, treatments and medications because of the exorbitant amounts, the exorbitant costs, and the same is true for one in five people who do have insurance. And on this Martin Luther King Day Jr weekend, it's important to note that the problem of medical debt disproportionately affects our neighbors who are persons of color. Black adults are 50% more likely than white adults to have medical debt, and the same is true of 35% of Hispanic adults. Now, y'all the reasons for this problem are too many to list in a 15-minute sermon. That's part of why we are trying to extend this conversation outside of the sermon, with our panelists next week and with our the on tap this weekend or this Wednesday. Rather, if you'd like to hear with people from far more expertise on the matter than I, I invite you to come to that panel next week. They will be able to speak with much more authority than me on the matter of how the system does or doesn't work. So my job as your pastor, as one who is not a healthcare professional, is to hopefully help us think critically, theologically and compassionately about how our collective faith might inform our views on the subject, on this subject that affects literally every single one of us literally every single one of us.
Speaker 2:And admittedly, part of the problems of this conversation is that our modern world and the world in which today's scripture was written can seem rather disconnected. After all, there was no such thing as a million-dollar MRI machine when those 613 laws were given. Despite rather inflated accounts in the Bible of people living hundreds and hundreds of years, we know that life expectancy has lengthened over time. There was no massive bureaucracy of insurance or pharmaceutical companies when the year of Jubilee was dreamed into existence. So all of those things are very different. But on the other hand, some things haven't changed. When left unchecked, you and I can often be governed by greed instead of grace. Just as when the Bible was written thousands of years ago, we still have those in power that behave in all sorts of unethical ways to protect the status quo that keeps broken systems broken.
Speaker 2:And what makes medical debt particularly problematic and heartbreaking is that most people incur it in moments of their lives when they are most vulnerable. Unlike most other forms of debt, medical debt is incurred through no fault of the debtor, many times when the person has literally no other choice but to sign on the dotted line. The title of today's sermon is Never Coercing, and that comes from that Ruth Duck hymn that we sang last week Sacred the Body, because I believe that forcing people into enormous debt when they have little to no choice in the matter is inherently coercive. And that's exactly the thing Deuteronomy 15 is speaking against, and therefore I believe so should the church. And though the Jubilee texts admittedly in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, make no mention of medical debt specifically, the heart of those practices speaks directly to those in need, who know only too well the burden of having those sums of money hanging over their head. I believe God envisions a world where no one needs to choose between a life-saving medical procedure and feeding themselves or paying rent or getting a loan. Simply put, deuteronomy 15 is God saying a permanent debtor class is wrong Full stop.
Speaker 2:But here's where things get a little bit tricky. Most biblical scholars will admit that we actually have very little evidence to prove that the Israelites actually practiced the mandates of Leviticus 25 and Deuteronomy 15, at least completely. Now this admission often prompts sighs of relief from those who find the year of Jubilee troublesome, unrealistic or even downright offensive to our capitalistic senses. If they didn't practice it. We might say well then, why should we? And while that sort of get out of jail free card might be tempting for us, I don't find that particular argument to be a faithful one, and here's why it has long been the work of us, the people of faith, to utter into being that which others consider impossible, foolish and naive. Think about it.
Speaker 2:Each and every month we gather around the Lord's table and proclaim the good news of the resurrection, and we give thanks that God has conquered death and violence. In a world that well, last time I checked still has so much death and violence, the life of faith calls us to make some pretty outlandish claims that are no less holy because others might scoff at us for saying them. You know, just a few weeks ago we read and sang together Mary's Magnificat in Luke's Gospel, where she has the audacity to claim that God will send the rich away empty and fill the hungry with good things. And Mary is so sure of these things that she sings of them in the past tense, as if they've already been fulfilled. But we look into a world that has so much inequality in it. But that doesn't mean that we don't sing the Magnificat. On the contrary, it means we sing it even more loudly.
Speaker 2:And so, as the church, you and I are stewards of this radical text, a text that no doubt compelled Jesus to instruct us to pray. Forgive us our debts as we want, you know it well. Forgive us our debtors. But it can feel all so overwhelming. You might be sitting in your pew or in your home thinking right now well, this is all well and good, this is really terrible, but what can I do about it? What can we do?
Speaker 2:You know, a few weeks ago, in Advent, we worshiped around the theme do the good that is yours to do. On that Sunday, we journeyed through the text of the crowds, the tax collectors and the soldiers in front of John the Baptist, saying well, okay, these sermons are great and everything, but we, what should we do? Well, friends, you and I cannot single-handedly repair our broken health care system, but we can talk about it. Do what we're doing right now, inform ourselves, spread awareness of the problem and also, even more importantly, we can be good news to our neighbors, whether that's collecting pennies for hunger, as we did just a few minutes ago, or when we collect the loose offering of the deacon's fund that go to support our neighbors in need. Often those funds go to pay for bills which may or may not be medical ones. But it's not uncommon when people come to me to ask for help to pay for utilities or rent for folks who have fallen behind on their payments, often because of an unexpected medical expense.
Speaker 2:But other churches have found ways to relieve medical debt by leveraging their money to purchase that debt for pennies on the dollar. A few members of our group, the Word this Week, let me know that the News and Record this week recently highlighted the ministry of a Moravian church, trinity Moravian church, in nearby Winston-Salem. A few years ago they learned of a profit called Undue Medical Debt, which is about 10 years old and is run, interestingly enough, by two former debt collections executives who know the system pretty well. So, with extensive knowledge of how that system works, these two folks decide to flip the script and make this nonprofit that forgives debt instead of collects it. They negotiate with debt collectors to purchase medical debt for pennies on the dollar, and so a few years ago this church, trinity Moravian, in Winston, set a modest goal of raising $5,000, just $5,000, to partner with Undue Medical Debt to purchase the medical debt of their neighbors in Forsyth County and that $5,000 that that church raised purchased over a million dollars of medical debt for 1,356 families around Winston-Salem. 1,356 people received a letter out of the blue informing them that their jubilee year had come.
Speaker 2:What a beautiful embodiment of Deuteronomy 15. What a tangible way to care not only for our neighbor's souls but for their bodies as well, as we talked about last week and at our gathering of the word this week. Last Tuesday, one of our participants asked what we as a congregation should do to actively work towards lifting the weight of medical debt, and so, with their blessing, I plan to ask either the Justice and Peacemaking Committee and or the Mission Committee for their blessing to maybe create a small fund here at the church if we would like to partner and do something similar to what our Moravian neighbors did. Imagine one of our neighbors right here, within a mile of where we're gathering this day, walking back from their mailbox to open a letter informing them that their medical debt was paid in full by Guilford Park Presbyterian Church. Our efforts may not seem to make much of a difference in the grand scale of this epidemic of medical debt.
Speaker 2:But for that person, I guarantee you, it would be life-changing. And in the meantime, we'll join together in song so that, like Mary and her Magnificat, we can sing into being that which others might say is ridiculous, a pipe dream. So, as one body with one voice, you and I can dare to dream that dream of Deuteronomy 15 and envision a place where not one more person need to be enslaved to a predatory economy, for medical debt disproportionately affects the least of these.
Speaker 2:So now, as you know the drill by now, we will sing our latest homegrown hymn. It's sung to the tune that we use to sing Come Thou, fount of Every Blessing, so most of you should know it. It's one of the tricks that us hymn. It's sung to the tune that we use to sing Come Thou, fount of Every Blessing, so most of you should know it. It's one of the tricks that us hymn writers do to get us to sing new hymns, so that you're not having to focus on the music but can instead focus on the words themselves.
Speaker 2:Verse one gives voice to God's declaration of divine disruption, calling us to interrupt cycles of death and to bear one another's burdens, which is a shout out to Galatians 6. Verse 2 recalls the story of God saving the Israelites from Pharaoh, and such recollection compels followers of Jesus to look for places around us where neighbors are being exploited. Verse 3 admits just how offensive the notion of dead relief is to those of us who are accustomed to the way things are. The members of the Word this week suggested that this hymn play around with the beautiful imagery in Deuteronomy 15 of tight-fistedness versus open hands of compassion. So that's in that verse. So that's in that verse. And the final verse summarizes everything else by calling us to serve others, by sharing a grace unfettered by the norms that we assume are the way things have to be. And likewise, the last line is a direct quote of the Lord's prayers insistence that we forgive our debtors. So, together, let's complete this sermon.
Speaker 3:I invite us to rise in body or in spirit as we sing. God Declares Divine Disruption. Thank you, the Church of Christ of Latter-day Saints we love you, lord, and we pray for you is the deep people demanded. Our history is a scramble, for we've come a long way. In our hearts we've a poor old tale as we head not bear away, though at times we may try to instill that we may instill grace. We are interested with mercy and we may all live in grace. Now let's tell him that justice is set. That was the thing we all can do. We are people saved from conflict and we're all to serve him. Let our hearts be set free. May we hear the grace of Christ. We may come on a new day. Let us be the glory of Christ and we'll hear of Jesus. Amen, son, we're here, all we need.
Speaker 2:In the name of God, the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer, may all of us, God's children, say Amen.