Greed (which is idolatry) | a sermon

A sermon by Jamie Howison on Colossians 3:1-11 and Luke 12:13-21

What do you suppose the link is between our reading from Colossians and the Gospel text for today? Sometimes there isn’t really a link, but on other Sundays there is one, which is the case today. So, what is it? Greed.

In Colossians it comes at the end of a list of things that should be “put to death” or set aside in the life of the Christian: “fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed.” Greed Paul writes, and then actually qualifies it by adding, “which is idolatry.”

And then in the Gospel text Jesus answers the man who comes with the request that Jesus tell his brother to divide the family inheritance with him. Jesus quickly replies, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” and then adds, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.” Of course, you might rightly respond to me by saying that while Jesus clearly focuses here on greed, in Paul’s epistle greed is just part of a longer list that is then topped of even further with “anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth.”

Yet there is something about greed that really does unsettle Paul, causing him to add that little clarifying statement that greed is idolatry, so I don’t think I’m at all out of order in landing the focus of this sermon on greed. 

You see I think that while we can pretty easily identify when we’re dealing with evil desire or malice or slander, greed is rather more tricky. In the case of the man who comes to Jesus and asks him to intervene in this case with the brother who is apparently not ready to share their father’s inheritance, Jesus seems to pick up quickly on the fact that the guy is probably flirting with greed. Sure, he pleads a case of financial justice when it comes to this inheritance, but does Jesus see in his eyes a desire to buy more sheep for his fold, build an extra room on his house, or buy his wife a new gold ring? The brother who has failed to duly share the inheritance is undoubtably in the grips of greed, but this man with the request for justice might be just as much at risk.

Then comes that strong statement Jesus speaks to him: “Take care!”—maybe paraphrased as, “careful there, buddy, you’re flirting with trouble.” “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Which actually hits the proverbial nail on the head, because Jesus knows that for too many people, a good life is absolutely defined by an abundance of stuff. You don’t have to look too far to see that, of course, and along with trotting out the list of multi-millionaires who have themselves on exorbitant executive salaries and grant themselves bonuses that could all but bail out a small nation from economic ruin, just wander through a shopping mall and look at all the stuff people seem compelled to buy. Never mind that they’re likely buying much of it on credit cards that are almost always maxed out, sinking them ever deeper in debt; they—and make no mistake, “they” can include a whole bunch of “us”—they want that “stuff.”

But set aside for a moment those of us who are up to our throats in credit card debt, bank loans, and overdrafts, and turn your attention to the rich man in Jesus’ little parable. He’s not in debt, fears no creditors, and is in fact fabulously wealthy. Think of him as an Andrew Carnegie, an Aristotle Onassis, or maybe the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, or Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. Massively successful in the world in which he lived, and wealthy to a point that I can hardly begin to imagine.

“What should I do,” the rich man says, “for I have no place to store my crops?” He’s that successful, you see, but there’s no thought to paying attention to the poor neighbour down the road or to the old widow who picks up the bits of grain that fall from his carts—something very much allowed in the torah, by the way. He’s produced these crops from his fields, he’s now rich, and he likes it that way. And so 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.”

And here I turn to Robert Farrar Capon’s take on this parable.

“I will say to my life,” gloats the Fool, “life, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.” Jesus, in other words, is having the Fool do what we all do in our avarice: congratulate ourselves on our lifestyle whenever possible. He sets him up as a paradigm of our whole plausible, reasonable, right-handed, wrongheaded struggle to be masters of an operation that is radically out of our control—to be captains of a ship that, all our life long, has been taking on water faster than we can bail. And then Jesus delivers the Sunday punch: “but God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your life is required of you; then who will own all the stuff you’ve spent so much time preparing?” In a quiet last line, Jesus adds, ‘This is how it is with one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich in God’s sight [eis theon, literally ‘into God’] [W]e, who spend our whole lives in pursuit of wealth, come in the end only to the poverty of death. And we complain bitterly, unable to make head or tail of such a cruel reversal. (Capon, The Parables of Grace)

 Or at least a good number of us might “complain bitterly,” because at least some of us have turned a crucial corner through which we’ve learned that of all the things in the world worth living for, the accumulation of money and stuff is rather a dead end. I remember when I was at a national church meeting back in about 2009, after saint ben’s had published my little book, Come to the Table, reflecting our practice of communion. One of my colleagues wanted to purchase a copy, which commanded the princely sum of $7 to cover the cost of printing, but he handed me a twenty. As I fumbled for change, he said, “no, just keep it. When someone wants one and doesn’t have the money, just give it to them.” And then he stopped, and said, “the older I get, the more I realize that it is good to stop worrying and just be generous.” That little exchange imprinted itself on my imagination, and rather changed me.

Well, Jesus’ parable has a tough edge to it, as a good many of his parables often do. I think it is important to attend to where Paul lands with his teaching, as it gives breadth to how we might want to think about this matter of greed and of the path that leads away from it. He winds down this portion by saying, “Do not lie to one another,” which quickly segues into his insistence that as Christians they have already “stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.” That, at least, is the claim that has been placed upon them, even if the community still wrestles with these issues of greed and the like. But Paul is unrelenting in his insistence that they have already been transformed, and that they need to keep rising to that transformation. And so he writes,

In that renewal—in that transformation that you are still getting your heads and hearts around, in other words—there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

That’s the deepest Pauline vision, and it continues to call on us right up to this day. If you dare, you can tuck in your own rendition of Paul’s little list. Here’s an attempt…

In that renewal there is no longer Indigenous and Settler, Russian and Ukrainian, left wing and right wing, hungry and full, rich and poor; but Christ is all and in all!

Which is another way of saying that we are called beyond our cultural, social, and economic distinctions, and mandated to take the time and energy to actually care about one another.

May it begin to be so. Again and again and again. Amen.