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Good Morning - The economic hardship experienced by many during the lockdowns and furloughing of the past year has been well documented. First time applicants for Universal credit, first time users of food banks. But quietly, while this hardship has intensified, a report published this week on Global Wealth (Credit Suisse) revealed that in fact on average, household wealth measured in US dollars, increased during the last year; to the extent that over a quarter of a million people in the UK have, over the past year, become millionaires. Low interest rates and rising house prices bear much of the responsibility for this which is another indication, if we needed it, that ownership of property or land is the best way, to grow wealth in a crisis. While not begrudging those individuals their greater degree of security to an extent, I have to confess I felt a measure of despair when I read this. The statistic helps draw a grotesque caricature of pandemic Britain: one group of people sitting in their private outdoor spaces becoming more wealthy simply by the minutes passing, and a larger group of people with no ventilated space of their own struggling to pay the rent. There are theological as well as economic themes here about what it means to own a piece of God’s earth and how that value is measured over time and by whom. The Christian radicals of the seventeenth century knew that, as they called themselves Levellers and Diggers to make just this point. For them, Scripture made it obvious that God’s land is common. Their ideas re-appeared through the 18th century in America and the 19th century in Europe and form part of the lively religious debate about relative wealth, the ownership of land, the eradication of poverty. In the gospels, many stories about money and land, find ways to provoke us, cajole us, cause us to ask ourselves questions about the wealth we hold, what we own, how far it is ever ours. The pandemic has stretched our perspective far beyond these last few months or looking ahead to the next couple of years. Fuelled by the global challenge of climate change, which in turn will force populations to move in vast numbers to survive, our attitude towards the land we live in and the space we own will be enriched by considering what the gospels call ‘the lilies of the field’. That is, a way of understanding our lives as, yes, economically active, of course, but more deeply seeing ourselves as recipients of the free gift of life; to use theological language - a state of grace - in which the language of contract and exchange doesn’t ultimately tell us who we are or dictate how we behave. And alongside this, holding the truth close, as expressed in those same gospels by Christ, that you cannot, you cannot serve both God and money.