“When you reap the
harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or
gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare,
or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor
and the alien: I am the Lord your God.”
Leviticus 19:9-10
The
Reverend Luther Zeigler
Epiphany
7A – February 19, 2017
St. Francis famously said: “Preach the gospel always; use words if you
must.” At the heart of this saying is the insight that what we do matters every
bit as much as what we say, if not more so.
Long before Christianity became an institutionalized religion with
creeds and confessional statements, the faith was known simply as “the Way,”
and its followers were known primarily for how they lived, not just what they
believed. The early church was organized
around a commitment to Jesus Christ as the divine embodiment of a new humanity
and a new model for human community.
In the early Church, what
differentiated Christians from others in the Empire were primarily practices that pointed to the
in-breaking of God’s reign: early Christians cared for the sick;
established communities without regard to class, social status, privilege or
gender; repented of their sins with humility, and sought and extended
forgiveness; exercised an unrelenting ministry of reconciliation; and they prayed
for others and for the world with regularity.
But there was another set of key
practices that marked the life of the early Church too – how Christians related
to property. The earliest Christians
were known for sharing their resources without a sense of possessiveness, giving
to the poor, and extending hospitality to strangers. We hear this message, of course, in Jesus’
words today, in which he urges us to give to anyone who asks, to lend to those
who need to borrow, and to give up not only our coats but our cloaks as well.
This notion that our lives should be
grounded in generosity, freed from undue to attachment to the things we own,
has deep roots in the Bible that we can trace back to our first lesson from the
Book of Leviticus. God is describing what it means for his people to be holy,
and notice what the very first item on God’s list is. God says: “When you reap the harvest of your
land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the
gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather
the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the
alien: I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus
19:9-10)
I used
to think that this holiness commandment, like many others from Leviticus, was
an antiquated, if charming, holdover from an agrarian society that has little
relevance to us today. But I was
convinced otherwise – and here, you may be surprised – by a member of the
faculty at the Harvard Law School, Joseph Singer. Joe is a distinguished property law professor,
the husband of Dean Martha Minow, and an observant Jew. Joe is also the author of a gem of a book
entitled, The Edges of the Field: Lessons
on the Obligations of Ownership,[1] in
which he seeks to demonstrate the enduring relevance of these two verses from
Leviticus 19 to modern property law and American capitalism. And he does in a
mere 136 pages in plain English that any layperson can understand.
And like any good rabbi, Joe organizes
his book around a story:
Just before Christmas 1995, the Malden
Mills textile factory in Lawrence, Massachusetts, suffered a devastating fire.
When the flames finally died down, three of the nine buildings were in ruins.
The next day, the owner, Aaron Feuerstein, assembled the workers in the high
school gymnasium. They feared the worst. Most of the textile mills in New
England had long ago moved to other parts of the country, other parts of the
world. Aaron was seventy years old and might be ready to call it a day. The
workers wondered if he would collect the insurance money and retire. What was
going to happen to them? More than three thousand people worked for Malden
Mills and their prospects looked bleak.
Then Aaron got up to speak. To their astonishment, Aaron announced that
he would rebuild the factory and that he would rehire every worker who wanted a
job. He would continue to pay their wages for the next month and they would
each receive their expected $275 Christmas bonus on time. Pandemonium broke out
in the gymnasium. It is reported that
“grown men cried, and in the several languages of the largely immigrant
workforce – Portuguese, Spanish, and others – prayers of thanksgiving were
said.”
Aaron Feuerstein made good on his
promises. Not only that: He continued to pay his workers’ salaries for
several months, until he could no longer afford to do so. He had no legal obligation to pay these
salaries or to help his employees get through the down time. Ultimately, the factory was rebuilt. As of 1998, almost all the workers had been
rehired.
When asked why he did it, Aaron replied
simply that he had a moral obligation to do so.
“The workers are depending upon me,” he explained. “There was no way I was going to take 3,000
workers and throw them into the street, and there was no way I was going to
send the city of Lawrence into economic oblivion.”
In his book, Joe Singer explains that,
as an orthodox Jew, Aaron relied upon traditional Jewish teachings about the
moral obligations of property owners, whether they be farmers (as in the days
of Leviticus) or factory owners (as in Aaron’s time). At the foundation of such
teaching is the conviction that human beings are not the ultimate owners of
their property and labors, but that God is.
In the words of the Psalmist: “‘The
earth is the Lord’s and all that it holds, the world and its inhabitants.’ Ps
24:1. Stated differently, because the
land and its fruits and our labors are all divine gifts, human beings are
merely stewards of these gifts. Through
our time, talent, and effort we may well earn the right to exercise
responsibility over property and labor, but within the Torah these property
rights are only qualified rights. And
because God intends for the fruits of the land and our labors to be enjoyed by
all God’s people, such fruits cannot be withheld from those who need them.
And so, as we see in our lesson from
Leviticus, God commands individual owners of property to set aside a portion of
what they own for the poor. Property holders are commanded not to reap to the
edges of the field, not to pick up grain or grapes that have been dropped in the
course of harvesting, and not to return to the field to retrieve ‘forgotten
sheaves.’ This portion of the fruits of the land is in fact owned by the widow,
the orphan, the stranger, and the poor – those who have no access to land of
their own or whose family ties have been shattered. To preserve such fruits is,
on this view, not a matter of charity and does not constitute a transfer from
the landowner to the dispossessed. Rather, the fruits at edges of the field are
the share of God’s bounty belonging to the landless.” (Singer, 49)
Aaron Feuerstein recognized that his
family’s success in the textile business was made possible only by God’s grace
and with the support of the community.
And so, in a time of crisis, Aaron recognized his own responsibility to
care for those who made his business the success that it was.
The biblical notion of titheing – of
giving away ten percent of one’s income – likewise has its roots in this
biblical concept of stewardship. The
admonition to tithe is not fundamentally an exercise in charity so much as it
is an exercise in humility and gratitude, acknowledging that what we have was
made possible only through God’s grace. We
give away ten percent not because we’re altruistic but because we are
acknowledging that at least ten percent of what we have properly belongs to God
in the first place and should be used for the benefit of others. St. Augustine had a beautiful way of
expressing this: “Find out how much God
has given you,” Augustine writes, “and from it take what you need; always
remembering that the remainder is needed by others.”
These biblical practices of good
stewardship, responsible ownership, and generous giving are, I am sad to say, increasingly
at odds with the American spirit of private enterprise, self-reliance, and
maximizing shareholder value. But it
needn’t be so. I don’t have time here to
summarize all of Joe Singer’s argument as to how America property law might be
transformed to more humanely reflect the compassionate spirit of Leviticus
19. But I will leave you with this
observation of his: “Contrary to what some believe and others fear, the
protection of property rights does not commit us to the view that gross
inequality is a necessary fact of life or that individuals have no legitimate
claim to lean on other people. Property is not merely an individual right, and
it is not based solely on the notion of self-interest or self-reliance. It is, in fact, an intensely social
institution. And ownership, far from being an absolute right, is a curious
blend of security and vulnerability between owner and non-owner. The manner in which property shapes social
relations of power is as important as ownership rights.”
We Christians have a lot to learn from
the Aaron Feuersteins of the world about what responsible and generous
ownership looks like. Faithful
Christians and Jews, it seems to me, can work together to re-orient our
perspectives on property and how we relate to it based on a prayerful
appreciation for our shared sacred texts.
As you think about what you have, and
what you may do with your talents and treasure in the future, I’d invite you to
remember that all of these things are gifts that ultimately belong to God. God is counting on you to use these gifts
wisely and generously to care not just for yourself, but for all of God’s
creatures and all of His wonderful creation.
Listen again to the words of St. Augustine: “Find out how much God has given you, and
from it take what you need; yet always remember that the remainder is needed by
others.”
Amen.
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