In 1999 the renowned Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann published a powerful and challenging essay in the Christian Century in which he characterized the biblical narrative as a story of tension between a mentality of abundance and the myth of scarcity. The entire article is well worth reading and can be viewed at http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=533
Here are a few selected quotes for those who may not feel inclined to plow through all 3,500 words of the original. These quotes need to be read slowly and thoughtfully. Each one is a small meditation in itself. Brueggemann writes:
God’s force of life is loose in the world. Genesis 1 affirms generosity and denies scarcity. Psalm 104 celebrates the buoyancy of creation and rejects anxiety.
Blessing is the force of well-being active in the world, and faith is the awareness that creation is the gift that keeps on giving.
Pharaoh introduces the principle of scarcity into the world economy. For the first time in the Bible, someone says, “There’s not enough. Let’s get everything.”
the great king of Egypt, who presides over a monopoly of the region’s resources, asks Moses and Aaron to bless him. The powers of scarcity admit to this little community of abundance, “It is clear that you are the wave of the future. So before you leave, lay your powerful hands upon us and give us energy.” The text shows that the power of the future is not in the hands of those who believe in scarcity and monopolize the world’s resources; it is in the hands of those who trust God’s abundance.
the gifts of life are indeed given by a generous God. It’s a wonder, it’s a miracle, it’s an embarrassment, it’s irrational, but God’s abundance transcends the market economy.
because Israel had learned to believe in scarcity in Egypt, people started to hoard the bread. When they tried to bank it, to invest it, it turned sour and rotted, because you cannot store up God’s generosity. Finally, Moses said, “You know what we ought to do? We ought to do what God did in Genesis I. We ought to have a Sabbath.” Sabbath means that there’s enough bread, that we don’t have to hustle every day of our lives. There’s no record that Pharaoh ever took a day off. People who think their lives consist of struggling to get more and more can never slow down because they won’t ever have enough.
we must confess that the central problem of our lives is that we are torn apart by the conflict between our attraction to the good news of God’s abundance and the power of our belief in scarcity — a belief that makes us greedy, mean and unneighborly. We spend our lives trying to sort out that ambiguity.
The conflict between the narratives of abundance and of scarcity is the defining problem confronting us at the turn of the millennium. The gospel story of abundance asserts that we originated in the magnificent, inexplicable love of a God who loved the world into generous being. The baptismal service declares that each of us has been miraculously loved into existence by God. And the story of abundance says that our lives will end in God, and that this well-being cannot be taken from us.
What we know in the secret recesses of our hearts is that the story of scarcity is a tale of death. And the people of God counter this tale by witnessing to the manna. There is a more excellent bread than crass materialism. It is the bread of life and you don’t have to bake it. As we walk into the new millennium, we must decide where our trust is placed.
Jesus demonstrated that the world is filled with abundance and freighted with generosity. If bread is broken and shared, there is enough for all. Jesus is engaged in the sacramental, subversive reordering of public reality.
The closer we stay to Jesus, the more we will bring a new economy of abundance to the world.
the creation is infused with the Creator’s generosity, and we can find practices, procedures and institutions that allow that generosity to work.
Our faith, ministry and hope at the turn of the millennium are that the Creator will empower us to trust his generosity, so that bread may abound.
In A Spacious Place 
6 comments
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March 22, 2012 at 7:53 pm
jaqueline
as it happens, the reading for today was this:
2 Corinthians 9:8-11
And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. As it is written: “He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.” Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.
March 23, 2012 at 5:36 am
Christopher Page
wow! wish I’d written that. thanks
March 23, 2012 at 9:47 am
Tress
On a more crass note , are we not destroying the abundance of nature . the earth has provided the means for us all to have sustenance and yet we tear up the forests and build on the farmlands , and kill the atmosphere and the waters so that we may have fruits out of season , whilst others starve, and t me the ultimate blasphemy is turning corn into fuel so that we can dash about at high speeds . i wont even go into oil tankers etc poisoning the sea and its abundance, then we charitable beings send cast of clothes to the people who need clean water and healthy food.
greed is in the way of grace.
March 23, 2012 at 6:45 pm
jaqueline
greed is in the way of grace…wow, you have it Tress, it is why these things ought to be addressed by Christians as blasphemy and sin…but not all see it that way.
Sometimes I think we ( some Christians ) think that the way we treat the Earth badly or are careless with her is not a priority because there is this idea that the Earth is dying anyway, our real home is heaven etc etc.. But the reply to that idea, is like this. : your mother is dying, so do you leave her out in the cold, and not tend her and not honour her, and not make sure she is treated well?
June 29, 2014 at 11:50 am
ctfuqua
Reblogged this on ctrecoveryjourney and commented:
Have had the privilege of hearing Walter speak twice now… Powerful insight into the history of systems built to oppress.
Some of my own notes from his last talk:
“Scarcity to abundance…a new pair of glasses.”
Scarcity leads to…
Accumulation leads to…
Monopoly leads to…
Violence leads to…
This is pharaoh’s narrative.
In pharaoh’s world everyone is dispensable and stays busy so they can’t think about alternatives.
The Gospel and poetry and the New Testament Interrupt the narrative.
Know the names of the interrupters. Not of pharaoh.
Deut 23:16
“The difference between heaven and hell is a new pair of glasses”
March 28, 2015 at 10:55 pm
Bonifresh Muhollo
Walter brueggerman is not an arm-chair theologian, his exegesis and philosophy begins from top and trickles down to the lowest grounds with healing in its wings, a real social, political and spiritual revolutionalist …One word: Wholistic!