The Rich Man (That’s Us)

A Sermon on Mark 10:17-27
Year B, 18 Pentecost, Proper 23

 

For thirty years Thomas Cannon was a postal worker. During that time rarely made more than $30,000 a year including overtime. What made Thomas Cannon unusual is the fact that over the last twenty-five of those years, he gave away $96,000 to various individuals and groups in need. Math has never been my forte, but I figure that comes to about $3,800 a year. On a salary of $30,000 a year!

Cannon said, "If people work hard to buy a Cadillac, nobody asks why. But if they give it to philanthropy, nobody understands."

In his entire life, Cannon, who died in 2005, never knew luxury. His preacher father died when Thomas was 3 years old. Although he received a degree in art education from Hampton Institute, Cannon opted for the steady salary of the post office to support his wife, Princetta, and their two sons. After serving in the Navy in World War II, Cannon settled into his post office job. The family lived in a tiny, kerosene-heated home in a neighborhood of Richmond that was poor even then and has since acquired a reputation as a drug marketplace. Cannon never gave a thought to luxuries: "We had food, we had clothes, we had all the basic necessities," he said. (Who needs $96,000?) Here was a man with a carefree and generous attitude toward money.

(From Parade Magazine, September 21, 1997, page 16)

Which brings us to this morning's gospel.A man ran up to Jesus and asked, "What must I do to inherit eternal life? I've followed the commandments to a “T” and led a blameless life. Surely, that's enough." Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said, "You lack one thing. Go, sell what you own, give your money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come follow me." In other words, “If you want heaven, if you want to start shaping your life in that direction now, if you want to point your heart toward your deepest joy; you lack one thing. Go, sell what you own, give your money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come follow me."

As if that weren't bad enough, after the man refused his offer, Jesus said, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." Ouch! It is one of those hard passages that begs to be played with so that it will say something other than what it seems to say. Surely Jesus didn't mean to say it is impossible for people with more than enough money to go to heaven. After all, that's you and me. We are the rich man. The rich people. Just by virtue of the fact that we live in the United States, let alone that we live in comfortable suburbs of a major city. By any standard, past or present, we are among the wealthy.

This gospel is hard for us to hear – and not for us only. The rich man was shocked. The disciples were perplexed and astonished. Ever since, people have found this a problematic text. Consequently, various ways have been proposed to interpret this passage in order to make it softer.

1) A particularly popular one is that the eye of the needle refers to a narrow gate in the city wall of Jerusalem. A camel, the story goes, could just squeeze through the gate after being relieved of its cargo. NO. There is no evidence of such a gate and the interpretation does not show up until the late middle ages when an imaginative monk put it in a commentary on the gospel.

2) The Greek word for camel is spelled like the Greek word for rope. A rope still won't fit through the eye of a needle, but it is less preposterous than a camel. NO. There is no evidence that the writer of the Gospel of Mark had a spelling problem or that Jesus did not pronounce his words clearly.

3) Jesus is only referring to those who trust in their money. NO. That’s not what it says. Look again. Jesus says, “It is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.” Someone who is rich. Period. John Wesley was probably right when he explained that, “[I]t is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for those who have riches not to trust in them.”

There’s no getting around it. Jesus said what he said and meant what he said. He was a master of hyperbole, the exaggerated image. The absurd image of a camel trying to get through the eye of a needle drives home a point. And the point is that there is something perilous, spiritually, about wealth. Like anything in our lives, money and wealth can be used as a means to praise and serve God and neighbor. Or it can be used to hide and shield us from God and others. The problem is money and wealth have a particular and powerful tendency toward the latter. Jesus suggests that the best thing we can do with our wealth is give as much of it away as we can.

The burden of wealth offers us great opportunities and responsibilities. It might or might not be that being wealthy is, in and of itself, sinful. But wealth and money are particularly dangerous to the soul. Money, along with the things it can get for us, is not neutral such that it can be used just as easily for God's kingdom as for anything else. No, money has a power of its own. It takes a good deal of spiritual discipline to have much of it and not let it seduce our hearts or intoxicate us.

Money is a lot like wine that way. You can get drunk on it and destroy your relationship with God and your neighbor. And just as many alcoholics deny they have a drinking problem, few of us are willing to admit that we have a money problem, that we have an attachment to our money and belongings that is dangerous to our souls and separates us from God.

You can use wine to get drunk. You can also use it to make Eucharist. The Eucharist is the particular place where we enter into communion with God and one another. Perhaps we can learn to see money eucharistically so it can also become a means of communion. How do we use our money eucharistically?

1) Remember Jesus is present with you. He is your true wealth -not your job, not your income, not your house. He is your security. He is your hope for the future. Begin to see everything else as revolving around him. The more we attach ourselves to Jesus, the more we can lose our attachment to money and stuff.

2) Trust in the power of God working in you to release you from the grip of money and

possessions. Like all addictions, this one is hard to overcome. But, Jesus assured his disciples and us that, though it is impossible for mortals, for God all things are possible.

3) Learn to see it as not an end in itself but a means to serve and encounter God. Every time we give, especially when we give until we feel it, we make room in our hearts for God’s Spirit to move in our lives and to draw us deeper into his heart and to fill with his life. Giving can become prayer and praise.

4) 'Eucharist' means 'thanksgiving'. Give thanks for al you are given. But, constantly remind yourself from whom it all comes and to whom it ultimately belongs. When we present our offering to the altar we say, "All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee." We can learn receive it with thanksgiving and pass it on in gratitude. Giving becomes a way of giving thanks, of making Eucharist.

That was the man's problem in the gospel. He had allowed himself to be deceived into believing his wealth was his own. When the real owner showed up and told him what to do with it, he was not prepared.

What if we began to imagine, to really believe, think, and act as though everything we have was on loan? A gift? Not only what we give but what we have left after we give. It's all God’s, so we are accountable for how we use all of it. The real question is not how much of my money will I give for God, but how much of God’s money do I need to keep for myself? What would God have us do with it. What if we really believed we would be held accountable?

This is a troubling passage. It is good for us to be trouble by it. Maybe it will shake us loose a bit from our attachment to money and wealth. But it does not have to be onerous or a burden. If we learn to understand our money eucharistically, it can be a sort of game. For example:

[Paraphrase the story humble Zacharias who challenged God, "Let us see who surpasses the other --Thou in sending blessings or I in scattering them! For Thou, Lord, are clearly the source of our riches and the giver of our livelihood."]

What if we at St. Barnabas made such a deal with God. What if, unlike the rich man in the Gospel, but like Thomas Cannon and Zacharius, we dared God to bless us faster than we can pass the blessings on–we who have already been blessed with so much? What would he do with us? What would he do with us–except fill us with himself. And fill us with joy beyond imagining. And lead us to eternal life.

Blessings are for Scattering

A story from the early (7th century) church apropos of this Sunday's Gospel (Mark 10:17-31):

 

I, [Leontius, Bishop of Neapolis on the island of Cyprus] all unworthy as I am, came up to Alexandria to revere the holy and victorious martyrs, Cyrus and John, and to enjoy their succor. While I was in Alexandria, I met with certain pious Christian men, and as we were conversing about biblical and other edifying narratives, a stranger came up to us asking alms, for, said he, 'I have only just been rescued from my captivity under the Persians'.

Now it chanced that not one of us sitting there had either a large coin or even any small change with us. A servant of one of our company happened to be with his master, he was a hot-water carrier at the baths, who received only three nomismata [a small amount of money] a year, and had a wife and two children. When the beggar was going away this man followed him quietly, took off a small silver cross he was wearing, and gave it to him, saying that besides that he had only a sixpence in the world.

Thus by chance, or rather through the good purpose of the all-wise God, I was privileged to see what he did, and deeply moved, I forthwith recounted it to the man sitting next to me, one Menas by name, a virtuous, God-fearing man who was also treasurer of the most Holy Church in the time of the glorious and ever-blessed Patriarch John.

He, seeing me astonished and full of praise for the man who had done this deed of charity, said to me: 'Do not be surprised, for he practices that virtue by tradition and from instruction.'

I replied, 'How so? For pity's sake enlighten me!"

He answered: 'He was servant to our most saintly, thrice blessed Patriarch John, and like a true son he has inherited his father's virtue. For the holy man once said to him, 'Humble Zacharias, be charitable, for then you have a promise from God through me, a miserable sinner, that neither during my lifetime, nor after my death, will God desert you.'

And this promise He keeps to the present day. For God sends him many blessings and of these he spends nothing save that which he distributes forthwith to the poor, almost reducing his own household to want. Men have often heard him say to God in exultation, 'Verily, verily, let us see who surpasses the other–Thou in sending blessings or I in scattering them! For Thou, Lord, are clearly the source of our riches and the giver of our livelihood.'"

 

From Three Byzantine Saints, Elizabeth Dawes and Norman H. Baynes, 208-209, (St. Vladimir's Press, 1948)

 

Caring for the Poor as Redemptive Liturgy

Following up on the last post and looking at the Gospel lesson for this Sunday about Lazarus and the Rich Man, I am reminded how seriously the early church took our responsibility to take care of the poor as an extension of its liturgy.

Liturgy (leitourgia) originally referred to work on behalf of the public, e.g., the wealthy would pay for public works and public religious festivals. In the New Testament, Christ is referred to as performing a leitourgia: “Christ has obtained a ministry [the Greek word is leitourgia - liturgy] which is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant it mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises.” (Heb. 8:6) Christ’s life of obedience, death on the cross, and resurrection is the Christian liturgy. It is public work done for the benefit of the people. The early church adopted the word to refer to its worship understood as participating in the one liturgy of Jesus.

But that worship was not understood as only what happened at church on Sunday morning. In her book, The Hungry are Dying, Bishops and Beggars in Roman Cappadocia, Susan R. Holman shows that in the early church,
"Almsgiving is regarded early as a redemptive leitourgia [liturgy]." p. 54.

Holman refers to Basil the Great who assures his audience that almsgiving is

the one action that would open to you the doors of heaven . . . . Do you realize that in giving your gold, your money, your fields, that is to say rocks and earth, you acquire life eternal? . . . . I know many who fast, pray, mourn and practice admirably the gratuitous forms of piety, but they do not give an obol to the outcasts. What good do the other virtues do them? They will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. p.108

Basil also asserted that, "as Adam brought in sin by eating evilly, so we ourselves if we remember the necessity and hunger of a brother, blot out his treacherous eating." p. 83

Here are three quotes from John Chrysostom's Second Sermon on Lazarus and the Rich Man, which can be found in On Wealth and Poverty:

[The Lord]settled the rich man opposite Lazarus in order that he might see the good of which he had deprived himself. "I sent", he says, "the poor man Lazarus to your gate to teach you virtue and to receive your love; you ignored this benefit and declined to use his assistance toward your salvation. Hereafter you shall use him to bring yourself a greater punishment and retribution." p. 48

Referring to a different parable (Luke 12:15-21) with a similar point, Chrysostom said,

When his [the rich man's] harvest was abundant, he said to himself, 'What shall I do? I shall pull down my barns and build larger ones.' There is nothing more wretched than such an attitude. In truth he took down his barns; for the safe barns are not walls, but the stomachs of the poor. p. 34

Like a lot of the early church preachers and theologians, Chrysostom asserted that our wealth is not our own:

Remember this without fail, that not to share our own wealth for the poor is theft from the poor and deprivation of their way of life; we do not possess our own wealth but theirs. If we have this attitude, we will certainly offer our money; and laying up great profit hereafter, we will be able to attain the good things which are to come, by the grace and kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ. p. 55

And here are some related quotes from the early church for which I unfortunately do not have citations:

"The price of the kingdom is the food you give to the poor who need it." - Leo the Great

"I know that God has given us the use of goods, but only as far as is necessary; and he has determined that the use be common. It is absurd and disgraceful for one to live magnificently and luxuriously when so many are hungry." - Clement of Alexandria

"Some think the Old Testament is stricter than the New, but they judge wrongly; they are fooling themselves. The old law did not punish the desire to hold onto wealth; it punished theft. But now the rich man is not condemned for taking the property of others; rather, he is condemned for not giving his property away." - Gregory the Great

Related post: Make Friends for Yourselves

Make Friends for Yourselves

A brief homily on Luke 16: 1 – 13

Jesus' parable in this morning’s gospel is notoriously one of the more difficult to understand. Is he commending dishonesty? Is he just talking about forgiveness? Just what is Jesus saying in this parable?

First of all, a word about parables. Parables are not one thing. “Parable” is a broad category. All parables use metaphor to mess with your imagination to reorient it toward Jesus and the kingdom of God. Some of them are allegories in which one thing stands for another. Others are more like stories with a moral. Others are similar to proverbs. Still others are like riddles, or even like Zen koans, that leave you pondering. Many, including today’s, have an element of humor. And some are more like a joke in which the point is not so much the set-up as it is the punch line.

The parable before us today is of the last variety. It is like a joke with a punch line. The story itself is not really the point. People get hung up when they try to turn it into an allegory in which "the rich man" represents someone and "the manager" represents someone else, etc. It is not that kind of parable. People also get hung up trying to figure out why Jesus seems to commend this scoundrel of a manager as morally exemplary. But, it is not that kind of parable. The story itself is just a somewhat ridiculous and humorous set-up for the punch line. And the punch line packs quite a punch.

And what is the punch line? It comes in verse 9: “And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes. “ I told you it packed a punch. The manager dealt shrewdly with what he had in a worldly way. If we are children of light, we will deal wisely with what we have to make friends who will welcome us into the eternal homes. What does that mean?

1.Dishonest wealth: I think the King James Version has it better when it translates the adjective as “unrighteous” rather than “dishonest”. We have come to think of money and wealth as a good thing or at least morally neutral. But, it has not always been so. Jesus, and a broad and long tradition following him, sees money with great ambivalence. It has spiritual power and that power is dangerous. You cannot have much of it without that spirit starting to work on your soul. So, the best thing to do is have as little has you can. So, what to do with it?

2. Make friends: It is deep in the tradition that giving alms to the poor is basic to faithfulness. Give and give and give. It is not only a faithful thing to do. It might just be salvific.

3. They may welcome you into the eternal homes: Shaped as we are by the Reformation, we are used to thinking that all you need is faith. But, it is hard to pay attention to Jesus (or to Paul for that matter) and come to the conclusion that it does not matter what we actually do. And the early church was clear that what we do matters and matters eternally. Giving alms to the poor is one of the things that matter. You all know I am big on grace. Grace is indeed the fundamental reality for Christians. But, Jesus will not allow us the complacency of cheap grace. Who will welcome us to our heavenly homes? The poor whom God loves. We would do well to make friends with them now.

Everything before verse 9 is set-up for that discomforting punch line. Everything after is an elaboration of the point.

Brothers and Sisters, let us make friends for ourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome us into the eternal homes.

***

I did not include this in Sunday’s sermon, because I’ve shared it at St. Barnabas several times before. It is a story attributed to John the Merciful (early 7th century). It makes the point well:

There was a certain man, Peter Telenearius, who, in order to get rid of the poor, threw rocks at them. One day when he was again surrounded by them, he had no stone handy, so he grabbed a loaf of bread and threw it at the head of one of them. Later he became sick and saw a vision in which his deeds were being weighed in the balance of divine justice. All his sins were on one side of the balance and on the other side was the loaf of bread thrown at the head of the poor. It had become acceptable to Jesus Christ as an act of mercy.

Of course, alms alone are not enough. We must also address the moral and systemic issues that cause too many to be poor. But that must never let us off the hook of giving of our own wealth for the sake of the poor. And for the sake of our own souls.

[Addendum: Here is a follow-up post on Caring for the Poor as Redemptive Liturgy]