Rich Oppression
Dr. James Smith
James 5:1-6
28 May 2006
During the Christmas season, it has become an unofficial American tradition, to see the black & white film rendition of Charles Dickens famous book, A Christmas Carol.
In fact the main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, was such a notorious and heartless miser, that to be called a “Scrooge” is to this day considered an insult.
After a hard childhood, Scrooge became an apprentice in a London book publishing shop. He soon fell in love with the owner’s daughter and looked forward to a happy marriage.
Scrooge learned the trade quickly and learned to love money even more quickly. He slaved long hours in devotion to his new found god, Mammon and this didn’t escape the eyes of his fiancee.
After many warnings, she told him that she could not be married to a man who loved money more than her. Scrooge left the business broken hearted but was determined to become successful as a moneylender.
Over the years he became wealthier and wealthier, charging exorbitant interest rates to his needy customers. He really was a miserable old man, though he never knew it. All his money blinded him to the lie he was living.
Unlike most rich people, he even began to quit spending money on himself. He no longer bought new clothing and he ate only the cheapest food, so he could hoard even more money.
Soon he began to cut the wages of his few employees, but because work was so scarce at that time, no one dared to complain for fear of losing their jobs, even though their families began to suffer.
Scrooge even discovered he could get them to work on Sundays, because they needed to make up for the lost wages. This, however, meant that they could no longer attend church.
He even became so cheap that he refused to buy moth balls or cedar chips to protect his clothing from moths and by this time, he had packed away so much silver that it began to tarnish and corrode as silver does when it isn’t used.
He never thought of raising his needy workers wages or helping a charitable organization and “God forbid” that he ever gave any of his surplus wealth to God’s work.
When reminded by a rather bold employee that is the Lord that gave him the strength to work and live, he snapped back, “I have worked too hard to give my money to hypocrites.” All the while, however, his employees wondered who the real hypocrite was.
And so Scrooge’s miserable life passed from year to year until one evening that he fell into a deep and happy sleep from repossessing some poor family’s home that he dreamed that awful dream.
As we think about this classic story from the nineteenth century, I think that in many ways, it is an excellent parable or illustration of the issues that we find in James 5:1-6.
This section, that the NIV gives the title of “A Warning to Rich Oppressors,” fits Ebenezer Scrooge to a “T;” Moth-eaten clothing, tarnished silver, hoarded wealth and a failure to compensate his needy workers and their families.
And while James doesn’t explicitly say so in the text, no doubt his audience would have contrasted rich oppressors with James’ half brother, the Lord Jesus Christ.
James would have naturally known all about the humble circumstances of Jesus, who was born in a stable, borrowed loaves and fish once from a boy to feed a crowd, borrowed a coin to illustrate a spiritual truth, borrowed a donkey and a room for his last supper, borrowed a cross and even borrowed another man’s tomb.
And didn’t James’ brother also say, that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God?
The example of Jesus Christ, whom James had known so well, is a clear contrast to the rich oppressors of James 5:1-6.
In this passage, James stands clearly in both the traditions of ancient Greco-Roman moralists as well the Hebrew prophets.
In the ancient mind, to live a life of luxury, excessive comfort and overindulgence was considered a dangerous vice. After all, such things naturally lead to moral decline as well as the hardening of the heart.
And James’ reference to the “day of slaughter” reminds us of the Old Testament prophets who railed against the rich because they had forgotten God and had become wealthy at the expense of the poor.
One of the great spiritual ironies of the passage then is this idea of the “day of slaughter.” Americans, however, don’t like to think or talk about slaughterhouses. We like our meat neatly cut and packaged.
But as a guy who used to raise animals, I could never shake the strange irony, that the more a pig ate, the quicker we sent it to the slaughterhouse and the quicker that it ended up on the family dinner table.
James reminds us of the foolishness of trusting in transitory wealth. While the rich thought (and continue to think) they were saving up wealth for their retirement years, in fact they were storing up God’s judgment.
In Ebenezer Scrooge’s famous dream, he was reminded that he didn’t become a monster overnight, but became that way as he hoarded his gold and silver piece by piece.
And with each piece he hoarded, and each worker or person that he mistreated, he added a link in the heavy chain that he was to wear.
So be careful of the question, “how much is enough?,” because if your answer is like Mr. Rockefeller’s, it could be spiritually deadly. When asked the question, “Mr. Rockefeller, how much is enough?” He responded, “just a little more.”
Proverbs 30:8-9 is a prayerful antidote that we should cling to as Christians.
“Two things I ask of you, O Lord, do not refuse me before I die. Keep falsehood and lies far from me; give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me my daily bread. Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘who is the Lord?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.”
Riches have the nasty habit of blinding people to reality; the reality that they were not born to possess things, but rather they were born so that they might be possessed by God.
An important spiritual principle that we can derive from James 5:1-6 this morning is simply this . . . don’t be a Scrooge.
God has blessed each and everyone of us here today in so many ways. And so we need to exercise care and discernment with what God has given us.
There are needs all around us in Hyde Park as well as the city of Chicago. Don’t be a Scrooge and so incur the wrath and judgment of God.
Let’s Pray
