Old Testament priests demand from the people money and consumables such as grain and animals from the people’s labor, “burnt offerings and sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar.” Priests burned some of the people’s offerings and sacrifices but stored most for themselves, in the Temple. The Temple operated as an early bank for rulers to use deposits from the people’s labor with scant return to the people. The set-up is the origin of the theology of scarcity. It is also the origin of capitalism, private ownership of people’s production. Capitalists promote their Old theology of scarcity as Christian. But Jesus lived a spirituality of abundance – of love, intent, energy, and more, always sharing what he had with people, as in today’s Gospel. When Jesus responds to a mother’s request to heal her daughter by saying, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs,” Jesus is referencing the Old capitalist theology of scarcity – but to subvert it. The scarcity model proposes a god and a theology that will not waste any resources on the unworthy, “dogs,” like the mother. Yet, it is this unworthy “dog,” made financially deficient by rulers and deemed of deficient value by them, who gushes with an abundance of love, intent, energy, and more – all for her daughter who is in need of Jesus’ healing. She as well gushes with an abundance of faith in Jesus. Jesus affirms the woman’s abundant faith, “O woman, great is your faith.” He also affirms his abundant spirituality by healing her daughter, “Let it be done as you wish. And the woman’s daughter was healed.”
Capitalism’s theology of scarcity is a central premise in Marxist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre’s criticism of it. He proposes capitalism’s scarcity is the prime structure of the world and influences people to be violent. Sartre asserts it is not in our nature to be violent, but capitalism propagandizes us with scarcity and fear of “strangers” who threaten our securing what we need. We react with “aggressiveness and hatred.” We rationalize the violence we do is defensive, aka “counter-violence” against an “other.” As a Marxist, Sartre rationalized counter-violence against capitalists. Humanity has scant hope for abundant life given two violent financial systems, capitalism and Marxism. The violence of capitalism allows rulers to use people’s payments for themselves with scant return to the people. People’s needs for a greater return or for change are minimized or responded to with more violence. So it is that current rulers are getting rich and returning scant help to Covid 19 hurting working people. So too rulers stay safe while they deny people basic human rights and deploy violent police and soldiers against them. They do so even against mothers, like Portland’s ‘Wall of Moms’ who know that “All mothers were summoned when George Floyd cried out for his mama.” Under the violence of Marxism, rulers do much of the same, with Sartre pondering if it was even “possible to conceive of… having a relation to (our) environment other than scarcity.” It is possible. It is possible to conceive of and nurture an economy of abundance shaped by a mother’s experience of communion with. It is the witness of today’s Gospel mother who shows us we do not need rulers, their scarcity, or their violence. The Gospel mother is all mothers who do not demand and store for themselves but instead provide and share for another. Mothers remind us we can all conceive of a relationship of communion, for we have all lived a relationship of communion, in the womb. Mothers, like the ‘Wall of Moms’ in Portland, also remind us we can extend womb communion to all children. We can nurture and we can structure a world of abundant communion, abundant love, and abundant healing.
“small insignificant indistinguishable my needs, my life, myself – small whispering offenses be quiet arguments of scarcity, anxiety, depravity Find your voice, Child speak truth in Love Come alive, child breathe, trust yourself and the God that is in You in abundance.” (Come Alive – Melissa Romero)
Prayer: Spirit, fill us with your abundance.
Question: How can I, in this culture of scarcity, give birth to a spirituality of abundance?
August 16, 2020 Gospel Matthew 15: 21-28 Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time