Trinity 11
By Mark Oakley, Sunday 3rd August, 2008
Last Sunday at this time I was leading the service in the Anglican church in Hamburg. It was an unusual service because although it was the main Sunday eucharist something different happened in the middle of it. The Chaplain got married to the former churchwarden! I was there to conduct their wedding. They are both in their mid 60s and the congregation surrounded them both with their love and their prayers as they made their vows to each other. And at the door of the church as you came in there were no enormous flower arrangements or balloons. But there was a huge box full of blankets, clothes and toiletries. On their wedding invitation Roger and Heidi had told their guests that they had two of everything and wanted no presents but instead they wanted their guests to bring useful gifts for the homeless at the nearby hostel. The whole occasion was a great example of a love that doesn’t get stuck just looking inwards but that can translate itself into other relationships. The day helped me glimpse something of the kingdom of God.
Later in the week, here in St Alban’s, I was privileged to celebrate with two couples the renewal of their marriage vows and to discuss with two more couples the marriage vows that they will soon be taking. And in the marriage service it refers to those vows as making a covenant and it is this word that I briefly want to think about. The Chief Rabbi of Great Britain’s thoughts are very helpful:
“Lets start outside Parliament on a walk, say, with a child, and imagine the child asking what happens there, and you say, politics. And she’d ask, what’s politics about, and you say: it’s about the creation and distribution of power.
And then you move on, and see the Banks and the Stock Exchange, and she asks what happens there and you say: economics. And she says: what’s economics about, and you say: it’s about the creation and distribution of wealth.
And then on our way back you pass a church, and she asks, what happens there, and you say: worship. And she asks: what’s worship about? What does it create and distribute? And that’s a good question, because for the past 50 years, our lives have been dominated by the other two institutions: politics and economics, the state and the market, the logic of power and the logic of wealth. The state is us in our collective capacity. The market is us as individuals. And the debate has been: which is more effective? The left tends to favour the state. The right tends to favour the market. And there are endless shadings in between.
But what this leaves out of the equation is a third phenomenon of the utmost importance, and I want to explain why. The state is about power. The market is about wealth. And they are two ways of getting people to act in the way we want. Either we force them to – the way of power. Or we pay them to – the way of wealth.
But there is a third way, and to see this let’s perform a simple thought experiment. Imagine you have total power, and then you decide to share it with nine others. How much do you have left? 1/10 of what you had when you began. Suppose you have ten thousand kroner, and you decide to share it with nine others. How much do you have left? 1/10 of what you had when you began.
But now suppose that you decide to share, not power or wealth, but love, or friendship, or influence, or even knowledge, with nine others. How much do I have left? Do I have less? No, I have more; perhaps even 10 times as much.
Why? Because love, friendship and influence are things that only exist by virtue of sharing. And these might be called covenant goods — the goods that, the more I share, the more I have.
In the short term at least, wealth and power are zero-sum games. If I win, you lose. If you win, I lose. Covenantal goods are non-zero-sum games, meaning, if I win, you also win. And that has huge consequences.
Wealth and power, economic and politics, the market and the state, are arenas of competition, whereas covenantal goods are arenas of co-operation.
Where do we find covenantal goods like love, friendship, influence and trust? They are born, not in the state, and not in the market, but in marriages, partnerships, families,
congregations, fellowships and communities — even in society, if we are clear in our minds that society is something different from the state.
One way of seeing what’s at stake is to understand the difference between two things that look and sound alike but actually are not, namely contracts and covenants.
In a contract, two or more individuals, each pursuing their own interest, come together to make an exchange for mutual benefit. So there is the commercial contract that creates the market, and the social contract that creates the state.
A covenant is something different. In a covenant, two or more individuals, each respecting the dignity and integrity of the other, come together in a bond of love and trust, to share their interests, sometimes even to share their lives, by pledging their faithfulness to one another, to do together what neither can achieve alone.
A contract is a transaction. A covenant is a relationship. Or to put it slightly differently: a contract is about interests. A covenant is about identity. It is about you and me coming together to form an ‘us’. That is why contracts benefit, but covenants transform.
So economics and politics, the market and the state, are about the logic of competition. Covenant is about the logic of co-operation. “
The scriptures teach us that God has made a covenant with his people. “This is my blood of the new covenant” says Jesus as he passes around the cup. The gospel story today is misunderstood if you see it just in terms of miraculous multiplication, a story focused on the quantity of bread. Instead, is about the division of bread, it would have reminded the first hearers of the days in which Moses in the desert called on God to feed his people, it would have reminded them that everyone there received some bread, men, women and children, that grace was abundant and generous. It would have taught them that this new covenant was not about God looking after his own, or a small group feeling satisfied with themselves, it was about gathering up everyone, even the fragments, sharing gifts, being fuelled by compassion not greed. And those early Christians were left with a clear message of covenant:
“Not me, but us. Not my bread but our bread, not sometime or somewhere else but right here and now…stop waiting for a miracle and become one instead.”
