Text: Romans 13:7-10
Speaker: Joel Miller
“Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another.” Romans 13:8
On his 21st birthday, Ernest Thompson received a surprising birthday card – from his father. It was a list of every expense his father ever had in raising him, starting with the doctor’s delivery fee. Each item had a precise amount next to it, with a grand total at the bottom.
This could have been a nerdy joke. Or an oddly detailed way for a parent to ask for thanks. Or, I suppose, an misguided attempt at birth control. See, it’s expensive. You should wait. In this case, it was none of these. It was a bill. No joke. This really happened. As he tells in his autobiography, Ernest didn’t have “a cent of money” at the time, but he was good for it. He went about earning and saving until he’d paid his father back for every penny.
This story is how Margaret Atwood begins her book Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth.
We might ask – If this is a story about debt, what kind of debt is this? If you’re a parent, or a child – or if you ever were a child – have you thought about these relationships in terms of indebtedness?
We speak of debt almost entirely in terms of financial transactions. And maybe you’ve been told there are two kinds of debt: Bad debt, and good debt. Unfortunately, a lot of common debt falls into the category of bad debt. Health care debt, payday loans, credit card/consumer debt, and Yes, car loans are generally considered bad debt. Anyone who’s ever been buried in any of these might agree.
What makes for good debt, so the reasoning goes, are loans on things that either go up in value over time, or produce income that outpaces the repayment schedule. A house, and land, typically fit that first category – they gain rather than lose value. Business loans have potential for the latter – income producing. College debt has been seen as a good investment in one’s future earning potential, although skepticism is growing on that one.
Schools of thought on debt range from Dave Ramsey, whose core philosophy is to avoid all debt, and if you have to get a mortgage pay it off as soon as possible. To folks with a high risk tolerance for leveraging large amounts of debt for ventures they expect to pay off down the road.
All this assumes debt is something one has the agency to choose or not choose. With around 2/3rds of US personal bankruptcies connected to medical debt, there are clearly deeper systemic issues at play.
My childhood, and who knows, maybe the trajectory of my life, was directly impacted by the crush of debt. With farmland values rapidly increasing in the late 70s, farmers were encouraged to get big by taking out loans against their growing equity. My dad was a dairy farmer who pursued this path. When interest rates shot above 20% in the early 80s the math, very quickly, no longer worked. The year I entered kindergarten was the same year the bank forced the sale of the cows and farm equipment. I remember this. We kept the house and land because it was owned by my dad’s parents. Dad went back to school and became a high school teacher, and I grew up on a farm without my parents being farmers.
As Jodi Quint has shared openly at CMC multiple times, financial debt can be a source of tremendous stress, and shame. Along with support within the congregation, our denominational partner Everence has multiple resources for addressing personal finances if this is a current struggle for you.
Given all this, it is not a logical next step to offer a sermon in praise of debt.
The definition of good debt I mentioned makes sense to me, but this is not about the benefits of real estate, or why college still has value in the age of AI. And no, even though I would soon benefit, it is not about why parents should look forward to a payout when their kids turn 21. This is about the way the Apostle Paul speaks of debt to the little assembly of Jesus followers in Rome. It’s about expanding our notion of indebtedness in a way that could be, surprisingly, liberating.
In Romans chapter 13, verse 7, Paul writes: “Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.”
This is a kind of summary statement of what Paul had been writing about in this part of the letter. In the previous chapter, he wrote: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another” (12:14-16). Although Paul never met Jesus, these and other words in chapter 12 sound similar to the Sermon on the Mount.
Paul then wades into the highly contested territory of relating with the Roman rulers: “Let everyone be subject to governing authorities….For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good” (13:1,4). These have always been tricky verses to interpret. They are frequently cited in American Christianity when people’s political party of choice is in power, and suspiciously ignored when they aren’t.
What unites these seemingly different topics is the question of debt, or what is owed: “Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.” Of those four things named, half of them are financial – taxes and revenue, and half of them are what we could call relational debt – respect, and honor.
We’re so used to the things of life coming with a price tag – a swipe of the card to fill the tank, get into the event, keep the lights on, buy a houseplant – that that second group – respect and honor – doesn’t feel like real debt. I mean, you can’t really equate giving someone your undivided attention with paying your rent, can you? It is interesting that we preserve the idea when we say that we “pay attention.” But no one’s coming for your credit score if you don’t, right? For us, social debts, relational obligations where no money is exchanged – just don’t carry the same weight as financial ones.
But like so many things, what’s normal for us 21st century Westerners, is highly abnormal in other cultures present and past. In many traditional cultures, the most powerful person in the tribe is also poorest, because they’re always giving away the material things their people need. What they get in return is honor, which is the real currency of relationships, the basis of their power. In many cultures where leaders do have the most material wealth it’s more a visible symbol of their honor, rather than giving them any ability to go out and purchase whatever they want.
Every aspect of existence involves relational debt. To the gods. To the earth. To the ancestors. Money is just one subcategory of how we track our obligations.
Paul takes it one step further. He believes there is a form of debt, let’s call it good debt, that should never, and can never, be fully repaid. The ledger can never be cleared. This is good, Paul writes. It’s the basis of community.
“Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor. Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Romans 13:7-9)
“Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another.” Love is the form relational indebtedness takes – given and received – as the basis of Christian community, and, more broadly, human flourishing.
What might happen if we lived with a sense of perpetual debt, of this kind? It would be, I think, something quite different than what happened between Ernest Thompson and his father – which is a story about eliminating debt. If you’re hungry for a few more details, here they are: the welcome-to-adulthood birthday bill came in 1881. It was for $521.50, which, I checked, in inflation-adjusted dollars is $16,516.72. Which is not a small amount, but waaay less than raising a child now. Not the point of the story. The point of the story is that after paying his father back for raising him, Ernest Thompson never spoke to his father again. Not only that, but he changed his name to Ernest Thompson Seton. Ernest Thompson Seton became a well-known naturalist. He was influential in the beginnings of the Boy Scouts of America movement. It seems he committed himself to being the mentor he never had.
Back to the point: It’s surprising, until you think about it a bit, and then it makes perfect sense. Ending the debt between parent and child ended the relationship. As if indebtedness was what held the relationship together. As if the kinds of debts we can never repay are what hold the world together. To be in good debt means that our lives are so dependent on past generations, the abundance of the natural world, the goodwill of others, that the only reasonable way to live is, as Paul writes, to “let no debt remain outstanding, except – except – the continuing debt to love another.”
Theologically, our life is on loan from the Source of Life. The hymn we will soon sing says “while all that borrows life from thee are ever in thy care.” We don’t always live in this awareness, which causes us to harm others and ourselves. In Christian understanding, Jesus frees us from debt-as-perpetual-guilt. I’m not talking about blood-sacrifice to an angry God theology here. There never have been and never will be enough sacrifices or acts of penitence to repay what we owe for the gift of life, let alone how we screw it up. In how he lived and taught and died and lives in resurrected power, Jesus frees us from debt-as-guilt, and transforms it into debt-as-love.
Love is never an attempt to even the score. It is always a recognition that we are liberated from keeping score, and so we are free to give ourselves in service to the world.
So let’s end with a little mental/spiritual exercise. It’s kind of like the birthday note to Ernest Thompson Seton, and kind of not. You can close your eyes if you want, or look wherever you want to look.
It’s your birthday – Happy birthday. Someone hands you your list of everything and everyone that has given you life. The doctor who delivered you is on there. But so is a 10th century ancestor you’ve never heard of. And some 2 billion year old bacteria photosynthesizing oxygen into the air you now need to breathe. It’s a long list. Maybe you can picture other specifics. Wow. You’re in so much debt.
But rather than a burden, it’s a calling. Relational indebtedness binds you to the whole of God’s creation. The repayment plan is full of sacred obligations.
You “repay” God through rituals that remind you of your smallness within the infinite.
You repay the natural world by honoring its cycles and balance.
You repay the cultural knowledge you inherit by becoming a student and making your own contribution to the culture.
You repay your parents and ancestors by becoming an ancestor, nurturing younger generations.
You repay humanity as a whole through generosity to strangers and behavior that recognizes the inherent dignity in all people. Respect and Honor.
You live a liberated life of relational indebtedness, free from guilt, full of love.
This series of “repayments” is adapted from page 67 of David Graeber’s book Debt: The First 5000 Years.
