“Where is the Lord?”

Where is the Lord?

Where is the Lord?

Jubilee Preaching Aid for August 31, 2025

In 2022, the world’s global public debt reached 92 trillion $USD. 3.3 billion people lived in countries that were forced to spend more on the reimbursement of their debt interest than on health or education. For around 60 countries in the global South, that debt exceeded 60% of their GDP, and African countries had to borrow at interest rates almost four times higher than the United States. That year, the United Nation Global Crisis Response Group concluded its report A world of debt by stating that “inequality is embedded in the international financial architecture.” When confronted with such an unfair and alarming reality, it could be tempting to see the international debt crisis as something that’s too big for anything to be done and so to give up. Such a response, however, cannot be that of Christians.

Indeed, to see the global debt as an unresolvable problem would be to turn it into an idol: a deity which, although made by our own hands, dictates our lives. The Old Testament is full of such instances. When reading about them, it is easy to scoff at the Israelites and at their constant turning away from God. How could they forget? How could they not see the evil that they were causing around them? How could they choose this suffering over God? With millennia of hindsight, it all seems so foolish. And yet, caught in our own historical moment, we tend to make the same mistakes. We idolize the trinity of growth, development, and debt. While God wants us to be led by humble people (Sirach 10:14-16) and finds righteousness in those who “have distributed freely” and “have given to the poor” (Psalm 112:9), we enthrone arrogant business leaders and bankers who fill the rich with good things and send the hungry away empty-handed (cf. Luke 1:53). According to a recent report by Oxfam, in the last ten years alone, the richest 1% increased their wealth by almost 34 trillion $USD. Meanwhile, many countries in the world are now forced to spend more money reimbursing creditors that are already indecently rich (a growing proportion of external public debt is owed to private creditors) than on building health and education infrastructures that could save lives and significantly improve the living conditions of billions of our brothers and sisters. “Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked; be utterly desolate” (Jeremiah 2:12), for once again we have forsaken God and are sacrificing the lives of our sisters and brothers to “cracked cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13). Rather than being blinded by false idols to the suffering that they cause to our sisters and brothers throughout the world, let us ask ourselves: “where is the Lord?” (Jeremiah 2:8).

This Sunday’s readings tell us that God is by the side of the humble and the poor, advocating for the forgiveness of their debts. Indeed, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us to “keep [our] lives free from the love of money,” “be content with what [we] have,” and share it “for such sacrifices are pleasing to God” (Hebrews 13:5,16). Jesus himself sums up beautifully his expectations towards us when he says:

“When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. And you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14:12-14)

As Christians, we are called to practice an ethic of gracious giving, especially to the poorest and oppressed, that does not expect any repayment. God wants to “feed [us] with the finest of the wheat, and [to satisfy us] with honey from the rock” (Psalm 81:16). In God, we are all called to find life, and life in abundance (John 10:10). But, in order to achieve such communion with God, we need to get rid of our egoistic tendencies and to give to those in need without expecting anything from them in return. In such an ethic of generosity, there is no place for accounts and debts, but only love. When confronted with an injustice as striking as the current global debt crisis, we Christians cannot stay idle. Together with millions of Christians around the world, let us turn debt into hope and, in the spirit of the Jubilee, let us ask for the cancellation of all unfair debts.

Samuel Huard is a PhD candidate in sociocultural anthropology at the University of Toronto. His thesis project focuses on Christian love, and how it is thought about, practiced and experienced by the sisters of the Congregation of Notre-Dame in Quebec and Central America.