Psalm 49
Great Riches
Rev. Cynthia O’Brien
October 29, 2006
Why should I fear when evil days come,
when wicked deceivers surround me—
those who trust in their wealth and boast of their great riches? Psalm 49:5-6
Do not be overawed when a man grows rich
when the splendor of his house increases;
for he will take nothing with him when he dies,
his splendor will not descend with him. Psalm 49:16-17
A man who has riches without understanding
is like the beasts that perish. Psalm 49:20
Ever wondered if you were rich or poor? I mean, in the great scheme of things, did you ever wonder where you rank?
I remember as a little kid hearing the phrase “middle class families” and asking my mother if we were middle class. She said, “No, honey, we are better than that.” “So,” I said, “are we rich?” She said, “Not exactly. Maybe upper middle class.”
That changed when we became a single parent family. Then I had no idea where I stood.
I was taught that it was impolite to ask other people how much they earned and what they paid for things. I never understood why it was such a big secret. Maybe that’s why people are so interested in Parade Magazine’s annual story, “What People Earn.” Because we won’t find out any other way.
Where do you rank? Are you rich or poor?
We tend to admire people who are rich, celebrities, athletes, successful businesspeople. But in our culture we also seem to enjoy criticizing them. What is Paul Allen doing with the Blazers? What’s Paris Hilton doing with a $10,000 handbag?
In Psalm 49, the psalmist is playing his harp and reflecting on those who are wealthy. He cautions us against admiring the rich.
PS 49:16 Do not be overawed when a man grows rich when the splendor of his house increases;7 for he will take nothing with him when he dies, his splendor will not descend with him.
Sometimes when I think about people who are richer than I am, I can become frustrated.
Especially when I think about my unfulfilled financial desires. So as I read this psalm, I try to put myself on the side of the person speaking, the person who is being oppressed by the rich. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that I am not the poor wise man in this psalm. I’m the rich. I am the one who should be challenged here.
We may not think we are living the high life, but in fact we are among the privileged few. Our standard of living is among the highest in the world. I have never been without food or clothing or shelter. I have never been oppressed or constantly threatened. The cost of health care may be going up, but all of us have access to the emergency room. We are very, very rich.
So if we are among the richest people in the world, and we want to receive Psalm 49 as God’s word to us, how can we interpret it?
A rich young man, a very devout religious man, once asked Jesus what more he should do to be saved. Jesus said, “You’re too attached to your riches. Give them to the poor, and follow me.” And the young man wouldn’t do it, because he was too attached to his riches.
The psalmist makes the same charge against the wealthy in his psalm. He called them
those who trust in their wealth and boast of their great riches and those who trust in themselves. Now we are starting to understand what the problem was. The wealthy were putting their trust in their wealth and in themselves, rather than acknowledging God from whom their riches came. And in the last verse of the psalm, verse 20, we see the problem:
PS 49:20 A man who has riches without understanding
is like the beasts that perish.
We must hold our riches with understanding. We must be the rich who care about the poor. Let me give you two examples of how this can be done, first about our local charities and then about Bangladesh.
Years ago, our church designated the first Sunday of the month as SnowCap Sunday, and everybody brought food for SnowCap on that day. We used to have a member whose name was Holly Fitzgerald. How many of you remember Holly? I never saw her do this, but I have heard that Holly used to stand out in the parking lot on SnowCap Sundays and as people came in, she would say, “Did you bring something for SnowCap?” One woman told me this week that she never came to a first Sunday without a grocery bag in hand, because she was afraid of what Holly would say.
No one would describe Holly as polite, but she was effective. Holly died last year, and now that she’s gone, it’s up to us to remember the needs of those in our very own neighborhood who are struggling to make ends meet. That’s why the Session has asked us to bring baby food this week and stack it here by the pulpit – to remind us of our responsibility for the poor.
But, you know, one small act of kindness can turn into something larger than you could imagine.
I was at a meeting of the Gresham Area Chamber of Commerce when Becky Coleman, the director of My Sister’s House, told me that she was in a cash flow crisis. I mentioned it to the members, and a businessman said, “We need to pass the hat for Becky. I’m going to put $100 in this basket and pass it around.” About a thousand dollars was collected that day in about 20 minutes. Seeing that kind of generosity and community support was what gave me the courage to ask the Chamber to bring baby food for SnowCap to our meeting here this Friday. It starts small, and it grows.
Let me tell you about what happened in Bangladesh.
A young man named Muhammad Yunus studied economics in the United States and returned to Bangladesh to work at the university. Yunus would sit in his office, writing economic treatises, and look out at the poor village that was right next to the university. One day he realized that what he was writing would not help the poor women outside his window who could not make a living.
In 1974, when he was barely 30 years old, Yunus loaned out $27 from his own pocket to some women so that they could buy supplies to make things to sell. Two years later, he founded the Grameen Bank, (Grameen means “rural” in Bengali), which was designed to make low-interest loans to the poorest people in order to help them work their way out of poverty.
Two weeks ago, Yunus and his bank were awarded the 2 006Nobel Peace Prize for their pioneering use of microcredit -- tiny loans -- to spur development among the poor. Grameen Bank was the first lender to hand out microcredit, giving very small loans to poor Bangladeshis who did not qualify for loans from conventional banks. No collateral is needed and repayment is based on an honor system.
Anyone can qualify for a loan - the average is about $200 - but recipients are put in groups of five. Once two members of the group have borrowed money, the other three must wait for the funds to be repaid before they get a loan.
Yunus says the method encourages social responsibility. The results are hard to argue with - the bank says it has a 99 percent repayment rate. Today the Grameen bank serves more than six million poor families in 71,000 villages by making loans and providing other services. Over the last 30 years, the Grameen Bank has loaned out $ 5.72 billion. Out of this, 5.07 billion has been repaid.
Recently Yunus started a program for beggars, the people who are the very poorest of society who have to resort to begging. He makes no-interest loans so that a beggar can buy a quilt or a mosquito net, and they can pay it back at the equivalent of only 3 cents a month. He has 81,000 beggars registered for the program.
In choosing Mohammed Yunus for the Peace Prize, the Nobel Committee said, “"Lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty. Microcredit is one such means. (It is) development from below." When they interviewed Yunus, he said, “I would hope that this award will make this message heard many times, and in a kind of forceful way, so that people start believing that we can create a poverty-free world.”
So whether you’re giving a jar of baby food to SnowCap or making a loan to a poor woman, who knows what may come of it. We don’t know how far our care goes. It would be easy to measure ourselves against Mohammad Yunus and say, “He’s running a 5 billion dollar bank and he won the Nobel prize, I’m nothing like that.” But he started just like us. He had no idea he would start something that would grow this big, he just thought it was a good thing to give away $27.
