More Than We Need

Psalm 65

July 12, 2020

William G. Carter

Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion;

and to you shall vows be performed, O you who answer prayer! To you all flesh shall come.

When deeds of iniquity overwhelm us, you forgive our transgressions.

Happy are those whom you choose and bring near to live in your courts.

We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, your holy temple.

By awesome deeds you answer us with deliverance, O God of our salvation;

you are the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas.

By your strength you established the mountains; you are girded with might.

You silence the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples.

Those who live at earth’s farthest bounds are awed by your signs;

you make the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy.

You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water;

you provide the people with grain, for so you have prepared it.

You water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, 

softening it with showers, and blessing its growth.

You crown the year with your bounty; your wagon tracks overflow with richness.

The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy,

the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain,

they shout and sing together for joy.

When we updated our television some time back, I began to ask around about good programs to watch on a TV that now had a laser-sharp picture. Many of you offered great suggestions: a concert where the rock star Sting sings with a full orchestra, some reworked Alfred Hitchcock movies, and remarkable entertainment from all kinds of places.

By far, the best suggestion was a series of nature shows that we had missed when first broadcast on a channel we didn’t know about. The series was called “Planet Earth.” There were eleven shows, all about an hour long, each one narrated with the flawless diction of Sir David Attenborough. Sir David took us on a tour of the whole planet.

We climbed the Himalayas to see the snow leopards and descended into the caves of Borneo to see the bats. We recoiled at the six-foot-long salamander in Japan and the piranhas of Brazil. We flew from mountain peaks to desert sands to coral reefs off Australia. The aurora borealis glimmered over northern Scotland while the winds blew through the savannah grasses of Africa. The series is stunning, and so are the sequels.

These days, we can flip through the National Geographic channel or watch a veterinarian do surgery in the Yukon. But what was so powerful of “Planet Earth” was the ability to scan the breadth, depth, and diversity of this entire planet in about eleven hours. It was far more interesting than watching an old movie. There is power and majesty when we encounter this entire planet.

The poet who gives us Psalm 65 is well acquainted with the world. He didn’t have high definition cameras at his disposal. Nor could he travel very far. Yet in this song of praise, it is clear to him that God is making all of it, that God is the inventor of meadows and hills, the Giver of grain, the Source of water and wind. The seas roar like lions. The waves smash against the rocks. By their sheer size, the mountains call us to lift our praises skyward. And when the rains fall, as they fell so abundantly on Friday night, the whole creation is renewed.

God stands behind all of this, says the poet. The magnitude of creation is overwhelming. Certainly, it proceeds from the imagination of a Superior Being. To see the world, in all its size as well as its intricate smallness, is humbling for us, who think we know so much yet are unable to manage so little. The poet looks toward God and declares, “By awesome deed you answer us, O God; you are the hope of the ends of the earth.”

It was John Calvin who said it well: “There is not one little blade of grass, there is no color in this world, that is not intended to make [us] rejoice.”[1] Calvin didn’t travel very far to observe that. Like the ancient psalmist, he stuck close to home and simply paid attention. Yet each of them experienced enough of God’s creation to hear the invitation to rejoice and welcome God’s rule over it all.

The hallmarks of God’s rule are creativity and abundance. There is so much to see, so much to taste, so much to embrace and learn and enjoy. Even if we sit on the porch, as some did during Friday’s storm, we see the rain dance on the sidewalk and renew the soil. Pretty soon, everything will sprout up even higher. There is so much, and it’s all a gift from the Creator. Even when unwanted dandelions pop up, or that runaway spearmint threatens to conquer the flower garden, or better yet, those fresh strawberries that my wife just made into jam – it’s all good, and there’s so much of it.

The Bible is not bashful about the creation. As one Bible scholar notes,

The Bible starts out with a liturgy of abundance. Genesis 1 is a song of praise for God's generosity. It tells how well the world is ordered. It keeps saying, "It is good, it is good, it is good, it is very good." It declares that God blesses -- that is, endows with vitality -- the plants and the animals and the fish and the birds and humankind. And it pictures the creator as saying, "Be fruitful and multiply." In an orgy of fruitfulness, everything in its kind is to multiply the overflowing goodness that pours from God's creator spirit. And as you know, the creation ends in Sabbath. God is so overrun with fruitfulness that God says, "I've got to take a break from all this. I've got to get out of the office."[2]

There is so much. The psalm for today looks around the field, and bursts into song. “You crown the year with your bounty; your wagon tracks overflow with richness.” God creates more than we need.

Yet here is the question: if there is so much, why do some folks think there is so little?

Perhaps they grew up in constricted times. The long-experienced ones of our acquaintance grew up in economic depression. Banks failed. Jobs disappeared. Three slices of bologna had to feed five people. It’s hard for younger folks to even imagine, especially when so many of us have convinced ourselves that luxuries are necessities. Like that cell phone, which would have been deemed a waste of money twenty-five years ago. Or that big TV that I convinced myself that we had to have; everyone else has one, I reasoned, so why not me?

Decisions like this were absurd to my grandmother, who was born in 1914 and raised in rural simplicity in a time of widespread poverty. Whenever I would phone her, she said, “You better hang up; this call is costing you an arm and a leg.” One time I told her she was worth the double amputation, so she hung up on me. In her generation, you didn’t waste money because you didn’t have any enough to go around. You cleaned your plate because the next meal was uncertain. You never bought more shoes than what you needed.

The lesson was instructive, and it went like this: simplicity, out of necessity. Grow your own food. Make your own clothing. Walk on your own two feet. Live modestly.

By contrast, remember back to the initial days of this pandemic. Those who had the means hoarded all the toilet paper and stockpiled the Lysol and paper towels. What was that all about? Fear, of course; fear that there wouldn’t be enough to go around. “I need mine, even if that means you don’t get yours.” And who was doing all the hoarding? The people who could afford it! Those who had to have what their neighbors couldn’t have. My hunch is they haven’t begun to use all that they have stockpiled.

So let’s set all this in the context of Psalm 65. God creates an abundant world, teeming with life and resources. There is plenty for everybody. Yet the recurring human response is the fear of scarcity. That’s the issue, isn’t it?

Not that God creates abundance, but that there isn’t enough to go around. Abundance or scarcity? That’s the choice.

Walter Brueggemann, the Old Testament theologian, points out that the fear of scarcity led to the Egyptian enslavement of the Hebrew people. God creates an abundant earth, a Psalm 65 earth. But in 47^th chapter of Genesis, Pharoah dreams there will be a famine in the land.

So Pharaoh gets organized to administer, control and monopolize the food supply. 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." … Because Pharaoh is afraid that there aren't enough good things to go around, he must try to have them all. Because he is fearful, he is ruthless. Pharaoh hires Joseph to manage the monopoly. When the crops fail and the peasants run out of food, they come to Joseph. And on behalf of Pharaoh, Joseph says, "What's your collateral?" They give up their land for food, and then, the next year, they give up their cattle. By the third year of the famine they have no collateral but themselves. And that's how the children of Israel become slaves -- through an economic transaction.

By the end of Genesis 47 Pharaoh has all the land except that belonging to the priests, which he never touches because he needs somebody to bless him. The notion of scarcity has been introduced into biblical faith. The Book of Exodus records the contest between the liturgy of generosity and the myth of scarcity -- a contest that still tears us apart today[3]

Is there enough? Or not? Psalm 65 says there is plenty, an abundance to go around, a world teeming with God’s generosity. But some of us aren’t so sure.

Sometimes the matter is translated into moral terms. The apostle Paul had to address the lazy people in one of his churches. Apparently, some of them were sitting around, doing nothing, waiting for the Lord to come. In a moment of frustration, Paul said, “If you don’t work, you don’t eat.” (2 Thessalonians 3:10)

By contrast, Jesus, on more than one occasion, fed the multitudes because they had no food. These were the poor, plundered by an occupying army. Jesus collected the little bread that they had, broke it, and there was plenty to go around. More abundance than they could imagine! (Mark 6:44, 8:9) He is the Sower who throws more seed into the field than it can ever use.

The early church followed after Jesus. In the book of Acts, they shared everything they had and gave to those in need (Acts 4:32-35). Yet in one tragic tale, two church people – Ananias and Sapphira – sold some real estate and held back some money for themselves. Saint Peter confronted each of them and it didn’t turn out well.

Why do people do this? Why do some share and others clutch? Picture two brothers: one gives freely, the other hunkers over his stuff. How can that be? They are raised in the same home, fed from the same table, given the same opportunities, loved equally by the same parents. Yet one lives out of abundance. The other fears scarcity. How can this be? I don’t know.

What I do know is that God creates a world of abundance. There is more than we need. There is plenty for all. Whether it is human fear, or the perceived inequality of everyone treated fairly, or good, old fashioned greed, we continue to have a distribution problem. What’s more, no matter how much some of us have, we want more. Especially if we can get more than the person next to us.

Ultimately this is a matter of the heart. And everyone must decide: are we going to live with the assumption of abundance or out of the fear of scarcity? And if there is an abundance, what are we going to do with it? Hoard or share?

While we decide, Psalm 65 celebrates the God who goes on giving. When the earth runs dry, God sends the rain. When the birds and beasts are hungry, God provides the food. When we find ourselves in trouble, God gives us help. When “deeds of iniquity” twist us out of shape, God sets us free with forgiveness to start afresh. Every single day, every lonely night, God provides an abundance.

And we can spend a lot of time wondering, is this the way God is?

We can wonder all we want. For what the Psalmist declares is what I say to you all: abundance wins. Abundance always wins. Our lives depend on God’s generosity.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] John Calvin, quoted in William J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait (Oxford, 1988), pp. 134-135.

[2] Walter Brueggemann, “The Liturgy of Abundance, The Myth of Scarcity,” The Christian Century, March 24-31, l999

[3] Brueggemann, ibid.