The Social Justice theme set by the National Council of Churches in Australia for 2012 is about Peace in the Marketplace so all may live in dignity. The booklet can be downloaded at www.ncca.org.au. The subject matter of economics, the marketplace, and the level playing field is a big ask so I shall leave it for you to read it at your leisure and talk it over.
Meanwhile, I’ll try to potter on in my own words and reminisce about my grandfather who was the hardware merchant in the country district centred round a small country town in which I was the third generation to grow up. I remember Grandpa explaining to us why he persisted in supporting all the other businesses in town whether one was considered better than another in their field.
It kept the trade in the town, he said, and maintained the families. It was my first understanding how small business operated within the town economics. It was what I would call today “symbiotic economics”. It describes a marketplace which survives by mutual support. It was the nearest in my experience to what everyone calls the level playing field. Everyone benefits.
You may well mutter about my living like a dinosaur in some mythical golden age. The rich and the poor and those in between were kept within nodding distance and help was given on the side. What is happening today? What we see is “parasitic economics” where the objective is to make more money by milking the vulnerable. Have you been like me trying to interpret all that shrinking small print on those “very important” letters and even on the side of some food packages?
We think we have had some education to cope around some of these things, so what about those who just don’t have those capabilities to avoid being taken in and to lose what they cannot afford to lose?
Yes, we know all the right words about social justice but what is to be done that can be done? Yes, I know I seem to belong to the Order of St Jude that patron saint of lost and hopeless causes – although there have been some small victories along the way. It’s time to drag down from the shelf that black leather-bound book with the gold lettering on the cover and follow that ancient question of “What would Jesus do?”
John Chapter 10 describes Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Yes, we know all about those sheep and the sheepfold with all those lovely pastoral sermons. This is a lot stronger than that and it is far from romantic. The job of a good shepherd is to protect the sheep from the predators. This is why Jesus describes himself in v7 as “The Door”. He is not changing tack here. What he is saying that it is his job as a good shepherd to keep himself between the sheep and the predators by lying down overnight in the doorway. To get to his sheep those predators have to get past him over his dead body first.
Later in the same gospel, Jesus tells his surprised disciples in 20:21, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you”. Gulp! How are we going to apply this to our parasitic economy? We’re not good at abolishing evil (unless you’ve had more success at this than I have). That’s not our job. Our job is to flush what is evil out into the light where it can be exposed for what it is. This is described in John 3:19-20. We are called to be whistleblowers, those people who, like Jesus, put themselves between the predators and the vulnerable.
Jesus has brought peace, hope and dignity to many lives by the way he put himself between them and the greedy parasites of this world. Because we have been strengthened by him, others can continue that same redeeming experience when we do the same.
Chris Ridings
who on 15th October this year
remembers the 45th anniversary of ordination
in Wesley Church, Perth 1967.
