Joined in Sharing

Nehemiah 5:4-13; Psalm 133; Acts 4:32-37; 1 John 1:1-2:2

Rev. Chris Harbin, Central Baptist Church—Lowesville, VA

19 April 2009

We have heard of predatory lending. We are aware of how many poor are trapped into high interest loans by those with no scruples about enriching themselves at the expense of those in need. Payday loans and car title loans reportedly make life easier for those in financial crisis. They are, however, a momentary fix that places the financial future of those in need in deeper crisis than before.

Such was the issue in Nehemiah's day. There was a difference, however. In the context of Nehemiah, there were regulations set in place to prohibit the very loans in question. It was illegal from the standpoint of Mosaic regulation to charge interest when one made a loan to a fellow countryman. To profit from someone's need and misfortune was deemed usury, immoral, and against God's very will. It ran counter to the understanding that the very land of Israel belongs to Yahweh, not the people living on its surface. It was provided to care for the needs of the nation, not to enrich the crafty at the expense of the gullible.

Nehemiah heard the plight of the people at the expense of their creditors who held their land, vineyards, and olive groves as collateral against the repayment of loans with interest. Money had been loaned to pay taxes to the king, but the means to provide an income for repayment of those loans had been taken away from the people. From Nehemiah's perspective, it was grand theft and unholy profiteering. He called the loan sharks to task. He shamed them into returning the land to those they had abused. He reminded them of Yahweh's definition that they were all one people and called to care for each other according to need, not to greed.

Greed had transformed them from a people joined by the bonds of family and the redemption of God into a society structured in classes of privilege and want. After all, "It's not personal, it's just business" was an attitude in vogue long before we adopted it for our own use. As even Hollywood has recognized, however, the phrase is simply a copout for ignoring how my business decisions affect the lives of others.^[1] When the rule of the game is get ahead at any cost, I have to distance myself from how my actions affect others to pretend my actions are not personal in their results.

They were missing the cry of Psalm 133 to live in unity. They were missing the responsibility to bond together as a people and a family under the banner of Yahweh. They had not learned the lesson of Jesus applied by the disciples in times of need following the resurrection. Acts tells the story of how things should have progressed in Nehemiah's day. It is a simple vignette of those with resources making them available to other believers according to the needs of each one. Luke sets Barnabas forth as an example of encouragement in contrast to the circumstances in Nehemiah's time.

Some of those believers doubtless thought they would have no need to provide for their own future, as Jesus was to return in glory at any day. Others simply recognized that the pressing needs around them were not issues to ignore alongside a claim to honor Jesus as Lord. A famine had struck Judea, and there were many facing hunger and want. Loving God and following Jesus as the promised Messiah meant taking seriously his words about loving one's neighbor—and even one's enemies.

John's epistle sets the issue forth a little differently. He talks about sharing the message of truth we have heard. He speaks of taking our very experiences of God—God in Christ Jesus—and expressing them in the same concrete means before others. It is in this means that fellowship is realized among the body of Christ.

It is interesting how the word "fellowship" has lost so much of its meaning in our day and time. Too often, we consider fellowship a time of talking around a table, perhaps a spread of food. We think of fellowship as spending time with one another. We think of fellowship as conversation, a meal, or a party. It is more. It is relationship—the kind of relationship in which we share our very lives with one another along a common journey. Fellowship is partnership in life.

This is what John points to in discussing the point of the gospel. We have shared the message we have heard and lived, he says, in order that we might have fellowship with God in Christ Jesus. This fellowship, however, cannot be real when we do not live in fellowship with one another. Cleansing and forgiveness from sin is a byproduct not only of private confession and repentance, it is also tied to living in unity and harmony with one another—living out our fellowship in the pilgrimage of life.

Elsewhere, Paul speaks of bearing one another's burdens. James speaks of the action of faith that goes further than saying "be warm and be fed." John will go on to say that love for God is expressed in how we love those around us whose needs we can see, if we pause long enough to share not only our food and stories, but the experience of our living in community.

That is what was missing in Nehemiah's day. The people had returned to the land, but were not thinking as a community. They were thinking, acting, and living as individuals after their own private pursuits. They did not consider the good of the whole, but only their own personal advancement.

The excuses were many. It was business, not personal. God helps those who help themselves. They were looking after the needs of their own. It's not my fault if someone else did not take advantage of the circumstances presented to them. Nehemiah said the excuses were ignoring the fact that God had called them to be one people, joined under the banner of the name of Yahweh. By excusing themselves from responsibility for the rest of the nation, they excused themselves from belonging to the nation named after Yahweh.

Being the people of God means accepting our roles and responsibility to live alongside the rest of God's people. It is to enjoy that fellowship to which we have been called. It is to enjoy the freedom of sharing our joys, sorrows, needs, and blessings with one another. It is not ours to continue living the shame of Nehemiah's generation. Rather, we are called to grasp the freedom in the gospel of Christ Jesus to live as those disciples in Acts. It is sharing our experience and walk with God, including its blessings, burdens, and responsibilities to belong to something greater than a dream of personal ambition.

Nehemiah was calling a people to build a wall. It was to be a joint effort. It required the input of all. It required working side by side and bearing one another's burdens, even at the expense of economic advancement. When we refuse to live in the way of the gospel, we are really no better than those loan sharks squeezing the needy and just calling it business for personal gain. Isn't it much more profitable to be joined together in sharing the gospel of fellowship with Jesus Christ?

—©2009 Christopher B. Harbin

This sermon in pdf

¹ Warner Brothers. “You’ve Got Mail” (1998). http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0128853/.