Hoarding Scarcity

Sister Simone Campbell, you and yours are lovely. Really. Thank you!

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I want to take a moment to also thank you for reminding us that there is enough to share, but not enough for our greed. I think this needs to be expanded, and I would like Brother Walter Brueggeman to share with us on The Liturgy of Abundance and the Myth of Scarcity.

The majority of the world's resources pour into the United States. And as we Americans grow more and more wealthy, money is becoming a kind of narcotic for us. We hardly notice our own prosperity or the poverty of so many others. The great contradiction is that we have more and more money and less and less generosity -- less and less public money for the needy, less charity for the neighbor...



Though many of us are well intentioned, we have invested our lives in consumerism. We have a love affair with "more" -- and we will never have enough. Consumerism is not simply a marketing strategy. It has become a demonic spiritual force among us, and the theological question facing us is whether the gospel has the power to help us withstand it.


The Bible starts out with a liturgy of abundance. Genesis I is a song of praise for God's generosity. It tells how well the world is ordered. It keeps saying, "It is good, it is good, it is good, it is very good." It declares that God blesses -- that is, endows with vitality -- the plants and the animals and the fish and the birds and humankind. And it pictures the creator as saying, "Be fruitful and multiply." In an orgy of fruitfulness, everything in its kind is to multiply the overflowing goodness that pours from God's creator spirit. And as you know, the creation ends in Sabbath. God is so overrun with fruitfulness that God says, "I've got to take a break from all this. I've got to get out of the office."...



Blessing is the force of well-being active in the world, and faith is the awareness that creation is the gift that keeps on giving. That awareness dominates Genesis until its 47th chapter. In that chapter Pharaoh dreams that there will be a famine in the land. famine in the land. So Pharaoh gets organized to administer, control and monopolize the food supply. Pharaoh introduces the principle of scarcity into the world economy. For the first time in the Bible, someone says, "There's not enough. Let's get everything."...


Because Pharaoh... is afraid that there aren't enough good things to go around, he must try to have them all. Because he is fearful, he is ruthless. Pharaoh hires Joseph to manage the monopoly. When the crops fail and the peasants run out of food, they come to Joseph. And on behalf of Pharaoh, Joseph says, "What's your collateral?" They give up their land for food, and then, the next year, they give up their cattle. By the third year of the famine they have no collateral but themselves. And that's how the children of Israel become slaves -- through an economic transaction.


By the end of Genesis 47 Pharaoh has all the land except that belonging to the priests, which he never touches because he needs somebody to bless him. The notion of scarcity has been introduced into biblical faith. The Book of Exodus records the contest between the liturgy of generosity and the myth of scarcity -- a contest that still tears us apart today...



By the end of Exodus, Pharaoh has been as mean, brutal and ugly as he knows how to be -- and as the myth of scarcity tends to be. Finally' he becomes so exasperated by his inability to control the people of Israel that he calls Moses and Aaron to come to him. Pharaoh tells them, "Take your people and leave. Take your flocks and herds and just get out of here!" And then the great king of Egypt, who presides over a monopoly of the region's resources, asks Moses and Aaron to bless him...


When the children of Israel of Israel are in the wilderness, beyond the reach of Egypt, they still look back and think, "Should we really go? All the world's glory is in Egypt and with Pharaoh." But when they finally turn around and look into the wilderness, where there are no monopolies, they see the glory of Yahweh.


In answer to the people's fears and complaints, something extraordinary happens. God's love comes trickling down in the form of bread. They say, "Manhue?" -- Hebrew for "What is it?" -- and the word "manna" is born. They had never before received bread as a free gift that they couldn't control, predict, plan for or own. The meaning of this strange narrative is that the gifts of life are indeed given by a generous God. It's a wonder, it's a miracle, it's an embarrassment, it's irrational, but God's abundance transcends the market economy.


Three things happened to this bread in Exodus 16. First, everybody had enough. But because Israel had learned to believe in scarcity in Egypt, people started to hoard the bread. When they tried to bank it, to invest it, it turned sour and rotted, because you cannot store up God's generosity. Finally, Moses said, "You know what we ought to do? We ought to do what God did in Genesis I. We ought to have a Sabbath." Sabbath means that there's enough bread, that we don't have to hustle every day of our lives...

What we know about our beginnings and our endings, then, creates a different kind of present tense for us. We can live according to an ethic whereby we are not driven, controlled, anxious, frantic or greedy, precisely because we are sufficiently at home and at peace to care about others as we have been cared for.


But if you are like me, while you read the Bible you keep looking over at the screen to see how the market is doing. If you are like me, you read the Bible on a good day, but you watch Nike ads every day. And the Nike story says that our beginnings are in our achievements, and that we must create ourselves... 

Abundance Statue in the Rose Garden, by Jim Linwood

According to the Nike story, whoever has the most shoes when he dies wins. The Nike story says there are no gifts to be given because there's no giver. We end up only with whatever we manage to get for ourselves. This story ends in despair. It gives us a present tense of anxiety, fear, greed and brutality. It produces child and wife abuse, indifference to the poor, the buildup of armaments, divisions between people, and environmental racism. It tells us not to care about anyone but ourselves -- and it is the prevailing creed of American society


Wouldn't it be wonderful if liberal and conservative church people, who love to quarrel with each other, came to a common realization that the real issue confronting us is whether the news of God's abundance can be trusted in the face of the story of scarcity? What we know in the secret recesses of our hearts is that the story of scarcity is a tale of death. And the people of God counter this tale by witnessing to the manna. There is a more excellent bread than crass materialism. It is the bread of life and you don't have to bake it. As we walk into the new millennium, we must decide where our trust is placed...


Jesus said it more succinctly. You cannot serve God and mammon. You cannot serve God and do what you please with your money or your sex or your land. And then he says, "Don't be anxious, because everything you need will be given to you." But you must decide. Christians have a long history of trying to squeeze Jesus out of public life and reduce him to a private little Savior. But to do this is to ignore what the Bible really says. Jesus talks a great deal about the kingdom of God -- and what he means by that is a public life reorganized toward neighborliness.

The question for the contemporary Christian is, "Which narrative do we follow? Who's story will we make our own? God's, or Pharoah's?" How, though, do we go about and practice and live out that story and testimony in the face of overwhelming pressure against blessings? When we are made to feel guilty for having a Sabbath, or for appreciating some occasional manna? When Jesus blesses the poor, and our culture and tv and movies and politicians and radio and restaurants curse the poor while delivering poverty?

How do we counter that?

No True Christian

No true Christian would ever...

Let's draw a Venn diagram, shall we?

Here we have two, very, very crudely drawn circles. One is labeled "Christian", the other "Christ-follower." Notice that the two are neither mutually exclusive nor are they equal. Meaning that one can be one, or the other, or both, or neither. But just because one falls under one label doesn't mean she falls under the other one.

And now you may have one or two questions. I'll see if I can figure them out and then answer them for you.

1. What's the difference between the first circle and the next?
2. What does this all mean and what is your point?
3. Couldn't you have used the circle drawing tool in the SuperNote app? It would've looked so much better?

Well,
1) To say that one is a Christian is to say that one follows or is a member of a particular religion that is attached to not only the person and deification of Christ, but also the religious ties that have been drawn up since then. Rules, guidelines, prescriptions, seasonal celebrations (such as Lent coming up right now), worship, ascribed doctrine, regular (or irregular) gatherings with co-religionists, offerings and other sacrifices, etc. On the other hand, to say that one follows the Christ himself is to say that he or she follows the examples and teachings - as best as can - that Jesus set out during his ministry years.

2) This is done to point out the fallacy of the No True Scotsman rule as applied to public figures and their claims to Christianity. Men like Franklin Graham are going around affirming Gingrich and Santorum's Christian credentials while plausibly denying Obama's Christianity. As a retort, many on the left are declaring that Gingrich and Santorum cannot be true Christians. But to say that is to deny that Christianity is a religion fraught with horrible atrocities committed in the name of Christ. Christians supported religious wars against Muslims and other Christians, genocide against American Indians, Palestinians,

Though without Jesus' approval and quite contrary to his teachings and examples.

3) Only two questions, please. So shut up.

So what we see here are two distinct but intermingled identities - one easy to identify (the particularly religious one) and one with different sets of criteria that can be seen through an engagement with the Gospels.

Please notice, unlike a particularly viral video posted by a young Christian, I don't want to give off the impression that religion is bad. Christianity, for many Christ-followers, can give us an anchoring, an identity, a spiriual home, and a community that we may otherwise flail about without. Joining in the suffering of Jesus that is Lent helps to remind us and keep us focused as to the person, work and focus of Jesus. Prayer and meditation keep us connected to our source and heart and can energize us - or at least calm us down.

But one can - as we used to say - go through the motions without actually following Jesus.

Most self described Born Again Christians would agree with that statement. But I don't mean the same thing they do, necessarily. Jesus said a tree is known by its fruits. We would have some overlap as to what those fruits look like (specifically, the fruits of the Spirit), but considering the de-emphasis on Jesus' teachings on the sheep and the goats (the most obvious qualifications he gives), not much.

Let's look at those qualifications:

• Love God.
• Love your enemies. (This means, particularly and without equivocation, we need to shun war and other acts of violence done against our neighbors and enemies.)
• Pray for those who persecute you.
• Let go of wealth. (This one is especially de-emphasized in modern times. We tend to say Jesus was okay with wealth, but the truth is he wasn't. He considered it evil and he shunned it, personally. The creator god of the universe, for example, came to earth not just as a baby, but as a peasant. And then he lived homeless, as a vegabond. It's within this context that we should understand his talk with the rich young ruler, or his lesson about the evil eye.)
• Work towards peace (Not just ending war, but all sorts of violence we do toward each other - including poverty)
• Visit those in prison (Rather than throw them in there to forget them under the auspice of "keeping us safer".)
• Give water to the thirsty and feed the hungry (In other words, those arguing for an end to social programs for the hungry - without any real, tangible plans to alleviate the suffering of those who are dependent on them are in direct defiance of this order.)
• House the homeless (Ditto)
• Clothe the cold (Well, most of us seem to get that one right. For the most part. Seriously.)
• Love your neighbor as yourself.

Now, keep in mind, the parts in parentheses are interpretations of the more direct exhortations in the Gospels (and the epistles as well). They are not direct commands, but I tend to think they're pretty obvious from the context of Jesus' culture and socio-political surroundings, as well as from the way that Jesus and the first few centuries' worth of his followers practiced out their faith. But again, my interpretation.

Which, I think, goes to show how complex it can be to try to point and say, "He's in; she's out; she, in..." I'm not so sure that's our place. Because if we were to go by specific rules, then we "all fall short of the glory of God." To follow Christ is to acknowledge that we are traveling, and that there is no destination, only journey.

I was highly tempted to list those I felt belonged in certain groups. But I think I'll refrain from that pharisaism. If public figures want to go around and act like anti-Christs while they claim the name of Christian, then they make their own rotten fruits evident. 

Fools, Idiot, Neighbors, and Teachers

I had a couple friends publicly denounce me and take me to task for publicly saying some mean things about religious and political leaders like Chuck Colson, Newt Gingrich, and Donald Trump because they said some nasty lies about Black, Latino, and poor people. The argument was that I should not attack fellow believers, and that Jesus left clear instructions about calling "your brother 'Raca' ('you fool')." Which he did, in the famous Sermon on the Mount, shortly after the Beatitudes.

And I seriously had to question this and think about this and wonder if I was betraying myself. If I may have gone overboard to my own principles.

See, I do have principles. I don't always remember what they are. And I'm not always faithful to them. But generally speaking, I try to live by them - even if I don't remember why I'm living by them or what they are.

So, I needed to ask, "Is that it? Is that the final word on name-calling in the bible?" Because it didn't seem to be.

I learned early on in my Christian life that the bible effectively uses sarcasm and sometimes even insults to get its points across. You thought Jonah was just a story about a fish eating a dude? Consider the final chapter of the book. Remember that section where Elijah and his protege Elisha dared the Baalians to a fire-off? "Where are your gods? Do they have the runs?"



And then there's these passages in the New Testament, where Jesus, Paul, and James use some pretty tough language themselves.

Jesus: You two-faced double-timers. You cleaned up sarcophagi. You den of poisonous snakes. Woe to you!

Paul: I wish those Judaisers would finish up their own jobs on themselves and fully emasculate themselves.

Speaking of sarcasm, notice the dripping irony here, in 2 Corinthians chapter 11:

Don’t think that I am a fool to talk like this. But even if you do, listen to me, as you would to a foolish person, while I also boast a little. Such boasting is not from the Lord, but I am acting like a fool. And since others boast about their human achievements, I will, too. After all, you think you are so wise, but you enjoy putting up with fools! You put up with it when someone enslaves you, takes everything you have, takes advantage of you, takes control of everything, and slaps you in the face. I’m ashamed to say that we’ve been too “weak” to do that!

In these passages, Jesus and Paul are addressing religious and civil leaders that abuse those under their watch. In contrast, Jesus gives specific directions about leadership to his followers:

• "Watch out for the impurity of the Pharisees,"  
• "The leaders of the non-Jews lord their leadership over them. You are not to be like that. You are to serve, as the Son of Man has."

In fact, that seems to be the whole point of leadership with Jesus. Those who want to lead must do so by humble example. Not by boastful braggadocio. Not by harming others, or exposing others, or spreading malicious lies about others. But by sacrifice.

If they weren't willing to do that, but were willing to take on the title of "leader" (and in the process, hurt Jesus' sheep), they are open for scorn. And not a little bit either.

But what about the word, "fool." Does the threat of hellfire in Matthew chapter five only apply to that word? Is it magical? Can we get away with any sort of insult, as long as we don't call someone a "fool"?

No. Not at all.

James 2:
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clohes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompani by action, is dead.
But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”
Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did.

As one can ascertain in the Corinthian passage, Paul was calling the other leaders fools for their
It seems obvious to me that there are several meanings for the word "fool" or for any such insult in the Bible. The most common understanding of the word "fool" (forgive my non-use of Greek or Hebrew here) in the bible is one who acts as if there were no God to be held accountable to. Which is one way of looking at the leaders in the Corinthian church that Paul was addressing, sarcastically, above.
ie,

The fool says in his heart, there is no god.

It seems clear that when Jesus said that we shouldn't call our fellow brothers or sisters fools, he meant we shouldn't take it our words, our interactions, our insults lightly, nor that we should take ourselves so highly that every little insult is a threat to our being.

Perhaps if we look at the model of Jesus, we see and recognize a pattern. Those who hurt the poor, those who profited from the abuse of others, those who bullied or kept themselves in a level above others were open for open criticism. The more common people who were not in leadership positions may be open for gentle rebuke, but from an actual state of humility, after the rebuker earned the trust, respect, and friendship of the rebuked. Far too often we critique or judge and say we're doing it out of love.

But we aren't.

We judge people we don't really know because they don't measure up to our standards. Rather than working through life and our struggles together, earning each others' trust.

However, when we are talking about leaders, or supposed leaders, we must consider a few other directives.

• Let not many of you consider to be leaders.
• The leaders of the pagans lord over them, but you are not to act as such.
• Weep and wail, you rich people
• Woe to you, pharisees.
• To whom much is given, much is required.

Let's not forget the clearing of the temple that allowed the outcasts into the holy place.

In short, it's not okay to lash out and take personal offense at others for debatable subjects. That not the way of the humble. Christians are to freely give. That's going to be a lifetime lesson and challenge for me.

However, if we see a rich man stealing from the poor, or a religious leader abusing his flock or excluding others from worship, or a political leader trying to garner power by trampling on others, then not only is it okay for Christians to speak up strongly, it's a biblical mandate.

So, no, I won't apologize for calling Trump or Gingrich "Neanderthals." Christians should apologize to the world for following them...

posted from Bloggeroid

A Million Miles in the Wrong Direction

Jesus... did not think of equality with God

as something to cling to.

Instead, he gave up his divine privileges;

he took the humble position of a slave

and was born as a human being.

When he appeared in human form,

he humbled himself in obedience to God

and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

 - Philippians 2 [New Living Translation] 

Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God’s.”
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me.
- Matthew 16 [New Living Translation]

I know it's a bit faddish - or at least that's what I've been told - but I prefer being called a Christ-Follower to being called a Christian. Although there are many reasons to hold onto the typical label*, the term Christian gives off the impression that conversion and purification is something that has happened at a specific moment in time. It is as if I've been Jesus'ed - as if Jesus had happened, and there is nothing else to be done. A moment in time, a simple prayer, some recitation and closed eyes and it's over. The rest is just waiting to happen.

But Jesus called his disciples to follow him. Daily. The book of Philippians instructs us that we are to follow in Jesus' acts of humility. Jesus told his first followers to pick up their crosses of sacrifice and forget the ways that the harsh, cruel, cynical world was teaching them. The world taught them to act in bitterness, told them to love and accumulate power, to bow down before the emperor as if he was a god.

And it only makes sense to, right? After all, the king's seat is the center of power and wealth. And if those are good things, surely those who control them are blessed by the gods, right?

Rather, Christ's followers are to follow him in submission. We see how the God-man acted in his sacrifice - in his actions of becoming a lowly, working-class "slave". In his

We are to follow him by turning our backs on the ways of the world and towards the things of God.

Although many Christians would agree with that assessment, I'm not sure they understand what the ways of the world are. And I'm particularly troubled that they may not understand what the ways of God are - whom God values and treasures. So though their intensity in the struggle may be commendable, the direction of their struggle can be easily misguided. We've gone very far, but in the wrong direction.

Jesus made it clear that his way is the way of the humble, the meek, the lame, the blind, the outcasts, the poor, the shepherds, the prostitutes, the dirty protesters, the aliens, the outsiders, the rejects, the mentally handicapped, women, people who look different than us, who sound different than us, those whose ways are strange to us...

According to Jesus and his early followers:

• We cannot worship both wealth and God in our churches - or our politics.

• We cannot consume all the world's resources while most of the world starves and follow the same Jesus who reviled gluttony and sided with the poor. That's gluttony. The US must repent, starting with Christians, for our consumptive culture.

• We cannot simultaneously hate Arabs and Muslims and claim to love Jesus.

• We cannot bear false witness while honoring the ten commandments. Such bold lies as when we allege that Muslims are trying to take over the Western world. Or that Sharia Law is a danger to the US Constitution. Or that Islam is a cult. No religious group that has been around for over a hundred (er, thousand) years and has over a million followers (let alone a billion) can be reasonably called a cult by any reasonable explanation.

• We cannot mock homosexuals and yet keep the two commandments (Love God, love neighbors).

• We either follow the desires of the world - fame, money, wealth, exclusion, power, gratification - or of Jesus - inclusion, healing, peace, service.

I am not suggesting that I am wonderfully following in these ways. I recognize that I let my anger and rage - often a selfish-influenced anger - get the best of me. I recognize and know my short-comings - or at least a few of them. I feel as if I've only crawled five miles in the general direction of Jesus. But that's not what this is about. This is about the error, the sin, of letting the sins of the prevailing culture - the ways of the world - take precedence over the gospel of freedom and deliverance for all - including the poor, the outsiders, the aliens, the sick, the hungry, the cold, the imprisoned, the lepers...

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*The sense of identification, the family, the history, the traditions, the security, etc. These are not bad in and of themselves and are in many ways a positive benefit of belonging to the universal church. In fact, in general they are good and necessary, and with a bit of soul-searching (apologizing and making up for past and present abuses, for instance) these attributes can once again be a blessing to the world and the name of Jesus. For now, however, we have some demons to exorcise.