 |
| Dollar Sign 9, Andy Warhol, 1982 |
A sermon given during a service of Holy Communion (BCP) at St Giles-in-the-Fields on Sunday 17th August 2025 based on the text of 1 Corinthians 10.1-13 and Luke 16.1-9.
The next
time you see one of those accounting apps advertised on the tube, spare a
thought for Renaissance man and Franciscan Friar Luca Pacioli – often called
the ‘Father of Accounting.’ The chess playing, puzzle loving monk was the first
person we know of to have published a book on the double-entry system of
book-keeping - upon which all modern accounting systems are based – although
the technique probably originated amongst Arab or Indian traders thousands of
years earlier.
It's one of life’s ironies that a member of an
order known for its vow of poverty is credited with writing perhaps the most
influential work in the history of capitalism.
In which, Pacioli
describes the process of book-keeping and the role of the accountant using
the biblical language of stewardship. For Fra Luca, cataloguing every resource
used in each business transaction, taking proper account of the value of assets
and the true cost of liabilities is a profoundly moral act. Balancing the books
a manifestation of the divine symmetry at the heart of God’s creation.
Inspiration perhaps, the next time we have to
complete our tax return?!
Two hundred years later the connection between
accounting, everyday life and biblical ethics were once again at the fore –
this time in Puritan England.
Nehemiah Wallington, a lathe-turner in the City of
London, kept a diary and notebooks, many of which survive to this day and from
which we learn how he used these documents as a form of self-examination and
discipline.
A sort of double-entry moral accounting. The kind
of thing we might reserve for Lent or Advent, Wallington did every day.
His notebooks include ‘Articles for the reformation
of my life’. Each article came with a financial penalty if he broke it – in the
form of a donation to the poor. Any infractions were recorded by marking a dot
in his notebook against the respective article. Wallington’s papers show that
he broke his pledge to ‘rise before six of the o’clock on the Lord’s Day’ six
times. Each lie-in cost him a quarter of a penny. There are seventeen dots
against his article to ‘be not angry with my wife but upon some just occasion’
which cost him halfpence for each infraction.
Wallington’s notebooks also record what he bought
and from where, providing a micro-history of the Civil War, Interregnum and
Restoration period. His approach to double-entry bookkeeping was more than
financial. It was a form of moral self-management — cultivating prudence in his
emotional and economic life.
Something
according to St Paul that we all need to practice! As he reminds us in the
First Epistle to the Corinthians, God’s people have always been prone to drift
— the Israelites, led through the Red Sea and fed by God in the wilderness,
still fell into idolatry, self-indulgence and bickering. “Let anyone who thinks
that he stands take heed lest he fall”, Paul warns!
We must be
vigilant - prepared to examine our lives and habits to live truthfully and
faithfully. Always trusting, as Paul says, that God will not let us be tested
beyond what we can bear.
Pacioli’s principles, Wallington’s practice and St
Paul’s portent, present us with what may well be an uncomfortable truth: that
our bank statements and credit card bills reflect our values more honestly than
we might like.
They show what we buy, who we spend time with,
where we travel. Some household bills now show the carbon impact of our
consumption.
The story of our lives, in minute detail.
Though we don’t write them in pen and ink like
Wallington, these documents offer a stark account of our Christian stewardship.
And in any objective assessment of which — will we
be found wonting?
As the steward in the parable, could we be accused
of wasting the ‘goods’ we have been entrusted with by God?
In the parable, the steward has not been calling in
the debts due to his master and so he is sacked.
But before he leaves his post, he colludes with the
debtors to write-off or cancel part of their debts – and they’re all too happy
to play along. The person who owed a hundred measures of oil gets his
bill reduced by half. The one owed an hundred measures of wheat has his
bill reduced by twenty per cent.
This cunning plan not only makes his master’s
accounts seem more favourable, but also allows the steward to ingratiate
himself with a whole supply-chain of potential future employers - so that “they
may receive [him] into their houses” when he is dismissed.
And what is his master’s response to all this?
He commends his former steward for acting “wisely”.
And Jesus appears to do the same. “Make to yourselves friends of the
mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into
everlasting habitations.” he says.
While
barely covered in the press here, Kenya, Angola, Nigeria and many other African
countries have faced widespread riots over the past year, with protestors
demonstrating against the high and rising costs of living.
The primary
driver of which is the cost of servicing government debt - which has a knock on
effect on the affordability of personal and corporate borrowing; stifling
innovation, limiting growth.
It is true
that corruption and financial mismanagement affect the price that many African
countries pay for their debt - but this alone cannot explain the huge
differential between the close to ten per cent rates charged there compared to
five percent in Asia and seven in South America.
A large
proportion of such loans to African countries are from private creditors who
sought new markets after the 2008 financial crash - most of whom are registered
in London and are subject to English law.
Despite
attempts at reform by international institutions, these arrangements are
crippling economies across the
continent and the lives of those who live there. Sub
Saharan African countries now spend more on debt servicing than on education.
And over thirty African countries pay more in debt interest (excluding
principal repayments) than on healthcare. As one example, Ghana pays 26 per
cent of its revenues in loan interest compared to 3 per cent in France. As a
result, services are being cut, taxes are rising and people’s incomes are being
squeezed.
An immoral
imbalance in our global economic system - a situation far removed from the
divine symmetry that Luca Pacioli prized.
By the turn
of the millennium, a sustained campaign by churches and pressure groups acting
together as the ‘Jubilee Debt Campaign’ led to the cancellation of more than
$100 billion of debt owed by 35 of the poorest countries in the world. But
the underlying structures that led to the debt spiraling out of control then
still remain.
In the
parable, the unjust steward had failed to manage his master’s resources
faithfully and was found wonting. But at the last, he acted with shrewdness—
reducing the burden of others, restoring relationship and securing a future for
himself. In making ‘friends of the mammon of unrighteousness’, Jesus says, he
acted wisely — and points us to the possibility that even worldly dealings can
be redeemed when used to serve eternal purposes. By using the resources at our
disposal for the benefit of others. By deploying the strategies of commerce and
management to reflect Kingdom values - even in less than perfect circumstances
and rather late.
This
unsettling and uncomfortable parable offers hope for all unjust stewards.
Pacioli saw
balance in the books as a reflection of divine order. Wallington used
accounting to examine his soul. And today, the numbers on our bank statements
or the terms of international loan agreements say more about our collective
values than perhaps we’d like to admit.
The Jubilee
2000 campaign to cancel third world debt showed what faithful imagination and
persistent action can achieve in just a few years. But it also showed us how
easily injustice can be restructured and rebranded.
Christian
Aid, CaFOD and other aid organisations are working to end practices
which continue to place unfair burdens on already struggling economies. You can
find out more online and support their ongoing campaign to lobby the UK
government to enforce stricter rules on the majority of overseas creditors
registered in England. To act as leverage for a change to the underlying
systemic problem.
And we can
examine our own finances - to judge what our bank statements say about our
values - and consider whether we too have systemic matters to address in order
to become more just stewards.
2033 - less
that eight years from now - marks two thousand years since the end of Christ’s
earthly ministry — his death, resurrection, and ascension. Let us pray and work
for a new kind of stewardship to take root before then: one that reflects the
values of the Kingdom not only in word, but in action. Like the unjust steward,
may we learn, albeit late and imperfectly, to act more wisely with what we’ve
been given. To reduce the burdens of others. To use the tools of our age - even
the mammon of unrighteousness - to secure a more just and generous future for
all.
What better
way to mark the anniversary of our redemption in Christ, than by helping others
to walk free — and by proving ourselves, at last, to be faithful stewards of
all we have received by His grace.
No comments:
Post a Comment