This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

The Eighth Sunday After Pentecost

From today's Gospel (Matthew 14:18-21):

And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full. And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children.

This text not only drives home the sacramental nature of the Christian life, it mercilessly reveals how we Americans have made of the economy an idol. And idols are meant to be toppled.

There are six occasions recorded in the Gospels in which Jesus multiplies loaves and fish to feed a multitude. (One may also note the four instances--inclusive of 1 Corinthians--which tell of Jesus blessing the bread and wine in the upper room, and the one occasion on which he did so with the two disciples en route to Emmaus.) We can have done with the silly rationalist explanation which says this was about a bunch of people sharing. I'll pass on the WASP-ish Jesus, thank you.

No, this is the Jewish Jesus, Lord of heaven and earth, who bringeth forth bread out of the earth. This is the Messiah who is renewing the miracles of the Exodus, providing bread in the wilderness. The Christ revealed to the Church, who gives us his flesh to eat and his blood to drink. They are all one and the same Jesus, and they all condemn us for our idolatry.

We are, everyone of us, never more than on instant away from economic ruin and starvation. If the Great Depression and the attacks on 9/11 did not tell us that, nothing else would. The rich may have all their wealth eaten away in an instant as inflation reduces their portfolio to something less than the cost of the paper it is written on. What new Enron will emerge only to collapse and leave thousands with no pension, no income, and nothing on which to fall back? Those of us who live paycheck to paycheck know something of this fear of destitution, scrimping as best we can to put something into savings, only to have to take it out again as our cars exhibit a certain faithfulness to the second law of thermodynamics. The poorest among us my have some governmental support providing something of the illusion that we need never fear that we wake up tomorrow to face widespread and depthless emptiness of purse and cupboard, but even here, the painful uncertainty of life breaks through.

Some Christians among us would seduce us into the belief that if only we could eliminate restrictions on the free market, all of us would have greater liberty and a higher standard of living. But there are others of us who rightly point out the essential aspects of free market capitalism which contradict the Gospel. But though in theory one may argue that compassionate socialism is far better than consumerist capitalism, such a theoretical socialist economy has never emerged: one has on the one hand the murderously repressive planned economies of the late Soviet Union or the consumerist socialist economies of various European states. These socialists are hoisted on their own petard when the same consumerism that plagues us here is a blight on European communities as well.

Economic theories, models and critiques aside, all of these mindsets fall prey to a damnable heresy: that we can provide for our own needs without anything more than a ceremonial reliance on a grandfather deity who blesses all our consumption. The capitalists fail because they allot to human individuals the providence and prerogatives of God. The socialist fail because they allot these same prerogatives and God's sovereign providence to the state. In either case, it is rank idolatry. We find no economic theories for managing national productivity in Scripture. And those of us who would talk as if one or another economic model were found in Scripture ought know better and ought now be called to public penance.

Neither President Bush or Senator Kerry--or, more pertinently, Chairman Greenspan--can provide for us. No matter the positive or negative consequences of their economic policies, God is not dethroned. Indeed, we have it on good authority that God pretty much laughs the nations to scorn for their various pretensions. If we are taught to pray God each day for our bread, if Jesus is the Messiah who provided bread in the wilderness, if we become God's own by eating his flesh and blood in the bread and wine, then to place any sort of hope in one political candidate or another, their policies, our nation's prosperity, or anything or anyone else other than God, then we are in sin. We have bowed down to and kissed foreign gods, and we need repent right now.

Socialism in any form is not Christian. Capitalism in any form is not Christian. Feudalism and any of the failed economies of history of any type are not Christian. The enforced government care of the poor is not Christian. The only Christian economic is daily dependence on God--apart from any governmental program or paradigm--and caring for the poor and destitute in our midst from the largesse which we personally have received from God.

For we know and live this truth in Christ Jesus our Lord: there's a table in the wilderness.

There's a table in
the Wilderness
Where the blind can see
And the poor possess
Where the weak are strong
And the first one's last
There's a table in the Wilderness
There's a table in
the Wilderness
Where the blessed sing
of his tenderness
Where the lame can walk
and the weary rest
At the table in the Wilderness
When you search so hard for the promised land
But the earth won't yield to your blistered hands
And you hang your head
And you wipe your brow
And you shout it out, shout it out
There's a table in the Wilderness
Where the blind can see
and the poor possess
Where the weak are strong
And the first one's last
There's a table in the Wilderness
There's a table in the Wilderness
When you close your eyes kneeling by your bed
All the working hours spinning through your head
You remember the place
That your heart desires
Where you found life, you found life
At the table in the wilderness
Where the blindcan see
And the poor possess
Where the weak are strong
And the first one's last
There's a table in the Wilderness
There's a table in the Wilderness
Where the blind can see
And the poor possess
Ever thankful for
Being honored guests
At the table in the Wilderness
There's a table in the Wilderness
Ther's a table in the Wilderness
All is welcome
Living Water
Come find Life
Come find Peace
Come find Rest