St. John's United Methodist Church, Dover, NH ~ "Whose Is It Anyway?"

Thou shalt not steal. This eighth commandment should come as no surprise, since we've already been dealing quite a bit with taking things that don't belong to us. Don't take the life of someone else...don't take the wife of someone else and then in the ninth commandment it will be don't take away a person's reputation without cause. In fact we could probably go back over all of the commandments and find that they all warn against stealing of one sort or another.

In some cases, it is simple. Don't take things that don't belong to you. Period. End of discussion. Anybody who robs a bank knows that they are taking someone else's money. They know they will have to use force; and they know that if they get caught, they will pay a penalty. We would use an insanity defense for someone who walked into a bank and asked for all the money without a clue that it would be a crime to get it. But the issue of stealing is not always that simple. In fact, I would say it is not usually that simple.

If you take a class in moral development, you will likely wrestle with a series of moral dilemmas. One class standard is called the Heinz dilemma. Heinz is a man whose wife is gravely ill. She needs a certain medication to live. The pharmaceutical company has a monopoly on the drug and jacks up the price beyond anything Heinz can hope to afford. There is no insurance, no benevolence or charity. Should Heinz steal the drug? The issue is now cloudier. Does a person’s right to live trump a company’s right to make a profit? Who should have a right to things like life-saving drugs...is it right for us to allow a corporation to own a drug?

How about things like the "purchase" of Manhattan from Native Americans, and the displacement of native peoples both here and in many places across the globe. Who really owns the land? What constitutes a purchase...can a purchase be a theft? Suppose the inhabitants of the land have not been human but rather wolves or panthers or spotted owls? Whose land is it?

I learned one year at our Conference Pastor’s Assembly that currently the US Patent office allows for the patenting of human genes. Not by the person whose cells they are, but simply by the researcher who isolates and identifies it. The researcher doesn't have to have discovered any particular kind of therapy or use for the gene and anyone who comes along later and discovers that a certain gene is instrumental in the cure of cancer will have to pay royalties to the person who first rushed to the patent office. Even if it turns out to be a gene that is unique to my body, I have no claim to it. The person who discovers how to utilize it has no claim to it. Is it right that we allow someone to own human cell tissue? Human organs? Who owns the human body?

That question leads directly into the horrific form of stealing called slavery. Can human life ever be property? It is still considered so in many parts of the world. Those who are owned by others are sometimes called slave, sometimes called wife, sometimes called son or daughter.

Who owns the air and the water? If my aeresol spray depletes the ozone and takes your life through skin cancer...is that stealing? If my company pollutes the river where you earn a living by fishing, is that theft?

The commandment against stealing is just the tiny tip of an iceberg called "ownership." We cannot know that we are stealing unless we have a clear understanding of who owns what, and that is a murky question at best in our world.

All of those are things that are currently debated and legislated in various ways in the public sphere. But I'm not here to advocate for certain public policies...although I'm sure you can guess my positions from my examples. What I want to bring out is that all of these questions that plague our public discourse and disrupt our public life are at heart theological issues. The proclamation of the church in a world struggling with issues of ownership is that...in the words of the 50th Psalm:

"I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, says the Lord, for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are mine. If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it." That’s pretty comprehensive. It’s all God’s. Human beings are not owners. We are stewards.

I believe that the greatest sins on earth today comes from the breaking of the eighth commandment. We have taken the things that belong to God and appropriated them for ourselves. We were given all things to be held in trust...to be invested wisely until the owner should call for his own with interest. But in time, we forgot our charge and came to believe that we were not stewards but owners of the cattle on a thousand hills and the earth and all that is in it. We came to believe that we could invest them for our own gain and our own purposes...believing that they were ours. We have stolen from God.

Stewardship is not just a time in the fall when the church begs for money to meet the next year’s budget. That tends to make us think that stewardship is a means to an end of added income. Stewardship is merely telling the truth about who and whose we are. We were not created to be owners. We were created as stewards, trustees, caretakers of God’s world and God’s people. Some have said that the theft of God’s world is the original sin in the Garden of Eden. The problem was not eating the apple, but TAKING the apple without permission.

We are given things in trust, to be used according to the wishes of the giver. When my grandfather died last November, he left me a sum of money. It was put in a trust in my name, and as soon as he died I could walk into the bank and get it. No legal restrictions tell me what I must do with that money. It sits in my bank account, and I could go to Mexico with it, if I chose. But, before he died, my grandfather explained to me about that money. It was to be used for my mother’s care. If I do something else with it, no laws have been broken, no charges can be brought. But it would still be stealing from my grandfather, and from my mother.

We do not own anything. We are stewards, holding the things of God in trust. This body is not my body. Anything I do with my body is a stewardship issue. Adultery, Abortion, Smoking, the abuse of drugs and alcohol. They are stewardship issues, because it is happening to God’s body. This is the body God gave me to do God's work in the world. I can enjoy all the benefits of having a body...it is a wonderful trust to enjoy. But the purpose is not for me to enjoy it, but to use it for the glory of God. When I do other things with it, I have stolen from God.

We are fooling ourselves when we say "my children," "my house," "my friends," "my money," "my yard." All of it belongs to God. Even if we follow the Biblical mandate of tithing...the giving of ten percent of our income to God's work...we can miss the point. It can lead us to think that 10% belongs to God and 90% belongs to us. None of it is ours. 100% is God's. We have it only because God gave us abilities and opportunities and talents which we have invested for God by working. God cares about how we use the income from that investment.

The real stewardship question is not do you give 10% to the church...although that would allow the church to carry out God's work with ease. The real stewardship question is "Would you be embarrassed to show Jesus your checkbook?" They are different questions. I have given at least ten percent of my income to the mission of the church since my early teens. That's what God asks and that's what I do...I don't even think about it anymore. But that doesn't make me any less nervous about having Jesus see my checkbook. I often forget that all of it is God's money, and I don't always think about whether my spending is a wise and moral use of God's resources. And THAT is the issue of stewardship...not tithing, but the recognition that all of it is God's.

Thou shalt not steal. When we realize that everything belongs to God, we begin to see that most of us steal all the time. During my time as a mediator for the Atlanta courts, I dealt with many cases that were labeled: “theft by appropriation.” You leave a CD player at my house and I argue that possession is 9/10ths of the law and start calling it mine. I use it without your consent, leave it in places where it can be damaged, and maybe even sell it to earn a dollar or two. When you come and want your CD player back, I say it's mine and refuse to give it. The case goes to court.

Theft by appropriation is the most common way that we rob God. God's earth becomes ours. The Body of Christ becomes simply our body, and when God asks that some parts of the body use restraint so that others parts of God’s body can be strong...to limit gluttony in one part so that others may be fed...we refuse. The talents God gave us for the building up of God's people become our talent for our own benefit. The list goes on and on. Theft by appropriation. We do it all the time.

Remember that the Ten Commandments are ultimately about evangelism. They are not meant just as rules for a good society...they are the living message about who God is. The proclamation of the eighth commandment is the living message of Genesis...of creation. Our God is the creator...the one who made everything we can see and therefore the rightful owner of the earth and all that is in it. Our stewardship proclaims that we are not our own...that our lives and our world have a meaning and a purpose far beyond the grasping purposes of earth. We are part of a plan, part of the grand design of a loving God who makes beautiful things and is willing to entrust those beautiful things to others.

As we realize our sin, we feel the weight and the darkness of it. But as we repent and try living the life of a steward, we find that the clouds disappear and the sun shines brightly. Especially in America, we have come to believe that happiness comes through possession. If I can just own enough...if I can just control enough of my own life and my own destiny, I will be happy. That's a myth. Real freedom comes in letting go, not in holding on. Walking on water comes from getting out of the boat.

The news that we are stewards and not owners is good news. We have a great deal of responsibility...God has trusted us and honored us with that. But we do not have ultimate responsibility. The greatest risk is God's, not ours. Stewardship frees us from bondage to possessions in the same way that Sabbath frees us from the bondage to time.

Thou shalt not steal. Recognize the true owner of all things, and use God's gifts with courage and wisdom. And try during this next week to recognize that truth in the speech that God gave you. Don’t talk about “my family.” Talk about “the family God entrusted to me.” Don’t talk about my body, but the body God entrusted to me. The land that God entrusted to me. The work that God entrusted to me. The dog that God entrusted to me. See if it doesn't make the people and things that God has given you seem more precious and more sacred. See if it doesn't feel like freedom. Amen.