Chasing After the Wind (Proper 13C)

Chasing After the Wind
Homily delivered the Tenth Sunday of Pentecost (Proper 13; Year C RCL)
1 August 2010; 10:00 a.m. Said Eucharist
Congregation of the Good Shepherd  Beijing, China
Readings:  Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23; Psalm 49:1-11; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

God, take away our hearts of stone
 and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

In the musical play, The Fiddler on the Roof, the poor milkman Tevye sings “if I were a rich man,” expressing how much easier his life would be if he only had sufficient money.  When reminded that in the wisdom of his people, money is the world’s curse, he replies, “May the Lord smite me with it, and may I never recover.” 

Today’s Gospel reading should bother us.  If it doesn’t bother us, it means one of two things:  either we are irresponsible people oblivious to our obligations and careless about our futures, or we haven’t understood this parable at all.   The parable of the rich fool is introduced with a warning against greed and ends with a morale against those who “pile up treasures for themselves.”   All right, then, we shouldn’t be greedy; we shouldn’t be overly ostentatious.  But the Greek word used for greed here, pleonexia, means “desire for more.”  The parable seems to criticize anyone who desires a little financial security. It’s bothersome, especially read with today’s Old Testament lesson from the book of Qohelet or Ecclestiastes.  There a jaded old man condemns practically all human endeavor, whether frivolous and sinful or even serious and responsible, as “vanity of vanities.”  (I think the best translation is “totally pointless.”)  All such activities are “chasing after the wind.”

Is all human desiring wrong?

A supplicant comes to Jesus asking him as a respected rabbi to settle a dispute on inheritance.  The practice was that brothers divided up estates equally with the elder brother getting a double portion (Deut. 21:15-17; cf. m. Baba Batra 8.1-9.10).  Families expected brothers if possible to live nearby or together and keep family-held real property as a unit.  But if not, each brother had a right to his portion and the estate should be divided.  The man asks Jesus to tell his brother his obligation under religious law to share the inheritance with him. 

Jesus says, “Sir, who set me up as a judge or arbiter?”   Just as in the story of Mary and Martha we heard three weeks ago, Jesus declines to take sides in an argument brought to him.  Note to all who want to quote Jesus to make a point:  Jesus does not like to be used as a stick with which to beat opponents in arguments.

Instead, Jesus counsels against greed, against desiring more than we already have.   He sees the man’s fractiousness as a problem, even though the supplicant is probably only standing on his rights.  The man’s heart is wrong, and that is what Jesus addresses.  

Unlike the Buddha, Jesus doesn’t counsel against any desire, any attachment.  He condemns a desire for more.  He simply says that we should be thankful for what God in his mercy has given us.  He counsels acceptance, not detachment.

Rembrandt, The Rich Fool

He gives the parable to illustrate.  A wealthy farmer facing a bumper crop realizes he cannot possibly store all the produce about to be harvested.  So he makes elaborate plans to tear down the old barns and replace them with larger ones before the harvest.  He describes to himself how good things will be when he’s completed his plan: “Friend, you have many good things stored up for years to come.  So take it easy; eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.”  But God says to him, “You idiot!  This very night—before you can do any of this—your life will be required of you!  Now who’s going to get all that you have prepared?”  Luke, the narrator, adds,  “That is how it will be for anyone who piles up treasures for himself and is not rich with God.” 

Jesus has taken the commonplace of the fool versus God from a long tradition in Jewish wisdom literature, like Psalm 14:1:  “The fool says in his heart, there is no God.”    By calling the rich man in the parable a fool, God says that he is an atheist in practice—he has thought, felt, and acted for all intents and purposes as if he believed there were no God. 

To understand this, let’s put it in context of some other things Jesus said and did. 

In Matthew’s Gospel, he says, “Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up treasures in heaven.  … For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,  … Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more than food? And the body more than clothing?” He points to birds and wildflowers as an example of how well God feeds and clothes his creatures, says that there is thus no need for striving for food and clothing, and then adds, “Your Heavenly Father knows all that you need” and he is good.  Thus, “work first for God’s kingdom and right way, and God will make sure you get what you need” (Matt. 6:19-33). 

Elsewhere, he describes what he means by “God’s kingdom”: we cannot enter it unless we become helpless like little children.  Poor people may get there before the rich; sinners, drunks, and traitors may get there before the pious religious.  In the kingdom, first will last and last will be first and you have to lose your life in order to find it.    God’s kingdom is not coming with observable signs, but is already at work on its own without us noticing it, like a seed that quietly sprouts in the night and grows we know not how.  God’s kingdom is already among us. 

He suggests in many, many places that the true way is not the path of a spiritual superman. God’s banquet is set for all people, not just for a few chosen ones.   “Being rich for God” or “storing up treasures in heaven” for Jesus is not another struggle, not a way of forcing ourselves to conform to God’s rules, not a way showing how good we are as compared to other people. 

He says, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  Other religious people of the day criticized him regularly for being too lax in his expectations of his followers.  And he regularly told his followers to rejoice, and had lots of parties with them.

He also says that the door into the kingdom is narrow and the way to life is tight fit.  “Go in at the narrow door; for the door is wide and the path is easy to leads to losing your soul.  Many people go in there and do not come out.  The door is narrow and the path is tight that leads to life.  At any given time, there are only few who can manage it.” (Matt. 713-14, paraphrased).  Jesus’ point is that there is no room there to take extra baggage.  If our hearts are set on other things, we simply will not be able to squeeze through.   

Make no mistake—this parable is an indictment of all who pursue material goods to the neglect of others.  It should make us uncomfortable if our heart of hearts tells us that what we want above all else—or even above many other things—is wealth. 

But when Jesus tells this parable about greed, he is not telling a story that applies only to the rich.  He is talking about any kind of desire that gets in the way of rooting our relationship with God in trust, thanksgiving, and acceptance.  He is talking about any orientation of the heart that imposes our own will between us and our creator.   He is talking about acting as if God were not taking care of us, were not a good and loving Parent, as if we thought that God did not exist.    Acting that way, pursuing anything with those assumptions, make life—well, in the words of Ecclesiastes—“totally pointless.”  It makes you a practical atheist.  It is very foolish. 

Our heart must be set on God.  The way to life, being rich with God, the narrow and tight path—all these describe a right relationship with God, and with it, a right relationship with ourselves and others.  In this right relationship, there is no room for illusion or fantasy.  There is no room for our imposing our wills. Acceptance and thanksgiving and an openness to more of the good that God gives is the right posture of any soul that would enter this path.  A desire for more, greed--whether it is of money, or security, or power, or beauty, perfect domesticity, or even of encores of spiritual high points—greed is baggage that simply cannot fit through the door. 

It’s all in the context.  At one point, Jesus asks the rich young man to sell his goods and give to the poor.  At another, when Judas criticizes a sinful woman’s extravagant gesture of anointing Jesus with precious ointment because she could have sold it and given the proceeds to the poor, Jesus defends her because she has done a beautiful thing.  He abandons his family and tells several of his followers to do likewise, but then on the cross gives the care of his aging mother to the disciple John.

Jesus here is not telling us here specifically to forgo any thought of modest retirement accounts or prudent savings.  Elsewhere he does tell us to be harmless as doves but smart as snakes.  He expects street smarts.  But he is blasting greed.  That’s what the listing of all the detailed planning for larger and larger barns, and his retirement plan of “relax, eat, drink, and be merry” is all about.  Jesus is not damning desire per se, but questioning desire for more.

Flannery O'Conner

In Flannery O’Conner’s troubling story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” a serial murderer called the Misfit abducts a family in a rural area of the southern United States.  The grandmother tries to talk him out of killing her by repeating tired banalities about prayer, the Church, and Jesus.  The Misfit answers:

“Jesus… thrown everything off balance.  If He did what he said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him.  No pleasure but meanness.”

This Misift takes the cynicism of Ecclesiastes to a very sick logical conclusion.  O’Conner once wrote that “The story is a duel of sorts between the grandmother and her superficial beliefs and the Misfit’s more profoundly felt involvement with Christ’s action, which set the world off balance for him.”  O’Conner’s point is that there’s no use in saying you believe in Jesus or God unless that changes your life and affects your view of everything. “Redemption is meaningless unless there is a cause for it in the actual life we live. . . . I see from the standpoint of classical Christian orthodoxy.  This means that for me the meaning of life is centered in our redemption by Christ and what I see in the world I see in its relation to that.” 

Practical atheism is not an option.  We mustn’t tart up our greed and our desires to do things on our own and be in control as mere prudence or wise stewardship.  Our trust in God must show fruits in our life, in how we make our decisions, in how we use or time and resources.  Jesus does not call us all to be ascetics, but he does call us all to trust and love God, to be honest with ourselves and with God, and let this help us make all the many decisions we need to make in this life so that it not be totally pointless. 

May we answer the call. 

In the name of God,  Amen.