There’s a parable that goes like this:
‘There are these two young fish swimming along
And they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way,
Who nods at them and says,
‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’
And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually
One of them looks over at the other and goes
‘What the hell is water?’
The immediate point of the fish story is
that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities
are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about.’ [i]
In preaching on screens last week
and shopping this week
I’m attempting to name some of the water in which we all swim,
and to help us recognise how this water shapes, seduces, and speaks
to our loves and imaginations with particular visions of the good life.
The every day stuff of life
is full of unconscious habits and rituals
that can be good and not good for the soul.
Jesus says, ‘follow me’
and we say ‘ok, but how?’
Jesus says, ‘I will make the difference in every bit of your life’
and we say ‘ok, but what does that look like?’
In first century Palestine,
There were four ideas of how God’s kingdom might come. [ii]
The first was to accept the situation as it was.
The Romans were in control,
any hope for change must begin with reality.
The key is to discover what is possible.
This was the strategy in the gospels of the Herodians and the Sadducees.
Let’s make the best of the situation,
which meant maintaining a breathing space for the Jewish people
and their way of life,
especially by keeping the temple open as a place of worship.
The second strategy, is the complete opposite.
It believed in righteous revolutionary violence.
This was the position of the Zealots.
Let’s raise an army and create God’s kingdom by force,
ridding ourselves of all opposition.
A third strategy, was the desert.
We don’t want to get too close to the Romans
and we can’t beat them in a fight,
so let’s withdraw and escape to the desert
here we can be pure and perfectly faithful.
These folk were the Essene community.
They disengaged themselves from the wider world.
A final fourth strategy was that presented by the Pharisees.
This option was what we might call ‘proper religion.’
We live in the midst of everyone else,
but we keep ourselves separate — certain agreed areas of life,
including certain coins, crops, persons, occupations, days were taboo.
This is the option of let’s be spiritual, but not political.
These where the four options going in Palestine,
when Jesus emerges on the scene.
They are the four options still on the table today.
Option 1, let’s get close to those in power,
say we are one with you, and hope they let us be.
Here nothing much separates Christians from anybody else,
apart perhaps from that hour on a Sunday morning.
We swim in the same water, doing the same strokes.
Option 2, let’s overthrow it all, down with the banks,
with globalisation, with the elites, with capitalism.
Here Christians put themselves in direct opposition to the world
and is only negative about it.
Option 3, let’s just step out of the mainstream,
and do our own thing — withdraw into our own enclaves.
Here the difference between option 2 and 3 is that instead making a lot of noise,
option 3 is almost indifferent to the wider world,
it’s consumed with its own life and being.
Here Christians are concerned perhaps only for other Christians.
Option 4, let’s get on with religion
and don’t say anything political, let’s keep stumm.
Of course to keep quiet, is to basically endorse or even baptize
the politics of the day.
Here Christians will have a tendency to focus on heaven,
rather than on earth.
All that matters is getting to heaven.
What does Jesus do?
How does Jesus show us the way God’s kingdom comes?
First, he rejects all four options.
He does not look to get close to anyone in power,
especially not Herod or Pilate.
He does not call for any overthrow.
At no point does he actually say the Romans need to go.
And he never endorses violence.
He does not suggest that his followers should withdraw from the world
and create a separate society.
And he does not pretend that God’s kingdom is anything but
political and spiritual,
earthly and heavenly.
What does Jesus do?
He creates a new community in the world.
A community which you can’t be born into,
but can only join through repentance and a kingdom commitment.
A community which is mixed.
It goes beyond gender, status, race, financial-means, background.
A community which practices forgiveness, non-judgment, non-violence,
generosity, dispossession, dependence on, and hope in, God.
A community that lives with the way of the cross in the light of the resurrection.
A community in the world, with the world, for the world,
but committed to God and the kingdom.
What does this mean for shopping?
Option one would say, shop til you drop it doesn’t matter,
as long as you’re here on Sunday morning.
Option two would say, don’t shop, avoid it all costs, cut up your credit card,
close your bank account, live in constant protest.
Option three would say, let’s start our own farm, all move in together,
and keep to ourselves.
Option four would say, its ok to shop, but not on a Sunday
and would probably have a list of shops you could visit and those you couldn’t.
Jesus I think might say four different things:
When you shop
avoid greed,
embrace creation,
love the neighbour
and practice Sabbath. [iii]
The problem with shopping is the temptation always to buy more than we need.
We get overwhelmed by our desire for things:
out of envy, out of a belief that whatever it is will make us happy.
Jesus, I suggest, would call us to avoid going down that road
and find a different path.
He tells the parable of the man who kept getting more,
so he kept building bigger barns,
and God calls him a fool (only parable to do so).
Let your desire be for God and kingdom first.
What might help us avoid greed?
I suggest committing to honest relationships,
who can hold us to account.
Find three friends and swap bank statements and shopping receipts
and help each other think through the choices we make.
Where are we vulnerable?
Alongside avoiding sin, is the more positive: embrace creation.
Shopping is not bad.
‘While the Devil might wear Prada or Primark,
shopping can be virtuous.’ [iv]
It can be a means of enjoying creation.
It can be done with thankfulness for the blessings of this world.
It can be a way of showing kindness.
It can be a source of kingdom investment.
It can be a way of embracing the goods of culture.
Here the question is what or who am I shopping for?
What’s the telos, the purpose?
What would it mean to shop with a goal
and not simply as a means of my happiness.
Jesus would say,
when you shop, shop in such a way that loves neighbour as well as yourself.
That is don’t shop to the extent that you are unable to be generous
towards those in need, that you spend all you have on me and mine.
And don’t shop in ignorance of the neighbour hidden from view:
the factory worker, the warehouse employee, the courier.
(I have in mind the unjust and unloving practices of the likes of Amazon.)
Here the question is can I shop with justice and fairness?
Can I shop in such a way that is good news for the poor,
that sets others free?
Can I shop sacrificially where I might become poorer,
so that others might become richer?
Can I shop in such a way that means I avoid,
with the parable of the Good Samaritan in mind, of walking by?
Can I shop in such a way that makes relationship,
that gives others dignity, livelihood.
Shop without greed,
shop in ways that embrace creation,
shop as means of neighbour love,
and shop in a way that practices Sabbath.
In other words, find times when we rest from shopping,
buy nothing days,
or buy just the basic weeks.
Balance fasting alongside feasting.
Taking a rest from shopping
means we can give attention to other things,
things that matter more.
Taking a rest from shopping
Can instil the habit of knowing when to stop,
Of knowing that we are not the sum of our shopping bags.
Taking a rest from shopping
teaches us to practice simple living.
Taking a rest from shopping
gives space for the opposite of buying
for sharing without cost, of being generous.
In these four ways,
we can shop in such a way that Christ makes a difference.
In such a way that embraces the world in which we live,
but with discernment and humility,
conscious that shopping is both a spiritual and political activity,
that we can shop well and shop badly.
Shopping well takes attention and imagination.
It is to see it as a means of following Jesus
and not as something separate.
Let me end by saying we can never shop for God
and the gifts of God can never be bought.
In this God is the opposite of consumerism.
God is the giver of free gifts:
salvation, forgiveness, friendship, faith,
love, joy, peace,
prayer, communion, scripture
and more
are the free gifts of God
and God gives them that we might be his image-bearers in the world,
lived out in the ways that practice friendship, marriage,
eating, screens, shopping and the every day things of being alive.
God’s desire for us is that we might be fully alive,
and to be fully alive, said one person,[v] is the glory of God.
Amen.
[i] David Foster Wallace cited in James K. A. Smith, You Are What You Love (2016)
[ii] I owe this next section to John Howard Yoder, The Original Revolution.
[iii] These four ideas come from Laura Hartman, The Christian Consumer (2011), but the exposition is largely my own.
[iv] Brutus Green, ‘On Popular Culture: To its Religious Despisers’ in Generous Ecclesiology (2013)
[v] Irenaeus
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