Are You Scared of Scarcity?

Reverend Roberta Finkelstein

Minister, Unitarian Universalist Church of Portsmouth NH

“I hate, I despise your festivals. I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.” The approach of Thanksgiving always brings those dramatic words from the biblical prophet Amos to my mind. Thanksgiving is one of those holidays that carries so many memories, so much pressure to live up to an impossible standard, so much angst. The original intent of Thanksgiving was not to make people feel inadequate because their families or their cooking didn’t measure up to the ideal. But I’ve had enough conversations over the years with distressed parishioners at this time of year to know that is what happens. The intent was not to pressure the designated cook into pursuing that mythical perfect turkey, perfect pie-crust, and perfect table setting, though many of us have fallen victim to that invitation only to end the day feeling exhausted and resentful.

The original intent of Thanksgiving was to take the time to celebrate life—survival in the face of hardship, plenty in the face of scarcity—and to thank God for renewing, once again, that ancient covenant that promised life and plenty to God’s people. Today, Americans and Canadians continue the Thanksgiving custom as an opportunity to pause and reflect on the fact that we live in the midst of plenty, that again this year the harvest has come in and we will not starve.

Many years ago, the story goes, a covenant was made between God and Abraham and Sarah. Abraham and Sarah were nomads; they really knew what it meant to live in scarcity. They lived in a land with little water—they had to eke out an existence as best they could. But even more, they felt that their lives were impoverished by the fact that they had no children. God made them a solemn promise that they would bear children, and that they would go to live in a land of plenty. From scarcity to plenty! What a promise! In exchange, they were asked to live in right relationship with God. They became people of a covenant. That struggle, ongoing throughout human history, reminds us that right relationship with God is not just about belief, it is also about actions. Indeed, even those who don’t feel a part of that Judaic tradition, who might not even believe in God, still participate in a covenant of right relationship, human to human, as living the covenant is about creating community. It is about the very nature of the society that we live in.

Much is required of a covenanted people in the way of civic as well as religious obligations. The Hebrew Scriptures are clear that right relationship with God means practicing hospitality: “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” It means practicing commerce honestly: “You shall not cheat in measuring length, or weight or quantity. You shall have honest balances, honest weights.” It means honoring the elderly: “You shall rise before the aged, and defer to the old.” It means practicing love of neighbor and fairness: “You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great; with justice you shall judge your neighbor.”

No wonder the effort to keep the covenant is a struggle for people. We encounter difference, we are afraid, and so we are numb to possibilities. We sense scarcity, and so we are unaware of plenty. Instead of practicing hospitality we turn on the aliens in our midst, hoarding our supplies and resenting their need. Loudoun county, where I was then a minister, was subjected to a media campaign aimed at stirring up fear and blaming local political problems on “foreigners.” The ads focused on some of the infrastructure problems that the county’s recent rapid growth had created: crowded and inadequate roads and schools, increases in crime. They went on to blame a hypothetical influx of immigrants for all these woes, and urged people to resist this invading horde. Now the truth is, a statistical analysis of the demographics of the county gave the lie to this analysis—most of the explosive growth had been young, white, middle-class, well-educated people coming to work in the dot.com companies that now line the streets of Sterling, not poor immigrants hoping to catch a small piece of the almost obscene prosperity of the high-tech corridor.

Our congregation watched with concern as these ads appeared. How would people react? We talked about a letter to the local newspapers, started an email conversation with others in the community. And then we noted with relief and gratitude that the County Board had passed a resolution condemning the unwelcome intrusion of these ads into our community. (The funding for the ads had come from an out-ofstate organization that is closely allied with white supremacist causes.) These folks may not have gotten the response they wanted in Loudoun County, but I fear that they know something about human nature that they will continue to exploit until they do find someplace where they will get the reaction they were looking for.

For those who live lives of abundance, it is easier to defer to voices of doom, leaving the poor to fend for themselves. If you are well-off, it is all too simple to scapegoat groups that are perceived to be needy—they (whoever they are) are after our jobs, our homes, our way of life. (In biblical times, the scapegoat really was a goat, sent out into the wilderness to expiate the sins of the community. It is no improvement that our modern day scapegoats are groups of human beings who may look or sound or smell different from the majority.) Justice and fairness become scarce in direct relationship to our fear of scarcity.

The people of ancient Israel had to learn that the only acceptable response to the gift of freedom and plenty was to share it generously—to remember the widow and the orphan, to empower the disempowered, to conduct business fairly, and to practice justice. God did not want displays of piety as a show of gratitude. God wanted them to live their lives as an act of gratitude. The only truly grateful response to the gift of freedom is to share it generously. What does that mean? It means that all of us must be hungry for peace, whether or not we experience violence in our daily lives. The children on city streets who are armed to the teeth and killing each other are our children.

It means that all of us must be hungry for justice, not just those to whom it is denied. All of us must be offended by acts of hatred and prejudice. If we all say “No” to attempts to discriminate, to stereotype, to encourage hate of one group by another, we are honoring the covenant. It means that all of us must be willing to take courageous stands against forces in our own communities that foment fear and advocate hate and violence.

This is the abundance we seek, and the abundance we celebrate this Thanksgiving—an abundance which declares that there is room for all at the table, that the only hunger which cannot be satisfied is the hunger for justice, for peace, for living the covenant of right relationship.

To see the original article, go to Quest, November 2007