Proper 27A 2002

A Sermon for Proper 27, Year A

The foolish bridesmaids said to the wise, “Give us some of your oil..”

But the wise replied, “No! there will not be enough for you and for us.”

There will not be enough for you and for us. It’s a very familiar notion isn’t it? Whether we encountered it as children when there wasn’t enough for everyone to have seconds at a crowded dinner table, or in competition for the limited places on the basketball team or cheerleading squad in high school, or in competitive college admissions or a tight job market, we’ve spent our lives living in a world in which the unspoken and universally accepted assumption is “there will not be enough for you and for us.”

In the midst of our present economic crisis and recession, we are even more likely than usual to think this way. People are getting laid off and competing for the few job openings out there. Pundits have pointed out that the massive deficits in the Federal budget will make it difficult for President-elect Obama to deliver on many of his campaign promises. Globally, the message is the same. Environmentalists warn us that the natural resources of the world are finite and we can’t keep consuming them at the rate we have and hope to survive. The world as a whole remains divided between into the rich of the developed world and the poor of the bulk of humanity. It seems more than obvious that there simply aren’t enough resources to go around.

The trendy name for this assumption is “a zero-sum game.” If you get more, I get less. Goods are limited. The pie is only so big. Resources are too scarce to meet everyone’s needs. There will not be enough for you and for us. We’ve experienced this assumption at work so regularly in our lives, that we’ve no doubt at all about its truth. In fact, we find it almost impossible to imagine the world being any other way.

But what if this assumption tells, at most, a very limited truth about the world we live in? What if the goods of creation could be shared in such a way that everyone got enough? What if abundance, not scarcity, is the fundamental reality of the world God made?

I hear your objections already. You’ve just told us of the competition for limited resources in our nation and in the world, Jack. How can you say that abundance rather than scarcity is the real truth about this over populated, overburdened world?

Well, I can – but first let me be clear about what I’m not saying. I’m not saying that the earth’s resources are unlimited. Vast as God’s creation is, our piece of it is not infinite. Our experience of limited resources does tells a partial truth. The earth, like ourselves, like each of God’s creature, is finite.

But the resources God gives are not scarce. Finite, yes; scarce, no. God has created a world that is rich, abundant, overflowing with life, love and goods. The abundance of God’s gifts is sufficient for everyone’s needs. That’s part of what Genesis means when it says that God looked on the whole Creation and behold, it was very good. Contrary to the zero-sum thinking so ingrained in us, it is not true that, “there will not be enough for you and for us.” God has made enough for all to have enough. What we need to do is learn how to recognize God’s gifts and to share them.

Still having a hard time believing in the truth of abundance? Maybe this will help. There is a wonderful children’s book called The Table Where the Rich People Sit. [1] The narrator is a girl who is annoyed at her underachieving parents who have chosen to live out in the country, working at simple out of doors jobs they love, but which don’t make pay well.

This sensible girl knows that the family is poor and that her parents have some explaining to do for leaving them without enough money. But as they sit around their scratched-up homemade kitchen table her parents show her the abundance of their lives. They start to assign dollar values to the riches among which they live and work: sunsets, canyons, eagles nests, howling coyotes, cactus flowers, bird calls, distant mountains – which they decide are worth $50,000.

The mouthy daughter learns to her surprise that she is worth a million dollars to her parents and so, too, are her mom and dad and even her little brother. In the end she concludes that hers is actually a wealthy family, blessed with abundance, and that their scratched-up homemade kitchen table with the almost empty plate of cookies is, in fact, The Table Where the Rich People Sit.

Now it’s a curious thing: this family with relatively few material goods (by American standards, anyway) are , with a little effort, able to see the abundance they have. We, who mostly live with many more material goods, often have a harder time getting out of the scarcity mindset into which we have been trained from birth.

But if our lives are not marked by material abundance, I don’t know whose are! We can go to the supermarket and get almost any kind of food we want just about any time of day or night – assuming, of course, that isn’t already in our refrigerators or cabinets. If we want some culinary specialty or just don’t feel like cooking (though its very easy with our ranges and microwaves), we can eat at one of the many restaurants within easy drive. Afterwards, we can see a movie or go to the mall and shop for the latest electronic gizmo or the newest fashion. And if we don’t find what we want there, chances are we can get it online when we get back home. We have vehicles to get all these places – with heat, AC, automatic door-locks, onboard computers, stereos, DVD players – and, compared to most of the world, still very cheap gas to put into them.

Oh, and did I mention the well-maintained roads that allow us to take our kids to soccer, dance, swimming and rock climbing; and the highways that make it possible to go to the shore or the mountains for the weekend or the several weeks paid vacation we assume is our right? Then there are the centrally heated, comfortably furnished houses we live in, the educational opportunities our children have, the technology at our fingertips, and much more – but I trust you get the point. If we of all people do not live in a world of abundance, who does? Yet we are so used to this abundance that we often don’t see it and act, instead, as if we live in the midst of scarcity – that there will not be enough.

My eyes were opened to the folly of this blindness years ago when I was part of a Diocesan group hosting people from Russia in the waning days of the Soviet Union. We took our guests on a tour of a large supermarket of the sort that carries clothing and household goods as well as food. They were, quite literally, stunned into speechlessness by the rows and rows of shelves fully stocked with items many of which they had never seen before in their lives. They were used to seeing nearly empty shelves in their stores back home. Later on, they spoke of this unbelievable abundance they had seen – and marveled at least as much that for us Americans it was not a big deal. They reminded us that we had no idea how rich we really are. They taught me that we live in the midst not of scarcity, but abundance.

Why have I gone on at such length to help you see that abundance, not scarcity, is the truth of God’s creation? Because our false assumption of scarcity -- that there will not be enough – gets in the way of faithful Christian living. Believing that we live in a world of scarcity makes us fearful – and fear is the opposite of faith. Faithful living trusts in the abundance of God’s provision for us and for the whole creation.

One way that plays out is in our giving to the life and ministry of the Church. If we believe we live in a world of scarcity, then giving can become a fearful business. Like the bridesmaids in the parable, we may fear that if we give too much, we will end up without enough oil in our lamps, or gas in our cars.

But this changes when we realize the abundance we have. Generosity governs our giving instead of fear. When we recognize the abundance that we’ve been given, the question becomes not, “How much do I dare risk giving away and still have enough for myself?” but “How can I give generously of the abundance I have?” “How can I share the wealth I’ve been given with others?” Most of us have, I hope, encountered people who give in that spirit of abundance. People who give with a generous spirit, sharing the abundance they have, whatever the amount, are models for us all.

Trust in the abundance of God’s provision helps us approach the challenges our nation and world face in a more faithful and hopeful way, as well. The great needs of people in God’s world are plain to any who read the newspaper or watch news on TV – and I suspect I will learn much more fist hand when I travel to Liberia in a week.

Conflicts divide peoples and destroy resources. Millions of people don’t have enough to eat; they get sick and die of preventable diseases; their future seems to have little hope of abundance in it at all. When we look at those people, we might easily believe that scarcity is, after all, the reality of the world.

But the truth is there is more than enough of the necessities of life for all of the people of this nation, and this planet to live and to live well. If some have much and others have little, it is not because there isn’t enough to go around; it is because those who have more have not shared with those who have less. The problem is not scarcity. The problem is how the abundance God has given gets distributed.

God’s challenge to those of us who live with an over-abundance of the world’s goods is great. We are called not simply to give away some of our extra stuff, but to re-order our lives in such ways that all of God’s children can live in the abundance God desires all to share. That is a more radical project than most of us are likely to want to take on. But my suspicion is that in the years to come the progressive globalization and interconnection of the world will in time force such change on us if we do not embark on it voluntarily.

How much better, how much more faithful, if, trusting in God’s abundance, we were to begin to make such choices now -- learning to live more simply so that others may simply live.

If we do that, we just might find joy in the process rather than the pain of resisting a change when it is forced upon us Trusting in the abundance of God’s generosity, we have the chance to grow in both generosity and simplicity of life; and can discover the joy of sharing our abundance with others. We can learn, as we give and share, that there really is enough for us and for all, for we are all the children of a God of abundant love.

The Rev. Jack Zamboni

November 9, 2008