Have We Had Enough Yet? (Luke 3:7-18)

In challenging the crowd to live a redeemed life, John the Baptist lays out a fairly straightforward economic ethic. If you have more than enough, share the rest. Derive what you need from your business and nothing more. The crowd asks what they can do to bear the fruits of repentance, and John hits back directly with: live more simply, care for others, and don’t rip people off. In a world where almost no one had much, and all but the absolute richest lived in ways that appear simple and spartan to our modern, Western eyes, folks probably innately understood what this meant. The vast majority of people only had one coat at a time, so given that you only needed one, if you had an extra, you gave it away. If you had eaten your fill or had more than you’d need for the winter, you gave away the rest. For the ancient, agrarian society that John spoke to, they could simply take the instruction, but how can we translate this into our modern, consumerist age? What on earth does enough mean in 2024? Does it mean having enough to survive? Does it mean having the same as the people around you? Does it mean avoiding conspicuous consumption? Or, do we live far further from John’s standard?

The motorcycle taxi bounces down the unpaved dirt track. Although this journey via Boda Boda has not resulted in me falling off the bike at the bottom of a gully, I’m still not accustomed to this means of transit. Three adults simultaneously riding a Chinese made dirt bike across undulating stretches of country side takes some getting used to. We arrive at our first stop of the day - a tiny village consisting of eight or so huts made of mud, wood, and straw. Before we begin the actual task of testing the local children for malnutrition, I walk into one of the huts that serves as the town store/restaurant. A charcoal grill sits in the middle of the room, venting out through a gap in the ceiling. Handmade wooden shelves contain a smattering of prepackaged snacks and soft drinks including Coca Cola (once again proving that Coke has the best distribution system on the planet). I buy a freshly made fried egg sandwich for the equivalent of a dollar and step back outside to gaze at the horizon, while I eat. I see short, scrubby trees dotting the red-brown soil and the occasional dust cloud kicked up by a passing Boda Boda – no electrical poles, roads, structures – just trees, soil, and dust.

The lights of Las Vegas Boulevard illuminate the inside of the cab. We crawl down the heart of the Strip from the Las Vegas Convention Center back to our temporary home and podcasting studio at the Luxor. Giant casinos flank us on both sides. Each built to an astounding scale with recreations of Venetian canals, the Eiffel Tower, the Roman forum, and the Egyptian pyramid in which we reside. To call these megastructures “casinos” at this point doesn’t do them justice. They all do have a hyper oxygenated gambling hall, but they contain villas, restaurants by name brand chefs, entire shopping malls, world class performance venues, boxing rings, golf courses, accommodations for thousands of guests, convention halls, and thrill rides. You can walk through one shopping mall with singing Roman statues, an Apple Store, and multiple places to spend $10,000 on a handbag, ride an airconditioned moving walkway to the other side of the street, and explore a shopping mall with a canal, Gondoliers, an Apple Store, and multiple places to spend $10,000 on a handbag. Everywhere you look is another opportunity to make more money, and around every corner is an opportunity to spend it.

I haven’t finished my Christmas shopping yet. Even still, my studio at home barely contains the boxes and shipping envelopes haphazardly shoved out of the sight of potentially prying children. In fact, my studio feels fit to burst with production equipment, in process projects, smashed children’s toys, Japanese actions figures, a coffee table that I made for a road case, a work bench, vintage video game consoles, a 3D printer that I built into the closet, and two CRT televisions, at the best of times. At some point, it all got out of hand. Globally, the self-storage industry makes close to $50 Billion a year, and in 2019, the United States had around 48,000 self-storage facilities that constituted about 1.8 billion square feet of offsite storage for normal humans. Any time that I have to move anything in my studio, I contemplate joining their number. Still, I gird my loins for an expedition out into the retail melee at the beginning of next week to complete my list, gather more items, and cram yet another package into the morass.

And the crowds asked him, ‘What then should we do?’ In reply he said to them, ‘Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.’ Even tax-collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, ‘Teacher, what should we do?’ He said to them, ‘Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.’ Soldiers also asked him, ‘And we, what should we do?’ He said to them, ‘Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.’ (Luke 3:10-14 NRSV)

Have we had enough yet?

Merry Christmas!