Lift Up Your Voice Like a Trumpet: Abundance in Creation
Today we begin our pilgrimage through the weekdays of Lent as we explore the theme of “Repairing the Breach: Discipleship and Mission in the Global Economy.” In the meditations that follow for Ash Wednesday, and the Thursday and Friday following, we introduce a crucial theme for this series, one that is part and parcel of the doctrine of creation—that God’s original intention is that the earth and all who dwell therein might have life abundant and live in harmony with one another and the whole created order.
Friday after Ash Wednesday: The First Fruits of the Divine Economy
Read: 1 Corinthians 15:20-26
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
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Reflect
Into this world the Son of God takes on human flesh, joining the dispossessed people of God. Emmanuel, God with us, reveals the good news of the kingdom of God. This is God’s true economy of abundance and blessing marked by the profligate forgiveness of debts and transformations in which first become last and last become first. The kingdom that Jesus announces and inaugurates is, like the garden, a world ordered so that all humans can fulfill their vocation to grow in ever deeper love of God and neighbor. At his baptism, at his transfiguration, and most clearly in his resurrection, God confirms and vindicates Jesus’ proclamation and inauguration of the kingdom.
The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus provide the first fruits of divine economy. Almost from the beginning, however, this Spirit-empowered community struggles with sharing possessions (Acts 4), anxiety over not having enough (Acts 5), and arguments about how to manage their common goods for the benefit of all (Acts 6). The apostle Paul both depends on the generosity of his congregations to survive and frets about how giving and receiving money can threaten and distort relationships. He chastises the Corinthians for allowing their common eucharistic gathering to become an occasion for reinforcing the economic and social stratifications common in Greco-Roman society. James notes similar problems in the congregations he addresses; the rich are honored and the poor pushed to the background. In all of these cases, Christians are challenged and often fail to live in the light of the gracious generosity of God.
In the midst of these failures past, present and future, Christians look forward to that day when our world is transformed by the arrival of the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21). This city of God is the fulfillment of the abundance of the garden. It confirms both the nature and the confidence that God will redeem the world and God’s deepest desires for us will come to fruition.
Pray
Be present, be present, O Jesus, our great High Priest, as you were present with your disciples, and be known to us in the breaking of bread; who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever. Amen.
(The Book of Common Prayer, p. 834)
Author
Stephen Fowl is a professor of theology at Loyola University in Maryland.
Thursday after Ash Wednesday: God’s Provision for a Generous People
Read: Leviticus 25:8-10
You shall count off seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the period of seven weeks of years gives forty-nine years. Then you shall have the trumpet sounded loud; on the tenth day of the seventh month— on the day of atonement—you shall have the trumpet sounded throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family.
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Reflect
God’s mission to redeem the world took shape in the calling of a particular people. The Israelites lived out their vocation as the people of God within a fragile agrarian economy. Poverty, destitution, and crushing debt were only one bad harvest away. Even the hardest working farmers could fall prey to drought or pestilence, ruining their crop and setting them on a downward spiral into lifelong and even trans-generational poverty.
The prescriptions for the year of Jubilee in Leviticus 25 remind the Israelites that crushing trans-generational poverty is not God’s best hope for them. Agricultural failures should not condemn a family to generations of debt-based slavery. The Jubilee further reminds the Israelites that they are but tenants on land that is ultimately God’s. Even in that time before God restores the abundance of the garden, the people of God are to manifest the generosity that God has shown them.
The prophet Amos, among others, makes it plain that time and again the people of God failed to manifest the generosity of God. This corrupts and distorts their relations with God, with each other and with creation. The litany of sins in the Ash Wednesday service echoes Amos’ indictment of Israelite economic and religious life. These failings are only intensified as various world powers come to occupy the Promised Land, exploiting the land and its people for their own benefit.
Pray
Direct us, O Lord, in all our doings with your most gracious favor, and further us with your continual help; that in all our works begun, continued, and ended in you, we may glorify your holy Name, and finally, by your mercy, obtain everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(The Book of Common Prayer, p. 832)
Author
Stephen Fowl is a professor of theology at Loyola University in Maryland.
Ash Wednesday: Remembering Who and Whose We Are
Read: 2 Corinthians 6:3-10
We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
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Reflect
It may seem odd to begin an Ash Wednesday meditation with a celebration of God’s abundance in creation. After all, part of the liturgy for this day takes us back, literally, to the ground: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Today, we are asked to “remember” that everything about the material world is originally ordered to allow humans to fulfill their vocation of loving and praising God. However, we are also reminded on this day that human sin disrupts and distorts this world of abundance. The peaceable harmony of creation is ruptured as humans become alienated from God, others, and the rest of creation. Scarcity, struggle, and violence ensue.
In this traditional epistle for Ash Wednesday, Paul’s words to the Corinthian Christians can also serve to help us remember that, while the gift of God’s abundance in creation is peaceable and lacking in nothing, the realization of that abundance finds its fullest expression in and through communities of persons who live lives of integrity and mutual love. Thus, even those who have nothing nonetheless possess everything. For when everything is in right relationship with itself, God, and the rest of the world, it is then that this state of Sabbath rest reflects God’s deepest desires for us.
Pray
Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
(The Book of Common Prayer, p. 264)
Author
Stephen Fowl is a professor of theology at Loyola University in Maryland.