Col. 3:1-11; Lk. 12:13-21
'Our lives do not belong to us,' it is often said, especially in pious circles; and people find that very hard to accept, especially in an individualistic society like ours. Perhaps we could nuance this a bit.
Did Christ not say to his disciples, "Love your neighbour as yourself." (Mk. 12:31)?
Perhaps a better statement would be: ‘our lives do not belong to us alone.’ Our life is given and led by God, a life led for the good of others and ourselves. That balance is important and allowed.
This isn’t meant to be fatalistic, but trusting and reassuring, loved and kept safe, in connection, even intimate. Life, simply because God is interested in us and appreciates us to the fullest, even when we don't, or at least not enough. In other words, we’re all set free and justified, have received salvation, free of charge, by grace through faith because of Christ alone, so that we can use our time and energy and wealth to serve our neighbour. God arranges the hereafter so that we can care about the here and now.
Here we arrive at the crux, the pivotal moment, between 'theory' and 'practice', which is a recurrent theme for the readings in this half of the Church year: how is this life, given so lavishly, transformed into a life of service and ministry that is fruitful rather than rich, and produces fruits rather than wealth?
Does this mean that having wealth is bad?
Perhaps that depends on the type of wealth we're talking about. Jesus did have a few radical things to say about wealth and money.
Do you remember the camel and the eye of the needle (eg Mt. 19:24): he’s talking about the sheer impossibility of a rich person attaining eternity. Or Jesus meeting the rich young man (eg Mt. 19:16-30), who doesn’t seem to have been able to come into contact, in relationship, with the other, in this case the poor; he preferred to retire to his safe luxury cocoon. Or when Jesus mentions rust and moths that consume.
Service and ministry sometimes involve risks, not necessarily physical risks, but the demand to undergo a change of mentality, a change of heart.
So is it bad to be rich?
There’s nothing wrong with working hard and saving up and enjoying what you’ve earned; Christ himself also enjoyed life very much and very often.
But consider the rich man in our Gospel reading this morning. When we read the text carefully, two important things stand out:
1/ The man had accumulated all that wealth -and let’s face it, he probably hadn’t worked for it himself, but his slaves and servants had- but still he wanted, coveted, more and more, bigger barns for example;
2/ The man had accumulated and saved up all that wealth, but nowhere in the text does he seem to intend to enjoy any of it, or share the wealth, neither with relatives, let alone with the stranger, the neighbour, the poor.
His priority was only his own warped desire to pile up material things, perishable things, a life turned in on itself, separated from one's neighbour, from God’s other children. The rich man had all that abundance and it seems that it didn’t even occur to him to share this rich life, as if he heard no calling but his own.
Unfortunately, we all fail to share our physical wealth. Unfortunately, we often also fail to share our spiritual and religious wealth. People have the built-in instinct to jealously guard everything they own, including spirituality. Humans have a built-in instinct to think that sharing means losing out. Just like money and time and energy, many find it very difficult to share God with others, especially the stranger. But as Christians, as people of faith, we are called to know better. Who then is that neighbour, that poor man, that stranger? Paul writes,
In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!
This means that every human being, and more broadly speaking, all of creation, every living being, is part of our ministry, of our sharing of the fruits. Just as we ourselves can be served by them. And we’ll do incredible good things with that, and make a lot of mistakes too. Yet our calling, our vocation, remains: our lives