Pastor Christa von Zychlin

Our Savior’s Evangelical Lutheran Church

Hartland, WI.  53029

A License to Steal?  August 3^rd, 2003   with reference to Proverbs 20,  Luke 19

 (8th in a Series on the Ten Commandments)

I’ll never forget the sweetness of the apple which the two men, the one older & gray, the other, his son maybe, barely out of his teens, if that, I’ll never forget the sweetness of the apple they handed me out of the back of their pickup truck, the perfect apple for my taste, with a tart crunch followed by an explosion of sweetness.

I was newly pregnant at the time and everything I put in my mouth mattered, you know.  I wanted nothing with insecticides, nothing artificial, I couldn’t stand meat, The small of grease made me sick to my stomach, but here in the middle of a hot summer afternoon, a miracle.  Two men in a battered blue truck, loaded with bushel baskets of sweet Michigan apples, driving down Highway 39 which ran by our little white parsonage in Ohio.

“Just drove ‘em down from Michigan this morning,” said the old man, as he cut the apple in half & handed me half to sample.  “Got tired of working through a middle man so my son & me, we decided to try & sell ‘em this way, but we only sell ‘em by the bushel, so if you think you could use that much, ma’am…

Absolutely I could eat that much, I was going to eat apples every day of my pregnancy.  What a blessing this man & his son were.  I happily handed over the $20 some dollars – a LOT for us back then - & considered it an investment in my child’s future.  Just then Wayne came home so the man handed him the other half of the scrumptious apple to sample, and we both smiled, all was well with the world as we hauled our apples into our little kitchen.  “These are great! Wayne said, reading into the basket for a second one, he rinsed it off quickly & crunched down on it.  ….  “Wait a minute, this one’s mushy.”

“Oh you just got a bad one,” I said, reaching for another, and watched a worm crawl out of a brown spot .  Right away we dug through the bushel basket & we could see that we had just purchased a very expensive bushel of mealy, maggot ridden fruit.  So we dashed out the front door just in time to see that battered blue truck disappearing around the bend, going south, on highway 39.  I’m not sure, but I think the kid waved at us, a friendly wave, as they sped off to find  the next group of suckers in the next town over.

THOU SHALT NOT STEAL says the Lord God in the eighth of the Ten Commandments given to Moses at Mt. Sinai.

Since earliest times, Jewish, Muslim, and Christians have understood this commandment to be about way more than just grabbing something that belongs to somebody else.  That’s wrong, yes.  But stealing is also very much about the things God just talked to us about, in our litany from the book of Proverbs:

Proverbs 20:10-- Two things the Lord hates – dishonest scales and dishonest measures.  In other words, cheating, skimping, giving anybody in any way less than their money’s worth. 

My mother is of an age where she’s spending a little too much time looking through catalogues & watching TV. ads.  Sometimes we’re the lucky recipients of her purchases , in the last year we have gotten several largely useless gifts including a “miracle solar powered out door safety lamp” which you can almost see, if you know where to look when, you pull in our driveway at night.  Somewhere, somebody is making money on that type of thing, and it’s stealing.

When your kid reports for his first day of work at a fast food joint, and the manager neglected to call and tell him that his hours had been rescheduled, that’s stealing time, energy, and scheduling commitment.

When an employee is paid for 8 hours work, but spends hours  surfing the net, taking personal calls, or giving special discounts to friends, that’s stealing.

In his small catechism Martin Luther puts it very simply, You must not steal.  Was ist das?  What does it mean?  We must fear & love God, so that we will neither take our neighbor’s money or property, nor acquire it by fraud or by selling him poorly made products (all things NOT to do) and then Luther continues with the positive meaning of this commandment:  but instead, a Christian will “help his neighbor to improve and protect his property and career.”

As many of you know, Pastor Wayne & church president Tim Culhane, and a group of 5 teenagers from Our Savior’s took part again this year in the Appalachian Service Project, serving this time in an area that Pastor Wayne told me was poorer than any place he’s ever seen in the United States.  They were 15 miles from the nearest working phone, none of their cell phones worked.  They stayed at a rundown local school which seemed to have no internet access, and was scheduled for demolition… in 4 or 5 years when the economy is in better shape!   Meanwhile, the kids that go there, and their teachers, are making do.

Who has stolen from these children in West Virginia, and how is it that young American citizens are growing up without benefit of a good Biblical work ethic, without a chance to see people around them earning a fair return for their work? Without schools or homes that until now anybody has seemed to think WORTH “Improving or protecting”.

I don’t know the answers to that, but I do know that in a small but important way, you and I at Our Savior’s are learning to keep the commandment not to steal, by supporting Our Savior’s out reach mission trips, which this week meant

 helping two families in an extremely poor place to improve their property and homes.  Without all of YOU who support Jesus ministries through Our Saviors, this Service Project would not be possible.  Together, we can work at keeping the 8^th commandment in a way that glorifies God and gives integrity to our membership in the church  of Jesus Christ. 

Finally, in the Gospel story of Zaccheus we have a wonderful commentary on the life of a New Testament thief, who meets Jesus, and turns his life around.

Zaccheus is a thief of the governmental variety, he’s a local tax collector, and whether the empire in Rome increases taxes or not, Zaccheus makes sure his cut goes up & up & up, so that he is a rich man, says the Gospel of Luke.  But then the man who felt like he had a license to steal meets Jesus.  And in this Gospel story we can see that the opposite of stealing is not just giving, as important as our acts of restitution and our service projects to paint and clean, to “increase  and improve our neighbor’s goods & property” might be. 

The most important thing in the Gospel story is that   Zaccheus meets Jesus, and receives the gift of Jesus’ unconditional friendship.  “Zaccheus, I’m coming to your house today!”  says Jesus, in front of all those people who hate Zaccheus for being such a crook, and a rich one at that!  And Zaccheus is so moved by Jesus open friendship to him, that his heart is changed.  And he vows to give half his money to the poor, and  promises restitution, 4 times over to anyone whom he has cheated.

But most of all,  Zaccheus the crook, Zaccheus the wheeler dealer stealer, sees the heart of God revealed to him.  And the heart of God reveals that God’s love is a gift, it can’t be bought, begged or stolen. 

Thou shalt NOT steal, Says God.  And through the gift of God’s own love, we are empowered instead, to receive from God with open hands, and then, to give to our neighbors with overflowing hearts.   AMEN.   

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