Land of Plenty
Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15 and Luke 9:10-17
How
much is enough?
I wonder when you find yourself
asking this question.
Perhaps you asked it last night when
you left a tip for your server after finishing your last bite of dessert
following a fabulous dinner. You may have examined the total amount charged and
pondered for a moment whether to tip on the pre-tax or the post-tax amount,
especially since the food and beverage tax in Washington is 10%. After making
this decision, you had to decide whether to tip 15 or 20% of the amount charged.
And while these decisions take only a few minutes to make, there are many
emotions that float through our minds while making them.
How much is enough for me to express my
gratitude to this person who went out of her way to keep my water glass full?
How much is enough for my date to not think
I’m cheap?
How much is enough to have in my wallet after
leaving the tip since we’re going to get drinks next?
How much is enough for the server’s needs,
given that this tip is part of the source of her livelihood?
What is enough?
How many of us have enough?
How many of us have more than enough?
How many of us do not have enough?
What would it take for every person to have enough?
People have been prone to taking more than enough, testing God’s
definition of enough since the beginning of time.
In the Old Testament lesson read today, the Israelites have left Egypt
and are on their way to the Promised Land when they start complaining and
questioning God. “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of
Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have
brought us out into the wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger”
(Ex. 16:3).
The Lord hears their complaining and then makes a promise through
Moses, stating how bread from heaven will soon arrive. And sure enough, the
Israelites wake up to a fine, flaky substance covering the ground. Seeing the manna,
Moses repeats the Lord’s commandments to take “as much of it as each of you
needs, an omer to a person… all providing for those in their own tents” (Ex.
16:16). God has provided enough. The people simply have to take what they need.
Still, many people fail to follow God’s instructions by taking more than they
need for that day, and everything they take and do not consume breeds worms,
becomes foul or melts.
God tests the Israelites. And the Israelites fail the test when they
take more than enough. Indeed, much of what God gives provides an occasion for
temptation – temptation most biblical characters cannot resist.
While I refuse to believe that God tests us with adversities or bad
things to see how much we can handle, I cannot help but wonder if God tempts us
with good things or tests us with abundance in order to see how we will respond
– if we can handle the admonition to take just enough.
Does God watch to see if we have taken our fair share, the exact amount
we need, while looking even harder to see what we do with our excess?
And I wonder what God thinks about the current state of our city where
the persistent income inequality is one of the widest of any other major city
in the nation?
According to the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, “The average household
income of the top 5 percent of District residents is $487,000” just under a
half a million dollars, which is the third highest amount among large U.S.
cities. At the same time, “The average income for the poorest fifth of DC
residents fell to $9,300” in 2014.[1]
How many of us can imagine living on less than $10,000 a year? Twenty
percent of the residents of our city are doing just that.
But the racial differences are even more striking. “DC’s lowest-income
residents are overwhelmingly people of color, and nearly half were born in DC,
compared with just 17 percent of other residents.”[2] While our economy is
growing and many of us love all the changes in our city, long-term residents of
color are being left behind. And in a city with rents rising rapidly to an
average of $2,133 a month for a one-bedroom apartment,[3] roughly 45% of our
households have incomes below $50,000.
While we cannot see everyone’s struggle to make ends meet, most of us
see poverty every single day. And if the truth were told, there are times when
I loathe walking to Chinatown because I don’t want to see the real need, the
pain of it all.
Shane Claiborne writes, “It’s really, really difficult to understand
that there is a God who is good when everything around us is so ugly and
broken. And it’s hard to understand that there is hope and life after death
when so many people are going, ‘Well, is there life before death?’ and ‘If God
really loves me, then why are my kids starving to death?’ And the incredible
thing I think a lot of us have felt is….’ God why don’t you do something?”[4]
Why is it ugly?
Why is it broken?
Why does God allow it?
Why do I allow it?
Have we been seduced into thinking, “That’s just the way things are?”
Or are we willing to work towards a different reality?
What would it take for us to embody
and work towards an economy of love? It’s the economy God put in place in Exodus.
In fact, God commands the Israelites to not take more than they need for each
day before God even gives the Ten Commandments. Details regarding God’s economy,
policies about what people are to do with what God has provided, fill the pages
of scripture. Instructions about gleaning are found in Leviticus where people
are told to leave fruit and vegetables from their crops on the edge of the land
and avoid going through the fields a second time to get additional food but
rather to leave this food for the poor to come and gather.[5]
Words about how to practice jubilee
are also found in Leviticus. Debts are to be forgiven every seventh year. Land
is redistributed. If things have gotten too far off balance, then the
inequality was dismantled at least once a decade.
God teaches people how to handle what
they been given. How, then did we get to the place where we are tempted to
believe that theology, the study of God, is only about the internal life –
things like meaning, purpose and value – and not what we do with our possessions
as individuals and as a nation?
One of my favorite interpretations
of the Luke passage read today questions whether the miracle was in Jesus
multiplying five loaves and two fish into enough food to feed 5000 people or
whether the miracle is people seeing the power of community. The disciples want
to send the crowds away to fend for themselves through private means. But Jesus
says, “You give them something to eat.” The disciples see scarcity, and Jesus
sees abundance. The miracle happens when Jesus invites people to sit down in
groups of 50 each. Soon all are fed, and there are 12 baskets of food leftover.
Is the miracle multiplication, or is the miracle people seeing each
other and wanting to care for each other?
Is the miracle multiplication, or is the miracle people taking a
smaller portion so all can be fed?
Is the miracle multiplication, or is the miracle people admitting that
they have a little food in their backpacks and are willing to share it now that
they know one another?
What could we do to embody this miracle today?
One theologian has suggested that if every Christian in North America
tithed, the church could feed every hungry person, fund basic education for all
the world’s children, and have enough left over to fund the evangelistic
ministries of the church.[6] Hundreds of individuals
are then trying to figure out if this person is telling the truth by
participating in an organization called the Relational Tithe. Participants give
10% of their income to meet the real needs of people with whom they are in community.
Similar to what happen in our gospel lesson today, something powerful happens
when people live and give in community. In the short period of time people have
been embodying the relational tithe, one specific group has “provided
sustainable job creation in Philadelphia, basic food needs in the Caribbean,
transportation for a single parent in California, housing in Cairo,
microenterprise development in Nigeria…health care in North Carolina, and a
proper funeral for a thirteen-year-old Sudanese refugee from Nebraska.”[7]
I’d love to be part of such a community on a micro level, expanding my
notion of family to include so many more people.
But what do we do on a macro level?
Douglas Meeks explains how the Greek word oikonomia from which we derive the word economy, is a compound of oikos which means household and nomos which is law or management.
Economy is the management of the household, a group of people living together,
a community. The care of the community is central to how God sees the purpose
of the economy. But today, the care of the community is no longer the center of
our economy. Instead, “Accumulation of wealth and exchange have replaced
livelihood as the center of economy,” writes Meeks before adding, “The values
of our economic organization are often held higher than human dignity.”[8] Furthermore, most people
view the economy through the lens of scarcity, the never enough syndrome,
instead of believing there is more than enough. Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove hits
the nail on the head when he says, “People are rich and people are poor, but no
one is satisfied.”[9]
But God says something completely different. The story of our faith is
a story that believes there is always enough to go around whenever God is
present. We have a foretaste of God’s economy each time we come to the table, a
place where all are welcome and no one is turned away. It is this table where
all are fed the same amount of food and drink and where all are satisfied. And while
we have run out of fried chicken at a potluck anytime someone does not give
each person one piece of chicken at a time, we have not once run out of bread
at this table.
There is always enough at God’s table.
There is always enough in God’s economy.
Parker Palmer suggests that one of the essential habits of the heart for
sustaining a democracy is the belief that we are all in this together. We are
dependent and accountable to one another.[10]
God has provided more than enough. The instructions we have been given
are clear. God says “Take what you need” in the Old Testament passage, and
Jesus says “You. You give them something to eat” in the gospel. In both cases
everyone is fed, and everyone is taken care of.
What would such a life look like if fully practiced not just in our
families and sometimes in our church but on a local, national and international
scale?
How can we get there because that’s the politics of Jesus?
[1]
http://www.dcfpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/2-24-16-Income-Inequality-Paper1.pdf
[2]
http://www.dcfpi.org/
[3]
https://www.rentjungle.com/average-rent-in-washington-rent-trends/
[4]
Shane Claiborne and Isaac Anderson, Economy
of Love (Relational Tithe, Inc. 2010), 18.
[5]
Leviticus 19:9-10 and 23:22.
[8]
Douglas Meeks, God the Economist
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 4.
[9]
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, God’s Economy
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009) 45.
[10]
Parker J. Palmer, Healing the Heart of
Democracy (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011), 44.
