Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
“Take care to guard against all greed … one’s life does not consist of possessions …. For where your treasure is, you heart will be also.” Lk 12:15 & 34
If you knew the world would end one month from today, what would you do right now?
To answer this question, Jesus tells a story about a man so immersed in his possessions that he lost all perspective.
Here’s another story like that – only this one is disguised as humor:
There was a man who was very, very rich. So much, in fact, that he decides that he needs to protect all his wealth in the life hereafter. So he hires a lawyer to bring a lawsuit against heaven.
Heaven, of course, recognizes no lawsuits, but to humor this guy when he appears at the heavenly gates, St. Peter allows him to bring one suitcase with him. The guy believes he’s outsmarted St. Peter, though, because he shows up with a huge “suitcase” – eight feet long, six feet wide and five feet deep.
St. Peter takes one look at it and says: “That’s not a suitcase.”
The guy responds: “You didn’t say anything about size.”
St. Peter rolls his eyes and says, “Well, I still have to open it and see what’s in it.”
St. Peter then opens the trunk and finds hundreds of bars of pure gold. St. Peter then looks at the guy, and with a smirk on his face, says, “You die, and get a chance to bring all your wealth to heaven, and you choose to bring pavement?”
What this story says, of course, is that everything the man treasured so dearly ended up amounting to nothing.
That’s also the gist of the story Jesus tells in today’s gospel too. He knows that money is important to us … that we need it to house and feed and clothe our family.
But the questions Jesus asks are: How important is our wealth? Is it so central that we allow it to drive the bus of our lives?
Notice the man in today’s gospel shows no concern for any of the peasants who worked the land that brought him all his wealth. Instead the only pronoun that comes out of his mouth is “I”: “I will tear down …. I will store …. I will say to myself.” The rich man has no recognition that he has become a walled-in human being, a prisoner of a way of thinking that dehumanizes him. He lives only to accumulate and to hoard.
As a consequence, he’s able to increase his wealth, but in doing so only impoverishes his own life. He’s able to amass goods, but is incapable of attracting friendships, of generating solidarity with others, of experiencing love.
Sadly, there is way too much of this kind of thinking in the world we live in. 22% of American children live in poverty. 80% of the people on planet earth live on less than $10 a day. Schoolteachers average $43,000 per year; numerous professional athletes are paid millions. Median family income in the USA is less than $50,000 per year.
Something’s out of whack – something like a sense of communal sharing.
We all are aware of Jesus’ insistence that, like the case of the rich man in today’s gospel, our lives can take a sudden turn at any moment. For him, it was his death.
But there are many other ways in which our lives can be dramatically altered: a phone call in the middle of night informing us that someone close to us has been involved in a life-threatening accident; or the unexpected pink slip attached to our paycheck; or a spouse that announces they are leaving a marriage; or any tragedy that is almost too difficult to bear.
We’ve all experienced something dramatic and terrifying.
So, back to our initial question:
If you knew the world would end one month from today, what would you do right now?
My guess is that you would spend every minute contacting as many people as you could to tell them one or all of three things: “I’m sorry,” “I forgive you,” or “I love you.” Because after all is said and done, it’s our connections with others and with our God that bring us lasting happiness. Nothing else does it.
This is the message Jesus is trying to get through to us in today’s gospel story:
Live now what matters forever. Live for what lasts. Live for what will endure.
Or, as Jesus puts it in his last words on this matter:
“Where your treasure is, your heart will be also.”
Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.
11809194l.1
7/28/16
