The Kingdom Movement

A Literary & Pastoral Study Guide to the Gospel of Matthew

The Inspiration of Matthew,

by Caravaggio

On the King's Errand

Devotional Reflections on Matthew's Gospel

Heart Transformation for Love, Part Eight – Care for the Economically Vulnerable:  Mt.5:42

^5:42 Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.

We’ve got to protect vulnerable people from predatory lenders.  Consider this example: Wells Fargo internally called black people in Baltimore ‘mud people’ and gave them subprime mortgage loans, with the explicit goal of one day repossessing their homes, and turning them out.  Associated Bank in Wisconsin discriminated against black and Hispanic borrowers from 2008 – 2010.  And then, take this example:  Nina McCarthy took out a loan which she normally was able to pay on time.  But the interest was 24.9%, and one missed payment quickly got out of control: 

‘About a year and a half ago, McCarthy took out another, different kind of loan. She went to her pastor, Rodney Hunter, at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church in Richmond. Hunter helped her borrow $700 so she could make a dent in paying off her mounting credit card debt, then about $8,000.  Here’s how it worked: McCarthy’s church offered funds as collateral so that she could qualify for a loan through the Virginia United Methodist Credit Union. McCarthy agreed to repay the loan at an annualized interest rate of about 6 percent – meaning monthly payments of $25 for about 2 1/2 years, drawn right out of her bank account… The program is called the Jubilee Assistance Fund.  In 7 1/2 years, it has helped parishioners of the United Methodist Church secure 14 loans – from $500 to $8,800 – according to Carol Mathis, chief executive of the credit union.  Similar initiatives run by faith-based organizations across the country are shifting the way churches approach charity. These programs offer parishioners an alternative to commercial lending agencies, which often charge triple-digit annualized interest rates.’1

Because of the teaching of Jesus regarding care for the poor, his teaching about forgiving debts, and the traditional Old Testament and Greek cultural aversion to lending money at interest, Christians in the early and medieval periods took a strong stand against usury, the cornerstone of banking and the driving force of technological and economic development.  The early Councils of Arles (314 AD), Nicea (325 AD), Laodicea (372 AD), and many others forbade clergy from trafficking in usury.  John Chrysostom, bishop of Antioch from 389 AD, thundered against it.  The Councils of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries forbade it to both clergy and laity, and laid down the punishments for such behavior.  Usurers were not to be given communion or Christian burial, their offerings were not to be accepted, and clergy who fail to punish them were to be suspended until they made satisfaction to their superior.2  The Council of Lyons (1274 AD) and the Council of Vienne (1312 AD) effectively made the usurious money-lender an outlaw and extended the church’s attack on usury to its highest pitch.  Anyone renting a house to a usurer had to expel that individual within three months, the will of a usurer was invalid, rulers and magistrates legally permitting the practice of usury were to be excommunicated if such legislation was not revoked within three months, and anyone declaring usury to not be a sin is to be punished as a heretic.  Pope Innocent IV, considered to be quite savvy in business and politics, reasoned that if usury were widely practiced,

‘Men would not give thought to the cultivation of their land, except when they could do nought else, and so there would be so great a famine that all the poor would die of hunger;  for even if they could get land to cultivate, they would not be able to get the beasts and the implements for cultivating it, since the poor themselves would not have them, and the rich, for the sake both of profit and of security, would put their money into usury rather than into smaller and more risky investments [which includes, in this context, assisting the poor].’3

A strong commitment to a fairly simple rural way of life is found here (‘the cultivation of their land’), with much greater consideration for stability and continuity than for progress.  Human freedom and justice were still thought to be important, but usury was actually thought to detract from both.  This is the life the church thought was normative for the average person.  In his study of how Catholic teaching effectively stymied the advancement of industrial capitalism whereas Protestant teaching facilitated it, British economist R. H. Tawney describes the general attitude of medieval Christendom:

‘On the iniquity of payment merely for the act of lending, theological opinion, whether liberal or conservative, was unanimous, and its modern interpreter, who sees in its indulgence to interesse the condonation of interest, would have created a scandal in any age before that of Calvin.  To take usury is contrary to nature, for it is to live without labor; it is to sell time, which belongs to God, for the advantage of wicked men; it is to rob those who use the money lent, and to whom, since they make it profitable, the profits should belong; it is unjust in itself, for the benefit of the loan to the borrower cannot exceed the value of the principal sum lent him; it is in defiance of sound juristic principles, for when a loan of money is made, the property in the thing lent passes to the borrower, and why should the creditor demand payment from a man who is merely using what is now his own?’4

Calvin and the other Reformers needed money to pay for travel, printing, salaries, etc. to pay for their Reformation movement.  So they made alliances with bankers and merchants, whose actions were despised until that point.  So today, already vulnerable people suffer at the hands of credit card companies, "payday lenders," and for-profit college student loans.  Middle class people suffer because the opportunity to go into debt to finance college tuition or inflates the price of housing and the price of college tuition.  Prices increase to fill the available debt.  Look at this chart:

How can your church help get its members or other people out of interest-accumulating debt?  And how can we reign in the banks in more ways than one?