Too Much and Too Little

2 Corinthians 8:7-15

I have mentioned elsewhere in these pages that I have never been overly enthusiastic about the Apostle Paul. Perhaps I have latent Judaizing tendencies, like so many of Paul's opponents in the early church, or perhaps it is because I have such a difficult time negotiating some of his convoluted sentences. I have come to suspect, however, that I have not spent enough time trying to understand the man in his highly complex and dynamic socio-historical context. In fact, when I look at the lectionary passage for this week, I cannot help but feel empathy for him, not to mention an enormous respect for his fortitude.

Consider the situation. A year or so has transpired since he last visited Corinth and in that time much has happened in the congregation to give him pause for great concern. Shortly after his departure a delegation of apostles – true apostles, to hear them tell it – arrived from Jerusalem and immediately attended to the task of putting out all the theological fires that had been set by the upstart convert from Tarsus. The congregation had already suffered considerably from various divisions and strife. Recall the controversies of I Corinthians: some in the church claimed loyalty to the golden-tongued Apollos while others maintained their fealty to Paul; rich and poor celebrated separate communal meals; tongue-speakers felt compelled to lord their spiritual gift over those differently inclined. And the resurrection – some were denying it. With Paul unable to defend himself, the delegation from the Holy City – from the very congregation of "poor saints" for whom the Apostle had worked so earnestly in taking up a collection (I Cor. 16:1-4) – had little trouble stirring the waters of an already turbulent, and no doubt confused, community of believers. They did not accept Paul's apostolic status, for he never knew Jesus "according to the flesh."

But despite the very real possibility that his letter would be poorly received, Paul is able somehow to set aside his human tendency to feel hurt, to feel betrayed, to feel abandoned, and trudge forward, keeping the eyes of his heart ever on Christ. While his Jerusalem opponents appear to have acted in an aggressive and authoritarian manner, Paul chooses instead the path of gentle persuasion, of encouragement:

I do not say this as a command…. For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. And in this matter I am giving my advice: it is appropriate for you who began last year not only to do something but even to desire doing something – now finish doing it, so that your eagerness may be matched by completing it according to your means (8:8-12).

And this is only an introduction to what he most fervently desires, the task he set before this congregation prior to his departure over a year ago, which now seems all but inconceivable to those of lesser spiritual dispositions: raising funds for the poor saints of Jerusalem, for the church that had apparently spawned the troublesome delegation.

I will admit that I am one of a lesser spiritual disposition. If I were in Paul's situation I would have shaken the Corinthian dust from my feet even before writing my first letter. I'm a little ashamed to admit it, but I just don't have that much patience with people, let alone a congregation. Had I been in Paul's sandals, I would have moved on to bigger and better things.

But this overlooks the point doesn't it? First of all, there are no bigger and better things than modeling the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and what better means of doing so than continuing the work of relief for the poor, even despite their questionable leadership? Second, this task is doomed to failure apart from the spiritual poverty that must precede it – that is, apart from emptying oneself of all envy and greed, of all self-righteousness and entitlement, so that the Spirit finds no encumbrances in her work as Comforter, as Sustainer. Had it been Paul alone coming to terms with the wayward souls of Corinth, he would have simply thrown up his hands and been done with it all. This would be the all-too-human response. But it was the Apostle who set pen to paper in this second letter, and that makes all the difference.

Paul's perseverance and Christ-mindedness are all the more instructive for us as we continue to feel our way through a broken economy and address the many difficulties it presents for us. I think the natural tendency in these times is to turn inward and simply attend to our basic needs and not waste too much energy on what lies beyond our limited frame of reference. We prefer to deal with the problems of Corinth and turn a blind eye to the poor saints of Jerusalem living a world away. But we who have too much refuse to empty ourselves to the Spirit when we choose to ignore the cries of those reeling from the social obscenity of having too little.

Just this week the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization revised its estimate of the number of people worldwide who are living in "food insecurity," a nicely sanitized way of saying "dying of starvation." In such a global context, where one in every six bearers of the image of God is hungry, can we truly afford not to follow Paul's example, Christ's example, of choosing spiritual, and at least some form of material poverty so that we – and perhaps most important, others around the world – might become rich?

The path that lies ahead for the church is perhaps more difficult than it has ever been given what many perceive to be its increasing irrelevance in the affairs of the world. In the past we have been faithful and somewhat successful at gathering our resources and funding relief efforts in every corner of the globe. But the climate has changed, and it appears that what has worked so well – by which I mean, so conveniently – in the past will need now to be severely amended, and this in keeping with the example of Christ. Our hope for the future lies not so much in what we are able to give, but in what we are willing to give up; not in what we are able to do, but in our willingness to do without.

From the perspective of one living in the U.S., it is appallingly evident that the excesses of my Corinth have been achieved at the great expense of so many poor saints of Jerusalem. The time has come for me, and perhaps many of us, to reconsider the vital wisdom of both spiritual and material poverty, or at least a life of greater simplicity. Every time I ask what I can give I will also take a careful inventory and consider what exactly I might also give up. The old Shaker hymn still has much to commend: "'tis a joy to be simple."

In concluding this section of his letter, Paul wisely draws on a tradition that both he and the Jerusalem delegation can uphold as authoritative, and it is one that still informs the church today, though in some places more than others. What better metaphor for the human condition than the experience of a people, a community, wandering in the desert, altogether dependent on the unwarranted grace of a liberating God who provides manna from heaven? But this manna is a gift with limitations, offered not that some may gorge themselves and become fat while others go completely without – a reality that many of us know all too well -- but so that a sense of equality (Paul's very word, isoteis) may abound and thus reflect the singular essence of the Kingdom of God: that "those who have much do not have too much, and those who have little do not have too little."


And These Questions Remain

1. If "too little" can be described as an amount insufficient for sustaining the quality of human life -- what roughly 1.02 billion people worldwide experience each day -- then by what criteria do we determine what is "too much"? Will Americans ever deal honestly with this important question?

2. For what cause or project would I be willing to take up a collection with a zeal and perseverance equal to that of Paul?

Of Related Interest

1. See the World Food Programme's A Billion for a Billion Campaign, appealing to the world's 1.6 billion web users to address the needs of the world's 1.02 billion hungry.

Strange Faith

This essay originally appeared in the journal Lumunos (Spring 2009).

Job 38:1-11

A little over seven years ago I made the move from Knoxville, Tennessee, nestled in the gentle arms of the Cumberland Mountains, to Hastings, Nebraska, a small town just holding its own against the harsh extremes of the Great Plains. At first the change was almost too much to bear. My personal narrative just didn't match up with any of the human stories that presented themselves in this place. This is Oregon Trail country, and everywhere along State Highway 6, a road I traveled daily, the landscape offered grim reminders of failure and hardship, of dreams lost along the way toward some brighter future. The graves of newborns, of wives lost to disease, of fathers killed by marauders, were frequent indicators that this was not a forgiving land. I felt lost on the prairie.

But my perspective began to change around March of that first year. I had made friends and was becoming involved in the community, but I still felt like an outsider. However, one morning I found a story I could claim as my own as I walked outside my kitchen door and heard the million-year-old throaty call of the Sand Hill Cranes somewhere in the clouds above me. Over the next several weeks I was introduced to their magnificent migration, a rite of passage that has endured for untold millennia, as thousands of these creatures – and I mean thousands – alighted in the fields along a fifty-mile stretch of the Platte River. I was completely mesmerized and swept up in what I can only describe as a kind of strange faith. It is ironic that the lives and deaths of intrepid westward pioneers had seemed so distant to me, and yet in the enactment of this pre-historic narrative I experienced a kind of primal hope in the recesses of my soul. It was then that I began to make this landscape my home. I began to love it.

I can imagine that my story is not all that different from those who have found themselves in a foreign environment surrounded by menacing uncertainty. We seek out the familiar wherever we can find it, and sometimes we extend our reach beyond our human community. Eventually we find some kind of foothold, and with this a point to begin the faith-work of transforming foreboding space into welcoming place.

I think of the experience that a handful of Israelites must have had in the sixth century BCE as they made their way from their promised land to a makeshift refugee colony on the banks of the Chebar River. Babylon offered nothing of the typical comforts of their city on a hill and they did what was necessary not to assimilate into what they considered to be a wayward culture. While some of the priests busied themselves with new expositions of the law as a hedge against God's further judgment, others found a kind of strange faith and comfort in the mystery of it all, in the profound precariousness of their situation. Uncertainty, they argued in their Wisdom Literature, is precisely what should be expected from a God of surprises, a God who confronts us precisely when we think we've got a good handle on the divine.

While the people of that alien land put their trust in chariots and horses, many Jews felt compelled by their emerging theology to bank on the absurd. They placed their hope in a Creator who is sometimes encountered only in the incomprehensible, in the whirlwind. As Job discovered, the call of this God can at times be less a comfort than a challenge:

Who is this that darkens counsel
by words without knowledge?
…Where were you when I laid the
foundation of the earth?
Tell me if you have understanding. (Job 38:2,4)

No one has to tell Nebraskans about whirlwinds. Every spring, shortly after the cranes tire of the Platte and make their way to Canada, the warm gulf air starts getting pushy with the arctic currents descending from the north, resulting in some of the fiercest storms on the planet. (Just last night, in fact -- June 14 -- I witnessed one of our periodic tornadoes skipping through an open cornfield just north of Roseland.) It is then, I find, that the human stories of perseverance and grit are revealed, usually in response to some greenhorn like me lamenting the ferocity of the winds or the force of the hail. "You think that was a storm?" This is how the litany begins, soon to be topped off by, "You should have been here during the Depression!"

In the right company this will be the entrée into a well-rehearsed local history that has been decades in the telling, even by those who did not experience the events themselves. It is true that the One who laid the foundation of the universe did not look kindly on the Great Plains during the 1930s, though the problems were exacerbated by ambitious farmers whose capitalist theology prevented them from seeking out the wisdom of their place. In the absence of life-giving rain, the tilled earth was no match for the harsh prairie winds, and soon ominous dust storms – some as high as a thousand feet – began rolling across the landscape with tragic regularity. Nothing could stay put long enough to set down roots and grow.

Except for the people, many of whom were just a generation or two removed from the tombstones on Highway 6. When I hear about the hardships these folks suffered during the Dust Bowl, it's difficult for me to imagine why anyone wanted to weather the storms. The truth of the matter is that most people had little choice. But when options are limited, a strange faith takes over, and if grace is sufficient, hope and love soon follow.

I have been impressed with the signs of this faith during my visits to some of the small towns that are still trying to make a go of it on the prairie. Many feature an old, red-brick school house rising up out of the landscape like some sacred civic monument, and I'm always surprised to see the dates of dedication that are carved there in stone. 1934. 1936. 1939. This is the hope and love that grow out of strange faith. Precisely at the point when the roiling tides of black dust were threatening the livelihoods of farm families in Glenvil, or Holstein, or any number of the now-forgotten communities on the plains, the people of these villages were pooling their meager resources and sowing in tears what they fully expected to reap in joy.

Now we are facing different storms and I wonder if our sense of uncertainty is a reflection of where we have too long placed our confidence. The health and wealth gospel will surely cease to be good news when all the stuff is gone. Though the masters of the universe have offered so many "words without knowledge," the Creator of the cosmos has laid the firmest foundation for our lives. Affirming this, my strange faith assures me that even as the thin narratives of the pretenders unravel at the seams, I can still expect to see the Sand Hill Cranes returning in March to their beloved Platte. Parents will continue to sow in tears for the sake of their children, and yes, the April winds will wreak their perennial havoc on the Nebraska landscape. But through it all, I do not doubt that the inhabitants of this place will abide by an equally strange hope, that with the ears of their hearts they might yet discern the still small voice of grace speaking from the midst of the whirlwind.

For me the evidence that this voice has been heard for millennia lies in so many facets of my community, and I feel especially called now to take up the challenge of hearing it in all its sonorous tones. There is so much chatter about dreams destroyed and money irretrievably lost that I can be easily drawn into the shared dysfunction of it all. I choose to focus instead on the remarkable wealth I experience in the landscape around me, and on the spirit of God who speaks to me there. It is a matter of strange faith.

This spring I once again tilled the earth and planted my seeds in the hope and love familiar to every gardener. I sowed in joy despite the world's apparent fixation with tears, and I continue to seek God's grace in those places long ignored by many who are now reaping their own whirlwinds.