Easter V – B   

May 10^th, AD 2009

Meadowvale Lutheran Church, Mississauga

Pastor Peter Lisinski

“HOW TO SOLVE THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS”

(Text:  Acts 8:  26-40)

A few weeks ago – on Thursday, March 26^th to be precise – the Ontario government presented its annual budget.  It included a proposal to stimulate our economy by combining the federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) with the provincial sales tax.  And, to offset any financial imbalance this might impose on some of us, Finance Minister – the Honorable Dwight Duncan – promised a $1,000.00 rebate to be sent out next year – I believe, in three installments.

Reaction has been, predictably, mixed.  And I’m not an economist, so I don’t know whether that’s a wise or fair approach or not.  But I do know, as surely as it’s possible to know on this side of heaven, that God calls – God expects and demands – that those responsible for the stewardship of public money take God’s word and will into account.  And it’s up to the people of God – the church; you and me – to encourage our public leaders to do so!  And so on Budget Day, Rosarie and I gathered with Bishop Michael Pryse, former Meadowvale pastor, Fred Schmidt, his wife, Marilyn and other Lutherans, at Queen’s Park for a prayer vigil to encourage our government to adopt financial policies that reflect God’s call for economic justice for the poor.  And I believe, further, that such public witness is rooted in the story Luke tells in today’s first lesson.

Acts chapter 8 begins with these words:  “A severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the countryside … going from place to place, proclaiming the word” (Acts 8: 1-4).

One of those scattered – made homeless – by the persecution of the church was a believer named Philip (not to be confused with the apostle of the same name).  While wandering along a wilderness road – wondering, perhaps, where his next meal was coming from or where he might sleep that night – Philip crosses the path of a person from the very opposite end of the social scale.  Besides describing him as an Ethiopian and a eunuch – an exotic foreigner of ambiguous sexual orientation – Luke identifies him as “a court official of the queen, in charge of her entire treasury.”

Lo and behold, this was none other than Ethiopia’s Finance Minister – a person of high social status, wielding considerable power and influence in shaping his nation’s economic policy.  Imagine Canada’s Finance Minister – the Honorable Jim Flaherty, MP for Oshawa – ordering his limousine driver to pull over and offer a ride home to an unemployed GM worker.  That’s a comparable reflection of the story Luke tells us today.  In that unlikely meeting between a persecuted refugee of no fixed address and a privileged person of substantial means God brought a victim of public policy face to face with a legislator of public policy!  And the powerless one converted the powerful one to accept the truth of God’s word and will, and to serve the fulfillment of God’s word and will revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  As Luke puts it, “He proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus” – the ultimate victim of unjust public policy!  That’s how to solve the global economic crisis – or any other crisis we face as individuals, as a family, as a worldwide community.

The church’s calling remains the same as Philip’s:  to introduce the politics of God’s love for the poor into the politics of human power in the service of wealth so that we might build a community life that reflects the salvation God wills for all his children, whatever our culture, creed or colour.  In every conversation, in every situation, in every personal and social interaction – in the home, in the workplace, in the marketplace, in the public place; wherever and whenever decisions are made that will affect the quality of human life for better or worse – you and I are sent – with Philip and the rest of Jesus’ scattered followers – to proclaim the social vision of justice, peace and freedom, for which he lived, died, and rose again.