SCARCITY OR ABUNDANCE OF LOVE

“So, there’s only so much of the love 
you can spread around,
when your own family, an American citizen,
or an American veteran on a street 
is having trouble.”

 So said one US national news commentator recently, but she only reflects what is a deep problem in the US – a culture of scarcity. It is a spiritual crisis, because it fails to believe in the God of abundance, seeking security in what we have.

I have also seen any number of posts on Facebook castigating those who are crying out for immigrants and refugees for, supposedly, not responding to the needs of homeless, especially the children, in the US. I don’t think this is the case because many of those I know protesting the treatment of migrants have been involved in care of the homeless and advocacy for justice for the poor. And they’ve given time and money and some even years of their lives in direct contact with them.

But such opinions flow from a culture of scarcity that is based on insecurity and fear – the fear that there will never be enough for me. It is a belief that there is only so much to go around. But our faith is rooted in a God of abundance.

The paradigmatic Gospel stories for this are the varied accounts of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes to feed 5000 or 4000 men, not counting women and children. What’s fascinating in two accounts is the apostles’ complaints about how much money it would cost – two hundred days’ wages, according to Mark 6: 37 and John 6:7. And they remark that five loaves and a few fish are hardly enough, “What good are these for so many?”

The disciples are working from the logic of money and scarcity. Jesus, however, works the miracle since he is the incarnation of a God of abundance, of superabundance, which is to be shared among all.

Walter Brueggemann, in Journey to the Common Good, writing of the Pharoah, notes the connection between fear of scarcity and the common good.

Those who are living in anxiety and fear, most especially fear of scarcity, have no time or energy for the common good. Anxiety is no adequate basis for the common good; anxiety will cause the formulation of policy and of exploitative practices that are inimical to the common good, a systemic greediness that precludes the common good.

When we think only on how much I have our hearts are closed to the needs of others. We think that there is not enough compassion, love, or food to go around.

But the logic of God is very different. Brueggemann writes how the People of Israel in the desert discovered the alternative of God:

What Israel discovered in the wilderness—and again in the exile—is that there is an alternative. Indeed, it is fair to say that the long history of Israel is a contestation between Pharaoh’s system of paucity and God’s offer of abundance. Surely it is a legitimate extrapolation that the long history of the church is a contest between paucity that presses to control and abundance that evokes patterns of generosity. Beyond Israel or church, going all the way back to Erik Erikson’s elemental “basic trust,” the human enterprise is a contrast between scarcity and the dreaminess of abundance that breaks the compulsions of scarcity. Israel, full of wonder bread, makes its way to Mount Sinai. That gift of wonder bread as a miracle of abundance is a show of generosity that breaks the deathly pattern of anxiety, fear, greed, and anger, a miracle that always surprises because it is beyond our categories of expectation. It is precisely an overwhelming, inexplicable act of generosity that breaks the grip of self-destructive anxiety concerning scarcity. (Italics mine.)

The gift of manna, “wonder bread,” in Brueggemann’s delightful phrase, is real. It undercuts the ideology of scarcity. Ours is a God of extravagant abundance.

As Ronald Rolheiser wrote, in Sacred Fire: A Vision for a Deeper Human and Christian Maturity:

God is prodigal, abundant, generous, and wasteful beyond our small fears and imaginations. And that invites us to be generous: when we have a sense of God’s abundance, we can risk having a bigger heart and a generosity beyond the instinctual fear that has us believe that, because things seem scarce, we need to be more calculating.

It all comes back to trying to control, to trying to have everything secured for me, to fear of insecurity.

As Thomas Merton wrote in Seasons of Celebration:

“One of the things we must cast out first of all is fear. Fear narrows the little entrance of our heart. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves.”

There is enough love to go around, to embrace the homeless in the US and the migrants and refugees fleeing poverty and violence. There is more than enough.

But we first must get rid of fear.

Someone write, years ago (1 John 4: 18):

There is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear.