THE great creation text in Genesis 1 that opens the Bible is not about “origins”. It is about the claim that the world is deeply linked to God’s will and purpose. The world for that reason is not a closed system that operates on its own, leaving us with a zero-sum game; it is rather a process open to the continued gifts of the Creator.
Yet the world does not possess the gift of life on its own. Creation is God’s partner, God’s object, God’s vehicle for wellness in the world that God continues to enact in the ongoing work of creation.
The Genesis recital tells of the ordered goodness of the world that moves progressively from day to day until it arrives at “very good” (Genesis 1.31). That ordered goodness, moreover, is sustained and reliable, even in the face of the deep threat of chaos. Thus, at the conclusion of the flood narrative, after the power of chaos has done its worst, God declares:
“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” (Genesis 8.22)
The full, regular functioning of the creation is assured by divine decree!
The recital has two features that concern us. First, the world is blessed by God. God had committed God’s own life-giving force into the wonder of the world. Second, the effect of that divine blessing bestowed on the world is that the world is to be fruitful, to keep generating food that will sustain all of life.
That life-giving force, moreover, has been entrusted to human care and supervision:
“‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, . . . and you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so.”
(Genesis 1.29-30)
The relationship of Creator and creatureliness is one of committed trust and responding obedience. The news is that the world is articulated in personal-interpersonal categories, that the proper interaction of God and world, creator and creature, is one of dialogic interaction that features trust, generosity, gratitude, and obedience.
Such a way in the world refuses the flat, reductionist language of commodity and control to which market ideology is always tempted. Thus the Bible can imagine that all creatures — humans as well as birds, beasts, and fish — are in conversation with the Creator. Specifically that conversation, as concerns human persons, is in the form of prayer.
THE MOST pertinent prayer for the food fight is the simple, regular, table prayer that voices thanks to God for food and that acknowledges that food is a gift from God and not a human product or possession. That prayer, practised on every occasion of receiving food, is one of gratitude that contradicts the self-sufficiency of the accumulators.
In the Old Testament, the two most treasured table prayers are situated in psalms of creation. In Psalm 145, the psalmist acknowledges God’s “wondrous works” of generosity that outrun human expectation (verses 4-7).The psalm identifies, in stylised terms, the covenantal fidelity of God as “gracious and merciful” (verses 8-9) and invites all creatures to give thanks (verse 10). Then, in verses 15-16, comes what has long been a reiterated table prayer:
“The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season. You open your hand, satisfying the desire of every living thing.”
The prayer affirms that God feeds “every living creature”; there is a correlation between “desire” and the timely generosity of God the Creator, who responds to every hunger. The prayer is a defiant refusal of autonomy and self-sufficiency.
The second such prayer is in Psalm 104, a psalm that moves from the large framing of creation as “heaven, earth, and the waters” (verses 2-9) to the specificities of daily life:
“You cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for people to use, to bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the human heart, oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart.” (verses 14-15)
We may notice two things about this list of daily provisions of wine, oil, and bread. The three derive from grapes (wine), olives (oil), and grain (bread). These are the three great money crops in the ancient world, “grain, wine, and oil” (Deuteronomy 7.13; 14.23; Nehemiah 13.5; Isaiah 36.17; Hosea 2.8; Joel 2.19).
But these cash crops that are raised by peasants (and often exploited by the accumulators) are also the sacramental tokens of the Church: thus water for baptism, bread and wine for the eucharist, and oil for anointing.
These sacramental claims of the Church take the core stuff of creation’s fullness as signs of the goodness and presence of God in the world.
While God is celebrated in large scope and then in regular provision, the psalm comes down to the case of daily food (Psalms 104.27-28). It is God’s open hand that feeds “all” who finally rely upon the Creator. . . The language is paralleled in Psalm 145.15: “The eyes of all look to you.” The grateful look is one of glad dependence that God will provide.
Such was the “look of Adam” toward the Creator. That was the look in the first instance of being formed.
But that look is also present in awed gratitude every time there is food. It is the gift of food from the Creator that valorises the creature. Such a look is a look of wonder for food given generously, a verification that our life — all of life — is sustained in well-being and joy.
That look is such an antithesis to the blank stare of the accumulator, who has only a look of self-congratulation.
That look of Adam is one of yielding trust and gratitude. Food is sustenance, valorisation, and the meeting of elemental desire.
The “other way” — other than accumulation — is rooted in the conviction that the Creator God presides over an abundant food supply with generosity toward all creatures.
This conviction cannot be stated with scientific precision or with closely reasoned logic, and Israel never tried to do so.
THE REALITY of divine abundance given in generosity requires a very different mode of discourse, namely, doxology. Doxology is the glad, self-abandoning exuberance of the creature who holds nothing back in affirmation of the Creator.
Doxology is a mode of discourse that matches the lived generosity of the creation. Indeed, Genesis 1 itself has the cadences of doxology, the lining out of awe that cannot be articulated in scientific discourse.
The psalms that I have cited are full, extended doxologies that take in the scope of all creation. Psalm 104 celebrates the framing of creation (verses 1-9) but pivots on the gift of water, and this in an arid climate. . . The water here is the same water that flows in the four rivers of the garden of Eden (Genesis 2.10-14); it is clear that water is what makes a life-giving world possible.
The psalm notices the sustenance of all creatures from the water-providing God —wild animals, wild asses, birds, cattle, storks, wild goats, coneys, lions. It is no wonder that at verse 24 the psalmist must fall back in exuberance, lacking any other form of adequate speech (see also verse 35):
“O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.”
The secret of creation is pronounced in verses 29-30 by the double reference to God’s “spirit/breath” on which the world depends. The world is not a self-starter. It cannot maintain itself automatically, nor can any of the creatures that inhabit it. Israel’s doxology knows that it is the gift of the wind of God that creates (see Genesis 1.2), that renews the face of the ground (Psalm 104.30).
It is no surprise at all that the psalmist, singing for all those who gladly trust God’s abundance, knows that praise defines human creaturely existence (Psalm 104.33). It is no wonder that Psalm 145 ends with a similar doxology:
“My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord, and all flesh will bless his holy name forever and ever” (Psalm 145.21).
DOXOLOGY is the rhetoric of overflowing in which the words of awe and astonishment tumble out. The words are not to be uttered to an abstract principle or to an empty sky. They are words back to the limitless generosity of God who gives seed and bread (Isaiah 55.10). . .
Doxology is about awed gratitude. It is response to gifts given by being in a posture of receptivity. That is why we sing such songs best with our hands outstretched. It is for good reason, then, that the creation liturgy in Genesis 1 culminates in sabbath rest (Genesis 2.2-3).
The world, as given by God, is not a restless, seething organism of recalcitrance. The world is “very good” as a fruit-bearing process to the benefit of all creatures.
For that reason, at the centre of biblical faith — indeed at the centre of doxology — is the command to sabbath rest.
One can judge that sabbath rest is the defining mark of God’s grateful creatures, who rely on the Creator’s generosity. Imagine: God rests! God is not anxious about creation working well. God is not a workaholic.
More than that, Exodus 31.17 declares that sabbath rest for God allowed God to recover God’s very self, God’s nephesh. The phrase translated there as “was refreshed” is a verbal use of the term nephesh (“soul” or “self”), so that God was re-nepheshed — given life back after depletion. The wonder is that God, even God, is depleted and fatigued by the work of creation, so that sabbath is recovery from depletion.
It is remarkable enough to imagine a depleted God who requires sabbath. It is equally remarkable to ponder human persons who are depleted and who require recovery and restoration.
Thus Sabbath breaks the grip of feverish work in the world, feverish accumulation. Big-time accumulators never take Sabbath rest. It is hard to imagine Pharaoh taking sabbath rest. So, of course, Pharaoh is more and more depleted, and consequently more and more anxious.
It is, in like manner, hard to imagine a conventional consumer taking a sabbath break from restless efforts at accumulation, performed for the sake of the children, or the career, or the Church, or whatever.
It is hard to imagine the vicious cycle of anxiety being broken, but such is the wondrous reality of Sabbath rest, which is in sync with the rhythm of creation. On that day, the pay-off day of creation, human persons join God and the birds and the lilies, and all creatures of our God and king and live in astonished abundance in order to ponder, and experience, and enjoy, the abundance given by God.
Sabbath is possible because God is known to guarantee what is needed to satisfy the desire of every living thing.
Sabbath is a performance of an alternative to assert among ourselves that we are not pressed by scarcity, we are not consumed by anxiety, we are not driven by greed, and we are not available for anxious accumulation. At sabbath, the creation takes into account the assured reality that “loaves abound”.
It turns out that abundance is not a matter of quantity. It is, instead, about being receptive rather than on the make, being a glad creature, rather than posturing as the creator of our own lives.
The convergence of creation as fruitful food production, response in exuberant doxology that matches God’s abundance, and restful sabbath to savour the abundance, generates a venue for food sharing in gratitude, and food eating in astonishment.
Questions for Reflection
- What table prayers do you know or say regularly? How do your table prayers function as an ongoing conversation with God and/or a reminder of the other way of approaching food and hunger in an anxious world?
- Where and when do you find Sabbath rest that reminds you to trust in God’s generosity and provision, instead of the pressure to work, be productive, and accumulate?
- How do you see the story of quail, manna, and water in the wilderness as a narrative at work in your own life? When and where do you need to recall that “God has more gifts to give; those gifts are to be given in places where we think it is not possible to have new life”?
This is an edited extract from Grace Abounds: God’s abundance against the fear of scarcity by Walter Bruggemann, edited by Davis Hankins, published by Westminster John Knox at £15 (Church Times Bookshop £13.50); 978-0-664-26591-5