Business Ethics

Sermon preached at Choral Evensong at St Alphege church on Sunday 20th September 2009, Trinity 15.

Readings: Amos 8: 4-7 Luke 16: 1-13



If you read newspapers or watch television you will most certainly have noticed the anniversary of the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in the early hours of 15th September 2008. It was a watershed moment. It was the moment that the grave problems in the credit markets exploded into a full blown financial crisis. It marked the start of some very uncertain days in which the complete collapse of the world financial system appeared to be a very real and very frightening possibility.
The media have marked the anniversary in a big way. One thing I watched, was a BBC 2 drama broadcast on 9th September called “The Last Days of Lehman Brothers”. The drama focused on the weekend leading up to the Lehman Brothers failure. It sought to recreate the events of that weekend, as they unfolded for the main characters involved. For people not well acquainted with the collapse it was rather a confusing drama to watch. There were lots of big, powerful men in dark suits getting more and more fraught as they struggled desperately tried to save the bank, and as they eventually saw it fail. A key moment in the drama came just before midnight on the Friday night. The characters suddenly realised that they had to think the unthinkable. They had to take seriously the possibility of bankruptcy. It was an apocalyptic moment. The Book of Revelation, chapter 18, was quoted with powerful dramatic effect. “…Babylon the great is fallen and become the habitation of devils!...the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies…”.
And it is certainly true, that if you look at Revelation chapter 18, the immorality and subsequent collapse of trade, money and wealth does appear to be an important part of the realisation of the end time prophecies. Bad ethical practice in trade and economics seems to be a symptom of the coming of the end of the world. But this is not just a theme of the Book of Revelation. It is also a theme of the book of Amos chapter 8, part of which we have just heard as our first scripture reading.
Amos was prophesying in the eighth century BC. He was warning the people of the northern kingdom of Israel of an immanent “Day of the Lord”; a terrible day of judgement when their society would be destroyed. This message was very unpopular and people did their best to ignore it. Amos got into trouble with the authorities for his teaching, but his prophecies were fulfilled in 722 BC when the Assyrians utterly vanquished the northern kingdom, removing everything of value and sending the people into exile.
The part of Amos chapter 8 that we read today set out God’s complaint against Israel. God is angry with the merchants and traders, who oppress the poor and trample on the needy. He is angry with their impatience to get on with their trade. They cannot wait until the Sabbath is over and the new moon over, so that they can get on with it. He is angry at the cheating practices in their trade, with rigged measurements and biased scales. He notices that it is the poor who are impoverished by the corrupt practises in trading. These are the charges that God brings against Israel, and for which he dooms it to destruction. It is a powerful lesson in business ethics.
At first sight our reading from Luke is also about business ethics. It is the story of a dishonest businessman who receives his comeuppance. A rich master employs a manager who had been squandering the master’s money. The master decides that the manager must be fired. The manager comes up with a cunning, albeit dishonest, scheme whereby, at his masters expense, he can ensure that he will have lots of friends who will look after him, even after he has been fired. It is all too easy to make comparisons with contemporary failed bankers who ensure their future livelihood, even after they are fired, by means of generous payoffs or oversized pensions.
It is a rather confusing parable because the master, who we might thinks represent God, appears to commend the dishonest manager for his shrewdness in looking after himself, rather than getting angry at the further squandering of the master’s wealth. Is the parable telling us that we should commend people for being dishonest and selfish? The biblical commentaries that I have looked at seem to struggle to explain this away. Some work hard to morally justify the manager’s actions. Others work hard to play down the master’s apparent commendation. I have to say that I am not convinced by either of these approaches. Personally I do not think the parable is seeking to make points about the morality of the manager. Rather it seeks to make a point about the way that money and wealth should be used in this earthly life. Jesus explains, “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” I think Jesus is saying that the wealth you have on earth is not really yours. It is given to you by God, and you can use it on earth, but you most certainly can’t take it with you when you die. However your good deeds do go with you when you die (Rev 14: 13), so it makes sense to use earthly wealth to help others. In this way transient earthly wealth can be used to generate real and enduring wealth in heaven.
But even if business ethics is not the central message of this parable in Luke, there can be no doubt that unjust business practices, and especially practices that damaged the poor, lay at the heart of God’s complaints against the northern kingdom of Israel in the period leading up to its destruction. And this is rather sobering for us as we meditate on the world financial system a year after the Lehman collapse. As the Archbishop of Canterbury commented on Newsnight (Tuesday 15th September), “There has not been what I would, as a Christian, call repentance, We haven’t heard people saying, ‘Well actually we got in wrong and the whole fundamental principle on which we worked was unreal, empty’.” He is absolutely right, of course. Three trillion dollars of public money have been pumped into the world economy to allow it to return to business as usual. It seems to me that this can only be storing up even bigger problems for the future. If the financial system continues to destroy value, then next time this comes home to roust the concern will not be the solvency of banks, but rather the solvency of governments. As the high gold price suggests, we have every reason to feel insecure about our financial futures.
And if we do feel insecure, then the value of the parable in Luke stands out even more clearly. We know we can’t take our money with us. Let’s use it to do good on earth. Especially let’s take care to trade in a way that helps rather than damages the poor. In this way, when we finally lose our money, however that may come about, we will have built up treasure in heaven.