Beyond Carrots and Sticks--August 16, 2024

Beyond Carrots and Sticks--August 16, 2024

"Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy." [Ephesians 4:28]

If we actually pay attention to it, the New Testament really is wonderfully strange.  It can take even the most seemingly obvious, self-evident ideas and turn them on their head.  

This is one of my favorites. In these words that many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, we get a sketch of the life of the Christian community: how we are to live together, speak to one another, and care for one another.  And in the midst of a larger conversation about not using hurtful or mean-spirited speech, the writer takes a surprising turn here.  He says, "Thieves must give up stealing." I say that's surprising, not because it's unusual to have a moral prohibition on stealing, but (1) because the writer seems to think that there might actually be thieves or bandits in the Christian community who need this reminder, and even more importantly (2) because of the rest of the train of thought.

We might expect a warning against stealing to threaten punishment or damnation as a consequence, or an invocation of the commandments.  We might expect the argument to go, "Thieves must give up stealing, or else they will be disqualified from inheriting the kingdom!" or "Don't steal from anyone, or else you won't get into heaven!" or even just a simple, "Don't steal--that's one of the Ten Commandments, after all, and we all have to follow The Rules!" Rather, the writer of Ephesians makes a turn toward love and generosity.  Thieves need to give up stealing so that instead, they can find honest work "so as to have something to share with the needy." In other words, in this passage, the reason to stop stealing isn't so much fear of punishment as the opportunity to share with a hungry neighbor. Stealing just takes away from someone else, but working a legitimate job allows everybody to get to eat.  It's not at all about the threat of a lightning bolt or a ticket to hell, but about the chance to show love to someone else who is in need.  I've got to be honest with you: that's not where I expected this verse to be going the first time I read it.  

But this is the whole key to the freedom and beauty of the Christian life according to the New Testament.  We no longer have to be driven to avoid bad behavior through the threat of punishment or to pursue good behavior in order to get some kind of self-interested reward.   We are past carrots and sticks.  Instead, it is all about love that feeds the hungry neighbor.  The writer to the Ephesians says we are called to honest labor rather than theft as a way of making sure we have enough abundance to share with someone else.  It is a completely neighbor-centered train of thought, rather than about me personally avoiding punishment.  It's about saying, "There are other members of the community who are going hungry--how can I be a part of the solution to the problem, rather than ignoring their need?"  It's about taking seriously the idea that everyone in the household of God gets to eat, and then making the choices in our own lives that help to feed everybody.  And to be very honest, that kind of thinking is radical. 

I say that because the conventional wisdom about religion is often pretty self-centered.  For a lot of folks, religion self-centeredly boils down to saying, "I should be good so that I get into heaven, or at least avoid being bad and getting sent to hell."  Sometimes it is phrased a little more elegantly or with theological window dressing, but yeah, sometimes it is put just that crudely (and wrongly).  Ultimately, that's a pretty selfish view of the universe, in which faith is just a means for me to get what I want or avoid the pain I don't want.  But of course that's not really how the New Testament sees things, especially not this passage from Ephesians. The New Testament reframes the whole conversation to say, "What if you weren't earning anything or avoiding punishments? What if you were so grounded in the love of Christ that you were free to do good for others simply out of love for them and concern for their needs?"  The Gospel pulls us out of the old self-centered carrot-and-stick scheme to see that because God has provided us what we need for life, we are free to care for the needs of the hungry neighbor next to us.  Doing God's will, then, isn't so much about how I earn a ticket to heaven or avoid a trip to hell, but about the freedom to love the people whom God loves.  As our older brother in the faith Martin Luther put it, "What is it to serve God and do God's will? Nothing else than to show mercy to our neighbor."  That's a very different answer from what we've heard from other voices of Respectable Religion.  

All of this is to say that our perspective changes when we find ourselves welcomed to the table of Jesus.  Instead of being solely concerned with our own self-interest, we discover that we are free to attend to the needs of the folks around us, including the willingness to do honest work--not to avoid jail time for stealing, but in order to make enough income to be generous for the hungry neighbors around us.  That is downright revolutionary... and it is lurking there right in the New Testament, waiting to be found and to change our lives forever.

What else might be reframed or turned upside-down in light of this kind of love? What lengths might you and I be led to because we have been changed by the love of Jesus, who attends to our needs generously?

Let's see where this takes us...

Lord Jesus, change our perspective today so that we use our time and resources for the good of others around us in need.