From scarcity to abundance

Here's the reflection I shared during today's lunchtime Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

I recently saw an excellent exhibition at St Stephen’s Norwich called ‘After the Storm?’ which includes an interesting triptych about the pandemic. This triptych by Liz Monahan is called A Long Overdue Reckoning and it tells the story of the lockdown in the UK through iconic images from face masks to anti-vaxxers, clapping for the NHS to social distancing signs, and Zoom rooms to Amazon deliveries. Across her canvases she takes us on a journey from darkness to light and the hope of a brighter, albeit uncertain future, through a Stanley Spencer-like focus on the incidental details of everyday life. She also draws attention to the disparities present within our society which the pandemic has highlighted and makes a homeless man central to her story enabling us to see Christ we see in the face of this central character.

There are some great contrasts in the triptych including a nurse remonstrating with a protestor who holds a placard that says ‘It’s all a hoax’ whilst pointing to the full beds in ICU. One key contrast that has emerged within lockdown has been between those with a scarcity mindset and those with an abundance mindset.

When we are in a scarcity mindset we focus on all the deficits, all that is wrong in our situation, in lockdown that might have included all we have lost and all that we didn’t have. Those to whom Jesus spoke in today’s Gospel reading (Luke 7:31-35) were in that place as whoever God sent to them was wrong. John the Baptist was wrong because he was too great an ascetic, while Jesus was wrong for entirely the opposite reason, being too much of a party animal. The point that Jesus makes is that if we inhabit a scarcity mindset nothing is ever right, which is why he quotes the lines, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; / we wailed, and you did not weep.’

Our Vicar Sam Wells says that, as Christians, we are called to live with an abundance mindset because of all that God gives in every situation, however, difficult and whether we recognise those gifts or not. ‘I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.’ (John 10.10) 'We don’t have to look far for a mission statement for the church. Living abundant life. That’s what the Father intends, the Son embodies, the Spirit facilitates. Christians are called to live in such a way that gratefully receives the abundance God is giving them, evidences the transformation from scarcity to abundance to which God is calling them, dwells with God in that abundant life, and shares that abundance far and wide. Jesus is our model of abundant life; his life, death and resurrection chart the transformation from the scarcity of sin and death to the abundance of healing and resurrection; he longs to bring all humankind into reconciled and flourishing relationship with God, one another, themselves and all creation.'

So, a key temptation we face as God's people is to a scarcity mindset in which we reject or fail to recognise the gifts that God is continually sending to us. Jesus is described as the stone that the builders rejected. Sam Wells notes that 'the rejected stone became the cornerstone, the keystone – the stone that held up all the others, the crucial link, the vital connection. The rejected stone is Jesus. In his crucifixion he was rejected by the builders – yet in his resurrection he became the cornerstone of forgiveness and eternal life. That’s what ministry and mission are all about – not condescendingly making welcome alienated strangers, but seeking out the rejected precisely because they are the energy and the life-force that will transform us all. Every minister, every missionary, every evangelist, every disciple should have these words over their desk, their windscreen, on their screensaver, in the photo section of their wallet, wherever they see it all the time – the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The life of the church is about constantly recognising the sin of how much we have rejected, and celebrating the grace that God gives us back what we once rejected to become the cornerstone of our lives.'

At St Martin’s we have learnt about the importance of inhabiting an abundance mindset and receiving the gifts God is constantly giving us through the work of our Disability Advisory Group, who constantly challenge us to be open to changes that enable all to fully join in here. The 10th conference on disability and church in partnership with Inclusive Church has deliberately been called (Still) Calling from the Edge because the voices of disabled people are still not consistently heard by the Church as a whole. The same is true in wider society where the achievements of Paralympians as rightly celebrated but, at the same, Government policies in the pandemic have reduced support and provisions for disabled people making society as a whole less accessible than was previously the case.

To genuinely experience the abundant gifts that God is giving as a church and as society at this time we need to receive the gifts of disabled people by making church and society more accessible, not less. We begin on that path when we reject to scarcity mindset that Jesus identifies in our Gospel reading and embrace the abundant life that he offers. To do so, means recognising the sin of how much we have rejected, and celebrating the grace that God gives us back what we once rejected to become the cornerstone of our lives.

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Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Bright Horses.