Toward a Missional Economy, Part 3
In his excellent book, Walking With the Poor, Bryant Myers proclaims,
“The incarnation smashes any argument that God is only concerned for the spiritual realm and that the material is somehow evil or unworthy of the church’s attention.”
As we saw yesterday, Postmodern cultures seem to have already demolished this dualism and are experimenting deeply with economic practices that are compassionate, generous, and inclusive – thereby joining the material realm of economics with the spiritual realm of communitarian well-being. I’m convinced what we’re seeing are the fingerprints of the Missio Dei on these subcultures, especially with their embrace of an economics that bears a strong resemblance to the “rules of the house” found in passages like Exodus Chapter 16 and 2 Corinthians Chapter 8.
If this what God is doing, the missional Church will have to embrace at least three major paradigm shifts in order to join Him on that mission. Today I’ll touch on the first.
From Wealth Building to Gift Giving
The first major paradigm shift is from wealth building to gift-giving. Perhaps what is most scandalous about Exodus 16 is the total absence of individual wealth building. As hard as it is to believe, nobody was terribly rich and nobody was terribly poor. God simply provided for everyone’s needs. Every morning each family gathered their “wealth” and every night (having consumed it) they returned to relative poverty. In his beautifully meandering book, The Gift, poet and cultural scholar Lewis Hyde comments on this ancient Hebrew practice, saying,
“This is the ‘poverty’ of the gift, in which each man, by his generosity becomes ‘poor’ so that the group may be wealthy.”
The “poverty of the gift,” as Hyde puts it, is the economy of faith. Thomas Merton once said, “The essence of the Christian faith is the beggars bowl.” To put it brutally, we Christians are merely beggars. Each day we extend our empty bowl in faith and God meets our needs. Yet the economics of God’s house don’t stop there because the first rule of any gift-economy is that the gift must always move – and this is the rule in Exodus 16 as well. Gifts that are hoarded soon rot and decay like day-old Manna. So like the ancient Hebrews, as we encounter the needs of our friends, neighbors – and yes, even our enemies – we empty our bowls to enrich others, making ourselves, at the end of each day, merely beggars once again.
Here in San Diego, our friends Jason and Brooke Evans have embraced this shift by starting Make Something Day. Every year on the day-after-Thanksgiving – the largest annual shopping day in the country, also known as Black Friday – they refuse to buy anything. Instead, they make homemade gifts using stuff they already have. As friends, neighbors, and even strangers from all over the country have joined them they’ve discovered a surprising abundance of multiplied gifts in return – including creativity, gratitude, and friendship.
Questions:
- Why do you agree (or disagree) with the Thomas Merton quote, “The essence of the Christian faith is the beggar’s bowl.”
- What makes the shift from wealth building to gift giving so difficult? Why does is challenge our sensibilities so much?
