October 14, 2012
20th Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, Proper 23
The Rev. Dr. Brent Was
“How hard
it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”
This is a
hard gospel. For as wealth-centric a nation as we live in, it is considered
terribly rude to speak about such things. But as Paul reminds us, “The word of
God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it
divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow…”
When it came to class and caste, wealth and poverty Jesus did not mince words. We must not either, nor may we shy from the
piercing truth of the Word of God.
Today,
Jesus teaches us about proper relationships to wealth along two lines. First is the injustice of concentrated
wealth. Second is the overall moral and
spiritual hazard of wealth itself, of materialism. We, as Jesus did, will walk down both roads.
But first,
I need to be honest about my own hypocrisy in relation to this gospel and in
relation to wealth. I surely count
myself among the wealthy. The clerical
shirt I am wearing today was made in Indonesia in what I have to assume was
slave-like conditions. That’s morally
upright, no? More was spent on my
education alone than the vast majority of the world will spend in their
lifetimes on everything. In placing
myself in this story, I am there, kneeling before Jesus Christ right next to
that man as he says, “Jesus, look at all the good that I do,” then being
dismayed at how much more I have left to do, how many more pounds of flesh I
owe the world’s collective kitty, how much more I have to pare away from my
worldly excesses and attachments. All I
can say is that I am praying on it and trying to do better and that I will keep
praying on it and keep trying to do better; that is all I ask of you all.
So a man
whom Jesus knows to be wealthy presents himself and asks, “What must I do to
inherit eternal life?” Jesus’ reply was
not as straight forward as it seems. “Do not defraud” is not in the Decalogue.
The Greek distinctly refers to economic exploitation. It infers a violation of trust somewhere
along the lines of “keeping back the wages of hirelings” or “refusing to return
things deposited with another for safekeeping.”
So when Jesus says “sell what you own, and give the money to the poor,”
the connotation is clearly, “return what you have wrongly taken, then you may
be my follower.” Jesus proscribes
reparations, a timeless and true form of reconciliation. And the man’s glum response is a timeless and
true reaction to such a direct call to reconciliation.
So that is
pretty clear, no? If the wealth you
possess was generated by exploitation, if it was stolen or extorted from those
weaker or less advantaged than yourself, then obviously there are moral and
spiritual issues. A demand for
reconciliation would be justified if your wealth came at the expense of others
and you care to consider yourself a follower of Jesus Christ. Yes?
That is the text and it holds true today. But the bigger question is whether
concentrated wealth is ever “clean”? Can
wealth ever be consolidated in a way that is not at the expense of others?
The law of
wealth is that wealth begets wealth. And
that is OK, it would be fine, actually, if everyone had equal access to the
means of wealth, but that is patently not the case. Forbes Magazine just released its voyeuristic
list of the 400 richest people. 40% of
those on that list earned their fortunes the old fashioned way: they inherited
it. Talk about a violation the first
social sin identified by Gandhi: that is the sin of wealth without work. It is sinful in that it is detached from
reality. Wealth takes work, so if you have it without work, your whole ability
to relate to the true nature of things will
be distorted. You will be distanced from God.
Wealth is
concentrated by the few largely because the very means of gaining wealth are
already concentrated. If you are born
poor, the vast, vast, vast majority of the time you are gong to die poor. It is just as true that if you are born
wealthy, the chance of you dying poor is about the same as, oh I don’t know, as
a camel fitting through the eye of a needle?
A tiny percentage, let’s round it to 1% of the world’s population
controls most of the world’s resources, and structurally that is not going to
change. Now that is a moral and
spiritual problem.
All the
world is a commonwealth. No one lives in
a vacuum. No one works or earns or
amasses a fortune on their own. I am not
going to get into the theology of the ownership of the means of production, or
the economics of the public ownership of the infrastructure of commerce; the
roads, ports, the electromagnetic spectrum, the laws and courts that makes
business, hence the concentration of wealth possible, but when some have at
their command more wealth than required to meet any worldly desire while others
do not have enough to meet even the most basic worldly needs, what we are
witnessing is sin. What we are
experiencing is a form of evil. When
wealth is concentrated to the detriment of others, the commonwealth is violated, by which I mean, which Jesus means, the
kingdom of God is pushed once again out of reach. “How hard it will be for
those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” The depth of this sin is made ever so worse
when the suffering of poverty, or the stresses of keeping out of poverty
prevents us from being the children of God we were born to be. Can wealth ever become great, ever become
concentrated in a way that is not, or does not lead to evil? I find that hard to imagine.
But Jesus
was not only concerned with the problem of concentrated wealth, but with
material riches in general. Remember how
dismissive he was when the disciples critiqued the woman who poured the costly
ointment on his head? It was valued the
same as a year’s worth of wages. The
disciples cried, “We could have sold it and fed the poor!” He tells them to leave her alone, that the
value ascribed to material things is bupkis when compared to the value of
relationships, of kindness displayed, generosity offered. No material thing has value when compared to
our relationship with God and with each other.
Jesus, God, is very concerned with misplaced priorities. Jesus, God is very concerned with what St.
Ignatius of Loyola called disordered attachments.
Jesus, in
this part of St. Mark’s gospel is clearly talking about the virtues of the itinerant
life, the virtue of mission-oriented poverty.
“Give up everything and follow me.”
Give up all of the worldly things that get in the way of your complete
and utter service to God and the people of God.
So everyone here, we already are settling for second best. Just like those of us who are married, or
have children, Paul was clear that the celibate life was better, but if you
must be married, if the misery or distraction of celibacy would interfere with
the rest of your vocation as a Christian, if celibacy would prevent you from
being as good as you could be otherwise, then get married, have sex, but do it
responsibly, do it honestly. I think we
can transfer that teaching to our material wealth. Be a householder and not a mendicant, but do
it well, live modestly if not simply.
Having
what you need is a God given right.
Sufficient food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, meaningful work… this is
not an exhaustive list, anything without which we cannot be full and productive
participants in the kingdom of God, these are fundamental needs established by
our creator. But when we start
accumulating more than that, when we start having “relationships” with
inanimate objects, our attachments to worldly things become disordered and we
start having problems. Remember Mae
West, she said, “Too much of a good thing is just right.” She was wrong. Too much of a good thing is just that, too
much. It chokes us. It distracts us from what is truly right and
good and joyful, what has meaning, what endures. Where our attention is, there
follows our bodies, our hearts, our very souls.
So what
are we to do? What are we to do with our
own wealth? How do we discern what we
need, what is enough and what is too much? How do we discern what comes between
us and right relationship with God and each other? Well, it just so happens
that our stewardship campaign begins today, so any excess wealth you have… Truly, these are intimate questions and I
don’t have the answers. I don’t know
what is too much, what is too little and what is just right. Windy and I don’t know what our family needs as opposed to simply wants.
We used to live with monks and they decided all the material things
together, collectively and that was that.
Sometimes I long for that simplicity of process even with all its flaws,
but that is not the world most of us live in.
We are entering our time of stewardship,
which is all about our relationship to the material world. This is a time to hold all of this in our
individual and collective hearts. As you
are considering how you will support the life of this community, you might pray
on this gospel. Mark 10:17-31. Read it
and ponder it. Talk about it as a family
or with a friend. Have a conversation about what you have, what your wealth
does and does not do for you, and what it all means. And give.
We break the power wealth holds over us when we give it away. Give to the church, yes, I am asking for
that; it is a Christian’s responsibility to support the Body of Christ. And also give to KLCC. Give to ShelterCare, Sponsors, the HIV
Alliance, St. Vinnies, the Relief Nursery, give to whatever draws your
soul. Give as if your life depends on
it, because really, it does, and so do the lives of others. AMEN
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