The divine creator is generous with the gifts of life, but these gifts must also be shared generously

There is an in-built tension when it comes to the stand of the Christian faith on opulence on the one hand and deprivation on the other. Christianity has its deepest roots in the faith and histo-ry of the people of Israel. There a conviction is formed that a good and abundant life is a gift from God. The word grace, which is so important to Jewish and Christian faiths, goes with the idea of full measure. Life is given in abundance. "A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap" said Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount. It is our right, as well as our obligation, to make good use of what life provides.

This does not mean that all is well. Everywhere and in all things there is a temptation towards selfishness, excess and injustice. "The bread of one" can be "the death of the other", when it comes to a test. The risks that go with riches and abund-ance have made the church give preference in its tradition to moderation and simplicity as a way of life. This does not ex-clude the feast, which is of great importance in human life. Restraint, there-fore, is an ideal well worth following. This, also, goes for voluntary poverty, not for all but for some. "The love of money is the root of all evil", wrote St. Paul. And Jesus said: "You can-not serve both God and Mammon".

Two inclinations

There is a biblical tradition of interpretation regarding this duality or ten-sion. The human heart has two inclinations, one to the good and one to the evil. The inclination is related to what life offers – food, drink, fellowship and possessions – and it is God-given. The good inclination is to use what life offers ac-cord-ing to the will of God. The evil, is to use it selfishly and to try to get more than we should at the cost of others. To be pre-served from this evil temptation Christians pray with the words: "do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from evil".

The use by human beings of what is temporal must be sub-mitt-ed to divine law. This particularly applies to possessions which have been gathered in excess by individuals or by closed fellowships. There has to be a sense of moderation and an aware-ness of the creator's conditions for the use of what has been created. If not, the disastrous structures of injustice and sin will develop in economics, politics and technical advancement. Against such trends, good structures for justice, restoration and participation must be established.

The question of a right and just distribution of what is good in life, as well as the burdens of life, demands special attention during the year 1993. The Church of Sweden has proclaimed this year as a Jubilee-year. The tradition of celebrating a Jubilee-year goes back through the long history of the church all the way to earliest biblical times. The impulse and the origin is to be found in the regulations for the new life of the people of Israel in the promised land of Canaan. The patriarch Jacob, with sons, wives and herds, left his land when famine threatened. After a long time in Egypt, the possibility of returning to a land that had recovered and was flowing with milk and honey was given. It was precisely because of the expected overflow that it was im-portant to set limits to the gains of the rich at the cost of the poor and in-debted.

A time for recovery

The Jubilee-year gets its name from jobel, a ram horn which was blown to announce an extra free year once in fifty years. Most important during that year was the restoration of deranged balances in nature, in social structures and in the distribution of property within the societal fellowship. The regulations summed up the experiences of many generations.

The Holy Land was ecologically very frail and could easily be over-exploited. The land was rich but would not stand excessive wear. Nature, thus, should have an extra year of rest, over and above a Sabbath-year every seventh, in order to recover and get its balance back. Also, we should note the working of human ecology. If someone, due to poverty, had been forced to sell him--self into slavery and had no relatives to buy his freedom, he should be freed during the Jubilee-year. That year should further be a free-year for those who had become so in-debted that they had lost their family property. That property should be returned to its original owner. The main ideas for the Jubilee-year were personal freedom, respect for the integrity of creation and economic rehabilitation. Criticism was directed particularly against those who traded on the credulity of the poor.

We are not sure how the Jubilee-year was celebrated in the new country. It seems reasonable to think that many tried to avoid its true purpose. However that may be, the regulations for the Jubilee-year with a view to redress and renewal remained. They were a challenge to seek a better order of things than the one that otherwise enfolds itself in human interaction. In his remark-able sermon in the synagogue at Nazareth – the one for which people were prepared to push him down the mountain steep – Jesus alluded to the thoughts of the regulations for a Jubilee-year. He proclaimed the acceptable year of the Lord. The differ-ence between this vision and the human ways of ordering things was what St. Paul tried to point at when he wrote to the church in Rome: "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is".

A just distribution

When the Church of Sweden celebrates a Jubilee-year our thoughts must inevitably go to the poorest and the most severely in-debted countries of the world. That is where personal freedom is most neglected, slavery is in force, people are economically, culturally and sexually exploited and the environment is exposed to life-threatening pressures. In spite of the riches of the earth and the abundance of the seas and in spite of all our technical progress and scien-tifically developed methods of extraction, an all embracing scarc-ity seems to threaten rich as well as poor.

In biblical revelation, and in the tradition of the church through----out centuries, experience is gathered. It is that the threat of living under the cold star of scarcity does not arise out of a lack of resources in creation, but out of a lack of a just distri-bu-tion. It is precisely the unwillingness to share just-ly the abundant life on earth that results in scarcity and destitution. In the light of this lesson, the meaning of the main Christian symbol, a meal of shared bread and wine, should be seen. The holy communion stands for the secret of sharing, a secret that was revealed in wonder by manna in the desert and the provi sion of food for all by the lake of Gennesaret.

The Church of Sweden belongs to the rich part of the world. The poor countries are indebted, to the extent that they cannot repay, to the family of rich and over-rich countries of which we are a part. For rather a long time it has been obvious that the poor countries of the world are overburdened with debts. In their misery they may be granted a certain respite or have their loans rewritten over a longer period of time. Basically, how-ever, they are seen as bound by their debts. If they were to say the words "forgive us our debts as we forgive those who are indebted to us" to the rich countries, those words would, at present, fall on very stony ground.

No net of protection

There is now also a debt crisis within the rich countries. Even in Sweden the number of bankruptcies and financial break-downs is unreasonably high. In many cases there are criminal actions involved. However that may be, those who are guiltless will have to pay. Families and companies have been trapped in debts as the rate of inflation fell and interest rates increased. Because they cannot pay their debts, people risk losing assets which they have held for many years.

The church of our land is a body with many members brought together for the purpose of carrying one another's burdens. The sufferings and the broken illusions, which have come so close and are to be found in our own midst, touch us all and they hurt. They cause severe troubles in families and in society. We have to take serious---ly the pain that has come to our country as a result of the economic crisis, and the personal tragedies are many. Never-the-less, what happens to the poorest of the poor countries of the world presents a far greater moral problem.

In countries that for a long time have been rich, there is, in spite of all, still a network of protection for many, even if there are exceptions. Banks and financial enterprises which have amassed debts that cannot be honoured, are protected through government actions. The burden of debt is distributed among all citizens via a tax system regulated by law. Such nets of protec-tion are not to be found for the poorest countries on earth and certainly not for individual families or societal fellowships among those at the bottom end – and that in spite of all the signa-tures on international agreements on human rights.

When loans and interest rates in an economic system exceed reasonable proportions – that is when loans are taken for more than the actual need and when interest rates rise above re-compen-se for work and risk – speculation and hazard with the use of other people's money and possessions occurs. After some time such merry-go-rounds of interest rates and such wheels of loans come to a stop. It then becomes evident that those who are less well off and unprotected will have to take the loss but are ex-cluded from the gain. This applies to individuals as well as to local societies and to nations.