Shaughnessy Heights United Church March 10, 2002
"You shall not steal" A.H.Harry Oussoren
#4 in Series on the Ten Commandments

Texts: Exodus 20:15; Deuteronomy 5:19; Matthew 21:33-43

Prayer:
Speak your truth to us, O God, so that we may learn to live your truth.
We pray in Christ. AMEN

You shall not steal is our theme. Here's a story about how the Bible can be helpful in preventing theft.
"An elderly woman had just returned to her home from an evening of church meetings, when she was startled by an intruder.
She caught the man in the act of robbing her home of valuables and yelled: "stop! Acts 2:38!"
("Repent and be baptized, in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven.")
The burglar stopped in his tracks.
The woman calmly called the police and explained what she had done. As the officer took away the cuffed man, he asked the burglar, "Why did you just stand there? All the woman did was yell scripture at you." "Scripture?" replied the burglar. "She said she had an ax and two 38's!" [source unknown]

Jesus' Gospel parable about the tenants is more sobering.
I imagine the tenants spent a good deal of time after their criminal actions fearfully rationalizing their behaviour.
Stealing, I find, usually generates a lot of rationalizing, justifying, and postures of self-righteous indignation:

RATIONALIZING
"That landlord already has so much. And we have so little. Withholding the rent is almost a favour to the landlord - we're helping him be more humble, less greedy; teaching him about generosity and sharing.
Unfortunately some of the hotheads in our tenants organization got a little carried away. We were okay with not paying the rent and a share of the produce because the owner didn't really need it anyway.
But then some of our number humiliated the servants and by accident a couple of the owner's messengers got hurt - one may even have died, regrettably.
But they were so arrogant, persistent, and pushy.
They really should have backed off and given us a little more time.
And then the heir came - the owner made a real mistake to send him. Some of our hothead people just saw red when he came with all his finery. They figured that taking him out of the picture would give them the chance to own the property. It was probably not a good idea, but, you know, these things happen. There was nothing much we could do about it."
Rationalizations.

You shall not steal,
says the eighth word of the Decalogue - the Ten Commandments.
It's an absolute command.
It's not one of those: if, then… laws.
If you're hungry, then it's okay to steal some.
If you've been good and live decently most of the time, cutting a few corners for your advantage won't be held against you.

No, the command is absolute.
That's because God has lots of experience with our rationalizations that justify taking what is not ours.
We are very good at devising all sorts of slippery thoughts to gain what we want at the expense of another.
We all know about that. Don't we!?
Let whoever here has never taken something without permission throw the first stone.

We won't have much trouble with the notion that stealing someone's wallet for one's own gain is breaking the law.
And taking someone's car without permission - that's clear.
We don't have a lot of tolerance for fraud artists who bilk vulnerable people out of their savings - we've all heard the scenarios where someone claims to have a fool-proof investment scheme, but the only service provided is to empty the gullible person's chequing account.

We aren't fully consistent on this though, are we?
We act like stealing is absolutely forbidden.
But then, why is it that we have sympathy for Robin Hood when he steals from the rich to help the poor?
When we see Les Miserables, our hearts instinctively go out to Jean ValJean the hopeless thief who stole the gentle priest's valuable candle sticks.
And if OUR child was starving, would we not take desperate and perhaps illegal action to feed her?

We need something to balance the absolutes of the law.
There's a tension to maintain here - between legalism and justice.
Isn't our absolute adherence to the law gentled by our awareness of God's compassion for the poor and our own instinctive inclination to fairness - especially when injustice is rank and rampant.
Between those who have and those who don't there is more than just a law against stealing.

When we traveled in India we were overwhelmed in Bombay by the contrast between a high-rise five-star international hotel, and right next door, the cardboard and plastic shacks for the worlds poorest women and children. Morally, something was very wrong with that picture.

This week we again had to come face to face with the historic theft of first nations lands in Canada.
Did you read John Ralston's Saul's piece in the Globe and Mail underlining our need to recognize not just two founding nations - English and French - but three. The aboriginal peoples of this land have been in the shadows of injustice long enough.
In the piece, Saul quoted the great Mohawk leader, Joseph Brant, on his death bed in 1807 musing about
how it seemed "natural" for Europeans to look "on lands in the possession of Indians with an aching heart, and never to rest till they (the Europeans) had planned [the native people] out of the [lands]."

So this week yet another court upheld aboriginal claims. This time confirming that signing Treaty 8 with the Crown assured native people they would never have to pay taxes.

And here in BC, stealing native lands is ongoing activity.
We refuse to come to fair negotiated agreements with native people over lands that were never purchased by or ceded to the Crown.
So is it any wonder First Nations are seeking recourse to the courts such as this week's dramatic court case for all of Haida Gwaii.
You shall not steal!

But our foreparents did it big time and we choose to benefit from the ongoing theft. Legally, that makes us accessories after the fact, and no less culpable than our forebears.
Ethically it put us at odds with God who longs for just relationships in the human family.//

When I first started thinking about the eighth commandment, I thought it would lead to a very short sermon. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that it affects all of life.

What's the university line:
Steal ideas from one person it's called plagiarism, but steal from many and it's called research.

What about stealing from someone's reputation. If I tell a little half truth, my competitor will look bad and lose some of her lustre, while I gain in stature. Is that just the cut and thrust of life, or is it theft?

I think too about how easily we can convince ourselves not to pay the GST or PST. We rationalize that by saying it's just the government. But isn't that just a form of stealing from all of us - who are the nation, the province, the city.

I think about the word stewardship. Like those tenants of the owner in the Gospel story, we have been entrusted with the bounty of the earth. We know God has provided enough for everyone today and if we are good stewards there will still be enough for our children and their grandchildren.

Except that we hardly think that way at all.
We are really more inclined to steal.
Steal first from the poor: we allow for ourselves far more than we need, while letting others wallow in their poverty. The ones who have, get more. The ones who have not get poorer.
Everything indicates currently in the province that the poor are being driven into deep financial despair. I'm told that at First United Church there is an eery quiet - a hush filled with fear and desperation. Vancouver's most vulnerable people are being ground into destitution as tax cuts go into pockets that already have enough and government services and benefits are removed from those who have next to nothing.
So as a society, we are stealing God's gifts that by rights the poor of our day deserve far more of.

Steal second, from our children and great-grandchildren. We exploit and plunder natural resources, we allow species to die off, we allow the greenhouse gases to warm the planet, we rake the sea clean of fish.
Future generations will not thank us, but recognize us for the thieves that we in our generation are.

The fundamental theft is from God - God's visa card has no limit. So we don't hesitate to claim for ourselves the right to have unlimited access.
But the Scriptures call us to use just enough for our daily need.
The Bible asks us to be responsible and participate In God's generosity.//

It is easy to point out evidence of stealing and its negative effects - there is no shortage of scope.
But what is the positive value of this command?
This commandment is part of God's abiding concern for us to get along with creation and with each other;
It is part of God's longing for us to live in peaceful community with one another;
Part of God's dream that we don't have to regard each other fearfully or enviously as enemies, trying to hoard for ourselves or to take away from the other.

God has created us to be brothers and sisters - part of God's wonderful human family created to care for each other, to revel in the bounty God provides, to share of earth's wealth and abundance.

That kind of generosity - whether through generous personal sharing or through collective action in the distribution of taxes, Jesus tells us, is a sign of the reign of God. When people who receive much, are ready to give away much, then we are indeed close to God's kingdom and we undermine the need to steal.

May it be so among us, in the congregation and in our homes, work places, and wider world.
Let stealing be the farthest thing from the minds of any we have contact with, because there is such generosity and such sharing
that all God's children have enough of God's abundant gifts.

Thanks be to God. AMEN