So, we continue with the very first book in the bible, Genesis (Gn 6:5-8; 7:1-5, 10), today hearing the story of Noah and the ark. We have moved from the awe-inspiring and wonderful account of the creation of the earth and all life on earth, the extreme goodness associated with all this, to the “disobedience” of Adam and Eve who ate the forbidden fruit, and then hear of the first murder occurring between their two sons Cain and Abel, ending up today with what could be interpreted as the dire consequences of so much “not getting it!” Just not grasping what type of creation this is.
‘So the LORD said: “I will wipe out from the earth the men whom I have created, and not only the men, but also the beasts and the creeping things and the birds of the air, for I am sorry that I made them.” ‘
What a terrible lament of the Lord. The story writers really have depicted a God Who seems totally discouraged in the fact that despite all the Goodness in Creation, Creation itself has rebelled completely and become wicked. So there is going to be a great flood to drown the wickedness of the earth…and yet there is one with whom God finds favor – Noah. At the request of God, Noah rounds up pairs of all living creatures on the earth, builds an ark, and after boarding the diversity of life on the boat, sets sail to survive the flood’s deluge. Wickedness will be drowned in the flood, but this buoyant remnant of life will somehow spark a new possibility for creation.
We have a story of another boat in the Gospel today (MK 8: 14-21). The disciples are in a boat with Jesus, and suddenly they become preoccupied with the fear that they did not bring enough bread along to feed everyone in the boat. When Jesus realizes what is going on, he makes a rather odd comment…
‘The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. Jesus enjoined them, “Watch out, guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.”
The disciples were a bit confused that Jesus would make a comment about “leaven,” when they don’t even know if they brought enough bread. Jesus, in noting their confusion, confronts them in what seems a quite irritated tone…
“Why do you conclude that it is because you have no bread? Do you not yet understand or comprehend?…
And do you not remember, when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many wicker baskets full of fragments you picked up?” They answered him, “Twelve.” “When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many full baskets of fragments did you pick up?” They answered him, “Seven.” He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”
We have a boat full of rescue animals in Genesis and a boat without enough bread in Mark’s Gospel – both afloat on seas of uncertainty yet with some hope. How are we to survive when things seem so scarce – things that are important like bread and life? In the boat with the disciples, Jesus is confronting them about this very mindset of scarcity, it would appear. When he warns them to be on guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and Herod, what is he saying? Leaven is an agent of growth and expansion, that which makes bread rise. But this leaven that he is talking about related to the Pharisees and Herod does not seem to be the kind of “leaven” that really offers life. It sounds more like the “wickedness” that God seems intent on drowning out in the Genesis flood. Could it be that both of these readings are saying something about how the fear of scarcity can be disastrous?
Isn’t it true that when we think that things are scarce, especially things that we feel we need to survive, our first response many times is to grab all we can for ourselves! Think of Walmart before a projected hurricane. The shelves are empty. We have one loaf of bread, and we tend towards stinginess from the fear of not having enough. This stinginess can develop into hoarding and then excluding and depriving others. This can be seen as “wickedness” or the “bad” leaven of the Pharisees and Herod. We think to ourselves, “I have got to protect myself and my own, because there is not enough to go around!” Sharing is out of the question!
In “The Liturgy of Abundance, The Myth of Scarcity,” the Scriptural Scholar, Walter Brueggemann, points out that the Hebrew Testament Scriptures starting in the book of Genesis and continuing on is a “Liturgy of Abundance,” that over and over again describes the people’s fear of perceived scarcity alongside God’s constant abundance. It seems that Jesus is making the same point in the Gospel today. He is enjoining his disciples to not succumb to the fear of perceived scarcity, for it will only lead to the “leaven” of greediness. He has to remind them that with God, there is always abundance, as evidenced in the miracles of the feeding of the multitudes.
In the United States we live in a country that is more affluent than anywhere else in the world. And yet, there are those among us and abroad who suffer from not having enough. Many times a direct line can be drawn from the greed of those of us who have more than enough to those of us who do not. We subscribe to a sense of greed fostered by the perception that there is scarcity and not abundance. We hold onto our one loaf of bread without risking how far it could go toward feeding others.
The question seems to be whether or not we will subscribe to a notion that creation is one of scarcity or one of abundance – whether we can see the continued sharing of love, life and resources with each other as a celebration of the abundance we hear in the Hebrew Scriptures, or we clutch onto greedy mindsets that only see that there can’t be enough for everyone.
I believe it is true that we can “create” that which we “see.” In other words, when we see through the fearful eyes of scarcity, we in fact create that scarcity because we withdraw, exclude and even horde. In the same way, if we “see” our world as an ark of abundance teaming with life, then scarcity is transformed into artistic creativity. Then, we can actively see the world, its people, our God, through the eyes of Christ who multiplied bread and life, despite floods and famine, and we can continue to “create” abundance by participating and sharing in it.
Peace
Thomas
The soul is the delicate yet durable cloth woven and laced together in loving pattern by the merciful strokes of God’s Passings…
And the sheen of our soul is the ever-glowing awareness we have of this sacred-stitched fabric.