This week we held our first coffee with the pastor via the online portal Zoom.  It was so great to see everyone’s faces and to chat and connect with people from the Parish.  As I was looking at the screen I realized that all of us, including me, are at high risk for the virus.  The night before the Lt. Governor of Texas had suggested that elderly people and others would gladly die so that young people could have a good economy.  As I looked at the faces of the people I love I know that I wouldn’t trade any of them for money.

This time of great challenge in the world has been a time of checking our priorities and our systems.  Our economy is built on the constant consumption of more.  And while there are lots of terrible theological connections around prosperity and blessing the thing Jesus talks about the MOST is economic justice.  And to be clear Jesus was not about the vulnerable and the poor dying so that others might have a robust stock portfolio. Jesus was about a radical, Britney Spears style, redistribution of wealth. The early church in Acts holds all things in common based on their understanding of Jesus’ messages about the poor, about justice, about what love of God really looks like when it is lived out on earth.

Our economic system is all about storing up treasures for some while creating systems that trap others in poverty and need. If the vulnerable must die for our economic system to succeed then that is clearly a sign of a system out of alignment with God’s vision for humanity.

In this difficult time maybe we have the space and the grace to think about who we really want to be and to contemplate how we can reform our systems and structures so that all people can thrive. I am seeing this lived out in small ways every day as people in my neighborhood share with each other what they have, offer assistance, and as we all shift our lives to allow people like me, like the folks on that zoom, the chance to be protected and healthy.

Maybe there is enough for everyone.

Maybe if we work together we can all thrive.

Maybe more isn’t actually good.

Maybe God is calling us to a new way.

May we remain committed to God’s way in these difficult times and may we all have the courage to stay home so that others might live.

-Eilidh