| In writing about anxiety as alternative to sabbath, Walter Brueggemann interprets four texts. Today I will write out the full comments on the first text. in Genesis 41:14-36, Pharaoh, the Egyptian god who presided over the resources of the superpower, had a bad dream. In the midst of his limitless abundance that is the gift of the Nile, he had a nightmare about scarcity. You know the dream of thin cows and thin years of grain, seven years of famine to come. But do you know the policy that arose from the nightmare of scarcity, as policies are always arising from our nightmares? In Genesis 47, Joseph son of Israel, child of the abundant creator God, signed on for the Pharaonic nightmare of scarcity. He went to work for the interests of corporate acquisitiveness, organized and imperial monopoly, and over a three-year period seized, in the interest of the corporate economy, the money of the peasants, the land of the peasants, and eventually the life of the peasants who were reduced to slavery. This achievement was all accomplished by a true son of Israel who was seduced, as we often are, into the nightmare of scarcity. You may be sure that in this anxiety over the coming famine there was no rest in the surge of confiscation, no time off, no sabbath. The machinery of acquisitiveness worked 24/7 until Pharaoh, by the genius of Joseph achieved total monopoly. That is how our people, by the book of Exodus ended in slavery; one among us believed excessively in the nightmare of scarcity that contradicted the abundance of the creator God. Thus, Genesis 47 stands as a prelude to the exodus narrative and indicates that a mistrust of creation's abundance created the crisis of the exodus narrative. Pharaoh's nightmare of scarcity disrupted creation and eventually evoked the plagues that constitute creation performing like chaos, a massive threat to order and abundance. I have never heard an interpretation like this. Later Brueggmann will connect it to contemporary times. As for this long piece, I was struck by the image of the "nightmare of scarcity." In that storytelling, even as there is eventually food for all, there is food for all because of the anxiety about not having enough. When we think that we will not have enough, we do wild things and attempt to make sure that scarcity will not overcome us. As is usually the case, the powerful are the ones who are able to use the resources and gifts of others in order to secure their lives. This made me think of how we go to war. We often go to war in order to secure resources or gain influence so that we will be able to sustain ourselves. Nothing is to get in the way of our anxiety. Nothing is to stop us from storing up surplus so that we can be masters of our own destiny. In the meantime, we forget about the God who promises life and all that will be necessary to sustain us. It is so easy to let ourselves be led around by nightmares rather than visions of shalom. Connection: Do you have nightmares of scarcity? And when you do - what do you do? I'm embarrassed to say I often attempt to secure myself before I dream about what we can do with and for one another. |
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