July 5, 2015
Texts:
Genesis 41: 1-8; 47:17-19
Mark 6: 34-44
As I was searching for information on climate change, I came across opinions from different sources affirming that today, with US elections coming up next year and other world changing events, there is a common feeling that there is something new and different going on. People worldwide are realizing that the gap between the 1% superrich of the world and the 99% of the poor is becoming unbearable; they are pointing fingers at the system that’s responsible.
People are realizing more and more that old institutions and ways of doing things no longer work, with more people being faced with the reality of inequality worldwide and here in the US with the failed foreign adventures in the Middle East and Afghanistan and the great recession of 2008 when the housing market collapsed and the big banks got bailed out. People are beginning to name the main culprit market capitalism and seeing the tentacles that this creature has spread out in people’s lives. Today coalitions are being formed and large alliances are coming together.
Market capitalism (or sometimes called “neoliberal economics” or the “free market” or “trickle-down economics”) is the beast that people are naming.
Even the issue of climate change and the deepening environmental problems we face are being linked directly to market capitalism. Pope Francis just issued his encyclical letter on climate change Laudato Si and explicitly links the issue of climate change to its impact on the poor saying,
Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years … There are too many special interests, and economic interests easily end up trumping the common good and manipulating information so that their own plans will not be affected”
Now I’m not an economist or even an expert on finances, but what does this all have to do with the church, with the 8th day faith community? Why speak about capitalism in a Sunday sermon?
This reminds me of a Republican leader recently admonishing Pope Francis to leave climate change to scientists! But how do we put capitalism and our Christianity together? Why should we as a community be concerned at all? I invite you to join me in meditation this morning and share my thoughts with you. I wish to dwell on what living under capitalism today means for the planet and for us in the faith community.
I take my points from Walter Brueggemann’s reading of Exodus in his book Journey to the Common Good. In the ancient world Egypt was a breadbasket situated in the Nile valley where thousands in the Middle East flocked, including the Israelites. It was an empire under the Pharaoh controlling large swaths of territory and people. The story goes that Pharaoh has a dream that disturbs him; so he has Joseph the Israelite who happens to be in prison summoned to interpret his dream. Joseph predicts 7 years of prosperity followed by 7 years of famine. Pharaoh then appoints Joseph as administrator who would assist him to prepare his empire for the coming critical years.
Joseph now becomes Pharaoh’s instrument to exploit the people and take advantage of their deprivation. At first the people buy food from Pharaoh then, when their money runs out, they bring their animals and other property including their lands in exchange for food, until they are left with nothing but their bodies and physical labor. The people end up as slaves of Pharaoh, expressing their gratitude to Joseph for saving them from starvation; meanwhile Pharaoh becomes more powerful.
Such is the way of empire ever since. It feeds on scarcity and the manipulation of resources. This is still the pattern today. The 1% needs more investments, more land, more energy and the rest are forced to live without basic necessities for human beings. Look at the African-American inner cities, like Anacostia, Ferguson, in Baltimore or the wall of occupation in Palestine. I remember years ago when I worked as an intern in a sugarcane plantation in the Central Philippines. I was walking one morning when I saw the little vegetable gardens that the workers planted around their shacks to supplement their meager income, cut down and destroyed. I asked the workers: what happened? And they said that the supervisors reminded them that the landlord owned the plantation and wanted them to focus on planting sugarcane for him.
When people live in conditions of scarcity and deprivation, they can think only of themselves, it becomes difficult for them to think of the common good. Life becomes an endless race in the violent competition to survive. But this is no way for human beings to live. Wendell Berry reflects, “Rats and roaches live by competition under the law of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.”
Yahweh finally hears the people’s groaning and crying and sends Moses to lead them in their escape from Egypt and Pharaoh’s power to a land of milk and honey that Yahweh promises them, but they have to go through the desert. During their journey God educates them about the common good and love of neighbor by letting them experience God’s generosity: they are fed with Manna, bread from heaven, which they are commanded to gather only enough for their consumption and not more. The story says that when some people took excess bread following their selfish instincts against instructions, the excess food turned foul the next day. Finally the journey culminates in the covenant with Yahweh and the people of Israel; they are commanded:
You shall not have false gods before you” You shall not worship Pharaoh or the golden calf.
You shall not murder You shall not commit adultery You shall not steal
And they are commanded that their neighbors, all neighbors, are to be respected and not used as instruments the way Pharaoh used them in his empire.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” Exodus 20:17
Yahweh commands them to avoid exploitative practices especially those taking advantage of the weak and dispossessed. He shows them a vision of the common good of respecting the neighbor born out of generosity.
This vision of the common good through the covenant Israel brings with them on their journey while the prophets are sent to remind them of the vision for they are constantly tempted by the fleshpots of Egypt. Micah tells them for instance:
Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, . . . He shall judge between many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks . . . neither shall they learn war anymore; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid. Micah4:1-4
As Christians it is also the Exodus journey through the wilderness that we must make from the scarcity and exploitative practices of the empire to the vision of abundance and the neighbor towards the common good. When we break the bread of the Eucharist and share it, it is a reminder for us. It brings us to that time in the wilderness when Jesus took pity on the crowd and told his disciples to feed them. The disciples answered: What? He then told the crowd to sit down and someone brought some bread and fishes. I heard an interpretation of the miracle of the loaves and fishes that goes this way. When the disciples took out their bread hidden in their knapsacks, others followed and shared their own bread so that there was more than enough for all in a big potluck.
As we break bread in the Eucharist, we are reminded of our covenant to leave the ways of the empire of the military-industrial complex to work for the common good and the good of the neighbor and the whole of creation by supporting one another and working to haveorganizations and public policies that serve the 99% of the people of the world and care for all creation. Such efforts as Christ House or Joseph’s House or Festival Center or the permaculture project in Dayspring and so on; let us be reminded that these are all work for the neighbor and the common good.