Sermon: The God of abundance HPMF July 28, 2013 Psalm 104: 1-2, 10-24 The Inclusive Bible One: Bless the Lord, oh my soul! The Lord, my God, how great you are! Clothed in majesty and glory, wrapped in a robe of light, you stretch the heavens out like a tent. Many: You set springs gushing in ravines, running down between the mountains, Supplying water for wild animals and attracting the thirsty wild donkeys; One: The birds of the air make their nests by these waters and sing among the branches. Many: From your palace you water the highlands until the ground is sated by the fruit of your work; One: You make fresh grass grow for cattle and plants for us to cultivate to get food from the Soil - Many: Wine to cheer our hearts, oil to make our faces shine, and bread to sustain our life. One: The trees of the Lord drink their fill those cedars of Lebanon, where birds build their nests and, on the highest branches, the stork makes its home. Many: For the wild goats there are the high mountains, and in the crags the rock badgers hide. One: You made the moon to tell the seasons, and the sun knows when to set: Many: You bring darkness on, night falls, and all the forest animals come out One: Savage lions roaring for their prey, claiming their food from God. Many: The sun rises, they retire, going back to lie down in their lairs, and people go out to work, to labor again until evening. One: The Lord, what variety you have created, arranging everything so wisely! All: The earth is filled with your creativity! Lord, what variety you have created, arranging everything so wisely.
This Psalm is the longest creation poem in the Bible; a poem that is a commentary on the creation story in Genesis 1 a poem that reiterates that God has arranged everything just so that everything in the creation has its right place. The author of this poem believes that in God s design, there is enough for each living creature on the planet. There is enough. This beautiful song, it tells the story of Genesis, a story of abundance. But in this country, we live by a different story. Last year advertisers in the U.S. spent 139 billion dollars (with a B) to tell us a different story than this Psalmist; 139 billion dollars to tell the story of scarcity. In the 1940s and 50s as the field of psychology became more accepted and mainstream, businesses started investing in combining elements of psychology with advertising trying to use principles of psychology to begin and shift people s mindsets to seeing themselves primarily as consumers. Piles of money spent in the effort for us to begin to believe that our value and purpose comes from our ability to consume. Last year we spent 139 billion to continue to tell that story. And it has worked. Studies show that when we make a purchase endorphins are released in our brains giving us a sort of high, literally making us feel better. But by the time we get home and set those shopping bags down, that feeling is gone. That is why so many people in this country have clothes in their closet that they have never worn, or gadgets that we have never used. 139 billion spent annually to tell us that we don t have enough time, that we are too busy to cook for ourselves, or even to make our own coffee. 139 billion spent on advertising in this country there are only 7 billion people in the world (that is almost 20 billion a person), and there are only 316 million Americans (I can t even do that math). That is what we spend to tell the story that there are not enough resources, there is not enough time in the day, there is not enough energy to share with the rest of the world, there is not enough land, there are not enough resources to share, there is not enough food produced so we
need chemicals to alter it and make it grow faster and stronger, there are not enough good schools for our children to attend (so we better get them started early) to tell us that we need more. More. 20 billion on you, to tell you more. More. I have shared before that I have talked to numerous Youth Pastors who have had parents come to them angry for encouraging their child to spend time doing Voluntary Service. Good Christian parents, good Mennonite parents, who do not want their child to spend a year before or after college doing Voluntary Service. They want their children going directly to college and after college, they want their child going directly to the job market. Why is this? Because we believe in the myth of scarcity, especially in our current economy. There are not enough jobs out there and so, if we spend time in service we believe our child will never find a job. The fear that if our child spends a year in service before college, they will never go to college, or they won t get into the right college, or their financial package will be reduced. This myth of scarcity, it finds its way into different corners of our mind, our lives. But this is not the story of Psalm 104, this is not the story of Genesis 1, this is not the story of the God we meet in Jesus Christ. Walter Bruggemann says that the story of the book of Genesis, the book that sets the stage for the entire Bible, is all about a God of abundance a God who created more than enough, a God who created each thing its it right place, a God who provides enough for each living creature. A story that says there is so much land, that every 50 years we can return the land to its original owner. And that land is so good, that every seven years we can let the land be fallow and still have enough to eat from last year s crop. A story that says there is so much labor that every 50 years we can let slaves and servants go free; there are so many resources that every 50 years we can forgive all debts. That is the God of abundance that we meet in the Bible. The myth of scarcity, says Bruggemann, does not enter into
the Biblical story until Genesis 47 when Pharaoh dreams of seven years of draught. It is in the Egyptian empire that the myth of scarcity is created. And because Pharaoh, like many dictators and presidents after him, is afraid that there aren't enough good things to go around, he decides that he must try to have them all. Because he is fearful, he is ruthless. Pharaoh hires Joseph to manage the monopoly of food that he stores up. When the draught comes and 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? What are you going to give the Empire in order to get food?" So, the first year they give up their cattle in order that they might eat. The next year they give up their land. By the third year of the famine they have no collateral to give but themselves. And so, in order to not starve they sell themselves, and that's how the children of Israel become slaves -- through an economic transaction. Through the rule of an empire who does not believe that God has created enough for all, an empire that believes in scarcity, so they believe they must save, collect, hoard, and have it all. But the people of Israel, they tell a different story even in slavery, they tell the story of abundance. As we know, the Israelites were a covenant people, their life with God was structured by covenant, by mutual agreements. They had a covenant with God that if they worshipped God alone and treated people justly, then the Lord would be their God all the days of their lives and they would flourish as a people. Part of this belief, says Bruggemann, is that Israel believed that creation too is covenantally ordered; meaning that they believe that God has created the world in such a way that there is enough that if we treat the earth with awe and with care if we love the earth and take care of it then it will provide for us all the days of our lives. But this is a covenant, a mutual relationship. If we break the covenant with the earth, if we treat it harshly
and exploit its resources, it will not continue to provide for us. Or, as the writer of this Psalm puts it at the very end of their poem, Let sinners be consumed from the earth. When I was in high school there was a company brand called No Fear. And they put out all of these t-shirts and bumper stickers with different sayings or scenarios that always ended with the phrase, No Fear. And one of those sayings was, The one who dies with the most toys wins No Fear. The one who dies with the most toys wins, this is the heart of the myth of scarcity. And there is one area in which that company No Fear had it right, the myth of scarcity is a story of death. If we choose the story of scarcity, we will lose the land we will burn it up in pursuit of greater and greater yields - putting excessive chemical fertilizer on it, trying to squeeze out as much from that piece of land as we can. Or it will go into draught because we have emptied the water table underneath it as we only think about one fiscal quarter at a time. So what can we do to live by the song of abundance rather than by the myth of scarcity? How can we possibly compete with 139 billion dollars a year telling us that the one who dies with the most toys wins? I think it begins with awareness, of having some knowledge of where the myth of scarcity is simply not true so that when we hear some of the lies of scarcity, we can counter with the truth that, if we use the earth s resources wisely and justly, there is enough that all may flourish and have abundant life. So, we are going to look at some of the stories of scarcity, the places we are told only of scarcity when the truth is, there is actually an abundance. {Slide show} 1. One of the tragic stories of our world is that 3.4 million people die every year from lack of access to clean water and sanitation; 3 children die every minute from lack of
clean water. So there must simply not be enough water, we must not have enough resources to get water to everyone. But the truth is, it is estimated that about 20 billion dollars could get clean water to the whole world (that is 119 billion less than we spent on advertising just last year). Not only this, but the bottled water industry is a 60 billion dollar a year industry, leaving much waste in its path. Just 1/3 of this could get clean water to the world. There is enough! 2. Another tragic story in our world is that 15 people die each minute from hunger or hunger-related illness. So there must simply not be enough food in our world we must need to find more efficient ways to farm, ways to get more out of our land But the truth is that in America 40% of the food we produce is never eaten, 40% never finds its way into a stomach. Not only this but we spend about a billion dollars a year disposing of this uneaten food. There is enough! 3. Another story in our country is homelessness, there are between 650,000 and 3.5 million homeless people in the United States (it is extremely difficult to count the number of homeless, and so I found numbers ranging from these two scales). So, there must simply not be enough shelter. But the truth is, there are between 14 million and 18.5 million empty homes in the U.S. That is about 6 vacant homes for every homeless person in our country. So even if 5 of those 6 vacant homes are falling apart and need to be torn down, probably the 6 th would be liveable. 6 homes for every homeless individual in our country. There is enough!
4. Probably the story we love to tell the most in our culture is the scarcity of time, there is never enough time in the day The truth is Americans waste a good bit of time. Here are some figures for the average amount of time we spend on various social media in one day: -18-34 year olds: 3.4 hours/day -34-49 year olds: 3 hours/day -50-64 year olds: 2.4 hours/day On top of this, the Nielsen group estimates that the average American over the age of 2 spends over 37 hours a week watching television on some sort of device (those of you who just watch on your computers, this includes you too). That is almost a fulltime job! There is enough time! 5. As we think about a lack of resources, I want us to think about what is used in just one day in America. In one day in our country we use: 39 million paper cups; another 4 million plastic cups; 1 billion plastic bags. It is not about a lack of resources, it is about how we use them. There is enough! There is enough Food. There is enough Land and Space. There is enough money, there are enough resources. There is enough energy, if we use it wisely and look to the earth for how to use it. There is enough shelter. There is even enough time.
For God has created it so. Lord what variety you have created, arranging everything so wisely! Let us live into the fullness of that truth. Amen.