Greed and gratitude, and then some

“Are you envious because I am generous?”

We get a glimpse this morning into how God chooses to act—but even more so into our all-too-common reaction. I think if we’re honest, sometimes the way things work in this divine economy of grace can really be outright offensive to our personal sensibilities.

If we want to go where God is leading, we have some unlearning to do and some choices to make.

This is much the story of the Hebrew people wandering around in the wilderness, which we just heard from the book of Exodus. They have left a slave society in which everything was predetermined on their behalf: when they eat, what they eat, and—most importantly—if they eat at all. 

Being confined to enslavement is brutal, though in truth it did bring them some measure of predictability. Because as anyone who has suffered and survived under any form of authoritarianism can tell you, there’s not much of a question about what the expectations are. Obedience is the baseline, and there aren’t too many choices to be made for oneself, if at all. Being robbed of choice in this way is anything but freedom.

But things are different for them now: out in the vast, open space of the world. And in the desert they struggle to let go of their understanding of how things work. Unlearning a lifetime of lessons is no insignificant thing. 

A slave economy prizes production—back in that place they came from—and it reduces the worth of a human person to their output. Above all else, it values self-preservation, and for this reason others are viewed as merely tools to secure profit and power.

A slave economy enslaves people (obviously): by which I mean all people, everyone confined within it, regardless of whatever their position may be in the order of things. And living under this kind of dehumanizing arrangement inevitably forms people for greed and entitlement, envy and resentment.

Unless those values are resisted, it makes choosing anything else near impossible.  

Many decades ago, Ghandi famously said: “The world has enough for everyone’s needs, but not everyone’s greed.” The truth in these words has really only come into sharper focus in our days.

We live in a time of rampant consumption. It’s undeniable. And it’s not without implications: as we can see unfolding from the bottomless greed that powers the AI revolution and its lofty promises to deliver freedom—even while bringing us to the brink of disaster.  

The thing about greed is that there’s simply never enough. It is insatiable. No matter how much profit or salmon or data it gets fed: greed merely breeds more greed. Unless we find some way to break free.

So Jesus tells a parable of laborers who are bound up in the same tired cycle, and of a landowner who invites them into something different. 

At the break of day, a group of laborers are hired and put to work. Later, the same landowner sees more people in need, so he puts them to work too—and then again with others, and then again. At the end of the day there are still more people out of work. And when asked why, they give a pretty predictable answer: because they haven’t been hired. It’s pretty straightforward, really. 

All we really know about their situation is that they haven’t found work. Perhaps they’ve only just now shown up in the marketplace: rolling out of bed late in the day. Maybe. And it’s also possible they are waiting with building fears while they get passed over for more skilled laborers, again and again. 

I can’t help but think of my own father, whose repeated and increasingly long bouts without work shaped my family considerably. It's not something I talk about often, if at all; for my family it's perhaps the single greatest source of shame. Unemployment is not for the faint of heart, as more and more families could tell you in this time of job insecurity and ever-rising inflation. Anyone who has ever wanted for work knows the questions and fears that surface as they wonder from where their daily bread will come, and whether there will be enough to go around the table. 

Now, we might pause here for a moment to wonder: who should be considered worthy enough to eat? And what gives a person more or less value? What lessons about this have we internalized intellectually, and how do we yearn to respond on a spirit level? Just how ought things to work in the economy of God?  

Some of these laborers believe they are simply entitled to more. It doesn’t take much to see how they come to the conclusion, and we might even sympathize with them. Even if they were to receive their just deserts, perhaps they might feel food for a moment—but I really don’t believe they would be satisfied. Because like greed, there is simply no end to opportunities for envy: to want what others have and then some.

As it has been said, “envy is the thief of joy”—and it will surely suck the soul dry.

Regardless of the reasons this final group stands idle in the marketplace, what doesn’t change is that they all begin with the same need as everyone else: a living wage that will see them through the day, and a desire to put food on the table. And in all that they hold in common, I imagine they offer the same prayer as the Hebrew people in the desert and the whales in the sea: God in Heaven, please give us food to eat.

Each one of them is met in this prayer, according to their need. This is how God works. The lowly are lifted, and the mighty brought down; the last made first, and the first made last… 

Like manna falling from the sky, God chooses to “make the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous alike”—on early risers and later bloomers, on sinners and even saints, on those who are “deserving” and “underserving.” God provides, again and again. 

“Are you envious because I am generous?”

There is in each of us a not-so-small voice constantly whispering we need more—promising that the good life is bigger, faster, busier. As the US secretary of war put it on his Arsenal of Freedom Tour earlier this week, “build faster, scale bigger, and deliver more.” We come by this impulse for more quite honestly, having received a lifetime of instruction. 

But I think this same part of ourselves that can be so easily offended by how things work in the upside down economy of God, is the very same part that is so desperate to know we are valued for more than what we produce.

Nothing is Going to Happen Here

Wendell Berry has been on my mind quite a bit these recent days. Spoiler alert, in case there was any question: the title pretty much captures everything—feel free then to let it spare you a thousand or so words to come. Drifting in and through consciousness, Berry’s work

Center + ShadowDavid Potter

How will we choose to live in light of God’s generous provision? 

We might seek to satisfy our endless greed, chasing after envy and remaining locked in an endless, tired story. Or we might instead choose to live in gratitude: receiving God’s provision, seeing all of this life as a gift, and aligning ourselves in harmony with the needs of the earth and all creatures around us. 

There are always choices before us—no matter what the circumstances that shape our lives may be. We choose how we will live within them: whether to accept the values of a slave economy or of God’s.

One way of living enslaves, and one sets free. I don’t know about you, but I want to live in freedom. 

Now, the thing about gratitude is that it too is generative. Gratitude for our lives merely breeds more gratification in our lives, and in the world. It only creates more to go around. 

It is by no means then any small, inconsequential thing for us to join together in saying, thanks be to God.