Lent 2

Second Sunday of Lent Genesis 17.1-7, 15-16 No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations Romans 4.13-25 For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. Mark 8.31-38 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering..

1. Covenant and Abraham 2. Gift and faith 3. Giving yourself 4. Covenant with the future 5. Marriage and the economy 6. The suffering of the Son of Man

God knows man and loves him. The Church is witness to the covenant of God with man, and its mission is to communicate this covenant to man. It is the job of the Church in London to assure this country that is known and loved by God. The Church is faithful to this mission for just as long as it points to the Israel, the apostles and the Church as witnesses to this covenant. 1. Covenant and Abraham Our first reading, from Genesis, tells us about a covenant. ‘I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.’ This is a second covenant, for the Lord God who made the covenant by which creation will continue for man’s sake, now makes a covenant with one specific man. Abraham is to be the ancestor of an entire people. One specific people are given this covenant and the promises that come with it. They will prosper and grow, and have children and become numerous. God will be with them, they will be his witnesses, always able to point to the promise that they have received. Since God is faithful they may be a confident people. We are witnesses too, albeit in the second row. We have heard about this covenant with the people of Israel, set out for us in the Old Testament. This covenant of God with man has come to us in Jesus Christ. He is the Word of God who came to Abraham and now makes himself known to all men as their God, as the New Testament tells us. It is this specific form of belonging, of the communion of God with Israel, that is the basis of all

human belonging and relationship. There is a necessary asymmetry: not all relationships and communities are the same or of equal value. This one, with Abraham, Moses, David is the one basis on which there may be any other covenants and societies. We shall examine the consequences of this next week. So it is on the basis of the existence of the Church, within which we are witnesses of this covenant, that we are able to make our distinctive contribution to our own society. God has given us himself in love that brings about a permanent relationship, for which we have the concept of covenant. We may accept or reject this covenant as we wish. As we acknowledge this covenant we can receive creation and other people as the gift of God to us and so as a great good. The society that does not receive, but holds out against, this covenant does not receive the world or other people as good, and so it oscillates between a too high and too low account of itself, and in Manichean fashion regards the world as a dark and friendless place. God made a covenant with Abraham, and this the Apostle Paul tells us in this letter to the Romans is an entirely unilateral gift. It is a gift that enables a whole world of things to happen. Because this gift is given to him Abraham will be the father of a whole nation of people and so an entire economy. It is given to him in order that, much further down the line, it may also be given to us in the simple one-sided generosity which we call ‘grace’. We may work and exchange and earn, but this is because the entire world within which we work and exchange and earn is given to us. We did not build the people we meet and attempt to sell things to; they are simply the gift and grace of God to us. 2. Gift and faith Last week I promised you that I would talk about the series of crises that are coming our way. These crises have arisen because we are poor judges of ourselves, who estimate ourselves both too highly, as though we did not really believe in anyone or anything beyond our immediate purview, and estimate ourselves too modestly, because we fear that there may not be a future for us. To explain why we are facing this flood and these crises we have to think through covenant, love and gift. We will examine them not because these are religious ideas, but because they are fundamental economic ideas. If we attempt to understand economics without them, we achieve incoherence. Economics has indeed tried to understand human interaction and exchange without the concepts of covenant, love and gift, and the result has been the bankruptcy of economics and a crisis that is both social and economic. These three concepts indicate our freedom: the concept of gift indicates that we are free to give, and give ourselves. They indicate that we are both individuals, as thus mature and self-possessed agents, and that we are persons in relationship with one another. We are both independent, and we live together with others and in interdependence with them. In this covenant other people are gifts, given to us. We are free to decide for ourselves that they are indeed good gifts, or we can decide that they are not so, and that we do not wish to receive them.

The fundamental freedom of man to give himself to his fellow man is the beginning of all human interaction and the basis of every economy. You may meet this person and exchange with him words, ideas, services and a whole world of commodities in what we call economic transactions. The two of you are in the market. When we call the market ‘free’ we mean only that one man may speak, persuade and sell to or buy from any other. Each of us free to address any other and offer to establish a relationship with him. Along with every exchange there is a relationship, regardless of how fleeting. For this reason we must be clear that ‘the market’ is good, for it is simply the freedom of man to be with man. Man is in covenant with God. Man is in covenant with man. We can give ourselves to other people definitively and truly. You give yourself, and so you come into relationship with someone who is not yourself: that someone gives themselves to you and so comes into relationship with you. We may do this because we are different from one another, and are able to bring something that the other did not have. Only another person can complement a person. In giving yourself and in receiving the person who give themselves to you, you can do something that no other set of persons may revoke. Now I am going to examine take these concepts of covenant love and gift by taking them in one particular direction. For about a minute this seem like a red herring but you will see the point soon enough. 3. Giving yourself In order to talk about economics, we have to talk about sex and marriage. in order to talk about economics. The concept of covenant and gift also relates to the way that man is himself. For man is in himself either man or woman. Humanity is not unisex, but sexed and so dual. For any economic encounter to work, the two agents have to offer things that are not identical. There would be no point in exchanging identical spades (The difference between the two things may only a function of time: I sell you these vegetables today, because I have excess today, but another day when I don’t have enough you will sell me identical vegetables). The two agents must be different. Difference is essential to human interaction and transaction. The difference between men and women is built in biologically. It is the first difference and the basis of all other differences. Without the difference of the sexes we would be a homogenous unisex being, that would not desire or reach out to encounter anything, for nothing would be different from himself. Mutual desire of men for women and women for men is both the beginning of all society and it is the first economy. Men and women may desire and love each other enough to give themselves to each other, without reservation or time-limit. Marriage is what we call refer to such permanent self-gifts of mutual service. But our society is not entirely confident about the desirability or possibility of permanent self-giving, or about whether the difference between the two sexes should be emphasised in this way. We fear that difference means that one is subordinate to the other. We have been attempting to play down the sexual difference. The Church says that the world is the creation of God, and has its own good order (‘natural law’) which we may discover, and that to reduce the difference between man and woman betrays a

great unhappiness. It comes from a an insecurity about the goodness of creation, and a fear and even hatred of our own bodies that relates to that old Manichean thing again. What is the difference between marriage and other sorts of relationship? Any fleeting ‘relationship’ between a man and woman may result in a pregnancy and the birth of a child. The child himself might be glad if this relationship was a deliberate, long-term, even permanent, arrangement. Marriage is that relationship intends to serve that child all the way up into adulthood. It is thus the formal recognition, not only that a child may come, but that child is also a person who from beginning to adulthood deserves a respect, love and service without end. The Church, the community of one covenant, witnesses to the goodness of this other covenant of marriage. The Church says that any man and woman may give themselves to one another, irrevocably and so enter the covenant that creates a new little society, a family. Marriage is uniquely suited to turn babies into mature members of society. Hindus, Jews and Muslims say so, and the Church says so. Though the Church did not invent marriage it does point out that Christian discipleship is the best means to learn to love and serve one another so that marriage grows. Then marriage can provide the long-term security in which their own eventual readiness to receive and enter covenants, and their own generous individuality, may develop. How do marriages work? I know of only one way – Christian discipleship. Marriages work when both partners come to the altar together week after week together to hear the promise of God's faithfulness and hear the question of their own faithfulness, and to apologise and receive forgiveness, from God, and from one another. 4. Covenant with the future Marriage gives the recognition that its offspring is not only a child but a person, who may expect to be brought up by that man and woman from whose bodies they come, and hope for a respect, love and service without time-limit. In marriage a husband and wife are dedicated to the children that they may then have. Though they are married to each other, their children are members of this marriage covenant too. We could even say that this couple is ‘married’ to their children, and even that they are ‘married’ to the next generation. Society is sustained as it succeeds in persuading people to marry themselves to their society’s future, dedicating themselves to its continuation. All human encounter and interaction is based on the permanent public encounter of man and woman in marriage and on the family that it creates. Children must be the first purpose of any society and the first product of any economy. The education and formation of those children to maturity must be the second purpose and product of that society and economy. In order that they do not remain children, they must be formed in the same industriousness and virtues that brought them into existence in the first place. A new generation must be formed in the virtues of mutual desire and service, for such love and mutual subordination is the glue of society and the source of the confidence in self-giving that is the motor of the economy.

A confident people starts new covenants. Young couples marry and take on the debt by buy a house and bring up a family, and will provide for that family together, and through doing so will themselves acquire an emotional maturity. They will not only go to work but imagine and work for the society that they would like to see their children inhabit. Marriage and bringing up a family is the one overwhelmingly positive thing that you can do for your society. Marriages bring up children who will be formed in that civilisation and as adults will themselves be able to desire, love and serve and enter marriage and other covenants. Children are the most basic form of saving. Your children will be there to look after you when you are old, unless of course they have been convinced by their education that you are not worth their service. Capital may grow as a result of technological development, but it grows principally as social capital, that is, a population that knows how to work and has reasons to go to work, and enough stake in that work to be creative, to take new initiatives, and even have the confidence to let those enterprises that do not work go bust. 5. Marriage and the economy Marriage is the result of high morale and it generates high morale, which encourages the creation of social capital. Marriage and parenthood matures us and orients us towards the public world in which our children are going to live. A husband and wife who depend on one other, materially as well as emotionally, have reason to make their marriage work. Where there is enough incentive to stick with our partners and children, because we realise the economic and emotional consequences of not doing so, we grow as persons and come through our difficulties. Marriage must also be sustained against resistance. For a couple of centuries the market has been seeping into the domestic household so its functions have dwindled to a fraction of what they were and a married household is now seldom an explicitly economic unity. When we evacuate marriage of its economic functions, husband and wife have nothing to bring each other, and it is no longer thought to matter whether these covenants succeed or fail. We are offered a more urgent love and more instant gratification than the other members of our family or neighbourhood can provide. The members of our family compete with the entertainment industries for our love. The moment we believe that we are not loved or not satisfied by those who love us, we become consumers and the things that we are prepared to work for, the house and car, become substitute children, parents, partners and friends. But the entertainment industries cannot sustain this gratification over the long term for they cannot love. For a half century we have increasingly deferred marriage into our thirties. Those who marry late have fewer children. Those with fewer children discover that sticking with the decision to give themselves to this one man or woman, year after year, is difficult. Our society does not give them strong enough reasons why they should persist. The family gives you motives to leave the household every morning and to meet other persons in the marketplace in order to gather the material and social resources that your family needs. Those who never start a family and those who after marriage break up become single again have no occasion to leave behind what has become an extended adolescence and to take responsibility. As the proportion of marriages drops, a whole society

becomes a set of de-motivated individuals. When marriages break up there is an immediate economic effect that reaches beyond the family itself. The arrangement of two parents in one household is a massively economic efficient way to bring up a child. When this arrangement is ended, we are left with a significantly less efficient way to bring up that child. More of the care of that child will be financially mediated, as additional care has to be paid for. If the market enters the household far enough to break up the family, the state steps in. The society that does not hear the Christian proposal that we are simultaneously covenanted and singular beings will not concede that marriage is distinct any other form of relationship. The society that does not like the idea of specific permanent interpersonal relationships minimises the distinction between those who are dedicated to the creation of the next generation, and those who are not. Let us indulge the consequent upside-down logic for a moment: we need children in order to have economic prosperity. But for the last half-century our ‘economic’ rationality and corresponding social policy have been undermining the production of children and the population that will be our future economic agents. We cannot promote economic growth by encouraging women away from their household and ‘back to work’. We cannot reduce the family economy in an attempt to grow the outer formal economy. What more serious work is there than producing the next generation? But this work has increasingly be left undone, with economic results that we see. 6. The Son of Man must undergo great suffering… The Gospel of Mark tells us that ‘He began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected,’ and that he ‘said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’ We said that in Jesus Christ God has given us himself, and so enabled us to give ourselves to one another and to receive one another. We have also said that self-giving demands selfcontrol, which comes with lifelong process of formation and discipleship, which has its own joy. There is a cost to this, for letting go of our illdiscipline and our unreadiness takes place against not only our own resistance, but against the resistance of others too. God is good for his word. God is indeed with man, and thus that all men loved, even through all their ambivalence about this love. Man is invited into the communion in which he can forever be a unique individual. He will never be absorbed into the collective or his identity be lost. Our togetherness and our unique individuality, our sociality and our particularity, are established simultaneously in the communion of God, that is given to us in the Church. But that society that holds out against this communion and this identity with Christ suffers. We are experiencing two movements simultaneously. One is of disintegration: social and economic pressures are trying to tug us apart so we revert into our constituent parts and cease to be whole persons, or members of a united society. As the reading from Mark has it, ‘those who want to save their life will lose it.’ By the vast effort of securing ourselves against every threat we have ensured that we are absolutely vulnerable and exposed. The other movement is towards absorption, so we are amalgamated into the total lump of humankind, become functions of the

economy and state and again cease to be independent and responsible persons. The concept of love is essential for economics. Love means generosity, respect, and self-giving in service, and only subsequently sentimentality. And the concept of freedom, that is the ability of any human being to act well, generously, to take initiatives, to enter relationships, to form covenants, to give him or herself, and to receive and hold on to the person who gives themselves to him, all this is fundamental to our individual dignity, to our communal life, and fundamental to economics. As long as our society is reluctant to acknowledge that it is loved by God, it will suffer a crisis. Mankind is in pain, because like Legion, he is divided against himself. The Church, the body of Christ, that has to undergo this suffering, publicly. It has to suffer before the world, and tell the world as it does so, that this is the world’s suffering, redeemed by Christ. By avoiding that cross, and that discipleship with its inevitable costs, we put ourselves through a greater agony, because it is the pain of long disintegration as man breaks up, and pain without hope. As long as we chase the short-term to the exclusion of the long-term, and remain in a crisis of confidence about the long-term, we put ourselves and our children through terrible suffering, and with no certain outcome. As long as we let the short-term push the long-term aside, we will put our own future in trouble. Economic success is all about looking ahead deep into the future, which comes from a confidence in the inherited practices and virtues that a society gathers over a long time and continues to practise. Only the man who knows he is loved, and who is therefore able to love and to serve, will survive. But the person who acts with their eye on the long term, who can give themselves and even sacrifice themselves for their children and the future of their community, will be redeemed. Whoever who takes up their cross and follows Christ, enduring however a long passion, will be raised and vindicated. He will have invested wisely and built well. Summary 1. The covenant given in Christ, expressed through Noah, Abraham, Moses and the whole people of Israel and recorded in the Scriptures, is revealed in the Church. 2. The covenant of God given to man in the Church is the basis upon which man may give himself to his fellow man, and create the many covenants of which society is made up. We may build our society and prosper on this covenant. 3. Marriages consist in economic as well as emotional provision. When their economic function and the mutual dependency of partners is not removed, marriages create lasting social capital. 4. Marriages motivate the production of children, and enable the formation of children into mature adults who are ready to enter their own marriage covenants.

5. The permanence of marriages communicates a long-term perspective to civil society. 6. We may act generously and take the initiative. We may start families and businesses and be an enterprising culture. 7. An economy without local access to capital loses manual and manufacturing skills, finds little dignity in work, and experiences a loss of industriousness and purposefulness. 8. The excessive growth of the market and financially-mediated relationships results from our failure to make ourselves open, vulnerable and dependant on one another formally in marriage. 9. Consumption substitutes for love. It allows us to distance ourselves from our families, friends and results in loss of social capital. 10. Without foundation in the covenant, a society is vulnerable to the forces that loosen its ties, divide it into antagonistic groups and tend towards its dissolution. 11. The Church that is renewed by God will stand forever. 12. The society that is content to listen to the Church receives new confidence.