The Affluence of God's Reign - Jeremiah 17:5-10, Luke 6:17-26

When I was a teenager, I spent a week one summer at the Victor Emmanuel Youth Birding camp. Along with a dozen or so other teenaged birders we explored some of the the country’s best birding hotspots, seeing fantastic creatures like elegant trogons, and finding fast friends with others whose dreams were not of sports cars, but the latest Zeiss binoculars.

In addition to searching for birds, our guides taught us about the brittle ecosystems of the southwest. It was during one of those lessons that we stopped on the side of the road and learned through a contrast that ran right along a fence line. On one side of the fence we saw a flourishing grassland; on the other, we witnessed rocky ground, dry and dusty, with only a few patches of sage brush here and there.

Our guides explained to us that neither field was irrigated, so water couldn’t explain the difference. The contrast was solely in how the land and its cattle were being managed. The lush grassland was growing because the owners of that ranch were concerned with balancing the life of the whole landscape. They wanted to grow cattle for market, yes, but they saw themselves as caretakers of a whole ecosystem. They used the right stocking densities and grazing patterns that would encourage the building up of the soil and with it the native grasslands. Over time the grass became thicker, the varied plants intertwined and shared life, and the landscape, including the cattle, became healthier and more resilient.

The other land, however, was acreage leased from the Federal Bureau of Land Management on which the ranchers were running their cattle only for extraction. They weren’t interested in developing the whole of the landscape. They paid the BLM low rent and it didn’t matter to the ranchers if their cattle were skinny. If they could get a few pounds on the steers before transferring them to a feed lot, it was no problem to them. The result was a devastated terrain that would eventually be devoid of life.

In these two ranches divided by a fence, I saw the contrast between riches and affluence, extraction and ecology. We may think of riches and affluence as synonyms, interchangeable words. But I want to use them differently, drawing on their roots.

The word rich is associated not merely with economic wealth so much as it is with power. Originally to be rich was to be royal, or one of high social and political standing. In its oldest form, rich is derived from an ancient word meaning to “make in a straight line.” In other words, it’s a term about control and power and who gets to wield it. Who gets to make people or the land line up according to their will.

Affluence, however, is a word about flowing and flourishing. It is about water and its freedom to move like a stream or a river. To be affluent is to be a participant in the flow of plenty. Such a flow would make one wealthy, but not because of accumulation. To be wealthy in its truest sense is to be one who is well, whole and good.

To seeks riches or affluence is the basic choice facing our lives. In one mode, we seek to accumulate resources and power so that we can make straight lines, controlling the landscape of our lives for our own ends. In the other option we join in the affluence of the world, participating in its plenty.

These contrasting impulses were well known to Jeremiah and Jesus. For them, whether we experience blessings or woes was a matter of whether we put our trust in the riches of human power or the affluence of God’s gifts.

God created a world of gifts, a place in which all can have enough, but that enough is available only through the shared life of community. What we see in healthy prairie ecosystems like that field in Arizona reflects the truth at the base of all creation. Healthy grasslands function through a diverse community of life. Together they intertwine their roots and share nutrients. Insects work to incorporate dead leaves and the manure of the animals that graze the grass. The grazing itself helps to loosen the soil as beneficial microbes are cultivated and spread through the rumens of herbivores. It is a flow of life and it remains affluent as long as no one member stops the cycles of renewal. And this reality of grasslands is a reality that is reflected throughout creation, from forests to marshes, oceans to human cultures.

There is a certain kind of trust involved in the life of creation sustained by God’s grace. There are those times when things begin to look thin and we can worry about tomorrow. We ask where our next meal will come from or how we’ll pay for clothing even before our plates are bare or our clothes are worn out. And the temptation is to let this anxiety grow until we no longer trust the gifts of God and creation’s flowing plenty. We begin to hoard, to store up goods. It helps us feel secure and safe when we do this, but over time it begins to isolate us. That is why Jesus says woe to the rich, not in condemnation, but in loving warning. His is an invitation into a different way. The way of affluence.

The question is, how can we live into the gifts of God’s affluence and the community of life that will sustain us through the worst droughts that come our way? Is such a life possible? I’ve had the fortune of knowing a number of people who are examples of this other way. One of them is a Muslim woman living here in Little Rock. Her neighborhood is poor by the standards of income and there are many there who can’t find enough to eat. To answer that need, this woman began offering home cooked meals to the people of her neighborhood, distributing hot lunches out of her front door in the hundreds. Her actions never made the nightly news and she rarely let people know what she was up to, yet there were always more than enough friends and family to help cook, and neighbors were always bringing by gifts of food. When her air conditioner was stollen and she didn’t have the money to replace it, friends quickly bought her a new one. When her roof leaked, a local pastor came by and patched it. She was not rich, but she lived in the affluence that is at the heart of God’s world.

I know another woman whose family went through the drought of terminal illness. Through it all she invited in the help of her community, friends learning to give IVs and near strangers helping with pickups and drop offs for her children. Through all the painful mess, the family was never wanting, but it was never because they paid for expensive services or care. Instead they weathered the drought because of the community they welcomed around them and God’s grace that they accepted each moment.

God is inviting us into this same reality, the lush community of life rooted in the sustaining flow of God’s love. It’s a place, Jesus assures us, of blessing, but to get there we must give up our trust in the alternatives. We must let go of the hope of control, of power, of safety and security through any human means of technique or mastery. We must know that the only place of our flourishing is in the tenuous plenty of affluence rather than the violent security of riches. And that affluence is not a reality we can possess, but a gift in which we can only participate both in giving and living in the vulnerability of reception. When we join in the life of that gift, sharing what we have, giving to those who ask, possessing nothing, not even enemies, we will be wealthy in the truest sense. We will be made well and whole through the affluence of God’s great abundance. When this reality takes root in our lives and our community, it will be a thing of great beauty, a demonstration plot of God’s kingdom. It will be like a flourishing grassland in the midst of the desert. Amen.