Rivetti's Blog

Are we all quoting Wall Street in our sermons this week? How can we pass up the “greed is good” speech when we’ve been told in Colossians that greed is idolatry, and in Luke that we are to guard against all forms of greed?

Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind ….” Gordon Gekko, the character played by Michael Douglas in the 1987 film Wall Street, is back – the long-awaited sequel played this spring at the Cannes Film Festival, and we will be treated to its release sometime soon. As in the mid-1980s the nation is once more reeling from the manipulation of financial markets; this time it is even more disastrous, unrelenting, and cataclysmic. This time, even more people are in danger of losing all that they have – a fearful situation that often produces in us a reaction of fear, a reaction of hoarding, of greed.

Some time ago I participated in a random phone survey run by the Barna Group, the evangelical research organization ,that asked about the church’s response in the face of the current economic uncertainty. Over the years, The Barna Group has documented in its multi-year tracking surveys of American attitudes, certain basics have become more important: health and a balanced life, financial stability, success, paying bills, having a good life. What seems to have lost ground in the top priorities has been faith itself. But when the young woman from Barna called me, she wanted to know how our congregation was responding to the loss of security and potential financial catastrophe. Were we reducing the amount of money available for programming? Were we deferring projects and looking for alternate sources of funding?  Or was our response “C. – the congregation responds by seeing this as an opportunity to share hope and good news through new outreach programs”  In the face of the Barna surveys, in the face of the latest incarnation of Gordon Gekko, the other option was to respond as if we had heard Jesus speaking the beatitudes: blessed are you hungry now, for you will be filled; blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Greed, we hear in the letter to the Christians in Colossae, is idolatry. Idolatry as in the worship of images – or, as Paul tells us elsewhere, as choosing a piece of the created world and mistaking it for the Creator. Giving to an object – a statue, a building, a text, or, as we hear today, the tokens of exchange – the honor, service and devotion that belong only to the one who is at the source of all that is holy.  So we who have been formed by God’s word know that greed is not good. It caps the list of behaviors we are to cast aside, to put to death, now that we have been raised in Christ: a list that is dominated by sexual greed: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire – the ways in which the goodness of our sexual nature is perverted into selfishness, abuse, violence, turning our fellow humans into objects – connecting that with the idea of greed as insatiable hunger for things – not for what they are capable of doing, but merely for having them, for taking possession of things that are merely here for us to share, an inheritance and gift we have no right to claim as ours.

Jesus tells the story of the rich fool in response to a person in the crowd asking him to intervene in a family struggle over inheritance. And like the good rabbi he is, of course he begins his response to the question with yet another question, “Friend, who set me to be judge or arbiter over you?” Who indeed?  Is this not the Son of God? But in response to haggling out the terms of the will and the accurate assignment of proportions according to law, we get the response that God would speak. One that warns us about “those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” What might being rich towards God look like? Is it something like that response “c” on the Barna survey – responding to the threat of financial shortfall with increased joy at the prospect of sharing the good news?

On the face of it, the rich man in Jesus’ story isn’t foolish. The wisdom of the proverbs and Ecclesiastes have taught him that storing up goods so that our old age may be quiet and secure, and our children provided for. On last night’s news there was the story of the Tuttle Farm in the northeast – the last heir of this land that has been in the family since the 17^th century is hanging it up. As he said in his interview, at his age he had a right to sell the farm to a developer so he could sit on his porch and sip a glass of iced tea – like anyone else who has worked hard for 45 years. He has worked hard and deserves his rest. The rich man in Jesus’ story has worked hard and wants to store up his goods in even bigger barns so that he can retire in comfort, eat, drink and be merry.

No, what is foolish is the absurd idea that the yield should be hoarded into ever bigger barns – almost like burying the good fortune, hiding it away. Like the unworthy slave in another story Jesus tells, this man wants to sit on the good yield of his land, as if that’s all it’s about, the accumulation of more and more possessions.

There was another story about a family farm in the news yesterday – this one in our local paper – about a group that has purchased a family farm from the last heir who had been considering selling the property to a developer. This group has instead banded together to form a conservancy with the land, to prevent its being developed, to preserve it as a farm in perpetuity. In agreeing to this new arrangement, the heir took less money than he would have received from the developer, but he is sharing in a project that will not only keep the inheritance of farming alive for many more generations, but will preserve more resources in the form of water and soil and air for the neighboring community.

A new life in Christ does not mean we are to strip ourselves of property, though sometimes it might be easier to do that. It does not mean that we are called to forego the gifts of life, our createdness, our humanity, our family, our good health. But it does mean that we are forever in neighborly relationship, called to richness towards God. It does mean that we must always see our goods as part of an inheritance, an inheritance that we must tend, nurture, and share.

How do we see the vast opportunity to share good news in this time of financial insecurity? Look at our generous response in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti earlier this year; look at the ongoing efforts of our Social Justice Outreach Ministry Team to forge a deeper relationship between this parish and the people of Haiti. Look at our elders who gather the cast-off items of the community and transform them into cash to aid our neighbors and provide resources for the formation of our youth, and to tend the inheritance of this place for those who will come after us. Our sharing of land and water with the Backyard Harvest to grow fresh produce for those who visit our food banks.

How has this financial crisis affected your life? How are you touched by depleted stocks? By loss of jobs or housing? Each of us knows someone who has lost a job, is losing a house, is facing financial hardship. How will we respond? With fear, with greed, with hoarding all our things so that we can be secure? Or by reaching out our hands in generosity, solidarity, and hope, clothed in the new raiment that is Jesus Christ, who transcends all barriers, who knocks down the walls we erect to keep others out, because in Christ, we are all fabulously rich toward God