Friends, there is strength in doing the right thing. But the right thing is not always profitable.

Let me tell you a story. Her name was Caroline. She had just moved into her very first apartment. Do you remember that feeling? The excitement of having a place of your own—your own key, your own front door—even if you were just renting. It still feels like a big step.

Caroline had been in her new apartment for about three months when she came to me for help. She was proud, independent, but also worried. She had borrowed some money—just $200—to buy paint and make her new place feel like home. But she didn’t borrow from a bank or a friend. She went to a payday loan place.

And here’s where it gets ugly. That loan for $200 came with an interest rate of 600% a week. Six. Hundred. Percent. That meant she owed more every single week than she could ever possibly pay. She was paying and paying—money that should have gone to groceries or rent—and only five cents of every dollar was going toward what she actually borrowed. At that rate, she would never pay it off. That $200 coat of paint would cost her thousands of dollars and years of stress.

The church paid off the loan, and I worked with Caroline by getting her mentors to help with her financial literacy. It was my first encounter with these payday loans, and they really set something off in me. Turns out, this experience was triggering my UCC roots.

Back in the early days of New England, our Puritan and Congregationalist ancestors were deeply suspicious of debt. They read the Bible passages that warned against charging interest—verses in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy—and they took them seriously. So seriously, in fact, that when the Massachusetts Bay Colony wrote its first law code in 1641, it limited interest on loans to no more than 8%.[1] Anything higher was considered usury, a sin, and a threat to the community.

Why? Because for them, debt wasn’t just about money. Debt was a form of bondage. And to profit from someone else’s desperation—by charging excessive interest—was an offense against both God and neighbor. If we made money off of keeping our neighbor in debt than all we would put all of our neighbors in debt. It would never end.

They believed the right thing wasn’t always the most profitable thing. And they set up their laws to reflect that conviction. True freedom must extend to all. If we build an economy that’s built on debt, that’s an economy of misery.

I believe we are in an angry time. I believe we are in a compassion recession.[2] I believe it’s because we’re reaping what we have sown. We have trampled on the needy.

I confessed last week that I’m judgy, and that you’re helping with that. I love you, church. Yet I think I messed up. Instead of remaining judgy, you have helped me develop something really disgusting. I believe it’s called… empathy. Some folks today are even calling empathy a sin.[3] And while I don’t agree with that blanket statement, they do have a point worth hearing. There is such a thing as ruinous empathy. Think of it this way: if you see someone who has fallen into a hole, and you climb down in there without a rope, without a ladder, without a plan—now there are two people stuck in the hole. That’s not help. Nor is that empathy.

That’s what it would have been like if, when Caroline told me about her payday loan, I went out and took one myself—just to “share the experience.” That doesn’t lift her up. That just pulls me down. Yet no one is doing such a thing, so it makes me think some folks are just trying to justify their callousness to their neighbor. True empathy means having the courage to feel with someone and the wisdom to bring the tools that help both of you out of the hole. And maybe give them tools to keep from falling into another hole down the road.

I wish I could just blame the poor. I wish I could walk by a homeless person and just shout at them to get a job. Or yell that they did it to themselves, pull themselves up by the bootstraps, and to get out of my way as I’m late for a meeting at church.

Amos calls out, “we will make the ephah small and the shekel great.” This is shrinkflation—paying more for less. Back in the spring, many companies were called out for putting fewer chips or less cereal in the bag and charging the same amount. Another way to translate this is, “we’ll make the measurement small and the price great.”

When the prophet Amos speaks, he names the merchants of his day who can hardly wait for the Sabbath to end. Their thoughts are not on worship, not on God, not on justice—but on how quickly they can get back to selling. And when they sell, they cheat. Smaller measures, higher prices, dishonest scales. They take advantage of the poor, and they do so with eagerness. Amos thunders God’s judgment: this is not just bad economics, it is sin.

Centuries later, Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations, looks at the merchants of his own day. He sees them whispering in the ears of kings, shaping laws to serve themselves. He calls it mercantilism: the idea that wealth is measured in gold and silver, hoarded by a few, and guarded by tariffs and monopolies. But Smith sees through it. He declares that wealth is not locked in vaults, but found in the hands of people—in the daily labor of farmers, craftsmen, and workers. Smith’s major concern in his book is not communism, it’s mercantilism. Like Amos, he exposes the game: the rules are rigged, the scales are tilted, the system benefits the powerful few while the many pay the price.

Both Amos and Adam Smith tell us: dishonest economics is not neutral. It wounds communities. It distorts trust. It crushes the poor. And in God’s eyes, it is a matter of justice.

Friends, we still live with tilted scales. We see them in predatory lending, in systems that promise prosperity but deliver debt, in policies that protect the interests of the wealthy while straining the backs of the vulnerable. Amos’ voice rises again: God sees. And Adam Smith reminds us: economies flourish when they are honest, open, and fair. There is strength in doing the right thing.

So the question comes to us: are we bending the rules to our advantage, or are we seeking the flourishing of all? For if we’re honest, we are closer to becoming a homeless person than a billionaire. The good news is that Christ comes to tip the scales back toward justice, to scatter the proud, to lift up the lowly, to fill the hungry with good things. There is strength in doing the right thing, even when it’s not profitable. What if we measure our economics by the strength of our communities: the stability of the roads, the removal of lead pipes so clean water flows into every home, the strength of relationships within the community, and how we look out for one another?

As disciples, we are called to build a community where no one waits for the Sabbath to end just to cheat their neighbor, but where every day is holy, and every exchange—whether of money, or time, or love—reflects the justice and mercy of God. For you cannot serve God and wealth.

Jesus tells a parable that broke my brain. I still can’t get to the bottom of it. We have a manager who is going to get fired. So he runs out and slashes prices. We are not told if he’s doing this arbitrarily, or if he’s just taking out the percentage on the loans. Yet he is called a dishonest manager, and yet he is praised because he acted shrewdly.

Look at the economics that the manager is using. He’s not using violence. He’s not using extortion. He’s using forgiveness. He’s leveraging relationship. Jesus said that the children of this generation are shrewder in dealing with each other than the children of the light. I believe that. I have so many stories of stupid reasons people have quit the church. There’s ghosting. There’s “I didn’t like what you said.” There’s outright slander. There’s “someone moved a table to a place I didn’t like” not realizing that we can move it back—it’s a table. The covenant at the Last Supper is for the forgiveness of sins. How shrewd are we children of the light in getting creative with forgiveness? Jesus says, “Not very.” And I would agree.

How can we be shrewd in forgiveness? How can we get creative? May we learn from stories of clever tricksters. Abraham pulled a trick on Pharaoh and was clever. Jacob tricked his father, brother, and uncle. Jesus tells us tricky stories that break our brains. So here’s an old parable to get to the point.

Once upon a time, a man was caught stealing and ordered to be executed.[4] On his way to the execution he said to his guard that he knew a wonderful secret and it would be a pity to allow it to die with him. He’d like to tell the king about it. He said he could put a seed of a pomegranate into the ground and, through the secret taught to him by his father, make it grow and bear fruit overnight. The thief was brought before the king and all the high officers of state.

The thief dug a hole and said, “The seed must only be put in the ground by a man who has never stolen or taken anything that didn’t belong to him.” So the thief turned to the king’s advisor, who admitted that in his younger days he had taken a friend’s toy. The treasurer said that in dealing with such large sums, he might have made a mistake. The king stated that he kept a necklace of his father’s. And the pastor muttered something about not returning a Blockbuster video.

Then the thief said, “You are all mighty and powerful and want nothing, and yet you cannot plant the seed. Yet I who have stolen because I was starving am to be killed.” The king, pleased with the ruse of the thief, pardoned him.

Faced with the loss of his position, the dishonest manager acted decisively for his future. One who hears the gospel knows that such a decisive act is required of those who will stake everything on the coming kingdom of God.

I confessed to you last week, church, your influence on me. I want to encourage us to get creative. To innovate. Not just with our building, but with how we are together. How we hang out. How we work in our community to foster forgiveness and the fruits of the Spirit. I’m calling all of us to get shrewd.

Most of us will not become a king with absolute power or a thief on their way to be executed. You might not convert a nation, forgive the debts of folks who owe your employers, or write an economics book that spawns a whole new system of commerce. More likely this coming week will present a chance to give a cup of water, write a note, visit a nursing home, vote in a local election, volunteer, pick up litter, teach a Sunday school class, share a meal, tell a story, go to choir practice, or feed your neighbor’s pet.

“Whoever is faithful in very little is faithful also in much.” May you be shrewd about it and take the opportunity, even if there’s no profit for you in it. For there is strength in doing the right thing. Thanks be to God.

Works Cited

[1] Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641)

[2] https://www.uccmedina.org/sermons/meant-to-live/

[3] Albert Mohler, “The Briefing: Joe Rigney on the Sin of Empathy,” AlbertMohler.com, February 19, 2025, https://albertmohler.com/2025/02/19/joe-rigney.

-Conor Friedersdorf, “The Christian Case Against Empathy,” New York Magazine, March 5, 2019, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/christian-sin-of-empathy-trump-era.html.

-“Vance’s Views on ‘Ordered Love’ Rooted in Conservative Christian Thought,” AP News, August 23, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/e868af574fb2e742c6ed3d756c569769.

– Weber Legacy, “What Charlie Kirk Thought About Empathy in His Own Words,” Facebook, March 11, 2022, https://www.facebook.com/weberlegacy/posts/what-charlie-kirk-thought-about-empathy-in-his-own-words-the-video-resurfaced-as/1332091211622085/

[4] Parable found in New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume IX, page 310. Originally from Moses Gaster, The Exempla of the Rabbis (London: Asia Publishing, 1924.)