[1] Dear colleagues and friends, the focus for this gathering is vitally important. Addressing harsh economic inequity and seeking to identify and undo the factors that cause it is \u2013 I will argue \u2013 critical to Christian witness, and therefore is at the heart of what it means to be church in the heritage of Martin Luther.<\/p>\n
[2] Since this group spent yesterday evening examining realities of economic inequity, I will not begin there except to emphasize that for many people, extreme poverty \u2013 especially\u00a0in the midst of\u00a0wealth \u2013 is brutal, often deadly.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cPoverty,\u201d declared Gandhi \u201cis the worst form of violence.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The data about the expanding wealth gap in the United States and around the globe is soul-searing.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/b><\/p>\n PART ONE: Practicing Economic Violence Obscures Proclamation of the Gospel<\/strong><\/b><\/p>\n [3] Let us step back for a moment to the end of the 20th century and then back further to the 16th<\/sup>\u00a0century. Do you recall the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999? During those protests, I was reading Luther and his economic ethics. I was stunned to hear that his words denouncing the emerging exploitative economy of his day were almost identical to the protesters\u2019\u00a0words. \u201cWell,\u201d I thought, \u201cmaybe I am just imagining this congruence.\u201d\u00a0So\u00a0I tested it during a talk I was giving at Augustana College. I read words from Luther and from the WTO protesters and asked people to vote on which was which. They could not tell the difference!<\/p>\n [4] \u201cWhy?\u201d I asked myself. Why did Martin Luther so fervently denounce economic norms that were the beginning of what, centuries later, assumed the name of capitalism?\u00a0 Pursuing\u00a0this question, I found that Luther\u2014like the protestors\u2014called people to defy the emerging exploitative economy of his day because it accumulated wealth for the rich by hurting the poor.<\/p>\n [5] For Luther, Jesus\u2019 call to love neighbor placed demands on economic life. The economic implications of neighbor-love were based on a presupposition about the nature of neighbor-love as a biblical norm, a presupposition inherent in Luther. It was that \u201clove\u201d as a biblical norm is NOT primarily an emotional feeling of good will or affection. It is a steadfast commitment to serve the well-being of neighbor, and neighbor is whomever one\u2019s life impacts.<\/p>\n [6] Today, two factors dramatically complexify neighbor-love. First, our economic impact on others is not primarily through personal interactions, but rather is through economic systems of which we are integral parts. Secondly, the economic systems of which we are a part that bring vast over-consumption and material goods to many United States citizens also bring devastating poverty or even death to neighbors whom we are called to love. Said differently, my economic practices \u2013 buying, consuming, investing \u2013 are dangerous or deadly for many people the world over.[2]<\/a>\u00a0 Of course, the examples are literally\u00a0endless\u00a0and they are tremendously painful to admit.\u00a0 I have been listening to voices of this truth since it was introduced to me by my Luther League group when I was about 14. We can talk much more about that event later but, for now, listen in on just three of those voices:<\/p>\n [7] The links between wealth and poverty are not limited to international; they are, of course, hauntingly real within the Unites States. How much of what I own was sold by stores that kept their retail prices low by paying their workers less than a living wage and by not offering health insurance?\u00a0 How many of those workers now are homeless? I recall a\u00a0woman living in the transition home for homeless women at my church in Seattle. She quietly explained that she had become homeless because her fulltime job did not pay enough for her to pay rent.<\/p>\n [8] This relationship between wealth and poverty leads to my main point in this Part One. Practicing economic ways that kill people or drive them further into poverty \u2013 if we could do otherwise \u2013 obscures our proclamation of the gospel. For me to say, \u201cGod loves you,\u201d while I also am destroying you does not work.<\/p>\n [9] Luther\u2019s\u00a0economic ethic \u2013 as an ethic of neighbor-love \u2013 offers vital resources for facing this untenable situation.\u00a0 Consider two aspects of his economic ethic:<\/p>\n These will be Parts Two and Three of my comments.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/b><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/strong><\/b><\/p>\n PART TWO: Threefold Moral Anthropology: Beloved, Broken, and Body of God\u2019s Love<\/strong><\/b><\/p>\n [10] Luther holds that we are, at one time, three things. First and foremost, before all else, we are beloved. This we cannot change by anything we do or fail to do. Neither individual sin, nor our participation in social sin \u2013 even the most heinous \u2013 can change this.\u00a0\u00a0We are, therefore, freed to hear and tell the truth about our engagement in collective economic sin because we know that it will not diminish God\u2019s love for us or negate God\u2019s saving us.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0Recall the words of the bishop from Mozambique. To this day, I could not take seriously the implications of that testimony and infinite others like it, unless I knew in the core of my being that my role in systems that impoverish countless people would not lessen God\u2019s love for me or endanger my salvation. God\u2019s love for us will not cease or dim.<\/p>\n [11] Secondly, we are broken. We are and always will be \u2013 on this side of death \u2013 broken by sin, both individual sin and collective or systemic sin such as systemic economic violence. Knowing this, we are freed from an expectation of perfection in the quest for economic justice. This is vitally important. It means that we need not be discouraged or stopped in our efforts to build more just economic practices by the fact that we can never fully avoid\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0forms of exploitation caused by the economic systems in which we are players.<\/p>\n [12] Thirdly, through God\u2019s action in Christ, we are body of God\u2019s love on Earth. God, Luther explains, gives two kinds of righteousness. The first places us in a radically different and right relationship\u00a0with God<\/em>; we are totally forgiven.\u00a0As a\u00a0\u201cfruit and consequence\u201d of this first gift, we are placed in a radically different relationship\u00a0with<\/em>\u00a0people<\/em>\u00a0by the “second kind of righteousness.\u201d\u00a0 It, he writes, is a manner of life spent in \u201cgood works\u201d that serve the wellbeing of neighbor.[4]<\/a>\u00a0 Luther holds that justification is transformative. Justified sinners gradually are changed through the indwelling presence of Christ, into people more attuned to seeking the well-being of others. The startling implications for economic life will become evident shortly.<\/p>\n [13] Let us be clear. This does not mean moral perfection; we are never \u2013 this side of death \u2013 fully freed from the human proclivity to serve self at the expense of others. We remain, in Luther\u2019s honest words, God\u2019s \u201crusty<\/em>\u00a0tools.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n [14] Of course, Luther\u2019s understanding of what happens to people when we are made righteous by God coheres with his central conviction that works do not and cannot\u00a0cause<\/em>\u00a0salvation. They\u00a0follow from\u00a0<\/em>salvation.\u00a0 Luther rattled the world with his astounding claim that God, NOT human works, make us righteous.\u00a0However, unlike some later forms of Lutheranism, Luther also insisted that works are a vital part of life for people who are justified by Christ.[6]<\/a>\u00a0\u201cFaith,\u201d he writes, \u201cis followed by works as a body is followed by its shadow.”[7]<\/a>\u00a0 “Faith in Christ does not free us from works,\u201d he writes, \u201cbut from false opinions concerning works, that is from the foolish presumption that justification is acquired by works.”[8]<\/a><\/p>\n [15] The form of \u201cworks\u201d relevant here are the works that embody \u201clove to our neighbor.\u201d Luther preaches: ”God makes love to our neighbor an obligation equal to love to himself.”[9]<\/a>\u00a0He identifies “two principles of Christian doctrine.” The first principle is that Christ gave himself that we may be saved, and we are saved by no effort of our own. The second “is love … as he gives himself for us … so we too are to give ourselves with might and main for our neighbor.” [16] Luther insists on the inseparability of the two: they are “inscribed together as on a tablet which is always before our eyes and which we use daily.\u201d[10]<\/a><\/p>\n [17] In short, God gives forgiveness as gift, regardless of how broken we may be, and then sends us forth to be God\u2019s hands and feet while remaining faulty and imperfect in doing so. According to Luther, our shortcomings in fulfilling this calling are vast.\u00a0Vaster yet is God\u2019s unfailing forgiveness of them and love for us despite them.<\/p>\n [18] Thus we find a brilliant and morally empowering moral anthropology.\u00a0For Luther we humans are at one time three things: beloved by a love that will not dim or cease, broken by sin, and body of God\u2019s love on Earth. As body of God\u2019s love (in ELCA terms: God\u2019s work, our hands), we are guided in all by one paramount norm. It is neighbor-love \u2013 seeking the wellbeing of neighbor \u2013 while meeting the needs of self and household.<\/p>\n PART THREE: \u00a0Implications for Economic Life<\/strong><\/b><\/p>\n [19] According to Luther, that norm of neighbor-love pertains to every aspect of life for Christians, including economic life. According to him, economic activity is intrinsically an act in relationship to neighbor. For this reason, economic practices that undermine the wellbeing of the neighbor (especially of the vulnerable) were to be rejected and replaced with alternatives. About this, Luther was vehement and specific.<\/p>\n [20] Luther’s was a time of “economic revolution gradually transforming Germany from a nation of peasant agriculturalists into a society with at least the beginnings of a capitalist economy.”[11]<\/a>\u00a0Consequences included high prices, growing disparity of wealth, and increasing poverty, especially of those with low or fixed income. How familiar does this sound?\u00a0 The poor “were a cheap labor pool for an expanding profit economy.” “Poverty was a growing social problem.”[12]<\/a>\u00a0Increasingly, large-scale international trade required capital which sought profitable investment. Thus, the ethics of capital transactions were in public discussion.<\/p>\n [21] In this context, Luther not only helped to establish a local social welfare system that created jobs and provided interest-free loans and health care to impoverished people.\u00a0 He also denounced theologically certain aspects of the emerging economy that exploited the poor\u2014including the freedom of capital from political constraints\u2014and admonished preachers to do the same.[13]<\/a>\u00a0Hear Luther in his comments on the tenth commandment in the Large Catechism: Speaking of the \u201cfree public market,\u201d he writes, \u201cDaily the poor are defrauded. New burdens and high prices are imposed. Everyone misuses the market in his own willful, conceited, arrogant way, as if it were his right and privilege to sell his goods as dearly as he pleases without a word of criticism.\u201d<\/p>\n [22] Luther taught that widely accepted economic practices that undermined the well-being of poor people ought to be eschewed by Christians. As alternatives, he established norms for everyday economic life that prioritized meeting human needs over maximizing profit. To illustrate: Christians, according to Luther, must refuse to charge what the market will bear when selling products if so doing jeopardizes the well-being of impoverished people.[14]<\/a>\u00a0Likewise, Christians may not buy an essential commodity when its price is low and sell when it is high, for so doing endangers the poor.[15]<\/a>\u00a0(Imagine that principle guiding life in the contemporary capitalist market economy, grounded as it is buying low and selling high.) Economic activity, Luther argued, should be subject to regulation. He extols, \u201cSelling ought not be an act that is entirely within your own power and discretion, without law or limit.\u201d Civil authorities ought to establish \u201crules and regulations,\u201d including \u201cceilings\u201d on prices.[16]<\/a><\/p>\n [23] Finally, Luther admonishes pastors regarding their roles and obligations in the face of economic practices that exploit the vulnerable. Pastors are to\u00a0unmask hidden injustice.[17]<\/a>\u00a0\u201cChrist has instructed us preachers not to withhold the truth from the lords but to exhort and chide them in their injustice\u2026.[saying] \u2018to keep still and let it appear that you do right when you do wrong, that we cannot and will not do\u2019 \u2026.for one should not remain silent about injustice\u2026.\u201d[18]<\/a><\/p>\n [24] In short, according to Luther, neighbor-love, as the norm for economic life, has at least three dimensions and demands:<\/p>\n * love manifest in charitable sharing;<\/p>\n * love manifest in disclosing and theologically denouncing exploitation of those who are vulnerable; and<\/p>\n * love manifest in ways of living that counter prevailing economic practices where they exploit the vulnerable or defy God in some other way.<\/p>\n [25] Loving in these forms, we are whom God has made us in justification:\u00a0 beloved creatures of God freed to embody Christ\u2019s love on\u00a0earth, and\u00a0doing this imperfectly indeed. As such, the church today is called to disclose, denounce, and counter\u00a0economic policies, practices, and assumptions that harm economically vulnerable neighbors whom we are called to love.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong><\/b>To illustrate:\u00a0The second kind of righteousness\u2014with neighbor-love at its heart\u2014would not allow Christians to profit at the expense of impoverished people. Thus, Christians could not condone inadequate wages in the quest of higher corporate gains. We would make every effort not to buy products made cheap by companies\u2019 failure to provide a living wage and health care benefits.[19]<\/a>\u00a0We could not fall asleep while tax policy benefits the rich and penalizes the poor. Neighbor-love would demand Christians to speak out against extractive industries that destroy indigenous people\u2019s lands and livelihoods in the US or in Ecuador, India, and around the world in order to benefit shareholders.<\/p>\n [26] The examples are endless. But they are summed up in the beautiful conclusion that God\u2019s work in Christ to give us two kinds of righteousness frees the church to bring faith to bear in both resisting the demands of advanced global capitalism and building the new economy.[20]<\/a>\u00a0This term — new economy \u2013 connotes the emerging worldwide movement to forge more equitable, ecological and democratic economic policies, practices, and worldviews. \u00a0\u00a0This is a life-giving, healing, liberating dimension of Christian vocation in the world.<\/p>\n [27] We do not have time to go into the question of wherein lies the moral-spiritul power to embody neighbor love when it includes\u00a0rejecting the opportunity to maximize profit at the expense of the poor. However, I have argued elsewhere that for Luther, this moral power was sustained by the presence of Christ dwelling within the Christian community, mediated by its practices. Christians as objects of Christ’s love become subjects of that love because it abides within them.[21]<\/a><\/p>\n In Closing<\/strong><\/b><\/p>\n [28] The extractive fossil fuel economy \u2013 global and national \u2013 will not endure long into the future. This is a physical fact. Earth cannot continue to provide what it requires and presupposes. Whether the future economy increases wealth concentration and inequity or decreases them will be determined by human decisions and actions.\u00a0 Lutherans have been given by God powerful resources for helping to move the economy toward economic justice.<\/p>\n [29] One of those resources is Luther\u2019s economic ethic of neighbor-love, grounded in his moral anthropology of human beings as beloved, broken, and body of Christ\u2019s love. This economic ethic of neighbor-love offers profound hope and guides the way!\u00a0 It invites Lutherans to re-affirm our beliefs and open ourselves to the vast life-giving potential that they hold. We may, in communities of faith, prayerfully and daringly risk living into our calling for economic life. Jesus walked this terrain at great cost. Luther was a daring, faithful and fallible follower.<\/p>\n [30] Walking that path would honor Luther\u2019s daring, risky, evangelical discoveries about what it means to be justified by God\u2019s grace.\u00a0\u00a0And it would weave us into the global movement to challenge systems that create economic inequity and build more socially just and ecologically sustainable economic policies, practices, and principles.<\/p>\n [31] In these faithful ventures and modes of living out our calling, we will be fallible, faulty, at times fearful, and encumbered by the incessant lure of self curved in on self\u2014as was Luther. However, that we are \u201crusty\u201d tools makes us no\u00a0less\u00a0precious tools in God\u2019s sight and in God\u2019s liberating healing work on Earth.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n NOTES:<\/p>\n [1]<\/a>\u00a0One recent report indicates that the three richest people in US (Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos) own wealth equal to bottom half of the US population. See Rupert Neate, \u201cBill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffet Are Wealthier Than Poorest Half of US,\u201d Guardian, November 8, 2017,\u00a0theguardian.com\/business\/2017\/nov\/08\/bill-gates-jeff-bezos-warren-buffett-wealthier-than-poorest-half-of-us<\/a>.\u00a0See also Oxfam International\u2019s reports: \u201cReward Work Not Wealth,\u201d\u00a0https:\/\/www.oxfam.org\/en\/research\/reward-work-not-wealth<\/a>\u00a0and \u201cAn Economy for the 99%,\u201d\u00a0https:\/\/www.oxfam.org\/en\/research\/economy-99<\/a>.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a>\u00a0For much more extensive inquiry into the relationship between the material wealth of some and the poverty of others, and for exploration into a response to that relationship grounded in Christian faith, see Cynthia Moe-Lobeda,\u00a0Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation<\/em>\u00a0(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013).<\/p>\n [3]<\/a>\u00a0Bernardino Mandlate, in presentation to the United Nations PrepCom for the World Summit on Social Development Plus Ten, New York, February 1999.<\/p>\n [4]<\/a>\u00a0Martin Luther, \u201cTwo Kinds of Righteousness,\u201d in Timothy F. Lull, ed.,\u00a0Martin Luther\u2019s Basic Theological Works<\/em>\u00a0(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989), 157, 158.<\/p>\n [5]<\/a>\u00a0Martin Luther,\u00a0D. Martin\u00a0Luther\u2018s Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe\u00a0<\/em>(Weimar: B\u00f6hlau, 1883\u2013\u00a0 ), known as the\u00a0Weimar Ausgabe<\/em>\u00a0(WA), 2.413.27, cited by George W. Forell,\u00a0Faith Active in Love: An Investigation of the Principles Underlying Luther\u2019s Social Ethics,<\/em>\u00a0(Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1954), 92.<\/p>\n [6]<\/a>\u00a0In the “Heidelberg Disputation,” he argues: \u201cNot that the righteous person does nothing, but that his works do not make him righteous, rather that his righteousness creates works\u2026 grace and faith are infused without works. After they have been imparted the works follow… that he himself may be Christ’s action and instrument.\u201d Luther, \u201cHeidelberg Disputation,\u201d in Lull, 46-47.<\/p>\n [7]<\/a>\u00a0Luther, \u201cLectures on Genesis, W.A., 44, 135, 2, cited by Forell,\u00a0Faith Active in Love: An Investigation of the Principles Underlying Luther\u2019s Social Ethics<\/em>, 56. See also: \u201cWe should not simply think, \u2018All I have to do is to believe and everything is taken care of, I do not have to do any good works.\u2019 No, we must not separate the two. You must do good works and help your neighbor so that faith may shine outwardly in life as it shines inwardly on the heart.\u201d Luther, \u201cSermon on John 6:48,\u201d cited by Forell, ibid.<\/p>\n [8]<\/a>\u00a0Luther, \u201cFreedom of a Christian,\u201d in Lull, 625.<\/p>\n [9]<\/a>\u00a0Luther, in\u00a0The Complete Sermons of Martin Luther<\/em>, John Nicholas\u00a0Lenker, ed. Reprint edition (Baker Books, 2000), vol. 7: 68-69.<\/p>\n [10]<\/a>\u00a0Luther, \u201cThe Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ \u2013Against Fanatics,\u201d in Lull, 331.<\/p>\n [11]<\/a>\u00a0Walter I Brandt, \u201cIntroduction,\u201d to \u201cTrade and Usury,\u201d\u00a0Luther\u2019s Works<\/em>\u00a045: 233.<\/p>\n [12]<\/a>\u00a0Carter Lindberg,\u00a0The European Reformations\u00a0<\/em>(Cambridge: Blackwell, 1996), 114, 111.<\/p>\n [13]<\/a>\u00a0See for example, Luther, \u201cAdmonition to the Clergy that They Preach against Usury,\u201d\u00a0Weimar Ausgabe\u00a051.367, cited in Ulrich Duchrow,\u00a0Alternatives to Global Capitalism: Drawn from Biblical History, Designed for Political Action<\/em>\u00a0(Utrecht: International Books, 1995), 220-21.<\/p>\n [14]<\/a>\u00a0I use the term \u201cimpoverished people\u201d rather than the more common term \u201cthe poor\u201d at the suggestion of colleagues from the Global South who prefer the former term as a way of indicating that people are not poor by chance but rather are poor because systems that enrich some sectors of humanity impoverish others.<\/p>\n [15]<\/a>\u00a0Luther, \u201cTrade and Usury,\u201d\u00a0Luther<\/em>\u2019<\/em>s Works<\/em>\u00a045: 261, 247-51.\u00a0 See also the entirety of \u201cTrade and Usury,\u201d (LW 45: 244 \u2013308) and Luther\u2019s comments on the first, fifth, sixth, seventh, and ninth\/tenth commandments and on the fourth petition of the Lord\u2019s Prayer in the Large Catechism.<\/p>\n [16]<\/a>\u00a0Luther, \u201cTrade and Usury,\u201d 249-50.<\/p>\n [17]<\/a>\u00a0Heiko Oberman cited in Lindberg,\u00a0European Reformations<\/em>, 116. See for example, Luther, \u201cAdmonition to the Clergy that They Preach against Usury,\u201d ibid.<\/p>\n [18]<\/a>\u00a0WA 28: 360-1; LW 69, 236-37 cited by Carter Lindberg,\u00a0The Forgotten Luther: Reclaiming the Social-Economic Dimension of the Reformation<\/em>, 22.<\/p>\n [19]<\/a>\u00a0These statements are oversimplified to make the point.\u00a0 A more complex rendition would acknowledge that this norm would not hold in all cases. To illustrate: In the case of Christians who themselves are experiencing dangerous poverty, the competing moral obligation of care for ones dependents or for oneself might make purchasing the inexpensive products the greater moral good.<\/p>\n\n
\n