Beyond the Market

7th Sunday of Easter (A)

Readings: Acts 1: 12-14; Psalm 26 (27): 1, 4, 7-8; 1 Peter 4: 13-16; John 17: 1-11

Picture: By Daniel Lloyd Blunk-Fernández on Unsplash

My dear friends, what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word economy? Perhaps it’s money, or the stock market. Yet, as you know, the word economy actually comes from a Greek root, meaning house or household. And if we stop to think about it, this close connection between a house and a market or money makes a lot of sense, right? After all, isn’t the world our shared house? And what makes the world go round, especially today, if not money?

Even so, our scriptures invite us to ponder an alternative economy, a different kind of household. Consider this deep desire expressed so poignantly in the psalm: There is one thing I ask of the Lord… to live in the house of the Lord, all the days of my life. The psalmist longs to rest in the temple, the holy house where God dwells among God’s people. Yet when Jesus visits the temple, in the second chapter of John’s gospel, he ends up driving out the money-changers and sellers, telling them to stop making my Father’s house a market-place (2:16 [NRSV])! And when the authorities challenge him to justify his actions, he defies them to destroy the temple of his body, and in three days he will raise it up.

By his Dying and Rising, Jesus embodies an economy very different from that of the world. Today’s gospel indicates what this new economy looks like. One striking feature of Jesus’ prayer to his heavenly Father is the frequent appearance of the word give. It is the Father who gave Jesus his teaching and his mission, as well as all those who follow him. And Jesus, having given his disciples the Father’s teaching, now prays to be able also to give them eternal life, by asking the Father to give him glory through the Cross. Give… give… give… Unlike the world, the economy of God’s household is not that of buying and selling, but of solidarity and gift.

And isn’t this what the disciples in the first reading are preparing to receive? By persevering in prayer in one accord, they offer the Spirit a fitting place in which to rest. So that the Spirit might give them power to become, for the world, a life-giving household, with its own distinctive economy. And, as the second reading points out, the Spirit’s power enables disciples even to joyfully endure the inevitable persecutions that result from the radical following of Christ. To see these troubles as welcome signs that the Spirit of glory indeed rests on them, as it first rested on their Lord and Master.

Which is not to say that the market is all bad. Its benefits are undeniable. But it can also very easily turn into an idol, the worship of which brings death, especially to those most vulnerable, including the poor, our own children, and our planet as well. The market’s logic can pollute our homes and even our church, making it hard to find a safe enough place to rest. Isn’t this why Pope Francis often speaks of the need to transform an economy that kills into an economy of life? 

Sisters and brothers, as we prepare to celebrate the Spirit’s coming at Pentecost, how might we embrace more wholeheartedly God’s life-giving economy today?