“Exploitive & Predatory”: Debt & Economic Justice
David Ketchum
September 18, 2022
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Chapter 16 of the Gospel of Luke contains what has been called one of Jesus’ “strangest parables,” a tale of a rich man with a clever manager, who wiggles his way out of economic and social ruin:
“There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” (Luke 16:1-8, NRSVUE)
I think it is safe to say that this text is not one of the top-ten-most-popular-texts-to-preach-about. Personally, I don’t remember hearing many sermons or reading many devotional texts about it. What I do remember is a vague emphasis on forgiveness, which spiritualized the economic aspects. It bordered on allegorical: the rich man became a symbol of God, the manager became a symbol of Christians, and financial/material debt became a symbol of sin. The moral of the story was that we needed to learn to forgive others, just as God forgives us. The line about not being strong enough to dig was used to condemn any kind of “salvation by works,” although I don’t remember the line about being “ashamed to beg” being similarly applied to salvation by grace.
I suspect that this interpretation was often chosen because the preacher was unfamiliar with any other one. Or, if understood, the economic aspects might lead to conclusions that would be considered “too political.” I don’t intend this in a mean-spirited way. I have felt the same pressures. Even one of the lectionary resources I generally trust, while emphasizing that wealth is not neutral, focused on the importance of being good stewards in this life so we can also be trusted with eternal life. (In our defense, we are perhaps encouraged to rush past the parable by the verses that follow, which ask, “If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?”) But that’s where I always got stuck, because what if the story really was about money, debt, and justice in this world? After all, both Hebrew and Christian scriptures teach that how we relate to money and wealth, and how we treat each other, is a faithful reflection of our capacity to love. The texts are filled with stories and teachings condemning those who hoard wealth and extolling those who live with generosity and justice. This is consistent, from Deuteronomy, where we read:
“If there is among you anyone in need, … , do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor. You should rather open your hand, willingly lending enough to meet the need, whatever it may be.” (Deuteronomy 15:7-8, NRSVUE)
to 1 John, when we are asked: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” (1 John 3:17, NRSVUE)
With this broader context in mind, we can look more closely at the economic realities of first century Palestine. But here again, we may immediately get stuck. At least in the Christian traditions with which I am most familiar, there is a common obstacle to even beginning this inquiry: that tendency to associate the Rich Man with God. Once this assumption is made, even subconsciously, it can be difficult to look closely at the economic injustice of the day, because the Rich Man is not a heroic character. It’s not exactly flattering to associate the divine with greed, usury, and cruel exploitation. So, for the sake of exploration, I’m asking us all to set that assumption aside.
The Rich Man was an elite. He needed a manager for a good reason, to oversee huge contracts. Scholars estimated that around 150 trees were needed to produce the approximately 900 gallons of olive oil in the story. And about 100 acres were needed to grow the wheat mentioned in the parable, a sum that equaled more than seven years of a common person’s wages. (Herzog, Parables as Subversive Speech, 240) As these contracts made up just a part of the business, the hearers understood that this Rich Man was a big deal and part of the ruling class. That class included the political elites, along with some retainers and wealthy merchants. Below them were more retainers, merchants, peasants, and artisans. And at the bottom were what William Herzog called “the expendables.” These were most commonly day laborers, a position so unstable and uncertain that most of them died within seven years. Only the cruelty of the system replenished their numbers.
It was a top-heavy system, with the top 2% controlling about 2/3 of the society’s wealth. The retainers, although only about 5% of the population, were essential to helping the elites maintain that kind of control with such huge social and economic disparities. They also provided a buffer between the elites and those they exploited. So, while the retainers were able to access some of the wealth and rewards, the proverbial crumbs from the rulers’ tables, they also were the easy targets of popular hostility and violence. They were, after all, the “agents of redistribution in the economy,” helping transfer the little the poor had to the elites’ ever-expanding hoard. (ibid, 61)
The manager was part of that system. The fact that he could be dismissed meant he was a retainer, instead of a slave. What we witness in the story is the manager grappling with the reality of losing his precarious position in society. His options terrified him, and not merely because he thought digging ditches or begging food was beneath him. That could have been the case, but the reality was also harsher than that. Losing his position would have meant dropping into that other class, the expendables, where he would have had to compete with others who were more accustomed to such a role. But the life expectancy of even the most successful expendables was very low. This was quite literally a life-or-death situation for the manager.
Remember the story’s start: “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property.” The retainer was caught between the Rich Man and his debtors. How could he possibly keep both parties pleased, especially while taking his own expected cut, the “honest graft” that made up his livelihood? This was a rotten system, with no one innocent but with clear winners and losers, oppressors and oppressed. Suspended between the Rich Man’s greed and the debtors’ envy, the manager was constantly vulnerable to both. The debtors accused him, the Rich Man dismissed him, and the manager’s life hung in the balance.
His back against the wall, the manager found a way to use the system to his advantage and save both his job and his life. Herzog goes into the details, and I encourage you to read his book, Parables as Subversive Speech, if this analysis interests you at all. But the strategy was brilliantly simple. Instead of protesting his dismissal, the manager acted before it was public knowledge, while the Rich Man awaited the final financial account. Instead, the manager summoned the debtors, one by one, and renegotiated their contracts. Not daring to hope that he would keep his job, the manager more realistically hoped that his quick thinking would make his services attractive to some other ruling family. But the strategy put the Rich Man in a tricky position. If he renounced the manager and insisted on keeping the original contracts, the debtors might turn their anger at him. If he accepted the new contracts and kept the manager – and receive the renewed obligations of the debtors. In Herzog’s words, “When the patron gives, he also indebts.” (ibid, 257) Those obligations turned out to be more valuable to the Rich Man in the long term, and worth any short-term losses.
This is the context of the Rich Man’s praise. The manager was not generous; he was shrewd. Both Rich Man and manager belonged to and benefited from an exploitive system, and the Rich Man recognized the value of having a steward who understood how the system worked and could navigate it so cleverly. If you are someone who cares about justice and peace, that’s not praise you are eager to receive. This is not a happy story, but one which reflected a deep understanding of the cruel economic situations that people faced every day. The parable honestly acknowledges the precarious lives of expendables, laborers, peasants, and even retainers, while also hinting at, or maybe aching for, the possibility of something else: a world without debt.
There are large gulfs between the world of this parable and the world we live in today. But, read this way, Jesus’ parable is much more relevant and useful than the spiritualized version I heard as a child, at least to me. Although our economic systems are very different, we can still connect with the experiences of those first century listeners. A 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 69% of US respondents said that the economy was helping the rich, while harming the poor. About 2/3 of lower-income and 1/3 of middle-income Americans worried about how they were going to pay their bills each day. This assessment was as close to nonpartisan as the USA gets these days, as the report noted that “lower-income Republicans are roughly four times as likely as those in the upper-income tier to give the economy an only fair or poor rating.”
A big part of these disparities is debt, from student loans to credit cards, medical debt, auto loans, payday loans, late fees, a combination, or more. From 1999 to 2016, household debt in the USA ballooned from $4.6 trillion to $12.29 trillion. In 2018, 71 million people (about 1/3 of US residents with a credit history) had debt in collection on their files. The most common reason for these debts was a “financial shock,” a reality that unmasks the economic fragility of so many of us, who live one catastrophe away from financial ruin. According to the Pew Trust, 40% of adults reported that “they would not have enough cash to cover an emergency expense costing $400, and 1 in 3 families report[ed] having no savings. Medical debt can be particularly devastating and accounts for more than half of all collections activity.” For many, the only choices are to sell their personal property, go into debt, or both.
But rather than addressing our economic system and changing it to provide more sustainable, healthier living circumstances, the US has largely responded by profiting off human tragedy. Buying debt has become a lucrative industry. From 1993 to 2013, “the total dollar value of debts purchased by debt buyers grew from $6 billion to $98 billion.” Collecting money is not generally an easy or pleasant job, so businesses have increasingly preferred to pass that task off to someone else. And the preferred tactic of collection agencies has become taking the debtor to court. According to the Pew Trust, “Two of the largest publicly traded debt buyers, Encore Capitol and Portfolio Recovery Associates, saw their legal collections grow 184 percent and 220 percent, respectively, from 2008 to 2018.”
There are many reasons why someone might miss an important court appearance, but the one I am most familiar with is that they never received a summons. For example, a collection agency might not have the current contact information of a debtor, but that doesn’t necessarily slow down the proceedings. In my own experience, I started receiving texts from a collection agency who were trying to contact a past owner of my new phone number. I tried several times to contact the collection agency to tell them that the person they were trying to reach was not at my number, but they continued to text me over and over again for some time. The texts finally stopped, but I’ve never stopped wondering about the fate of that phone number’s past owner. I hope they are well. In other cases, respondents could not afford to take off work, couldn’t get transportation, or were simply overwhelmed or confused by the lawsuit. Remember, the most common trigger for a debt of this nature is a “financial shock,” a situation that rarely leaves a person in the best circumstances for navigating a complex legal battle. (ibid)
Once a default judgment is issued, the debtor is usually in even more desperate circumstances. Every state allows the court to award collectors interest on the debt, and many states also allow collectors to be reimbursed for attorney fees. (This can be devastating, as in the case of a defendant taken to court for a medical debt. Although she had successfully paid off $8,500 of the original $9,861 debt, the court ruled that she owed an additional $8,500 in interest.) Then, once the case is decided, the debt has to be paid. To recover the money, a court may allow a collection agency to garnish wages or issue property liens. In some cases, the debtor is incarcerated. Although debtors’ prisons were officially outlawed in 1833, when Congress abolished them, and the Supreme Court has ruled that a person cannot be jailed for debts, debt imprisonment continues. This is because a debtor can be held in contempt of court, such as for failure to appear, and the agency can request a civil arrest warrant. An arrest like this can create a new cycle of debt from lost wages, loss of employment, and bond debts. (ibid)
The shrewd manager in Jesus’ story inhabited a very different world, but thinking about that world invites us to see our world in a different way. We have our own tiered economic system, with no one innocent but with clear winners and losers, oppressors and oppressed. We are invited to reflect on who our own society has made expendable, whose economic misfortunes have become a cautionary tale, but not a human worthy of compassion and justice. In reflecting on Jesus’ parable, Herzog concluded that:
“Clearly, the issue at the end of the parable is the cancellation or reduction of debt. The twisted machinations of debtors and desperate scheming of the steward led to a lowering of debt to which the master, for whatever reasons, consented. The result was a glimpse for the debtors of another order, one in which forgiveness of debt would be more than a petition in a prayer.” (Parables as Subversive Speech, 258)
I’m not saying is the “right interpretation” or the only way to reflect on this passage. But it is a reflection that is worth our time, because our own society also needs to glimpse “another order,” where forgiveness of debt is not spiritualized, but real. More accurately, we need a spirituality that doesn’t separate economic needs from spiritual ones. And we need a society with true economic opportunity and security for every person, including policies that eliminate major debt sources, such as universal healthcare and education. Reflecting in this way, we can glimpse – and then co-create - a world where no one has to wonder if they are expendable, and everyone is valued, not for their potential for profit, but simply for this beautiful, complicated, incredible opportunity to be alive.
