By Lee Van Ham
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Mary sings her solution to the giant inequalities across the Roman Empire in her song of exultation that she’s pregnant. Her solution is redistribution (Luke 1:51-54). It’s far too easy to dismiss her words as visionary and impossible—that they don’t work in current circumstances. But if we will embrace Mary’s paradigm of creation and cosmic consciousness, then her words will liberate us from the notion that her song has no meaning for us today.
A few years ago I was changed by the powers of cosmos active in the story of the birth of Jesus. In The Liberating Birth of Jesus (2019) I wrote:
If we embrace Mary’s radical economic transformation, a deep conversion of mind and heart gets underway in us, moving us away from empire-think. In empire-think, wealth and poverty are accepted as an inevitable arrangement, even by those who despise it. Extreme maldistribution is so institutionalized in today’s economic structures that any conception for change is repeatedly aborted before it is born. Yet, in the womb of Mary, the hope for change did get carried to term and resulted in a person living with a soul connected with the cosmos.
Her economic model assures that caring and sharing are able to shape a more just economy, and do so with the authority of creation and cosmos. And as Luke goes on to show in his Gospel, her son would teach and live such an economy, taking his cues from creation which the sabbath and jubilee economy of his scriptures also seek to embody. But congregations, whether from lack of understanding or intention, have selectively ignored the economy of scriptures.
The omission of economics from the spiritual life has devastating consequences for creation. Wendell Berry in his book, Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community (1992) pleads for correcting this omission.
Probably the most urgent question for people who would adhere to the Bible is this: What sort of economy would be responsible to the holiness of life? … I do not believe that organized Christianity now has any idea. I think its idea of a Christian economy is no more or less than the industrial economy—which is an economy firmly founded on the seven deadly sins and the breaking of all ten of the Ten Commandments. If Christianity is going to survive as more than a respecter and comforter of profitable iniquities, then Christians, regardless of their organizations, are going to have to interest themselves in an economy…. They are going to have to give workable answers to those who say we cannot live without this economy that is destroying us and our world, who see the murder of Creation as the only way of life. (Berry, Wendell. Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community, New York: Pantheon Books,1992, 99-100.)
For me, Berry describes profoundly the disconnect between saying we believe or respect the Bible but do not challenge the current economic realities. So I continued in The Liberating Birth of Jesus to hold up some who believe Mary’s economy and know it works.
In this situation, described so clearly by Berry, we need to say together, “Let’s welcome Mary, the economist.” And some are doing just that. There are, today, voices advocating for sharing, caring economies. There is abundant research—especially by feminist economists—on how these virtues are excellent shapers of a healthy economy despite the continuing reign of the military-industrial-growth economy. One such voice is Riane Eisler in her book, The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics (2007). Eisler shows how re-inventing economies to include caring and sharing makes good economic sense, as well as being right morally.
… The Swiss banking giant, Credit Suisse, provides an annual Global Wealth Report. It shows that the world has more than enough wealth to provide economic security for every person on Earth.
Mary got it right. Her economics releases in us the deepest capacities we have as humans to live our best spiritual beliefs and inherent sense of justice. Her economics brings us into being truly human, a species able to participate in a robust new creation of Earth’s creatures and processes of life.
Luke’s presentation of the birth story, Mary’s song being a case in point, transformed my way of thinking about that birth. He uncovers the powers that can lift us out of the economic morass holding most of the world. Changing consciousness and paradigm do this. Then Mary makes sense. Then we can solve inequality. I wrote:
Consciousness of all taken in by the superpower mindset have no faith in Mary’s ways. None. They don’t believe her. But believe or not, wherever the Holy Spirit and messengers connecting cosmos and Earth are at work, they dwarf the realities of superpowers and temples, despite any appearances to the contrary.
Think about it. What is there in these lyrics for superpower governments to like? Or for MultiEarth economies to relish? Or for businesses pursuing models of economic growth to rejoice about? Nothing. Only by converting out of ego consciousness do we connect with our soul’s capacities to join Mary in her paradigm. Notice, too, that Mary’s lyrics are mostly in the past tense…. Is the past tense wishful thinking? Or is it being prophetic about what will happen someday? Neither. Luke is resisting the imperial paradigm in which such questions arise. In the paradigm he so earnestly wants us to embrace, the truth of Mary’s lyrics is underway in many of the ways the Earth and the cosmos function. Concretely, they are happening in the minds and actions of people living the OneEarth, creation-centered ways. The past tense shows emphatically the obsolescence of the reigning paradigm—an obsolescence we see around the world in the devastations visited on our environment by humans wedded to MultiEarth ways. What cannot be seen or imagined in the consciousness of ego and empire is apparent in the consciousness where the Holy Spirit, dreams, and angels’ messages are welcomed as part of the mystery of reality. They are exactly the energies needed to move people into new ways of thinking and living. Luke put them into full service.
Photo by Clay LeConey on Unsplash
