Embodying Sacred Stories
A Review of
Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy: Luke’s Jesus and Sabbath Economics
Ched Myers
Paperback: Fortress Press, 2025
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Reviewed by Julie Germain
I first encountered Ched Myers’s writing in seminary with his commentary on Mark, Binding the Strong Man, which had a profound impact on how I viewed politics and scripture. Myers explored how the Gospel of Mark emphasized anti-empire themes and drove me towards a new reading of scripture. Myers’s latest commentary on Luke, Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy (HARP), has again reshaped my perspective on Jesus and Sabbath Economics, pushing against empire and capitalism.
Myers states that the purpose of HARP “is to challenge the widespread silence in our churches regarding the crisis of disparity” (9). All of Myers’s writing is focused toward advocacy and activism, aiming to be integrated in “seminary, sanctuary, streets, and soil” (10). Myers based HARP on a booklet he wrote in 2000 entitled The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics. Unlike Binding the Strong Man, HARP is not a “true” commentary going through each line of the text. Myers focuses instead on “Sabbath Economic threads” (10) seen throughout the gospel. Myers balances scholarly thought with accessibility for the common person.
Myers’s opening chapter begins at the end of Luke, the Emmaus Road, where Jesus began his teaching with Moses and the prophets. Looking towards the Torah to more fully understand Sabbath Economics, Myers sums up three defining characteristics (38) for Sabbath Economics based on the manna the Israelites gathered in the wilderness. The first is “every family is told to gather only what they need,” i.e. everyone has enough. Second, “manna should not be stored up,” i.e. do not hoard and keep redistributing wealth. And third, focusing on “Sabbath discipline”, that is, believing that the world will continue to operate at least for one day without human interaction. Myers then shows how these characteristics come to life in Luke’s gospel.
In chapter 3, Myers looks at Mary’s Magnificat, John the Baptist’s message, and Jesus’s temptation to show how Sabbath Economics lays the foundation for everything in Luke’s gospel. All three episodes expand on power dynamics and speaking truth to power. Chapters 4-13 then dive into Luke sequentially, exploring Luke’s use of Sabbath Economics. Myers spends much of his time examining Lukan specific stories. As noted earlier, this commentary only covers certain episodes from the text and Jesus’s time in Jerusalem and the Passion are not discussed (except in brief in the epilogue). In every story, Myers is keenly focused on Jesus pressing against the empire and expounding on what the good news of the poor actually is.
At the heart of Myers’s commentary is the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16). To summarize the story, there was a rich man who lived opulently and there was also Lazarus who lived at the rich man’s gate. Both characters die and, in the afterlife, Lazarus is taken to the “bosom of Abraham,” while the rich man ends up in Hades. There is a great gulf that separates them (chasma mega in the Greek). This great gulf is uncrossable by design and still in our world today through income inequality. The rich man pleads with Abraham that someone should warn his brothers about the great gulf and the torment of Hades. But Abraham replies, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” Myers emboldens us to think deeply on this story as our own society (especially in the United States) is “more than twice as disparate as was the one to which Luke originally addressed his Gospel” (170). Our great gulf is even wider than that of the first century.
Myers closes the main portion of his book with this quote: “the goal of the Third Gospel [is] to press readers/listeners to see and reckon with the persistent disparities of their world and to insist on personal and political alternatives by apprenticing ourselves to the cosmology and practices of Sabbath Economics” (200). Our job as a society is to attend to the inequalities found in our world and apply the rules of Sabbath Economics. Easier said than done. But Myers gives us tools from which to work beginning in the epilogue.
The epilogue is its own treatise on how food and eating are embodiments of Sabbath Economics. Myers examines the Last Supper, the Emmaus Road, and the common meal shared at Pentecost as meals at the heart of the Gospel and Sabbath Economics. Sharing a meal can often help us re-member those among us who are marginalized. Resting and regrouping around a table can help us build a vision for what society can look like with Sabbath Economics at the forefront. Myers exhorts us to “engaged study, advocacy, and above all, embodiment. Because the enchantments of mammon cannot stand up to our sacred stories” (213).
Overall, this book is profoundly impactful. I was taken with Myers’s prose and deft arguments. As one moves from page to page, Myers builds on his exposition, drawing the reader toward connections in the text not previously seen. Myers stands in the tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Wendell Berry as one who points us toward societal change.
This book is for those who yearn for economic liberation and desire for Sabbath Economics to rule. As Myers so aptly states, “Affluenza and plutocracy are terminal diseases that can only be healed through collective, intergenerational recovery and deep political transformation. This book has endeavored to provoke, animate, and strengthen our will to change…” (231). This work cannot be done alone. There must be systemic change to turn our economy towards Sabbath Economics. All of us working in harmony can bring about a new society.
Julie Germain
Julie Germain lives in San Diego and is a case manager for people experiencing homelessness. They enjoy woodworking and being outdoors, and are an elder in their local church. Hailing from Oregon, they have lived in a myriad of places including East Tennessee and Tanzania. Julie earned an MDiv from Emmanuel Christian Seminary.
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