billionaire's row: healing our brokenness inadequately 2

“…The heart of the sons of men
is full of evil,
and madness is in their heart
while they live…”
(Ecclesiastes 9.3)
 
Wherewith shall I come before the LORD,
and bow myself before the high God?
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good;
and what doth the LORD require of thee,
but to do justly, and to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with thy God?
 (Micah 6.6, 8)
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billionaire's row: ​healing our brokenness inadequately 2
​

“They heal my people’s brokenness inadequately, announcing:
   “It’s OK! It’s OK!”
      But nothing is OK! (Jeremiah 6.14, author’s translation).
​

  introduction

In his famous soliloquy and song, “If I Were a Rich Man,” Tevye dreams of a “big, tall house with rooms by the dozen,” with a “fine tin roof with real wooden floors.” Outside the house, he dreams of a “yard with chicks and turkeys and geese and ducks.” He dreams of a wife with plenty to eat and “a proper double-chin.” As for himself, Tevye dreams of having “the time that I lack to sit in the synagogue and pray… discuss the holy books with the learned men, several hours every day” To him, “that would be the sweetest thing of all.”
 
We all have dreams. Even at nearly 70, I still do. One of my dreams involves Hebrew prophets. I wish they would come back; return in a renaissance of prophetic discernment and courage. Prophets like Jeremiah, Amos, Micah, and Isaiah. Today’s religious leaders—whether the go by prophet, priest, or pastor—seem not up to the task, lacking both discernment and courage. They seem utterly blind and mute to sin, unless it involves human genitalia.
 
This Mad State post is the second in an ongoing series entitled, “Healing Our Brokenness Inadequately” The title takes its cue from Jeremiah 6.14 in which the prophet laments the ineffectual and specious ministry of Judah’s prophets. In this series, we explore specific examples of individual and societal sins about which religious leaders remain willfully blind and stubbornly mute… and therefore complicit. With these examples in mind, we will imagine what a Hebrew prophet might have to say if he were to come to us from the past.
 
 
  billionaire row and housing insecurity

In an article by Liz Theoharis on the site, TomDispatch, entitled, “The US Government Has Abandoned the Nation’s Poor,” Theoharis reminds us of the existence of a grouping of tall ultra-luxury residential towers known as “Billionaires’ Row” that can be found at the southern end of New York City’s Central Park. 

​In these modern-day manors, the wealthy purchase luxurious condos and penthouses for 10’s of millions of dollars—some for well over 100 million dollars—or rent apartments for 10’s of thousands of dollars a month.

Several investigations and studies have revealed that many of the condos, penthouses, and apartments in these great and spacious buildings; these monuments to decadence remain unsold or unrented. Many of the condos, penthouses, and apartments that have been sold or rented remain without inhabitants. Many that have been sold, rented, and furnished remain unoccupied for all but a few weeks of the year, while others remain furnished and unoccupied year-round.
 
It is an open secret that for many developers and purchasers these condos and penthouses serve only as tax havens to hide money lest it be used for the public good and/or as laundry mats to clean dirty money. For the “less corrupt,” the condos, penthouses, and apartments are simply somewhere to put money that they have no earthly idea what else to do with.
 
Meanwhile, due to inadequate wages and predatory rent prices due—both, no doubt, championed and practiced by the very people buying space in the great and spacious buildings—on real planet earth and in New York City, 10’s of thousands of individuals and families are racked with anxiety and worry over the prospect of losing their homes, living in cars, tents, or cardboard boxes.
 
It is difficult to imagine how an actual Christian could countenance such corruption in a nation they claim as “Christian.” It is impossible to imagine an actual Christian participating in such corruption of individual integrity and public welfare. And it is the height of unfathomable grotesqueness that Christian leaders—prophet, priest, or pastors—should remain mute or refrain from just criticism of such immoral decadency and inhuman indecency.
 
To be sure, the Hebrew prophets would not be silenced by the intimidating arrogance of the self-promoting and self-justifying wealthy. Indeed, as we have commented elsewhere, Isaiah, for one, did address a kind of housing piracy not unlike this one.[1]
 
“A cause of lamentation and warning! There are those who merge homestead after homestead,
   combine property after property
until there’s nothing left
   and you dwell by yourself in the heart of the property” (Is. 5.8).
 
Though Isaiah does not mention it here, there can be little doubt that such ancient real estate practices did nothing to better the lives of vulnerable people, but only served to create additional insecurity and homelessness among them. But, here we are in New York, a few wealthy taking up enough resources and space to house thousands.
 
No, I don’t expect developers to invite the poor in to live in the palaces they built for the rarified. I expect, if not the developers, then those with conscience to build affordable living for the vulnerable. That’s what a real Christian nation would do. Jesus may have encouraged his disciples to be more anxious for their eternal soul than their temporal body, but he did not intend his disciples to live without physical shelter or to, themselves, direct a full-scale attack on the emotional peace or temporal existence of their fellow beings. 
 
Yes, these rich New Yorkers are like those ancient rich Israelites.
 
“They covet tracts of farmland, and find a way to steal them.
   They covet houses, and seize them.
Thus, they violently extort a property owner of their home,
   and an individual of their property” (Mic. 2.2, author’s translation).
 
Yes, that’s right. I accuse those rich New Yorkers (and the society that condones and even lionizes their behavior) of what is tantamount to violent extortion which robs others of the security of home. They are the modern-day equivalent of medieval barons living lavishly in their defended castles in complete disregard for the welfare of landless serfs. Yes, those rich New Yorkers would do well to answer the very pertinent question and heed the applicable warning issued by Jeremiah.
 
“Shalt thou reign,
   because thou closest thyself in cedar?
Did not thy father eat and drink,
   and do judgment and justice,
      and then it was well with him?
He judged the cause of the poor and needy;
   then it was well with him:
was not this to know me? 
   saith the LORD.
But thine eyes and thine heart are not but for
   thy covetousness,
and for to shed innocent blood,
   and for oppression, and for violence, to do it” (Jer. 22.15-17)
 
 
  conclusion

True followers of Jesus would see what has been happening on the south side of New York’s most famous park—and many other places from sea to shining sea—for what it is. Theft and pillage committed by the wealthy against the disadvantaged, vulnerable, and powerless. True Christians would not actively participate in such theft and pillage, nor become complicit in it through inaction or silence. They would not elect politicians who legislate in such ways as to make such behavior possible, and certainly not “legal.” Furthermore, it is certain that true prophets, priests, and pastors would speak up and denounce the decadent covetousness that does violence against the disadvantaged—a violence that has certainly led to many a failed heart and early death.
 
Yes, that’s right. We see red when we look up at those monstrosities of covetousness and greed and hubris that line the south side of Central Park. We see the red of human blood dripping from the shimmering windows of New York City’s Billionaire Row.
 
The cowardly silence of modern-day prophet’s, priests, and pastors is profoundly shameful and unlike the vocal courage of the Hebrew prophets as well as that of Jesus of Nazareth. If they were around today, we can imagine that we might hear something like this:
 

A cause of lamentation and warning!
Glittering palaces march in line on Billionaire’s Row.
Manors of lustful warlords.
Castles of entitled and privileged crusaders.
Plantations of merciless masters.
Idolatrous temples of human sacrifice.
 
Like shafts of biting steel,
shards of cutting glass
and long, jagged, and gnashing teeth,
they rend wind and sky,
and, worse, shred the flesh of everyday working people,
Declaring war on humanity.
 
Ordinary folks, seen as lesser,
lack capital, resources, and reserves,
and experience needless and unwarranted anxiety.
Will they lose what little they have, their humble abode?
Will the open sky become their only roof,
motor cars and cardboard boxes their bed?
 
But hardened lords of the manors,
masters of the high and haughty domains,
high priests and priestesses of fertility,
like those of babel’s tower,
build siege ramps to storm the heavens,
challenge God’s rule,
and defy His best wishes and just counsel.
 
Consumed by greed and lust, insatiable appetite,
hubris, pride, arrogance, self-centeredness, false self-importance,
and contempt for fellow citizens--
siblings for whom they have not a care--
they feed on their own unfortunate kin
engorge themselves with the flesh of the powerless.
 
May their mammon molder, their stocks slide,
and their glittering gold turn to fine dust.
May their edifices, monuments of ignominy,
and symbols of human depravity,
creak and crack, crumble and corrode;
totter, wobble, tilt and implode.
 
May the builders and their clientele with whom they collude
find no lasting abode
but in dark, and damp dungeons of lower earth,
patrolled by guards and jailers of like mind as they.
May they gnash their teeth in bottomless pits,
where light and sky ever hide from occupants,
 
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!


[1] See our meditations on Isaiah 5.8-10.