The Voice of the Profits

Luke 12:13-21

Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Many years ago, when I was living in Chicago, I had the opportunity to study with the well-known feminist theologian Rosemary Ruether. I was able to arrange for her to preach at the church I was attending, the Episcopal Cathedral of St. James.

As you may know, many churches follow the custom of having titles for sermons, often posted on a sign outside the church. It seems that Dr. Ruether assumed that my church followed the custom of naming sermons and would need a title for her sermon. She planned a sermon on the Old Testament text – a reading from one of the prophets – and phoned the church office with her sermon title:

Hearing the Voice of the Prophets in Today’s World

Unfortunately, whoever took down the message misunderstood what kind of prophets she planned to talk about. They apparently thought she was planning a sermon about the kind of profits found in annual reports of corporations. So the sermon listed in the service leaflet that Sunday was

Hearing the Voice of the Profits in Today’s World

I wonder how many people in the church that day were disappointed not to hear a sermon about the dangers of a capitalist economy. It would have been a good topic, because I think many of the evils in the world now and throughout history have been motivated by a desire to make as great a profit as possible:  the inclination to be greedy. Or as we read in the letter to Timothy, love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

In today’s Gospel, we hear from a man who is concerned about money: getting what’s due to him, as he sees it. He’s so concerned, that he interrupts Jesus while he speaks, asking for help in getting his inheritance. It seems the man is involved in one of those fights over property that throughout history have often followed the death of someone with more than one heir. I think we’ve all known people who have fought with relatives over who gets what – often even over things that have little financial value.  For many siblings, disputes over their parent’s estate can lead to long-term estrangement. The rift created by conflicting claims and bad wills may persist for decades, sometimes ending only with the death of one of the potential heirs. The conflict between two brothers over their father’s estate is a serious matter, which can poison their relationship if some way isn’t found to resolve the dispute.

Since religious law covered inheritance matters in the world of Jesus, it’s not surprising that a dissatisfied heir would bring the dispute to a rabbi to judge. But clearly this man has mistaken what kind of rabbi Jesus is – he’s not the kind that settles disputes. Perhaps the man hasn’t been listening to what Jesus is saying. Jesus is talking about serious matters. He’s telling followers how they should answer when – not if -- they’re interrogated by the authorities. Suddenly the man interrupts him. “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.”

I’m sure we have all had the experience of listening to a speaker when someone interrupts, saying something totally inappropriate. This is one of those occasions. Jesus is talking about life and death matters. I can imagine people looking at each other, shaking their heads in disbelief.  Jesus gently points out that the request is not appropriate: “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And then Jesus addresses the spiritual problem that he discerns behind this man’s urgent request: Greed. “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

To make his point, Jesus tells a story about a greedy man. This man – a farmer –has had such a good harvest – or perhaps several harvests -- that he’s run out of places to store all the grain. What a problem! He decides he’ll need to build larger barns to contain the abundance. Then he can lean back and relax, his future secure: He can now enjoy himself. “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”

Now, he could instead be thinking that he can now afford to be generous, to share the extra grain. He could be thinking about people who are having a hard time that he can now help, people who don’t have enough for their basic needs. Instead, the successful farmer plans how he will stockpile his grain. After all, he has enough for many years – or so he thinks. I’m not an expert in such matters, but I suspect that even in a large, well-built barn, grain eventually rots. Or the mice and rats eat it all up.

But it doesn’t matter, because the farmer is in for a big surprise. He’s about to discover that being wealthy doesn’t mean that he’ll have a long and happy life. That very night he’s going to die. And then his heirs will claim his estate.

We might think that Jesus is condemning money as a bad thing, but I don’t think it’s money: it’s what money can easily do to us. The problem is in how we regard money: whether we allow money to become an idol that rules us, and what we choose to do with our money.

St. John Cassian is one of the group called the Church Fathers, the ancient group of Christian  teachers and church leaders whose writings have influenced Christian thought for over 1600 years. John Cassian was born around 360 CE, probably in what is now Romania. He traveled to Egypt to live with monks who had fled to the desert to live austerely and simply, and spend their lives in prayer. He wrote about his experiences living among them, and what he had learned.

Cassian wrote about the eight sins he observed, one of which was the sin of avarice or greed: lusting after possessions and wealth, more than what a person actually needed. These desert monks had given away everything they owned to go live in the desert and devote their lives to prayer. Yet despite this great sacrifice, Cassian observed that a monk beset with the sin of greed would become enraged when he lost something. He could give away all his wealth, but still remain greedy. The real problem lay in the monk’s desires, and his attitude toward his possessions. Giving away his possessions was an outward sign of a more important inward struggle against greed, a struggle that continued even after he was outwardly poor.

Greed leads to anger and interferes with our relationships. I think we’ve all seen people fighting with those they love over things of little actual value. We make the possession – the money or whatever we both want – more important than the relationship. A friend of mine, who practiced family law for a number of years, said divorce brought out the worst in people. She told of one occasion in which a divorcing husband and wife were meeting with their lawyers present to try to settle how they would divide their property. At one point, the couple got into a lengthy argument over who was going to get the gardening tools. The lawyers, who were charging quite a bit per hour, watched in amazement. The couple could have easily bought new gardening tools for what the argument was costing them in legal fees. The fight over their possessions grew out of a disordered relationship, but greed made a bad situation even worse.

Greed can be a sign of fearfulness, and a lack of trust in God.  John Cassian thought the root of avarice was a lack of faith. Monks beset by avarice feared the future: they feared that if they were old or sick, or decided to leave the monastery, they would not have enough.

Likewise, we may become too concerned about collecting possessions because we fear the future and hope that if we have enough stuff, we will be safe in a world that is sometimes scary. At an extreme, survivalists stockpile large amounts of food and other necessities of life expecting that in the foreseeable future, after an apocalyptic collapse of civilization, they will have to take care of themselves and protect themselves from their neighbors. Their hoarding is driven by intense anxiety and a belief that they will be left entirely on their own. But as Jesus makes clear in this parable, our lives are always in God’s hands, and anything we possess has been given to us by God. We are simply stewards of what is not really ours.

Most of us possess so much stuff that like the rich farmer, our big problem is figuring out where to put it all and how to find it should we need it. I like to watch television shows like House Hunters, or Love It or List It, which show prospective homebuyers visiting houses they’re considering buying. The houses tend to be very new and large, and the closets are often huge – the size of bedrooms in older homes. Yet the home buyers routinely complain that there’s not enough closet space. Do we truly need mammoth closets?  If you’ve ever lived in an old house, you’ll know that in the past, people had small closets because they didn’t have so much stuff, even if they were relatively well off. Were our grandparents less happy than us because they had less? Can large walk-in closets bursting with all sorts of stuff really make us happier? More content with life? Closer to God?

Personally, I don’t think so. I think possessing a lot only makes us long for more, like an addict who needs more and more of a substance to satisfy – at least for moment -- the craving. We move into a home with big closets, and when we’ve filled those big closets, we go looking for a new home that has even bigger closets – which we will fill with more things we don’t need. No-one truly needs 30 or more pairs of shoes. And what are we to make of the fact that we are only able to possess so much that we don't need because we benefit from cheap labor in third world countries, labor that often involves children and terrible working conditions. Is our greed contributing to the demand for these products?

I recently heard of a woman who has a lot of stuff – much of it unopened and unused. Every time she sees a bargain, she buys it – whether she needs it or not. She has far more of just about everything than she’ll ever be able to use. She has no babies to buy for, but if baby clothes are on sale, she buys them. I’m told that this woman’s basement looks like a department store, filled with new merchandise. Meanwhile, people who could actually use these things that she owns but doesn’t need go without.

We may not have a basement full of brand new stuff that we have no real need for, but I think most of us have too much stuff – so much that we periodically have to find ways to get rid of things. We have garage sales; we fill dumpsters; we haul it to thrift shops. We even rent storage lockers – spending money each month to store things we don’t need and will likely never use.

The last time I moved, I threw away an astonishing amount of stuff, and wondered how and why I had accumulated so much.  Was someone sneaking into my house in the middle of the night and leaving all these useless things? No, it seems that I was responsible. I swore I’d never again collect so much stuff – but that’s a promise I’ve made and broken many times.

I think part of the problem lies in the society in which we live. Marketers and merchants continually tell us that the things they sell will bring us happiness. But I think believing this false promise is only part of the problem. I think we acquire too many possessions to try to fill a spiritual void, to fill what we sense is missing in our life. I think we all know that however much we accumulate, it will never fill that emptiness. We will always want more. What we’re truly longing for isn’t more stuff and can’t be bought at any store.

The 17^th century French philosopher Blaise Pascal once wrote,

There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person, and it can never be filled by any created thing.  It can only be filled by God, made known through Jesus Christ.

What we’re really longing for is spiritual:  We long for better relationships with other people, for meaning, for inner peace, for contentment. We long for the peace that only God can bring to our lives.