8 Pentecost Proper 13C
31 Jul 2022
We can love things and use people, or we can love people and use things.
Jesus has just given several life lessons: nothing is hidden from God, neither thought nor deed. God knows every hair on our heads just as he knows every sparrow. Fear God, yet if you live your lives with godly integrity, you have nothing to fear.
Today he speaks about greed, which is by the way not the act of having possessions or wealth, but how you view that wealth and what you do with it. If you own much, or even little, you can be possessed by your possessions and your money. What good is wheat or barley permanently stored in a barn? It is only good when it is used to feed and nurture.
Wikipedia says Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world, with something like 132 billion dollars to his name. I cannot even fathom what that might mean. What does one do with that much money? I guess you try to buy Twitter or build your own spaceship.
Jesus does not condemn wealth per se, nor does he condemn someone for being wealthy. The problem comes when one puts ownership over use. The rich landowner was only interested in building up his own wealth. There are probably more “I’s” in this short parable than in any other paragraph in Luke, or perhaps the entire Bible. This is about greed. God never condemns celebrations; think about all the times the fatted calf is killed or a feast is called for!! God also does not condemn building storage facilities to save a crop foe those times of famine. Why? Because neither celebrations nor saving are selfish acts. Greed is a sin, a sin that hurts others and separates the person who hoards wealth from God and from others.
God also condemns us when we attribute all the good that comes to us as due to our own efforts. We often succeed or fail because of geography, race, gender, ethnicity, wealth, or poverty. We succeed because many people have made it possible.
One commentator noted that there are potentially five lessons that we should take to heart. We can have or suffer from:
1. Preoccupation with possessions
a. What we have becomes the focus of our devotion.
2. Security in self-sufficiency
a. Will having a year’s worth of freeze dried food really save you?
3. Grasp of greed
a. One succumbs to the endless cycle of wanting more and more
4. Hollowness of hedonism
a. Gratifying wants becomes an addiction
5. Practical atheism.
a. If anything is god, it is wealth and its accumulation.
Hosea says God is the one who, like the most loving parent, taught us to walk, held us, healed us, led us with bands of love, lifted us to God’s cheek, fed us. Think about that; I do not believe anywhere else in scripture do we find such an intimate expression of how God loves it. It doesn’t get any more wonderful than that. So why would one turn from God, give up that love, for the sake of that which does not satisfy? Yet over the eons people have done just that. Money or wealth becomes God. We may love wealth, but wealth will never love us!
Even Paul addresses this: greed is idolatry. Greed is worshiping wealth. Don’t do those things which hurt other people. In Christ as we know him, there is neither Greek nor Jew, Anglo nor Latinx, Democrat nor Republican, conservative nor progressive, for Christ is in all things and all people.
We can love things and use people or we can love people and use things.
I am blessed because of the people I have met in my life and the gifts they have given me; not the gifts of things, (although I treasure many gifts given to me over my lifetime because of the giver and not the thing itself) but rather the gifts of people with their stories and wisdom.
I have heard it said that travel and education are great equalizers. You learn that people in general want much the same things; we all laugh and cry, we all love our families and friends. We all see the same sun and moon. All of us find beauty in something and someone. We create, we eat, we sing, we love. Sure, there are people in every culture who are evil, but as humans we have so much more in common than in what separates us and so much more reason to love and care for one another and creation than in hunkering down in some fortress of our imagination, where we will not be safe or secure but rather isolated and fearful.
When I was in Portugal this year, I went to the ruins of a Moorish castle built around the year 1200 CE. The walls and the defenses were a marvel of engineering. Did the Moors believe the castle would allow them to defend the territory they held? It didn’t in the end. Most castles are in ruins; they depended on human strength and in the end that will fail. In the end death takes us all.
We can choose to live our lives in fear of each other; we can wall ourselves off and be tribal; we can buy into great lies so deeply they become the truth for us. Or we can say no to people who would have us hate one another, who would have us destroy the forests and the fields to gain wealth for a few, when preserving the natural world and putting people ahead of profits would allow us to live in greater peace and harmony. Jesus said that we are not to be like other people; we are to be the servant leaders.
Wars are fought because of greed, no matter what the rhetoric.
What did Jesus say? We are to be rich towards God, which means that God is first and the will of God is that we walk with each other, that we celebrate the gifts that everyone has and that we use what is given us in love and service to our sisters and brothers.
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