Do we Think of Ourselves as Consumers or Producers?

"In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. "'Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a market-place!'" This saying of Jesus' points to the commodification of the holy space. There is nothing wrong with a marketplace. We need the market. However, not everything should be bought or sold. But we have, as a culture, have taken on the cultural metaphor of the commodity

Last Sunday's assigned Lenten text, read by many pastors, priests, or liturgists in the service is from John 2 (NRSV excerpt): "¹⁴In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. ¹⁵Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. ¹⁶He told those who were selling the doves, 'Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a market-place!'"^17\

This passage is talking about the commodification of the holy space, "Stop making my Father's house a marketplace." There is nothing wrong with a marketplace. We need the market. However, not everything should be bought or sold. We have, as a culture, taken on the cultural metaphor of the commodity. Increasingly congregants think of themselves as consumers of the congregation not producers of the congregation. Increasingly congregations think of themselves as consumers of denominations not producers of denominations and increasingly denominations think of themselves as consumers of councils of churches, not producers of councils of churches (except, of course, in Minnesota).

This metaphor of consumer of commodity is also too much at play in the public sector where we are often referred to as taxpayers first and citizens only as a distant second. The truth is we have been given this enormous gift of democracy precisely so that we can be producers of government not just consumers of government, producers of the common wealth not just consumers of the common wealth.

This is going to my Lenten mediation today. How do I participate in the commodification metaphor, acting as a consumer not a producer? In what ways do expect to be provided with what I need simply by paying a price? What things do I think I am owed because I can pay for them, things that really aren't able to be bought? How do I let that metaphor take over my relationship to the earth, that is, how do I see it not as the place God dwells but how do I fall into the cultural trap of seeing it as something to be consumed not stewarded?