Spokane Friends Meeting

 The Magnificat is a song of joy for being chosen to bear the Messiah. But it also expresses another sort of joy: ‘He Has Brought down the Powerful from their Thrones, and Lifted up the Lowly’. The hopes of the oppressed have, since ancient times, found expression in the dream of seeing the power of their oppressors overturned and they themselves being installed in the seat of power. It is often described as ‘The Great Reversal’.

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The cries of the poor and hungry are never far from any of the authors of the Bible. Compassion runs through the Biblical narrative from beginning to end. In the next to last chapter of the last book of the Bible we read:

‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There shall

be an end to death, to mourning, to crying and pain’

(Revelation 21: 4).

And God’s care is celebrated in the

Psalms:

‘He has satisfied the thirsty and has filled the

hungry with good things’ Psalm 107:9

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Preparing for the coming of the Lord does not mean turning our backs on the world, opting out, becoming monks. We all have to work, to buy, to save, and to consume. We must start where we are, whether we are bankers or bailiffs, landlords or builders, journalists or bus-drivers. It’s the choices that we make in these activities that matter – both by making a contribution to justice and to the environment and by sending a message that things must be different and that it can start with us.

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Advent 2009 – A World In Waiting

Week Three – A New Morality

Day Four – A False Dawn

Zephaniah, Nahum, Habakkuk – a formidable trio. More or less contemporaries. Prophets of doom,

who, with the most violent of images, announced the unleashing of God’s terrible judgment on his people:

‘The great Day of the Lord is near…That day will be

a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of

ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a

day of clouds and thick darkness… I will bring such

distress upon people that they shall walk like the blind;

because they have sinned against the Lord, their blood

shall be poured out like dust, and their flesh like dung…

In the fire of his passion the whole earth shall be

consumed; for a full, a terrible end he will make of all

the inhabitants of the earth’ Zephaniah 1: 15-18

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 …since the Protestant reformation, a Puritan ethic has virtually sanctified hard work and savings, while deferring gratification and treating pleasure with suspicion. Now, in an age where consumer goods are available in abundance, the challenge may be to see these as gifts of God not to be refused but to be used well, to be shared and at times, to find ways of protesting, as did Francis of Assisi against their being given a higher place in human life and striving than they deserve. And that perhaps is the real problem with the Prosperity Gospel.

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 Although we are infinitely more prosperous now than we were even fifty years ago let alone in Smith’s time are we happier? Economists, such as Tibor Scitovsky, began to express doubts over a quarter of a century ago. In his book The Rough Guide to Happiness, published earlier this year, Nick Baylis gives far more attention to the multiplicity of therapies being tried by people in their desperate search for happiness than he does to the question of money. Might Carlyle have had a point? Is the ever increasing role of ‘the cash nexus’ part of the problem?

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 In modern times the sense of citizenship has played an important role as a crucial backdrop for economics, including for the philosophy of Adam Smith and for the perspective of the founders of the American Republic. The ‘pursuit of happiness’ was put forward alongside, not as an alternative, to civic responsibility. In our own times the notion of citizenship can still provide a crucial backdrop for key principles of economic life.
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The hope of Advent is described by the prophets as a dawning of a new age, marked by peace and plenty, by banqueting and feasting, by security and rest. Don’t let the “new age” handle upset you. It is nothing of which to be afraid. This New Age has a spiritual dimension as well as a material one. But if we take Matthew 5 seriously, it all depends on the practice of justice and it is a justice after which we hunger and thirst – a justice made perfect by the coming of Christ as judge and liberator. Most Christians, including Friends, earnestly believe that the new age, which we more often describe as ‘the Kingdom of God’ has already begun with Jesus the ‘Christ’ ( the Messiah, the anointed one). The Gospel of John’s sacramental imagery blends into one the material and spiritual dimensions of this new age. The huge challenge for us is to see how that messianic reality find expression in our economic life.

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But the first set of obstacles may be not with our structures but with ourselves – our attachment to the ‘normal’, whether old or new. In other words we need to address the things within us that stifle hope and desire for a better world. That’s the place to start. After all, John’s message is not just about God’s people traveling through the wilderness. It’s about God who will be on the march. It’s a time to clear the way. Perfect solutions can come later.

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One of the most basic features of the real economy is water. Water is, quite simply, a matter of life and death, whether it is a case of too little (drought) or too much (flooding). The very first words of the Bible are: ‘In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.’

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