Sung Eucharist and Matins, Christchurch Priory, 4th August 2019
Ecclesiastes 1.2,12-14; 2.18-23
Colossians 3.1-11
Luke 12.13-21
It happens all too often, sadly. There’s been a family falling out over money. One son hasn’t got his fair share of the inheritance, or what he thinks is his fair share, and so calls out from the crowd for Jesus to sort things out. But Jesus isn’t interested in playing the role of judge in a family spat. Instead, he drills down to what he knows to be the heart of the matter, giving everybody who’s gathered around him this stark warning:
‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.’ Imagine we’re in the crowd. We turn and nod to each other, saying, ‘Yup, that’s true. Greed. It can be a real problem. Not that I’m greedy myself, you understand. But you know… what’s his name. Yeah, exactly… now that’s someone who’s really greedy…’
But Jesus hasn’t finished. He continues his warning with these words. ‘One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’ And then as now you can hear a pin drop. Because everybody’s thinking, [lean in], ‘What does he mean exactly by abundance?’
And it’s a good question. How much is enough? Last week we heard Jesus teach his disciples how to pray. He taught us to ask Our Father to ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ This echoes the story of the Israelites when they received the manna, the food from heaven, so they wouldn’t starve as they journeyed through the wilderness. You’ll remember they only got what they needed for each day, no more, no less. Those who tried to put some away for the next day found it turned rotten.
So it’s no surprise that Jesus answers our unspoken question about abundance by telling us a story about a rich man who had a bumper crop with more food than he could possibly consume.
Notice that throughout the story, the rich man is totally self-centred. He’s always talking to himself. Always thinking about himself. ‘I’ll tear down my barns and build new ones and store all my grain and all my goods.’ My, my, my. Not once does he stop to thank God for what’s happened. Nor does he think to share the bumper crop with those who have little to eat.
Many years later, the early church father, St John Crysostom, said that the only barns we need we already have: the empty stomachs of the poor. But the rich man isn’t thinking of the poor. Instead, with all the food tucked away safely in his brand new barns, he says to his soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years, so relax, eat, drink, be merry!’
For the rich man, there is no God nor a duty to care for the poor—not even a self-interested pragmatism gets a look in. He hasn’t even realised what Ecclesiastes knew well, that whatever pleasures life affords you, we will all of us die. All the money we’ve earned and tucked away, we can’t take a penny of it with us. And whilst we may comfort ourselves with handing on our money to those who come after us (and remember it was a family dispute over inheritance that prompted Jesus to tell this story), again, as Ecclesiastes makes clear, you have no idea whether that money will actually be spent wisely or just frittered away.
But then in a heartbeat, everything changes. God shows up. ‘You fool!’ God says, ‘This very night your life is being demanded of you.’ The rich man had completely forgotten or never understood that life itself is a gift. And all the food in the world, all the money, all the abundance of possessions, none of it will be of any use or comfort when we’re dead.
With that Jesus turns to the crowd and tells them, ‘So it is for those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’ And this isn’t an isolated bit of Jesus’ teaching. In fact, throughout the gospels, Jesus makes clear that it’s a choice. It’s either God or wealth. Only one can occupy the top spot in our lives, which is what Paul is on about in his letter to the churches in Colossae when he says that greed is idolatry. This is when make wealth our functional God, mistakenly looking to it to provide us with security, identity and self-worth.
Now it may be that, living as we do in one of the richest countries the world has ever known, you hear this parable of the rich fool and Jesus’ teaching about greed, possessions and treasure, with a conflicted heart. If you’re like me, you want the phone, the big TV, the dishwasher, the fridge that spits out ice cubes—ah heck, forget the fridge, let’s have a whole new kitchen with a fancy oven and whilst we’ve got the builders in, let’s get them to do that loft extension we’ve always talked about—ah but builders, they’re always such trouble, they never turn up when they say they’re going to, it’s exhausting. Better book another holiday, go on a cruise or something. Sit back and relax, eat, drink… hang on, that sounds familiar…
What makes it so hard to figure out what abundance is, is that we think our desires for these things come from within us. But I’m persuaded that that’s not actually the case. The French Catholic anthropologist Réné Girard, who I’ve mentioned before, argues that what’s going on instead is that we desire what we see others desire. The object that we desire, and it can be anything, is only desirable because we’ve seen someone else desire it first —and this person is usually someone we admire, or we want to emulate, or whom we identity with.
This dynamic is called mimesis. We unconsciously imitate each other’s desires. This is because we are creatures who imitate. And in many ways imitation is obviously a good thing—it’s how we learn to speak, how we learn to play football or the piano, ride a bicycle or drive a car—but it also has this dangerous side. There’s this inexorable pull to desire what we see others desiring. It starts from earliest of ages—you only have to look at the child who wants that one toy, and only that one toy, that the other child is already playing with, in spite of there being a whole pile of toys around them.
Advertising relies on this dynamic, of course. But it’s there within our everyday human interactions, as well, all throughout our lives.
And this helps explain why it is so hard to judge where the line is between just having possessions and having an abundance of possessions. Between wanting the good things in life and wanting so much of them that, without realising, we’ve become greedy. It’s because our point of reference changes depending on whom we admire or whom we identify with from amongst those we socialise and work with (as well as those we don’t know but see on the TV or on social media). Unwittingly, we imitate them and their desires become our desires. The phone, the clothes, the car, the house, the holiday, whatever it may be that we see them desiring, we too find ourselves desiring. And vice versa, of course.
If this way of understanding desire is true, then as individual members of the church, the Body of Christ, we have a choice before us. We can either imitate the desires of the world around us, or we can let the desires of our hearts be shaped into the desires of God’s heart.
You see, the thing is we’re always going to have our desires shaped by the desires of others. What matters is who that other is. If it’s God the Holy Spirit shaping our desires, then by being part of the church, we will imitate each other, and the desires we’re imitating together slowly transform into the desires of Our Heavenly Father, the same desires for the world that we see embodied in Jesus.
But if it’s the desires of the world around us that are shaping our desires, so that our desires as Christians are no different from everyone else’s, then it’s as if God has been written out of the story. And if that’s the case, then functionally, we’re no longer being the church.
Working out who is actually shaping our desires is a lifelong process. Our young people with us this morning, they’re having to figure all this out as well. And it’s made even harder for them with social media which is driven by mimesis, this process of imitating what others desire. But it’s not just them, it runs all the way through life.
So, every time you find yourself really wanting something, ask yourself, am I desiring this because it is obviously what God desires and so I should spend my money or apportion my wealth accordingly?
Or am I desiring this because I’ve seen someone else who wants this or who has it, who’s got that car, been on that cruise, is a member of that club, whatever it may be?
All the while remembering that we have a mutual responsibility here, because what we desire will be imitated and desired in turn by others.
If your heart sinks a little, like mine does, when I ask myself that question, we do well to remember this parable of the rich fool who had forgotten both God and the poor. It’s a hard story to hear but it needs to be in order to grab our attention and help us remember Jesus’ warning: ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’
And then when you’re feeling the way that I know many of us, myself included, are feeling right now, there’s only one way out. Prayer. Something like this:
Father God, please give us the Holy Spirit so that the desires of our hearts become the desires of Your Heart. We ask this in the name of your Son who lived out your desires amongst us and who desires to do so again through us today. Amen.