Deep magic

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Deep magic

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Thursday of the Fourth Week of Lent

Romans 4:16-17

Abraham is the father of all of us. He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into being what does not exist.

When he was 75 years old, Abraham left his country, his people, and his ancestral home because God said, “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you.”

Abraham believed in God’s promise of abundance. There will be more than enough for you and for all your children.

Abraham’s son Isaac was as good as dead, but God raised him from the stone altar when his dad’s knife was poised to kill him.

God gives life to the dead and brings into being what does not exist. God always provides for all of us with what Walter Brueggemann calls a “liturgy of abundance.”

So why do we believe the myth of scarcity? Why do we hoard anything? Why do we think we have to protect anything from others? In their wonderfully titled book Slow Church, Chris Smith and John Pattison describe the tension they feel living in America, caught between an economy based on scarcity and God’s promise rooted in abundance.

“We are a people being stretched to our very limits by this tension. We are too quick to submit to an economy that is sometimes in outright opposition to the deep magic that orders the universe.

“We would like to have more of the stubborn dignity asserted by Wendell Berry: ‘So I have met the false economy in the road, and am expected to yield it right of way. But I will not get over. My reason is that I am a man, and have a better right to the ground than the economy. The economy is no god for me, for I have had too close a look at its wheels. I know it has no moral limits.’ ”

The first move of the dance of abundance is gratitude, the authors say. Followed by the rhythms of generosity and hospitality. Thank you for what I have. I would like to share it with you. And … oh yeah, how about if we share it with that stranger over there?

We do not lose our desires. “We desire because we live,” St. Augustine says. But only when our desires flow “toward the Creator will we find fulfillment in the things of creation.”

St. Augustine learned to love God the hard way. He wrote of his own life, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Lord, we sing your promises forever. Through all generations, our mouths shall proclaim your faithfulness. Your kindness is established forever, and in heaven you have confirmed your faithfulness. Your covenant with us stands firm. And we praise you.

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