Hosea 11:1-11. My compassion grows warm and tender.
Colossians 3:1-11. The wrath of God is coming on whose who are disobedient.
Luke 12:13-21. Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.
O God of abundance, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.
This morning we have scripture readings that take the clichéd and inaccurate characterization of Old Testament god of wrath and New Testament god of love and turn it on its head. You might know that one of my life goals is to stop as many Christians as possible from thinking that the First Testament or Hebrew Bible depicts an angry God and the Second or Christian Testament depicts a loving God. I also want those people who finally learn to spread the news to others. Alas, it’s like the work of coming out: my work is never done.
Through the prophet Hosea, we hear a compassionate and merciful Holy One telling the story of falling in love with God strugglers (a literal translation of the name Israel) when they were children. God fell in love with those children when they were in a tight spot, a terrible bind, a narrow place (a literal translation of the name Egypt). God called to those children, but the more God called, the more the children ran in the other direction. They kept giving their precious resources to the wrong gods (gods of everything but love): offering their devotion to worthless causes, placing their hopes in idols, making dumb investments. Yet, God (Love with a capital L) knows that they will eventually come trembling back from the narrow place (Egypt) and the militarized place (Assyria), and God will return them to their homes.
Our summer lectionary provides two options for a Hebrew Bible reading. The other choice from Ecclesiastes includes the verse, “All was vanity and a chasing after wind.” [1] That verse always reminds me of the most powerful deathbed awakening I ever witnessed. Many years ago, a Boston commercial real-estate tycoon was just hours from crossing over from this life to the next. His cancer diagnosis and precipitous decline had completely enraged him. He was furious about the loss of control he was experiencing. I had been visiting him every week for several months at his daughter’s request. During my last visit with him, as I was saying goodbye, he beckoned me to come close, and whispered, “It’s all vanity, isn’t it?” I nodded. His face radiated with a peace that had eluded him during his many decades of striving. At that very moment, I heard angels singing alleluias and welcoming him home.
Our Gospel lesson assures us that one does not have to wait until the hour of our death to come home to God, to Love. Indeed, our Gospel lesson begs us not to wait. Today’s passage is bracketed by Jesus’ assurance to his followers that they need not worry. In the verses just before, Jesus says, “Don’t worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say when you are being accused; a spirit of holiness will be your teacher in the moment.” Remember, last week we heard Jesus’ promise that a spirit of holiness will be given to whoever asks, seeks, or knocks.
Then someone in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” It seems like a reasonable enough request. In ancient cultures, as in modern ones, inheritance is an important component of ensuring well-being. [2] It’s not so different from Martha coming to Jesus and asking him to tell her sister Mary to help her with the vitally important work of hospitality. It anticipates the story known as the Prodigal Son a few chapters later. According to Luke, however, Jesus resists sibling arbitration! Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me your judge?” (He didn’t actually call him friend; the word Jesus used in this story isn’t as nice.) Then he said to the disciples: “Watch out! Guard against greed in all its forms, because one’s life is not in the abundance of possessions.”
We hear many warnings in the Gospel of Luke about the negative effect possessions have on following Jesus. The storing or preserving of wealth, according to Luke, is incompatible with discipleship. While the other Gospels are perhaps more spiritual in their presentation of Jesus’ teachings, for Luke it’s all about economics and concern for those who are poor. Jesus has warned against greed over and over, but now he’s going to tell them a little story about the improper use of wealth. Bernard Scott calls it the parable of “How to Mismanage a Miracle.” [3] It’s kind of a funny Good News story, that is, if you’re poor.
The story goes that there was a rich man whose property produced a bumper crop. Now everyone knows that a fantastic harvest, in other words, prosperity, is a gift from God. (At least, the people listening to Jesus know that.) The rich man finds himself with more than he had room for. “What do I do now?” he asked himself, “since my storage silos are already full.” Then he said, “I know! I’ll tear down my silos and build larger ones so I can store even more.” Now this is funny. And the humor draws his listeners in. The rich man in the story doesn’t build additional storage units; he tears down the existing ones. With this absurd exaggeration, I think Jesus is poking fun at rich people’s tendency to get rid of old stuff that is perfectly functional, and replace it with newer and bigger stuff. I think the disciples were laughing and shaking their heads at this point.
Then the rich man says to himself, “Self, you have plenty put away for years to come. Take it easy; eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.” Uh-oh! The disciples knew the common Greek philosophy phrase Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die and its association with immoral behavior in the Jewish tradition. This is where God enters the story and says to the man, “Hey dummy! This very night your life will be demanded back from you.” God points out that the rich man’s attempt to protect his life with his stockpile isn’t going to work.
Then God says, “All this commodity you’ve collected, whose will it be now?” Jesus’ disciples know the answer: it will go where it should have gone in the first place, to the wider community. According to the Bible, they all know the purpose of wealth is to serve the public need, the common good. God provides the miracle of abundance so that the community can be cared for. An attempt to preserve private wealth is a misuse of God’s blessing. The miraculous nature of the harvest places demands on the rich man. It places on him an obligation to care for other people who do not have enough. That’s what it means to be rich towards God: providing for the needs of others, being rich in Love.
The rich man is neglecting his social responsibility. Accumulating wealth results in the impoverishment of others because worldly goods are finite (as we know), not infinite. The rich man also forgets to acknowledge God’s hand in the abundant harvest. He is talking only to himself in this tale about storing the abundance for his own pleasure and security. He is forgetting the existence of God: that’s idolatry. Actually, the word that God uses to address the man, the word that gets translated fool, in Greek carries the double meaning of not very smart and of being lifeless, like a statue or an idol. So Hey, dummy! conveys the idea in English much better than You fool! There are overtones of immorality as well. We also have a clear warning in our reading from Colossians about the wrath of God coming upon those who do not listen to Love; and Colossians identifies greed as idolatry.
Jesus’ teachings are taken directly from Torah. Jesus’ story equates the mismanagement of the miraculous harvest with idolatry: that is, not placing God (or Love) first, before all else. According to Bernard Scott: [4]
The identification of God’s [realm is] with community and the demand to provide for the needs of others….Yet this caring for neighbor is not based upon a moralizing or sentimentalizing principle. Not to place community first violates the First Commandment; [it] is idolatry. No apocalyptic explosion will rid the world of evil….[The realm of God] exists only in the deeds of a loving community.
God’s realm in Luke isn’t the afterlife. It’s only other-worldly in the sense that it’s different from how this world generally operates.
So remember at the beginning, when I said that this story is kind of funny Good News if you’re poor? Is there Good News here for any of us who are not poor? I think so. I think this story is evidence of Jesus’ desire for fullness of life for everyone. I think this story is evidence that Jesus is trying to teach those of us with wealth from where it comes and to whom it belongs, so that we, too, can be rich toward God, rich in Love. I mentioned that this Gospel portion is bracketed. The verse immediately following our passage for this morning is:
Therefore, I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. Consider the ravens: they have neither storehouse or silo….Consider the lilies…clothed in splendor. Do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying….Strive instead for the realm of love, the rule of mercy, and these things will be given to you as well.
Open up the channel; open up the circuit of receiving and giving!
Listen to Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem about the rule of mercy and the realm of love. It’s called “Red Brocade.” [5]
The Arabs used to say,
When a stranger appears at your door,
feed him for three days
before asking who he is,
where he’s come from,
where he’s headed.
That way, he’ll have strength
enough to answer.
Or, by then you’ll be
such good friends
you don’t care.
Let’s go back to that.
Rice? Pine nuts?
Here, take the red brocade pillow.
My child will serve water
to your horse.
No, I was not busy when you came!
- Ecclesiastes 1:12-14; 2( 1-7, 11) 8-23.
- D. Mark Davis makes this point in “Inheritance, Greed, and Living toward God” in his blog www.leftbehindandlovingit.blogspot.com.
- The argument construct that I follow here is from Bernard Brandon Scott in Hear Then the Parable (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989) pp. 127-140.
- Ibid., p. 140.
- N.S. Nye, Red Brocade.