A Sermon for Provoking Faith in a Time of Isolation,
The online gathering of Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church,
16th
August 2020
Exodus 16.12-21, 31
Listen to this sermon here: https://soundcloud.com/bloomsbury-1/universal-basic-income
A few weeks ago I posted a link
about
Universal Basic Income on my social media stream,
and a friend who I respect came back to me
with an
interesting response:
They said that they are not sure that UBI is ‘biblical’.
Their point was that the human experience of God’s provision
should be
matched by a corresponding expectation
that people
will undertake work in response;
and that the biblical injunction to stewardship
negates an
economy based on the ‘free gift’ of money.
This approach certainly has a long tradition
within
Western Christianity and Western Society,
with the influence of the Protestant Work Ethic
embedding
in our collective consciousness
an emphasis
on hard work, discipline, and frugality.
The German economic philosopher Max Weber,
who coined
the phrase ‘Protestant Work Ethic’
in the
early years of the twentieth century,
traced the origins of European capitalism to the Protestant
Reformation,
when the
break from Christendom enshrined in the popular mind-set
a
religious mandate for secular labour,
as people
were expected to ‘work out their salvation with fear and trembling’
(Philippians 2.12-13).[1]
Well, comments from a number of sources within the
mainstream denominations
suggest
that my friend is not alone,
and it seems that there is a substantial suspicion
about
whether UBI is something
that can be
supported from a Christian perspective.
Many Christians react against the idea
that people
who have done nothing to deserve it
might end
up getting something for nothing.
So I thought it might be interesting this week,
in the
first of our short series looking at justice issues,
to explore a biblical model
that might
support the concept of a Universal Basic Income,
and I want
to offer two key concepts for our consideration.
On the one hand we have the wilderness experience of the
Israelites
as they
fled slavery in Egypt on their way to the promised land;
and on the other hand we have the words of Jesus.
Deuteronomy
8.3 [The LORD your God] humbled you by letting you
hunger, then by feeding you with manna … in order to make you understand that
one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth
of the LORD.
Matthew
4:1-4 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the
wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2
He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. 3 The tempter came and said to
him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of
bread.” 4 But he answered,
“It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes
from the mouth of God.’”
Matthew 6.9-11 “Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on
earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread.”
The daily
reality for many people in our country
is that the prayer for daily bread
has a level of anxiety to it that is
easily lost
on those who have enough
resources in hand
to
feed ourselves for the foreseeable future.
This is not
easily a middle-class prayer.
However, for
many of those in First Century Palestine,
to whom Jesus first taught this
prayer,
uncertainty
about their future ability to feed themselves
was a part of their day by day
existence.
It was only
the rich and the wealthy
whose future was assured.
For
everyone else,
the only certainties were death and
Roman taxes.
The first
century had no welfare state, no minimum wage, certainly no Living Wage;
there was no trades union movement,
no standardized terms and conditions
of employment.
If you got
ill, or lost your job,
the step from feeding your family to
destitution
was startlingly small.
And it was
to disciples facing uncertain futures
that Jesus taught the prayer:
‘Give us, this day, our daily
bread’.
There is an
urgent simplicity to it when it’s heard in a subsistence context,
but I wonder if this is where its
first challenge to us,
in all the complexities
of our Western Capitalist lives,
might come from.
We too live
in a society of huge disparities of income and security.
Some struggle to not eat too much,
while others struggle to
know where our next meal is coming from.
Some struggle to know how to wisely
invest their resources,
rightly asking ethical
questions of our bankers and pension funds;
while others don’t have enough
income for even today’s needs
let alone the needs of
an imagined future retirement.
So what might
the stark simplicity of a prayer for daily bread,
say to a world where investment
banks and food banks sit side by side?
Well, to
me, it says that something has gone wrong.
Unchecked
and unchallenged,
global capitalism causes vast
suffering across the world,
and colludes in ecological
destruction on an unprecedented scale.
And I want
to suggest that the challenge to this spiral of misery is right here,
in our little verse from the Lord’s
Prayer:
‘Give us this day our daily bread.’
If people, if
we, can learn to focus not on what can be acquired,
but simply on what is needed,
we discover
not only a revolutionary concept
but an antidote to individualism.
What if we
were to decide, personally and communally,
that enough is just that, enough?
What if we rejected
the idea that the ever increasing acquisition of resources
is not an endless quest never reaching
a conclusion?
Firstly, it
would release resources for others,
but secondly it would begin to release
us
from the continual pressure to
acquire wealth, status, and success.
If we ask
for, and receive, our daily bread,
then we have enough for today.
Jesus is disconcertingly
ambivalent about tomorrow:
Luke 12.29-31
Do not keep striving for what you
are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying.
30 For it is the nations of the
world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need
them.
31 Instead, strive for his kingdom,
and these things will be given to you as well.
This was
the lesson that the Israelites of ancient times had to learn
in the story of the manna in the
wilderness,
which is clearly in the background
to Jesus’ words in his prayer.
If they
collected too much, and tried to keep more than they needed,
it went rotten by the next day,
except on the sixth day
when they had to collect enough for two days,
so they could rest from
their labour on the seventh day.
So what if,
rather than worrying about the question
of what this mysterious manna
actually was,
we simply
take this ancient story at face value
as a parable of idealized economics?
Here we
have a story which speaks of simple living,
where enough is enough,
where unnecessary accumulation is
pointless,
where rest is sanctified,
and where people can be content
and
stop complaining about their lot in life
because
they - simply - have - enough.
The
question of what we think we’re asking for
when we pray for our daily bread
is of course an important one.
Is it just
a prayer for food,
or is it for shelter, warmth,
security,
love,
self-determination, mobility,
a car, a
private jet…?
Where do we
draw the line?
Studies
have shown that there comes a point,
and it is lower than you would
think,
beyond which additional wealth does
not lead to additional happiness.[2]
The
temptation to excess is ever before us,
just as it was before Jesus in his
own experience in the wilderness.
He didn’t
wake up every morning of his 40 day Lenten fast in the desert
to find fresh manna waiting for him.
He starved.
And then he was tempted to use his
divine power
to command stones to
become bread for him to eat;
and in his reply to the tempter he
quoted words from Deuteronomy,
originally written to
reflect the Israelite experience
of 40 years wandering in
the wilderness,
sustained by the daily bread of heaven.
This
passage Jesus quotes
tells us that the lesson of the manna
from heaven
is not that God meets all your needs
and invites you to a life of luxury;
but rather
it is that abundant life
is not found in the abundance of a
person’s possessions,
or even in the abundance
of the food they consume,
but in obedience to every word that
comes from the mouth of God.
The
discipline of praying, each day, for daily bread
is not some ritual to get God to
give us what we think we need;
that kind
of prayer has more in common with magical incantations
than it does the articulations of
the longings of a humble heart.
No, we pray
for daily bread
for the same reasons the Israelites
gathered manna:
to learn
obedience to God who guides us
into works of goodness, humility,
and charity.
The prayer
for daily bread, you see, is not about me, or even about us,
lest we think that God especially
favours us by answering our cry for food.
Rather, it’s
a prayer that takes us into solidarity with those who lack,
and which drives us into action to
see the hungry fed,
the poor raised up,
and the impoverished
released from the snares of debt.
It is a
prayer that takes us into good works of transformative action.
It certainly did for the early
Christians,
as the book of James makes clear:
James
2:15-17 If a brother or sister is naked and lacks
daily food,
16 and one of you says to
them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,"
and
yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?
17 So faith by itself, if
it has no works, is dead.
And
similarly in the book of Acts we read:
Acts 6:1
Now during those days, when the disciples were
increasing in number,
the Hellenists complained against
the Hebrews
because their widows were being
neglected
in the daily distribution of food.
And I wonder, in our complex, interconnected, globalised
capitalist world,
what such
good works might look like for us?
What would it look like if our commitment to good works
led us to a
commitment to good work,
where we become advocates for good employment practices
where
people are paid a fair living wage,
and receive
paid holiday, sickness benefits, and maternity cover?
What would it look like for our prayer for daily bread
to include
a commitment to alleviating food poverty?
And so we come to the idea of a universal basic income
as an
alternative to the current cruelties of our social security system;
A universal basic income would mean that every individual
would receive
sufficient to live with dignity,
and they would
receive this as a gift of grace, unconditionally.
The hungry in our city are not primarily those we see
begging on the streets.
These may
be the most visible,
but
the vast majority of those
who
are malnourished in our city are behind closed doors,
and they
include the young and the elderly,
and parents skipping meals so their children
can eat.
What, I wonder, does a prayer for daily bread mean to them?
And how
might we be part of the answer to that prayer?
The first
Lord’s supper was the celebration of the Passover meal.
The story of the manna was there
before the disciples
that evening in the
upper room;
and Jesus, while they were eating,
took a loaf of bread,
and after blessing it he
broke it, gave it to the disciples,
and said, "Take,
eat; this is my body." (Matthew
26.26).
Elsewhere,
in John’s gospel,
we read that Jesus described himself
as the bread of life,
saying that whoever comes to him
will never by hungry (John 6.35).
And in
Paul’s story of the Lord’s supper in his letter to the Corinthians,
he records Jesus as saying that
‘as often as you eat this bread and
drink this cup,
you proclaim the Lord’s
death until he comes’ (1 Cor. 11.26).
The
Communion meal of bread and wine is the meal of sharing,
it is the meal of accountability,
the meal of sacrifice,
the meal of abundance,
the meal of life.
And as the
body of Christ share bread,
we find the answer to our prayer for
daily bread
taking shape in our lives and in our
midst.
It is as we
share the bread of Christ’s broken body,
that we discover together what it is
to be obedient
to every word that comes from the
mouth of God.
It is as we
eat bread together, that we find ourselves motivated
to good works in our world,
to share with those who have less
than we do,
to lift up those who are weighed
down by poverty,
and to offer all that we have to the
service of the one
who calls us to newness
of life.
It is as we
break bread, and eat together,
that we discover the answer to the
prayer
that Jesus taught his disciples to
pray.
Our father
in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your
kingdom come, your will be done
on earth as
in heaven.
Give us
today our daily bread.
Amen
[1]
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, original lectures
given 1904-5.
[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/money-happiness-how-much-earnings-income-needed-study-perdue-university-indiana-gallup-world-poll-a8218086.html
