Chasing After the Wind (Proper 13C)

 

Chasing After the Wind
Homily delivered the Eleventh Sunday of Pentecost (Proper 13; Year C RCL)

The Rev. Dr. Anthony A. Hutchinson
4 August 2013; 8:00 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Eucharist
Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)
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.

Today’s Gospel reading should bother us.  If it doesn’t bother us, we have either totally misunderstood it, or are irresponsible people oblivious to our obligations and careless about our futures.  

We might agree with the basic premise of the parable’s morale against those who “pile up treasures for themselves.”  In our middle class morality, being overly ostentatious is just bad form.   Most of us tend to feel uncomfortable when we watch the original movie Wall Street and the Michael Douglas character, Gordon Gecko, says baldy “Greed is good.”  Okay, we may say, greed is bad. 

But the parable seems to criticize even this basic morality and prudence.   The Greek word used for greed here does not mean overly lavish or ostentatious: pleonexia simply means “desire for more.”  The story criticizes, it seems, anyone who desires even a little financial security.  

The rich farmer, if you are honest, seems to be a prudent, smart person who thinks strategically and plans for the future.  He takes basic steps to ensure his future security.  And Jesus calls him a “fool.” 

And so the parable should bother us, especially when we read it 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?

Jesus tells this parable in response to a complaint from a person in the crowd about a family will.  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. 

Most lawyers will tell you that disputes over wills and inheritances among siblings are loaded with a lot of emotion, because the siblings are actually fighting over the money as some kind of token of their deceased parent’s love.  Jesus understandably replies: “Sir, who set me up as a judge or arbiter?”   Just as in the story of Mary and Martha, 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 up those who disagree with us.

Jesus tells the story to get at the heart of the matter:  the man’s desire for more, whether of goods, or of parental love.

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.'  Annuity maximized, check.  Portfolio diversified, check.  Real properties secured, check.  Secondary income streams confirmed, check.  "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.” 

The commonplace Jesus uses here, the fool standing before God, comes 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 overly prudent rich man 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. 

He is not criticizing the man because he is rich, but because he is actually poor in terms of bigger things, and unaware of it.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus 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."  Note: the heart here follows where we invest, not vice versa-- you can act yourself into a right way of thinking, but not necessarily think yourself into a right way of acting.   "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 Reign and the justice it demands, and God will make sure you get what you need” (Matt. 6:19-33). 

Elsewhere, he describes what he means by “God’s Reign”: 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.   

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 more important issues and the needs of other people.  It indicts us 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 desiring more, 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 places our own will and desires above those of 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 letting our fears and anxieties run rampant and blot out the table of plenty before us.   Acceptance, thanksgiving, and openness to more of the good that God gives are the right posture of any soul that would enter this path.  This is the spiritual basis of all proper stewardship, of all properly conceived rules of life.  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 narrow door.  

If we're not quite there, that's OK.  Remember that our heart will follow where we place our treasure.  We can act as if we had faith, and faith will come. 
 
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 his aging mother into the care of the beloved disciple, and his disciple into her care.   

Jesus here is not telling us specifically to forgo any thought of modest retirement accounts or prudent savings.  Elsewhere he tells us to be harmless as doves but smart as snakes.  He expects street smarts, and his disciples to be no one’s fool.

But he is blasting practical atheism, acting as if God didn't exist.  He is blasting the commonplace we tell ourselves as a justification for this, "God helps those who help themselves."  He is blasting all this because such practical atheism, such idolatry and greed, itself is the act of a fool.  

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; thankfulness, not indifference; passion, not apathy.   Jesus is not damning desire per se, but questioning desire apart from God.  

Practical atheism is not an option.  We mustn’t tart up our greed and say it is prudence.  We mustn’t justify our desire to be in control and autonomous as mere independence.   None of this is wise stewardship.  Our trust in God must show fruits in our life, in how we make our decisions, in how we use our time and resources.  Jesus does not call us all to be spiritual supermen, or ascetics.  He calls us all simply to trust and love God, be honest with him, and make our decisions and commit our resources in light of this.

May we answer the call. 

In the name of God,  Amen.