Recent talks: 1.  I am the true Vine Audio & Notes 2.  Resurrection Today Audio & Notes 3.  Street Drama - Palm Sunday      Notes 4.  Anger        Notes 5.  Giving things up Audio & Notes        Ash Wednesday - The Five Messages      Notes        2012 Lent Course Outline Notes click here            For other talks click here     Abundance & Scarcity Talking about money is considered off-limits nowadays for many people, and this includes Christians.  Like sex, it is considered to be a private matter.  So we have the attitude ‘what I do in private behind my front door is my own business’ and ‘what I do with my money is my own business’.  But I am not sure that this is how God sees it.    Some scholars consider the book of Genesis to be the most carefully written and the most important book of the Old Testament.  It has been called a ‘Liturgy of Abundance’ as it as if it starts with a song of praise for God’s generosity.  It keeps saying about creation, “it is good, it is good, it is very good”.  It talks of fruitfulness, of filling the earth, of vitality and abundance, and the overflowing goodness that pours from God’s creator spirit. It ends with Sabbath rest.  God is so overrun with fruitfulness it is almost as if God says, “I’ve got to take a break from all this.  I need to get out of the office!” Genesis continues to tell the abundance of God’s provision until we get to chapter 47.  In this chapter Pharaoh dreams there will be a famine in the land, so he gets organised to administer, control and monopolise the food supply.  Pharaoh introduces the principle of scarcity to the economy.  For the first time in the Bible someone says, “there is not enough to go round, so let’s get everything.”    Charles Handy (an author/philosopher) said: “The problem is that we have grown up in a culture of scarcity.”  We have grown up believing that there is not enough to go round.  We feel things are going to run out.  This mindset leads to wars and financial crises.    We have forgotten what it means to revel in the utter abundance of God’s provision.  We have lost the spirit of delight and thankfulness for what we have.  Instead all we hear is ‘there might not be enough for you’, and so we live anxious and fearful lives.  It is ironic that we are haunted by scarcity while living in a world of plenty.    Church leader and author Rob Bell says, “If you own a car you are rich – no matter what sort of car, how old, how good etc.”  We could add house, flat, pension etc.  Yet we never feel we have quite enough, we want just a bit more. I have never been to Africa, but I know many people who have visited poor parts of Malawi, Nigeria & Uganda.  They tell me stories of people willingly walking 15 or 20 miles to a church service to welcome them.  They told me about people who gave them, as a gift, one of their few cabbages and homes they were invited in to, where they slaughtered one third of their flock to feed them – one of their three chickens.  These people believe in the abundance of Genesis and can sing Ps 104 with gusto.  These are hearts bursting with generosity and thankfulness.    Paul tells rich Christians in Greece about the amazing generosity of poor Christians in Macedonia (2 Corinthians 8.1-9).  They gave to the church in Jerusalem 1,000 miles away, where there was a famine.  here we have Gentile Christians giving to Jewish Christians across the cultures.  It was an example of the poor giving to the hungry, yet with abundant joy, cheerfulness and overflowing generosity.  Paul affirms that “This is how you become rich, properly rich!”   So how do we break out of the darkness of fear of scarcity?  How do we become liberated and enabled to live with less?  Rowan Williams says, “What God gives is God.”   All God can do is to give generously, because without this God would not be God.  We need to see that we are a chip of the old block – deep down in our DNA it is our nature to be utterly generous.    The theologian/priest Daniel Hardy says, “The Christian faith is founded on the consistently generative generosity of God”   This is modelled in Jesus, who though he was rich, for our sake became poor.  If we do not remodel this it can be said that we are not really ‘church’.  We might be a club, bunch of friends or an interest group – but not church.    We do not become generous and thankful, though, by being told to be generous and thankful.  But by realising that this is who and where we have come from and all we have ever received from God is overwhelming generosity. We do not give just when we feel thankful and generous, it needs to be planned, thoughtful and consistent – so that it becomes our pattern of behaviour.    The Christians in the book of Acts shared what they had.  It is interesting to note that today in the church very few people (if any) know what our household income is?  Is this right?  Shouldn’t maybe a few people know so that we are accountable to somebody?  Why has this become such an ‘off limits’ topic.    Openness, generosity and thankfulness are all marks of God.  If we realise where we have come from and to whom we belong, we also will develop these same traits. Graham Turner Generous and giving God whose heart is abundance and whose name is love teach us what it means to live as your daughters and sons with no fear of scarcity but with great trust in your provision so that we can also be generous and giving as Jesus always was.  Amen.