(This post was written by Rev. Chris Predeek, reflecting on the Sabbath Economics class at Mission of the Atonement Church, Rev. Chris Laing, facilitator)

On this day after the national elections (Nov. 4, 2008) I recall the words of Tim Russert, the beloved political analyst, who once said “Florida, Florida, Florida” as the key in the election process. With the recent economic crisis, an analyst last night was saying “Bush, Bush, Bush” as a key factor to the voting issue. Now I have just taken a mini-course on Sabbath Economics where sacred word is “justice, justice, justice.” But the greatest revelation for me was how unaware I was that this was the heart of the Old Testament message, and even the message of Jesus in the New Testament – this was the glue that bonded Israel together as a prophetic covenant people with their God and with one another. » Continue reading “Now Is the Time”

“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation. . .” (2 Corinthians 5:17-18, NRSV)

“. . . that we might be made the justice of God in him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21, Douay)

These familiar words from 2 Corinthians 5 are ingrained in most of us, especially if seminary trained, as referring to our personal experience of God through saving faith in Christ. Our last Jubilee economics class challenged that individualistic approach as the sole perspective on “reconciliation,” seeing in addition Paul’s call to reestablish the open, free, classless community of the earliest church—in other words, fulfilling the ideal of Jubilee relationships, rising above social norms to be a reconciled, counterculture community reflecting God’s generous reconciliation with humanity in Jesus Christ. » Continue reading “Our Sixth Jubilee Economics Class Session”

“Well done, good and trustworthy slave. . . .To all those who have more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.”

These puzzling words, so reflective of a production-consumption-success stance toward money—and of the benefits affluent Americans have enjoyed as compared to the bottom billions of the world’s people—create an urge to search for an alternative interpretation of the parable of Jesus from which they come, the so-called the Parable of the Talents. That was the major task of last Thursday’s session.

Before we got there, we found time to worship and to express feelings and responses to the memorable events of the week, as we have often during this class while economic news has had such a high profile. Several spoke of having received letters from friends in other countries telling of joy and celebrations as a result of the Obama election. We shared that delight but also recognized huge challenges facing us all, highlighted in the litany which guided our worship.

We also considered words of Wendell Berry from Blessed Are the Peacemakers. Berry urges us to hear stories and instructions of Jesus as if we were present among those who first listened to him so that we hear “something utterly scandalous, utterly unexpectable from the premises of contemporary society.” Berry also writes about his being a literalist, that is, one who first looks for the literal meaning of a story before attempting to interpret or expose deeper levels of meaning. We realized the importance of those words as we prepared to engage the parables of Jesus. » Continue reading “Our Fifth Sabbath Economics Class Session”

(What follows is from The Christian Century, Nov. 4, 2008, p. 9, based on an article in International Herald Tribune, October 7, 2008.)

If the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street were paid out in $100 bills, it would amount to a stack 54 miles high. Or if you were to count to 700 billion at the rate of one number per second, it would take 21,000 years. Given the magnitude of the plan, no wonder there is public outrage. But columnist James Carroll noticed another, similar figure: in the fiscal year just begun the Pentagon will spend $607 billion on regular military operations (as well as another $100 billion on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq). He wonders where the outrage is over this comparable figure. “The annual American military budget is at least 10 times larger than the military budgets of Russia and China,” says Carroll, and “it is 20 times larger than the entire budget of the U.S. State Department.”

“. . .Fred Craddock defines the sin of sloth so clearly that it stings like a slap in the face. What we casually dismiss as mere laziness, he says, is “the ability to look at a starving child . . . with a swollen stomach and say,’Well, it’s not my kid.’ . . .Or to see an old man sitting alone among the pigeons in the park and say,’Well . . . that’s not my dad.’ It is that capacity of the human spirit to look out upon the world and everything God made and say, I don’t care.“

(This quote appears in Acedia & me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life by Kathleen Norris, pp. 114-115.)

“How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the Kingdom of God.”

Those words of Jesus amazed early disciples–as they watched a rich man walk away in grief. Those words astonish us, too; they are “not good news for First World Christians,” Ched Myers writes, and usually we find a convenient way to avoid them or to minimize their impact.

However, in our fourth class session, we sought to allow Jesus’ clear meanings to reach us as we immersed ourselves in Mark’s story of that rich man appealing to Jesus for reassurance about his “eternal life.” (10:17-31) Coming just before Jesus arrives in Jerusalem to confront powerful rulers who detested him, the rich man’s quest for mild theological assurance goes way off track when he hears requirements well beyond anything he’s willing to give. » Continue reading “Our Fourth Sabbath Economics Class Session”

Our next class will be on Thursday, October 30, again at 7:00 p.m. at St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, at NE 43rd Ave. and Broadway.

Our reading assignment: Chapters 4 and 5 in Ched Myers, The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics.

All are encouraged–urged!–to write comments on this blog to continue and expand the discussion.

“You will always have the poor with you.”

When confronted with these words of Jesus, several class members commented about how often they had heard that quote from Christian people, ripping the words out of their context and assuming that closed all discussion of eliminating poverty or giving money to the endless host of needy people.

That was not the mood of our third class by far. No one was holding out for a version of Jesus that would get us off the sharp hook of the enormous inequities visible all around, even more obvious when we look around the world. We had moved on from the clarity of Sabbath economics in ancient Hebrew writings about Creation and the Exodus, and in the Prophets, to now looking for footprints of Sabbath economic thinking in the words and actions of Jesus. » Continue reading “Our Third Sabbath Economics Class Session”

“But Israel never really practiced the Jubilee!” That happy assumption has been regularly used to escape perplexing Hebrew directions about Sabbath, because those rules so diametrically oppose the affluence we have accepted as our right. That provided the backdrop for tonight’s class session: how those quaint texts are dismissed not only in our own time but in ancient Israel as well. » Continue reading “Our Second Sabbath Economics Class Session”