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. 

A Loathsome Stranger's Mercy (Proper 10C; Good Samaritan)

Rembrandt, The Good Samaritan

  A  Loathsome Stranger’s Mercy
Homily delivered Seventh Sunday of Pentecost (Proper 10; Year C RCL)
11 July 2010; 10:00 a.m. Morning Prayer Said
Congregation of the Good Shepherd
Beijing, China
Readings: Amos 7:7-17 and Psalm 82 or Deuteronomy 30:9-14 and Psalm 25:1-9; Colossians 1:1-14; Luke 10:25-37

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

Finding a dead body lying out in the open is a very disturbing experience.  When my wife and I lived in West Africa several years ago, one Sunday morning we were running of the beach.  She got ahead of me, as she usually does when we’re running.  I heard her start screaming in terror and hurried to catch up with her.  There beside us, in sand at the high tide mark, was what used to be a human being, now bloated in the heat and already a meal for the crabs.   We ran to get the port authorities, who recovered the body, identified it as a fisherman who had fallen from his boat a week earlier about 25 miles up the coast, and returned it properly covered to his grieving family.  It was not the only corpse I saw in Africa.  Once, on a trip into Lagos Nigeria, I spotted a body lying along side the road.  My driver refused to stop to try to get help, since the area was notoriously known as the haunt of criminal gangs who often would rob anyone who has the misfortune of having to stop their car. 

Today’s Gospel reading is a parable that describes such a disturbing scene. 

A lawyer asks Jesus a question of Jewish Law: “Master, of all the 615 commandments in the Torah, 365 'Thou shalt not's' and 248 'Thou shalt's,” what is the essential that I need to do to please God? “ 

Luke says the lawyer is asking Jesus the question trying to test him (10:25).  Jesus is cautious, and asks the lawyer what he thinks the Law establishes as its core (10:26). 

The Lawyer replies in these words: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart” (Deut. 6:4) and then “Love your neighbor as yourself (Lev. 19:18). 

This epitome of the Law is probably Jesus’ own.  Matthew and Mark place it on the lips of Jesus himself as he replies to a lawyer or a scribe (Matt. 22:37-40; Mark 12:29-31).  The first of these commandments is part of the Shema, the basic creed of Judaism that every practicing Jewish male recites during morning prayer (Deut. 6:4); the second is a commandment found in Leviticus 19:18, part of dozens of rules enumerated in the  Leviticus Holiness Code (Lev. 17-26).

“Love God, then love your neighbor.”  Jesus agrees:  “That’s exactly right.  If you do that, you won’t have any problem pleasing God.” 

Then the story gets complicated.  The lawyer follows up with another question of law, seeking, as lawyers are wont to do, clear definitions of terms of law and the scope of their applicability.  “And who, rabbi, exactly is my neighbor?” 

Luke tells us that the lawyer asked the question in order to justify himself.  The point is clear.  The lawyer wants to know the exact scope of his obligation to love others so that he can have a clear idea of who it is that he is not obligated to love.  

Clearly other people had asked the same question about the Holiness Code’s commandment to love our neighbors.  The Holiness Code prescribes rules for God’s people living in God’s land, including special ones for God’s priests and their assistants in the Temple (Lev. 21-22).  It also gives rules regarding aliens living in the midst of God’s people, both how to treat them and what is expected of them.   It seems to distinguish between “Israelites" or “your people” from “aliens living in your midst” as well as “your neighbors.”  It is not completely obvious from the text whether “neighbors” includes only fellow Israelites, all resident aliens also, or only aliens who keep the rules.  One text, however, clearly also says “The alien who reside with you shall be to you as the citizens among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” (Lev. 19:34).  

So the legal question “who is my neighbor” was a point of discussion, and different people gave different answers to it. In the inter-testamental Book of Sirach, we read, “give to the devout, but do not help the sinner” (Sir. 12:1-7).   Here the distinction between your fellow countryman and a neighbor is whether one keeps the Law or has the reputation of being religious.  In the Manual of Discipline in the Dead Sea Scrolls, we read, “… seek God with all your heart and all your soul, . . . love all the sons of light, and hate all the sons of darkness” (1QS 1.1-3, 9-10).  Here, even fellow Jews, if they do not accept the legal interpretations of the Dead Sea Scroll sect, are considered beyond the pale of being “neighbors.”   On the other hand, the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria two centuries before the common era wrote, “God asks ... [us] to love him . . . and serve him with . . .[our] whole soul” (Spec. Leg. 1.299-300) and says that this is a “duty to God as shown by piety and holiness, and a duty to men as shown by humanity and justice” (Spec. Leg. 2.63).   Neighbors here appear to be all fellow human beings. 

Jesus’ reply to the question is a story that turns many expectations of that time and place totally on their head.

 Dundee Parish Church (St. Mary's, Church of Scotland) 

Parable of the Good Samaritan

A man goes down the dangerous road from Jerusalem to Jericho.  Remember Jerusalem is 2700 feet above sea level while Jericho is 800 feet below it.  With only 17 miles between, it means there is a 200 foot drop every mile.  There are lots of switchbacks in the steep road where many nooks and crannies can easily hide crooks and baddies. 

He meets up with robbers, is beaten unconscious, stripped of all his clothing, and left for dead. 

But then by chance someone comes by.  It is a Priest, commuting between his home in Jericho and his intermittent work in the Temple in Jerusalem.  Surely a priest—a religious person and an example of doing the right thing—will help a fellow countryman who is almost dead, right?   But when he sees the man, he hurries to the other side of the road, and walks on. 

Then another religious leader, a temple assistant called a Levite, also comes along.   He too avoids what appears to be the naked corpse on the side of the road.  

Now we mustn’t think too ill of the Priest or the Levite.  The Law of Moses stipulated that Priests and Levites had to be ritually pure for their service in the Temple, and also clearly stated that any contact with a corpse contaminated and brought with it ritual impurity.  

It is probably just about at this point in the story that Jesus’ listeners realized that the fact that the man looked dead might in reality cause his actual death through lack of care, and all because of religious people scrupulously trying to follow the commandments of God. 

To be sure, the Law did provide over-ride clauses where saving someone’s life or even helping them save their ox from the mire took precedence over purity requirements.  But even here, such acts of mercy and human sympathy did not get rid of the pollution thus incurred. 

Like good storytellers in any culture, Jesus here follows the rule of three.  We often hear jokes about an Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scot, or other ones about a Rabbi, a Catholic Priest, and a Baptist Preacher.  Here is it a Priest, a Levite, and a…

Jesus’ audience knows it will be a normal resident of that part of the country, a Judean.  He won’t be constrained by the heavier purity concerns and he’ll save our poor victim, right? 

No.  The third traveler on his way is not a Judean.  It is a Samaritan.

Now to Jesus’ Jewish audience, having a Priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan being the three is like someone today telling story and having the three be the Pope, the Dalai Lama, and Usama bin Laden, or maybe Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, and the head of the Mafia.   

Samaritans were seen as contemptible half-breeds, heretics and blasphemers, allies with the foreign occupiers, and immoral.  They themselves were considered by Jews to be ritually unclean and contaminating.   The poor Jewish man who is about to die himself will be ritually polluted by accepting anything from the Samaritan.  But at this point, he isn’t particular about who he can accept help from.  Better unclean and alive and than unclean because you’re dead. 

When this Samaritan sees the wounded man, he stops, is moved to mercy, takes good care of him, and even provides for him as if he were a family member.  

Note that the Samaritans also had their own version of the Torah, and the same basic rules about corpses were found there.  But this Samaritan risks contamination by his own lights and helps the half-dead person on the side of the road. 

Jesus closes his story answering the Lawyer’s question “who is my neighbor?” by saying, “Who do you think acted like a neighbor to that unfortunate man?”

The lawyer can’t even bring himself to say, “The Samaritan.”  He replies abashedly, “the one who showed him compassion.” 

“Go and do likewise.  Be like that Samaritan,” is Jesus’ reply. 

This answer by Jesus places him squarely on one side of a major division within the Biblical tradition. 

Walther Bruggemann, in his magisterial Theology of the Old Testament, points out that throughout the Hebrew scriptures, one finds two great thematic threads. On the one side, there is the striving for purity and ritual holiness, for being special and set aside for God’s service.  “You shall be holy for I am holy,” we read in Leviticus, and there follows hundreds of detailed rules setting boundaries and defining categories to help achieve holiness.  On the other side there is striving for justice, for treating people, especially the marginalized, decently and fairly. 

The two themes often seem in opposition.  The priests and the Law tend to talk a lot about purity and holiness.  The prophets tend to talk about dealing with others justly, especially those most in need.  For Samuel, Amos, Isaiah, Micah and others God says things like:  “I expect obedience, not sacrifice.” “I hate your sacrifices because you mistreat the widow and the orphan.”    “All I really ask of you is to treat the poor fairly, and to walk humbly with me.”  For the priests and teachers of halachic law, however, God say things like, “You will be Holy for I am Holy, says the Lord.”  “You shall not pollute the land with impurity, or I will destroy you.”  “You shall drive out pollution from among your midst and separate yourself from uncleanness.” 

Bruggemann says that the two traditions are both important and mutually corrective. The boundaries established by the Law are what define and preserve the People of God, and allow ethical monotheism to flourish.  But if holiness is not tempered with the call for social justice, it becomes empty ritual, a mode of oppression, and dies.  On the other hand, calls for social justice in the absence of an authentic call to holiness rapidly degenerate into the most obvious self-serving form of interest-group politics.  That’s why it’s love God first, and then love one’s neighbor.  

It is very important to note that in the Gospels, whenever social justice is placed in conflict with ritual purity and Jesus is asked to decide between them, in every single case he opts for social justice.  For him, justice trumps purity and holiness in this sense every time.  

It has to do with his understanding of God as the God of everyone, not just of the Jewish nation, or righteous people.  “God makes the sun shine and the rain fall on both the righteous and the wicked,” he says (Matt. 5:45).  “You have heard it said, ‘You shall love your neighbors and hate your enemies, but I say, love your enemies’,” he says (Matt. 5:43). Thus his answer about “who is my neighbor?”  

Jesus sees that the Lawyer’s question has framed the world wrong.  The commandments to love God and to love neighbor are, above all else, commandments to love. When the lawyer tries to interpret them by asking in essence “and who exactly is it that I don’t have to love,” Jesus throws a parable at him.  The intent is to shake his world view.  Like a Zen koan, the parable is meant to shock the lawyer into a new way of feeling and perceiving. 

Professor Klyne Snodgrass in his recently published master work on the parables Stories with Intent says this:  “This parable is evidence of what is obvious elsewhere:  Jesus will not allow boundaries to be set so that people may feel they have completed their obligation to God.  Love does not have a boundary where we can say we have loved enough, nor does it permit us to choose those we will love, those who are ‘our kind.’ With this parable, Jesus in effect says, ‘You should know already from Lev. 19:34 that the love commandment extends to the stranger (or traveler) in your midst.’’” 

Love knows no boundaries, and, in the words of St. Paul, “love never ends.” 

All of us have our ways, like the lawyer, of seeking to justify ourselves and say to the God who calls us to love, “Enough, already!”  We all too often use boundaries as a means to do this, whether national, ethnic, political, gender, or even what we consider to be moral boundaries. 

We do this because it is easy.  It is, in fact, too easy, since we know that we as creatures live and die by boundaries.  We need definitions and limits, or our lives are chaotic and unordered.  Boundaries are generally good, and something we all need.   And this is the case whether we are talking moral boundaries, legal boundaries, or personal space and autonomy boundaries.  We need them because without them we are messes. 

But we must never let boundaries become a strait-jacket that makes us unable to reach out our arms in love to those in need.  

Good fences may indeed help make good neighbors, but not if we do not chat across the fences, and as needed reach over them. 

I challenge each of us this week to look at ourselves.  Take 10 or 15 minutes during your prayer time or meditation time, or even exercise time, and ask these questions:  1) Where am I transgressing boundaries with resulting harm to myself or others? 2) Where am I using boundaries as an excuse to not do the right thing?

Once you have some answers, then look again at this story. 

Remember that lawyer and his self-justifying question.  And then really think about the story of that loathsome stranger doing kindness to a fellow human being, no matter how different, no matter how alien.

And go and do likewise. 

In the name of God,  Amen.