“The church needs to stop talking about sex and start talking about money.” [paraphrase, Alan Story]

On Tuesday nite i attended an evening with some friends, largely from Christ Church Kenilworth, looking at Economic Justice. One of the statements the speaker Alan Storey made, was relating to how little Jesus spoke about sex and how obsessed the church often is with focusing on that, while how often Jesus [and the Bible] spoke about Economics and how the only time the church ever seems to speak about money is when we’re asking for it.

He gave some statistics which you can check for yourself, saying that:

Every 16th verse in the New Testament is about money.

Every 10th verse in the Gospels [Matthew, Mark, Luke, John] is about money.

Every 7th verse in Luke is about money.

Every 5th verse in James is about money.

If those are true, then how come we as the church have not given economics a much huger platform.

On the contrary we have actually been taught not to speak about money [this might be a cultural thing rather than a specifically church thing but we’ve definitely bought into it].

Alan then asked us to turn to the people at our tables and share our salaries and what we spend on living and what we give away with them. Big laugh. Why? Because we don’t do that. i wish he’d refused to continue until we had done that. i imagine if you’re sitting at a table and your monthly coffee allowance rivals someone else’s grocery bill or rent then that might be a powerful enough talk in itself. But he let us wriggle out of that one…

But the idea of a room full of people [easily a hundred plus] coming together as the church to discuss Economic Justice in South Africa excites me so much. And Alan is not someone who typically pulls punches and while he may have gone easy on the salary sharing, there were some other ways in which he pushed the screws home.

people carrying tables

Alan started off the evening by sending people from a row of tables [30ish people] to stand at the back of the room. He made two other tables move their chairs around one table and squish together. Then he made four other tables of people stand up and pick up their tables. i was made into a policeman with two others and if anyone dropped the table we had to get them to lift it again and if anyone gave us lip we could take them outside and shoot them [well, not really]. He then started his talk and went on for quite a while with these people [some of them fairly old] holding these tables in the air. The biscuits were sent to the people lounging at the front with spare chairs as foot stools and he took turns asking people how they were feeling about their particular space and role. He asked what Jesus would say to the people at the front [Woe to you…] and what He might say to those holding the tables [Put down your table…] and more.

Eventually he let everyone sit down but point made.

Economics in its root word form means ‘The Management of the Household’ and is the same root word that we get both Ecology and Ecumenism from.

Alan defined Justice as Love distributed which is a nice definition to hold on to, especially in our context.

One of the most in-your-face points Alan made which i’m not sure a lot of white South Africans really get right now is the idea that the people without chairs [going back to our chair and table analogy] outnumber those who do have chairs [and chairs in abundance to be able to use as footstools] and at some point – maybe it’s when the children of the people without chairs grow up – they will realise that they would rather die than live the way they currently are living [which is a form of death] and at that point – when the cry becomes Freedom or Death – the people with the chairs are in trouble… because You cannot rule a people who aren’t afraid to die.

That paragraph alone is something we should be reflecting and meditating on every day when we consider how involved in the South African race conversation we are going to be. When we think about learning an African language or whether the salary we pay the woman who cleans our house is minimum wage or living wage or whether there is any kind of theology that allows us to own a holiday house that sits empty for 90% of the year while people live in slums… and more.

If Jesus was focused so much on how we relate to and manage our money and our stuff, how can we not be? Seriously, go and pick one of the gospels [Luke is a good start apparently] and read the story and words of Jesus and think about the things your church leaders put emphasis and whether or not there is a gap.

WHOSE FAMILY IS IT ANYWAY?

Think family… and go and do likewise. Isn’t that the essence of Jesus’ teaching?

Yet the big lie we have bought into is that our family is only the people we share a house with.

In Matthew 12 we see Jesus speak directly to this:

46 While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothersstood outside, wanting to speak to him. 47 Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”

48 He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?”49 Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Alan spoke about how every rabbi used to summarise all their teaching in the form of a prayer. So in Matthew 6 when the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray, they are not just asking for a Prayer 101, but they are actually asking Him to summarise the message He has brought so they can learn it and take it on.

So when we look at what we call the Lord’s Prayer and we see that the first phrase is “Our Father” we see immediately that we have got ourselves a family.

When Jesus speaks of “Love your neighbour as you love yourself” He is calling me to see my neighbour as an extension of myself.

There was a lot more, but that is a whole lot of stuff to think about. Especially if we take that last line and take some time meditating on it and thinking about what it might mean as a Christ follower in South Africa. If i go to visit a friend in Khayelitsha where so many people have to rely on outside Porta Potty toilets as their only toilet [and what that means if you need the toilet during the night] i need to think to myself: Would i let family live like that?

Would you?

What was one of the points from this post so far that stood out for you? Did anything challenge you? Is there an area of economic justice that you are struggling with at the moment? And would you be happy to sit at a table with seven strangers and share what you earn, what you spend, how much you give away and what your monthly coffee bill is?

[For Part II with more notes from Alan Storey’s talk, click here]