Text: Deuteronomy 15:1-11; 24:10-15

Every seventh year you must cancel all debts.

That’s the end of the sentence. Cancel all debts. Period. And in some ways it’s the end of the sermon. There’s really nothing more clear. The problem is humans are gonna human. So nothing is simple. And the text recognizes that too, so there is more to say. But before I go on, I invite you to think about debt that you currently have or debt that you’ve carried at some point in your life. 

There are very few people who have made it any distance through adulthood without accruing some level of debt. Student loan. Mortgage. Car payment. Credit cards. Medical debt. Our social and economic systems rely on debt. We call it credit, but actually our economy depends on people indebting themselves to others. Individuals indebting themselves to corporations. 

Now imagine – or remember – what it feels like to not owe that money any more. To have made the last payment, or been granted debt relief or been given a gift that allows the freedom of not having to make that payment. And what would it have felt like, at your most in debt, to have that debt cancelled?

In my own experience, it has meant a) increased financial stability and freedom – both to be generous and to care for my family and b) it’s a huge emotional and mental weight lifted. 

All the verbs in this first section of the text give that feeling of a weight lift, of expansiveness.  They are words like relieve, forgive, cancel, don’t demand repayment. These are instructions that, if followed, break the cycle of generational accumulation of wealth and generational indebtedness. This is a system that reboots and updates every seven years. Borrowers have the opportunity to get the help that they need when they need it but they are not reduced farther and farther into debt, such that their children then need to take on their burden.

If you follow these instructions, the text says, there won’t be any poor persons among you!

If we look around at the capitalist culture in which we live, generational wealth and poverty have deep roots. I’m sure it’s also global but it seems also to be uniquely American: the drive for individual success, for personal wealth accumulation, for dominion. The “american dream” is built on individualism and competition. Borrowing and debt is all a part of it.

Again, from my own experience, as a white woman with a white spouse, we have benefitted from the accumulation of generational wealth. Literal inheritances allowed us to purchase our home, along with support from other family members. I know we’re not alone in this experience among our peers, or (I suspect) in this congregation. I had to take out student loans for college but inherited wealth allowed me to pay them off earlier than I might have otherwise.  Generational wealth is not metaphorical or theoretical. I have experienced it.

My white forbears built up their wealth on their access to land seized from indigenous people and/or at the exclusion of non-white people. My ancestors and elders have home equity that has been passed down, they were able to take advantage of farm subsidies, get loans to build businesses. All of those are in my family’s generational history of wealth. They were not thinking about it that way at the time. Like their immigrant peers they thought, “This land is empty. This is our opportunity for religious freedom and to build a farming community.”

For other families, the accumulation has not been of wealth but of debt: predatory lending, cash bail, wildly expensive medical systems are all especially hard on people of color in our country and communities. Cash bail alone means that for the lack of $100 there are people sitting in jail, separated from their families, losing their jobs, being evicted, which in turn directs additional family and community members down a spiral of poverty that ripples into next generations.

There are churches and individuals trying to do what the systems are not. There are people and communities who are reading the word of God from Deuteronomy and following through. They are doing things like paying the bail so that people can return to their lives. They are buying up medical debt and allowing humane repayment terms or forgiving interest, or paying down portions of the principal. There are folks who are giving up some of the inherited wealth to balance the scale of inherited poverty. They are offering that deep breath of relief and the dignity of being freed from indebtedness.

In reality, Deuteronomy wasn’t written for systems and corporations and companies. It was written to people. Of course companies and corporations are made up to people who created those systems and we should continue to advocate and act to interrupt them. But these laws are somewhat smaller scale and they are relational and communal in their intent. 

So I invite you to now think about if you have ever been asked for money. If you have ever lent someone money and wondered if you’d get paid back. If you’ve decided not to give, even though you have the extra, because there’s no return on investment. Or you don’t know what they’re going to do with it.

This is what feels the most uncomfortable (at least to me) about these instructions. This is written to people. The Israelite community didn’t have banks that were lending folks money. There were just people – some with more wealth and some with less – asking and being asked to lend. I’m not sure about you, but there are not too many people who I’d ask money of – not for myself, anyway. I’ve definitely hit up my parents – especially as a young adult. 

My local ice-cream shop, (shout out to Black-owned business Creamy Cone) had their credit card system go down. And they know no one carries cash. They continued to operate, asking people to come back in later or to make it up the next time they came in for a scoop. That’s a tremendously generous way of thinking about their community. In some ways a risk – what if people don’t remember to pay back their debt? But it also builds good will and it means they don’t have to close down for the day and lose business altogether. 

In some ways, these instructions are about building a community of trust. They expect a level of comfort in asking for and offering help to each other. And then giving, giving generously and giving even though we may not get the money back. Even though we know that once the seven year mark comes around that money is gone. (Except that it’s not gone, it has helped a neighbor who needs it).

I kind of love verse 9 in the CEB version of this reading: “watch yourself!” it says. God knows what people are thinking – Oh crap. The 7th year is coming up, I’m just going to keep my money in my pocket. I’m going to save my generosity for year 1. But God is insistent: Do not game the system! Instead, (and I’m noticing the verbs again) “don’t be hard hearted” and “be generous,” and “give generously,” and “open your hand wide.” 

This kind of mutuality in both giving and asking for what you need requires a LOT of trust. It requires trust in the seven-year-cycle system and in the community who is implementing it. The texts carves out exceptions for outsiders, which make me a little annoyed at God – like, why doesn’t everyone get in on the deal – but it really is focussed on building the trust and also the accountability within the Israelite community.

I just joined the leadership team of a fundraising alliance in Southeast East Seattle. Our school PTA’s are working together to address the funding inequity in schools both within our neighborhood and advocating for greater equity within the Seattle school ecosystem. We notice how much better resourced our North Seattle schools are and it’s unfair! We struggle with the how to both work within our own community to create trust and build buy-in for all of us to have enough and to radiate out that model of enough-ness to neighborhoods where PTAs can buy multiple teaching positions.

It’s a challenge. I think of what’s mine as MINE! My house, my car, my investments, my money, my stuff, my school, my program!  It’s super uncomfortable to hear God’s commandment to give of those things and to give generously, not expecting a return. The return is to an enriched and flourishing community. And it builds a system and the community in which we can trust each other to do the same – to respond in generosity and abundance when when anyone has need, then truly no one person will never see need – including me. This is the kind of discomfort that continues to center us – the faithful community – in living out of abundance rather than scarcity.

These are Biblical instructions rooted in sabbath. We think of Sabbath as rest, recuperation, relief from work. But it could well be framed as ceasing to produce, to accumulate, to make more, grow more. God’s vision for creation is not endless production, endless trade and accumulation but resting in enoughness. A practice of rest and reset in a cycle of sacred sevens. Every seven days, every seven years, we remove ourselves from the economy. We stop. And we do so as a community. We’re in it together.

So this big thing – which absolutely feels like it’s too hard to do on my own – is possible when we’re all in it together. May we continue to live into it and into an economy of trusting, mutual, generous community.

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