Make Poverty History

Now the men and their wives raised a great outcry against their fellow Jews. Some were saying, “We and our sons and daughters are numerous; in order for us to eat and stay alive, we must get grain.”

Others were saying, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards and our homes to get grain during the famine.”

Still others were saying, “We have had to borrow money to pay the king’s tax on our fields and vineyards. Although we are of the same flesh and blood as our fellow Jews and though our children are as good as theirs, yet we have to subject our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but we are powerless, because our fields and our vineyards belong to others.”

When I heard their outcry and these charges, I was very angry. I pondered them in my mind and then accused the nobles and officials. I told them, “You are charging your own people interest!” So I called together a large meeting to deal with them and said: “As far as possible, we have bought back our fellow Jews who were sold to the Gentiles. Now you are selling your own people, only for them to be sold back to us!” They kept quiet, because they could find nothing to say.

So I continued, “What you are doing is not right. Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God to avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies? I and my brothers and my men are also lending the people money and grain. But let us stop charging interest! Give back to them immediately their fields, vineyards, olive groves and houses, and also the interest you are charging them—one percent of the money, grain, new wine and olive oil.”

“We will give it back,” they said. “And we will not demand anything more from them. We will do as you say.”

Then I summoned the priests and made the nobles and officials take an oath to do what they had promised. I also shook out the folds of my robe and said, “In this way may God shake out of their house and possessions anyone who does not keep this promise. So may such a person be shaken out and emptied!”

At this the whole assembly said, “Amen,” and praised the Lord. And the people did as they had promised.  Nehemiah 5:1-13

Hunger does weird things to a person. Did you hear the celebrities as they left the jungle? All of them said one of the hardest things was not having enough food. It made them weak. It made every task that much harder. It impaired their judgement. It made them emotionally fragile. Irritable. Cross when anyone was deemed not to try hard enough to win the camp food. Desperate. Willing to undergo any trial to win meals.

And that was just a game. They knew it wouldn’t last forever. There was always a way out. They faced three weeks of hunger. That was all.

For many people around the world, hunger is not part of a game. There is no end in sight. There is no way out. Many have been hungry all of their lives. This is real hunger. Where you have to choose which child to feed today. Where you have to go without again to feed your child. Where your baby is dying from malnutrition because you can no longer produce the milk to feed it. Where selling one of your children becomes the only option to keep the rest of the family from starvation.

Families living in poverty are open to exploitation. They are desperate. They will work long hours in dangerous conditions for low wages, because something is better than nothing. They have no power to fight back if the rich mistreat them and cheat them out of their wages. They are defeated. They live at the mercy of those who have power – and often have no mercy.

And it makes people angry. Angry enough to protest. To fight back if they have the energy to. To oppose the tyranny.

Just like in this passage. The rich were charging an exploitative tax on fields and vineyards. Many were losing their land. Many were going hungry. Many were having to sell their children into slavery to survive.

All those centuries before, God had heard the cry of His people and rescued them from slavery in Egypt. More recently, many of the Jews had been brought back from exile in Babylon where they had been treated as slaves. Now here they were exploiting each other, treating their own people as slaves. Nehemiah is right to be outraged.

Those in a position to lend money to the poor are taking advantage. The poor and hungry are desperate. They will agree to anything. They have no choice. The money lenders are having a field day.

‘What you are doing is not right. Lending is OK. But not exploiting. Are you not afraid of what God will think? Do you not care what the peoples around us are going to think about how we treat our own? This has got to stop. It has got to stop. It’s time to put this right. Time to give back what has been wrongfully taken.’

You may not be an exploitative money lender. You probably are not. But consider thee five ways in which you could avoid taking advantage of the poor today:-

1. Stop judging other people’s lives and actions from a distance. You have no idea how it feels to live on benefits. To have no respect. To have no role. To live in a miserable damp flat in a block where the lift never works and the lights on the stairs are always smashed.
2. Open your eyes to what’s going on around you. Poverty isn’t something that’s going on a long way away. It’s happening right here under our noses. Find out about your local Foodbank. Support it. Get involved in something. Get to know some real people suffering with poverty.
3. Consider how you treat people who work for low wages. Shop workers for example. I know a little of what that’s like now. How customers talk to shop assistants. Talk down to them. Treat them as inferior. As stupid. Shop workers work really hard. Long hours with short breaks. It’s hard work. Many people are doing jobs you wouldn’t dream of doing – and they do them well and with a smile.
4. Take fair trade seriously. We don’t, do we? Not really. We play at it. Companies like Traidcraft make it easy for us. They verify the supply chain. They check out all the personal stories. They know that fair trade works. Poor people don’t want handouts. They want to work. To work for a fair wage. They want to provide for their families and build a life for their communities. We can make a difference. A real difference.
5. Get money in perspective. The amount of money we waste and spend on stuff is ridiculous. It’s as if we have so much, we don’t know what to do with it. We have it so we’ll use it. And we’ll buy the expensive stuff to show everyone what we have. Don’t ever fall into the trap of thinking having the right stuff makes you a better person, more worthy of respect. And don’t think someone is worth more as a person because of what they have. Maybe if you have more than you need, you should be giving more away. Doing something more useful than getting your eyebrows threaded every few weeks.

A few years ago, we went on the March in Edinburgh to ‘Make Poverty History.’ I don’t know what happened to that. I guess we were never going to make poverty history. As Jesus said, and it gets quoted a lot, ‘the poor will always be with you’. That’s not an excuse to do nothing, you know. To give up. It just means we will always be able to find opportunities to share God’s love in this way. To live His life. To bring His kingdom here on earth.

This is a challenge to me too, you know. Money is always a challenge. We all want more. We all love having nice things. And we feel what we’ve earned is ours and we struggle to share. And maybe the more we have, the harder it is…..this is what one of my colleagues shared on Facebook a few weeks back –

I think having this job at asda has been a good thing for me…. It’s made me think about the way I spend money and how to keep my costs to a minimum instead of when I was earning 350-400 quid a week and just spending it in a week….I was an idiot

Food for thought, as we go about our Christmas shopping …….