"Scarcity," a sermon given by the Rev. Dr. Alan Gregory, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of Church History, given in Christ Chapel on April 20, 2006

I was still getting used to the effect he had on the room. I'd swear the walls leaned towards him like trees gently bowing in a slight breeze. Dressed in a bulging white boiler suit, he sat in my armchair, which wrapped round his portly form. I don't usually think of furniture as particularly alert but had a small table trotted over to him and saluted with a spindly leg, I'd hardly have raised an eyebrow. "You're here for a reason, I suppose, other than just seeing me?" His head was so smooth and bald, it made eggs look hairy; and it glowed with a light from within, overflowing the lamp hanging from my ceiling. "Look out the window," he pointed, "does anything look odd to you?" "No," I said. "Pity because somewhere out there, you have a demon on the rampage." "What, horns and stuff? Heads spinning around and green vomit?" "That would be a little conspicuous, wouldn't it?" he asked. "Considering your lot conjure these things up, you have some funny ideas. Sin, you know about sin, don't you, sin works like pressure. Enough demented behavior and suddenly the old moral order bursts a gasket and, then, you've got a demon, sort of enfleshed steam. There's a lot of it about." "Enfleshed?," I asked.

"Yes, round here, at least, usually as dentists, charted accountants, guys with air blowers, you know the ones that are never there when you look out of the window, and small dogs, Scotties mostly. You've got to remember," he sat up in his chair, his whole head beaming, "that most of the time people get the demon they deserve, they come tailor made to particular forms of sin. Unfortunately, of course, other people suffer from the demons other people deserve. You're about to experience an acute shortage." "Food?" I asked. "Oh, no. There's going to be a rush on toilet tissue." "Isn't it a run on toilet tissue?" "This isn't funny," he said, reaching over and turning on the radio.

A news summary was starting but the voice kept getting lost in crackles. "Alarming news," it announced, then several seconds of buzzing and squeaking was followed by "acute shortage," and a little later, "health concerns" before a long series of howls and, finally, in a clearing of complete silence, the portentous words, "toilet tissue." "You see?," he switched off the radio. "This is the demon we deserve?" I was genuinely shocked. "It's not very glamorous is it, culturally speaking. I'd expected something a bit grand, you know, Luciferian." "There's nothing grand about evil," he frowned, the light around his head turning a slightly darker shade of gold. "In the end, it's shabby, you get down to malice, greed, spite, envy, just some fallen angel squeezing itself into a snakeskin." To change the subject I asked, "What name are you using these days?" "Shirley," he said. I blinked at him, "Don't you lot do any research up there?" "You're too conventional," he stood up, "I just liked the name. Now, are you ready or what?"

Human beings had worked with number systems for about five thousand years before coming up with the idea of a sign for nothing. The Hindus called it "sunya," which means "empty"; the Arabs picked it up as "sifr," and from there it eventually worked its way round to zero. Five thousand years without "nothing" seems a long time but the logic of counting is resistant to zero. Perhaps, if we had a stump on one hand, where a sixth finger failed to evolve, we might have got to nothing faster. As it was, common sense led us to count in units of ten, toes being found mostly inconvenient. We get to ten, have a new sign and then another new sign for ten units of ten, and so on. So for five thousand years, nothing slipped through our fingers. Nought, sunya, zero means empty, a blank space, nothing, as in "101," that is, one unit of ten tens, no units of ten, and one unit of one. Of course, that zero means nothing doesn't mean that nothing doesn't count. Interestingly, the familiar sign for nothing is also, for many, the sign for fullness, abundant plenty, the fecund mystery of God. Between the two is scarcity, the world of the numbers, the world we live in, most of the time. It's just a thought, but perhaps, if we can't aspire to being God -- Adam and Eve having set a discouraging precedent in that respect -- perhaps instead we can aspire to nothing and so find God. Israel had no independent tradition in mathematics, but they did know something about nothing. Here, then, are three lessons in biblical mathematics.

"Jesus said to Philip, 'Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?' One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?'"

"Now that," said Jesus, is a metaphysical question." "Yer what?" said the boy. "Look," Jesus took the two fish. "What's left?" "Five crummy loaves." "And if I take three of these?" "Two left." Jesus took them, "What now?" "A whole basket of nothing!" "Nicely put," said Jesus, "but are you quite sure?" The child rolled his eyes. "Nothing," said Jesus, "right, just watch." "Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he given thanks, he distributed them, and so also with the fish, as much as they wanted." Later, the fragments left over filled twelve baskets.

"Consider your call, brothers and sisters. God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are nothing, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God."

Consider your call. You are to be the nothing that counts, a space for receiving life. That's not easy. After all, being something is perfectly natural, guarding what you have for a little time against all the inevitable intrusions of life and other people. We cling to the hand-carts, keeping off marauders. Scarcity is given, the question is how much, and what we'll do to get it. Nothing is trickier and will take all the grace of God, grace upon grace.

A man squeezed himself out of the crowd. "I'll take that," he said.
"Hey, that's my begging bowl."
"You don't need it anymore."
"It's half-full."
"Well Bartimaeus, my lad, that's better than nothing isn't it?"
"Look, I'm sorry, but you're not blind."
"Neither are you."
"I was."
"Right. I told you, you don't need it anymore."
"You can't pretend to be blind."
"Yes, I can, I'm naturally dishonest. Anyway, hard times, you know, and, in times of scarcity... ."
"But I'm left with nothing."
"That's your problem. Should have stayed blind."
"Watch, I can pretend."
"That's awful. You make a terrible blind person."
"I was blind for thirty years!"
"Still can't get it right, though, now shove off. Follow your friend in the white suit."
"Where's he going?"
"Jerusalem, apparently. Mind you, when he gets there, he'll find nothing but a whole of nothing waiting for him."

Certainly, something was wrong. We turned the corner and practically fell over two elderly ladies, rolling on the sidewalk, pulling and clawing at each other over a bulky plastic bag sporting the comforting words, "Double Thickness." I looked at Shirley. "What did you expect?" he said. The center of town was already cordoned off, the police holding back an ugly looking crowd a safe distance from a burned out grocery store. "There is no more toilet tissue," a scared voice crackled over the crowd. "Go to your homes. There is no more toilet tissue. Looters will be arrested and any toilet rolls confiscated for the use of essential services." A man sprinted between the charred walls of the grocery, a moment later he was out again, clutching a single roll of the precious. Half the crowd went off after him.

A hundred yards away, a machine gun guarded the library, just in case someone had a bright idea. Every office, every store, every house we passed was locked down and barricaded, frightened eyes peered between the shutters. There were notices all over the place, "No toilet tissue here!" Even the pet shop had one, alongside the hopeful announcement of a special on kitty litter. 'Where's it all gone?" I asked. "What?" Shirley stopped, "human charity or toilet paper?" "The toilet paper!" "You're not getting this, are you?" he shook his head which glowed impatiently. "You have a demon here and demons lie. There's no shortage, everyone just thinks there's a shortage. Yesterday, you had enough toilet tissue. Today, you have enough toilet tissue. And if you weren't hoarding the stuff, buying it by the truckload, and starting a black market in bog rolls, tomorrow, you'd have enough toilet tissue. It's all about the illusion of scarcity. That's all it's ever about. You live your lives believing there isn't enough and that generally makes it pretty certain that soon there really isn't. The end result is nobody has anything -- not even to wipe their ass with!" "What now?" I asked. "Somewhere near here," he said, "people will be lining up. Where there's a shortage -- or a non-shortage -- there's a queue. All we have to do is find and follow."

The Lord of Israel has bounty to spare.
His blessings weigh down the wagons,
Heavy in the road ruts.
He softens the land with showers,
And laughs at the shoots eagerly
Parting the ground, and at trees
Bending under their fruit like old women.
He patches the desert with green,
And dresses the hills for a wedding.
No one can hold his gifts,
They exceed expectation, and
Leave us staggering with joy.
The flocks are busy on the meadows,
But the wolf, He sends away empty.
Plenty falls from the sleeves of His robe,
And all creation will be satisfied.

No one, we are told, whom God possesses knows lack or scarcity. I'm not sure we believe that, not really. "What are these, among so many?" That's our question: framed from a sinner's well-tried fear. What we believe in is scarcity, the scarcity we have and the gruesome scarcity we create for others. We accept as a bedrock certainty, one we can take to the bank, that there is not enough: not enough strength, not enough time, not enough security, not enough "stuff," not enough love, not enough life. And because we believe there is not enough, we cannot help but be at war with one another. What are these among so many? So, to hear of God's bounty, his eternal surplus, sounds like a dream. Of course, if we're then told that God chooses to give everything only to what is nothing, then we have a nightmare. Moths and rust notwithstanding, isn't a little treasure in the hand better than a kingdom of heaven? It certainly feels that way.

"Nothing" hangs on the abyss; something is not enough but at least it's, well, something. We are happier with something, dying of the not enough that for God is always, always too much. That would be the way of it, with nothing more to be said, were it not for Jesus who, dying a death reserved for nobodies, proves the metaphysics of zero. From the moment he dies, from then on, all hope is offered here, on ground zero. As in the beginning, all things are made new from here, ex nihilo, out of nothing. Three days, the Spirit hovered over the imploding nothingness of death and hell, and then Jesus is raised in life extravagant. He rises in the abundance of light, laughing at locksmiths, giving his Spirit like there was no tomorrow, fishing by the net full, up while Dawn's red-rose fingers throw aside the night. What is this among so many -- so many with so little and so many clutching what they have to the last breath? What is this? Springs leap from parched mountains, tables bend their legs under the weight of the feast, and the roads are empty of wanderers. It is everything for everybody.

The line wrapped itself around three city blocks and half way down another street before turning sharply. This queue was sullen, stretched-out, tense with agitated murmurings, looking after us with hundreds of suspicious eyes. After all, a fat guy in a white boiler suit with a head like a beacon, what else is he going to do but crash the nearest line? When we turned the last corner, even Shirley blinked. Not, though, at all the bulky goons in black suits, not at the long table and the suitcases of cash, not even at the large notices offering toilet tissue at 20 bucks a roll, but rather at the huge construction behind. Like some vast pastel colored ziggurat built to the gods of the bathroom, a fifty foot high bunker of toilet tissue, crowned in a ring of delicate lime-green luxury, treble-thickness, you-could-write-your-memoirs-on-this-stuff rolls, ascended the sky. "Wow!" I said, "it's beautiful!"

"Don't be stupid," Shirley snapped, recovering himself. He crouched down and stared under the long table where a small Scottie dog was bouncing up and down and barking like a loony. "Your head," I shouted, it's on fire!" "Don't look at it, you'll give us away!" He pulled out a hat, one of those long pink socks that flop over one side of the head, popular among Walt Disney elves. Then, he started to run. Rolling under the table, he grabbed the dog and was off, leaving me to catch up. We ran for well over a mile, the dog growling and twisting, before I realized that nobody was following. We ran on anyway, into my house, Shirley pushing his way into the kitchen. "Open the microwave," he ordered. "You can't put that dog in the microwave." "Why not?" "Well, the plate won't go round." He ignored me, shoved the dog in and pressed "power." For a moment, the Scottie just looked very put out, then furious, beady little eyes hard as marbles, eyebrows dancing with rage. Then he exploded. There was final livid waggle of disembodied eyebrows and an arc of aroma: heather on mountains, whisky, Edinburgh rain, Loch Ness monster, and used kilt. "Ah!" said Shirley, "everything should be back to normal in a hour or two." "Is that all?" it seemed an anti-climax. "Is that all?" his head glowed irritably again, "we've only just plugged another hole in the universe. You lot keep putting pressure on the fabric, we keep plugging the holes so you can keep on mucking about. It's called the patience of God. As usual, you're always messing with more than you know." "It's a good thing it wasn't a dentist, then." I said. "Why?" "You'd need a damn big microwave."

Now we reach what is crucial to the biblical metaphysics of zero. God, who puts himself to nothing in Jesus, who was of no account, makes even nothing new. Biblical nothing is not empty but full, always less and always infinitely more than the many somethings we cling on to, all the numbers of our worldly desire. Biblical nothing has a glory above all numbers: the particular form and glory of Jesus, and him crucified. Each one of us has found hidden in Jesus, the one who counted for nothing, nothing less than the fullness of God. Perhaps, then, we can trust ourselves to nothing, consider our call as a call to become not any old nothing but to this particular way of losing and finding, the Way that is Jesus. The name for becoming nothing in this way is "faith" and faith is trust in the hidden plenitude of God. By faith, Israel left the scarcity of Egypt for the lightening of God in the empty desert. By faith, Elijah dismissed the pyrotechnics of blustering gods and waited for the silence echoed in a whisper. In a world of scarcity, where we are all grabbing something, the plentitude of God is always hidden, like treasure in a field. There is no greater plenitude than the Cross. No greater place where hope is given, fears are braved, lives risked and ventured, love dared. No scarier nor more comfortable place. Grief, repentance, forgiveness, setting aside our rights for another's good, fidelity in the faithlessness of daily life, courage before death, loving rather hopelessly. These are the practices of zero, bound by its metaphysics to joy.

Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid that the world conspires with God to bring you to nothing. You will need to speak and not have words to say, need comfort and find only those more needy than you are, need success and watch your enemy enjoy it, you will, in time, lose everything. But do not be afraid. The world does not know what it's doing, does not know that it is forming us into the likeness of Christ. God's secret, shared with us at Easter, is that there is no shortage of life, that there is no greater illusion than the illusion of scarcity, and no greater pearl than is hidden in the Way to nothing.

Amen.