Proper 13/Pentecost 11/Ordinary Time 18
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VII, Cycle C
Object:
Theme For The Day
Many of us are facing a growing clutter problem, one that's not only physical but spiritual.
Old Testament Lesson
Hosea 11:1-11
God, The Heartsick Parent, Loves The Wayward Israel
In this passage, God takes on the persona of a heartsick parent, addressing the wayward Israel. Like a parent called to the emergency room to rescue a drug-addicted, runaway child, God seesaws back and forth between anger and gentle caring. The Lord recalls, in poignant imagery, the early episodes of this child's life, like teaching him to walk, sweeping him up in a loving embrace: "I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them" (v. 4). In verses 6-7, God the parent turns stern again, vowing retribution for Israel. But then, in verses 8-9, God again turns gentle, crying, "How can I hand you over, O Israel? ... my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger...." In verses 9-10, Hosea is again speaking, warning Israel to beware of God, who "roars like a lion."
New Testament Lesson
Colossians 3:1-11
Put Earthly Passions To Death
Paul now makes the transition from the didactic (teaching) section of his letter to the hortatory (moral advice) section: "Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God" (vv. 2-3). Because Christians have already died to this earthly life, we are to put to death anything within us that belongs to it: "fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry)" (v. 5). Sinful speech is singled out for special attention: "anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language," as well as lying (vv. 8-9). In words parallel to his better known "new creation" teaching of Galatians 3:27-28, Paul urges the Colossians to "clothe yourselves with the new self": "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!" (v. 11).
The Gospel
Luke 12:13-21
Parable Of The Rich Fool
As scholars of the Law of God, rabbis were sometimes called upon to serve as judges in minor legal disputes. This is what happens in this incident, as a man comes up to Jesus and asks, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me" (v. 13). Jesus' first response is to dismiss the case: "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" (v. 14). Helping a petitioner untangle a complicated probate question is not Jesus' idea of what he has been placed on this earth to do. He has more important concerns. Rather than addressing the legal question directly, Jesus decides to turn it into a teaching moment for all who are listening: "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions" (v. 15). He amplifies this teaching, then, by telling the Parable of the Rich Fool. A spectacularly successful farmer has yet another bumper crop, but he has a problem: his barns are already full. So he decides to tear down his barns and build even larger ones. With the harvest safely stowed away, he resolves to relax and enjoy his affluence -- but God interrupts his reverie, informing him that he is going to die that very night: "And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" (v. 20). "So it is," Jesus concludes, "with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God" (v. 21). This parable is a perennially difficult one for our culture, for we have been conditioned to value thrift, hard work, and savings. The successful farmer embodies all these virtues. Yet, when we read the story from the viewpoint of a subsistence economy, it becomes clear that the farmer already has, stored up in his old barns, far more than he will ever need. It is his act of building new barns, rather than distributing the surplus to the poor, that is sinful. When is enough finally enough?
Preaching Possibilities
Jesus tells a parable about a man with a clutter problem -- only his problem is not cluttered consumer items -- as so many of us have to deal with -- but grain. We do happen to know the circumstance that leads Jesus to tell this parable. A man comes up to him, saying, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me" (12:13). The text doesn't tell us so, but it's likely this man is a younger brother. His older brother, who's got charge of their parents' estate, has evidently declined to cut him in on the family inheritance -- something that's technically his legal privilege to decide, but which most observers, then or now, would agree is mean-spirited and selfish.
Jesus, wisely, refuses to step into the middle of this family spat: "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" (Jesus doesn't want to be put into the position of having to declare which brother's greed has more merit than the other's.) But he does issue a rather stark warning about the danger of greed. After that, he tells them this parable.
It seems there's a certain man -- a farmer -- who has had an exceptionally good harvest. His barns are already full to the rafters, for the previous year evidently produced a bumper crop as well. So what does this lucky farmer do, but pull down his existing barns and build even bigger ones? This fellow's so tickled with his good fortune that he starts talking to himself: "Soul" -- he says to himself -- "you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry!"
But then Jesus surprises us with this ominous note: "But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God" (12:20-21).
Storing up treasure for himself is exactly what this fortunate farmer has done. "And what's wrong with that?" most people would be quick to ask. Gotta have a savings plan. Gotta have a few investments -- a nest egg for the future, a hedge against inflation!
Yet Jesus is clearly talking about more than the ordinary amount of savings. This farmer already has a full barn -- on most farms, a barn would provide enough storage capacity to see its owner through just about any famine. One can only wonder what this exceedingly cautious farmer said to himself at the end of the last growing season -- after he'd filled his barn up to the roof. Did he say, "Now I can relax, for a change, and not worry about the future -- thanks be to God"?
If he said that then, how swiftly he forgets now! How easily his capacity for anxiety is slowly, imperceptibly, adjusted upward! When he sees this year's bumper crop of newly harvested grain, piled high on the ground outside his already full barn, he could have said to himself, "What does it matter? I've already got enough. I'd better give this latest harvest away!" But, no -- over the past year, quietly and insidiously, greed has done its dirty work, insinuating itself deep inside the farmer's soul. It's caused him to forget the meaning of the word "enough." And so he builds himself a bigger barn.
The Old Testament -- the scripture Jesus and his listeners recognize as authoritative -- demonstrates a strong ideal of sharing. This is often overlooked by those who profess to teach the Bible. When farm fields are harvested, there is a clear instruction to purposely use an inefficient farming method -- to actually leave some of the harvest lying out in the field (Leviticus 19:9).
The practice of going back into a farm field to scavenge the leftovers is known as "gleaning." It's what keeps Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi alive, when they come back into the land of Israel after losing both their husbands and their children, and therefore sinking into poverty. All over Israel are farm fields that have been inefficiently harvested -- on purpose. These two women pick up stalks of wheat lying on the ground that the reapers have left behind. Off to the edges of the fields, Ruth and Naomi rejoice to discover entire plants that haven't been harvested at all. These the farmers have intentionally left, free gifts for people such as them. It's probably the oldest example in human history of public assistance.
What if those farmers had decided to harvest it all, and simply build bigger barns to store the surplus? Ruth and Naomi would have starved.
A new sort of occupation to emerge in recent years is that of "personal organizer." Some of them charge as much as a hundred dollars an hour. What these people do is come into a home, interview the people who live there about lifestyle and needs, and proceed to suggest organizing "solutions" -- everything from helping these clutter-challenged people throw out that lifetime collection of National Geographic magazines to assembling more efficient storage racks for the bedroom closets. One personal organizer calls herself a "clutter therapist." She recognizes that the problem of clutter is not so much the clutter itself, as the mental state that makes it difficult to throw things away.
The clutter problem we have -- as a society -- is something no personal organizer consultant can help us solve. People like that could help us straighten out a messy attic or basement, or deal with a file cabinet stuffed full to overflowing. If they're really good, they might even help us understand, psychologically, what makes it so hard to loosen our grip on all the junk. But as to the other, more general sort of clutter -- the ever-increasing expectation of what the word "success" means, and how much is truly enough -- only a soul-renewing experience can help us deal with that.
"You're going to die," God says to the farmer in the parable, "tonight. What good will your brand-new barn, filled to overflowing, be to you then? You can't take it with you." God calls the rich man a "fool."
Notice that's very different from what anybody else would think to call him. Jesus gives us not a single hint, in this parable, that the farmer has been anything but a righteous, upright, hard-working citizen. He's plowed his fields, planted his seed, kept the weeds at bay -- why, he's probably followed every tip the University of Judea agricultural extension agent gave him. There's no suggestion he ever took advantage of his hired hands, or colluded with other farmers to form a grain cartel. This guy's done everything right -- but God tells him that, in the most important accounting, he's done everything wrong.
Finishing off his parable with a sort of moral, Jesus observes, "So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God" (12:21). Jesus never says it's wrong to be rich. What he does say is that there's a distinction between ordinary riches and being "rich toward God."
So what does it mean to be "rich toward God"? Preacher and social activist William Sloane Coffin has a pretty good handle on it. Coffin once observed, "There are two ways to be rich: make a lot of money or have few needs." Those who are rich toward God keep their needs under control. With many of us, our perceived needs continue to grow explosively throughout life. The threshold of what constitutes "enough" is ever-expanding. It's a kind of soul inflation -- and for many people in our culture, it's just as much a daily fact of life as the economic kind. Those who are truly rich toward God know how to say "no" to advertising. They don't think those neighbors, the Joneses, are people they need to "keep up with," especially. When the barn is full, they seldom feel the urge to go out and build a bigger one.
So how do we solve a clutter problem? Some would say we've got to attack it from the bottom up: cleaning out the attic or the garage one dusty old box at a time. The only problem with that advice is that most of us are oh-so-easily distracted. We're likely to get bogged down sometime between the first box and the second. We quickly lose the ability to see the forest for the trees.
The only way to attack a clutter problem is not from the bottom up, but from the top down. We've got to cultivate our ability to see the big picture: to see ourselves for the rich people we are -- compared to the rest of the world, anyway -- and to be absolutely ruthless in asking ourselves what it is we truly need.
Prayer For The Day
Teach us, Lord,
every day,
that gentle discipline
of letting go.
Our fingers grasp tightly
the things we fear to lose:
but they are only things, after all.
They are created by you,
that we might enjoy them for a time
then pass them on to others.
May that act of passing them on
begin, for us, here and now.
May we never again seek to merely store
that which you have meant to be enjoyed. Amen.
To Illustrate
Stuff is important. You gotta take care of your stuff. You gotta have a place for your stuff. Everybody's gotta have a place for their stuff. That's what life is all about, tryin' to find a place for your stuff! That's all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time. A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you're taking off in an airplane. You look down and see all the little piles of stuff. Everybody's got his own little pile of stuff. And they lock it up! That's right! When you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. 'Cause they always take ... the good stuff; the shiny stuff; the electronic stuff. So when you get right down to it, your house is nothing more than a place to keep your stuff ... while you go out and get ... more stuff. 'Cause that's what this country is all about. Trying to get more stuff. Stuff you don't want, stuff you don't need, stuff that's poorly made, stuff that's overpriced. Even stuff you can't afford! Gotta keep on gettin' more stuff. Otherwise someone else might wind up with more stuff. Can't let that happen. Gotta have the most stuff....
-- George Carlin, Brain Droppings (New York: Hyperion, 1997), pp. 36-37
***
The truth is that life in America has improved so much in the past century that we have forgotten what it is to struggle. We hear whines that schools are overcrowded today. Actually, the ratio of students to teachers has gone from 30:1 in 1955 to 19:1 now. We hear whining about pay. Yet total compensation, adjusted for inflation, has tripled since 1947, and the cost of necessities has plummeted. Food in 1950 represented about one third of a family's total expenditures; today, it's one seventh....
America's Gross Domestic Product is greater than the next five countries combined. Our unemployment rate [of around five and a half percent, at the time the article was written] -- while higher than it was before the 2001 recession -- is still lower than the average U.S. rate in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Unemployment in France is 9.6 percent. In Germany, 10.4 percent. And we're complaining!
Two thirds of Americans now own their own homes. We have more cars, more children in college, more cultural institutions. We work shorter hours ... On the whole, we're more prosperous than any other nation in history -- and far better off than we were in the past.
-- James K. Glassman, "Whine, the Beloved Country!" The American Enterprise, June 2004, p. 48
***
When political pundits speak today of Americans "voting their values," they usually mean one thing by that phrase: questions of sexual ethics. Yet what is conspicuously absent, from most so-called moral discussions, is any mention whatsoever of that other great moral topic: money.
In the Bible, money issues are just as much a part of morality as questions of sexual ethics. Here are a few verses that make this clear:
Be sure of this, that no fornicator or impure person, or one who is greedy (that is, an idolater), has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.
-- Ephesians 5:5
Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry).
-- Colossians 3:5
Why is it that those who are looking to uphold a so-called "biblical morality" are so quick to quote the first part of such verses, but completely ignore the second? We have it right there, in black and white: it couldn't be more clear than it is in these two verses. The Bible considers greed to be just as serious a moral failing as sexually licentious behavior. Yet we Americans conveniently drop greed from these lists of moral failings. We believe that a bigger barn is always better.
***
For greed can have a very pretty and attractive cover for its shame; it is called provision for the body and the needs of nature. Under this cover greed insatiably amasses unlimited wealth. But if the heart expects and puts its trust in divine favor, how can a person be greedy and anxious? Such people are absolutely certain that they are acceptable to God: therefore, they do not cling to money; they use their money cheerfully and freely for the benefit of their neighbor. In fact, in this commandment it can clearly be seen that all good works must be done in faith and proceed from faith. People are generous because they trust God and never doubt but that they will always have enough. In contrast, people are covetous and anxious because they do not trust God. Now faith is the master workman and the motivating force behind the good works of generosity, just as it is in all the other commandments.
-- Martin Luther, commenting on Exodus 20:15 ("Thou shalt not steal") in "Treatise on Good Works" (1520), Luther's Works Vol. 44, (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress), pp. 106-109
Many of us are facing a growing clutter problem, one that's not only physical but spiritual.
Old Testament Lesson
Hosea 11:1-11
God, The Heartsick Parent, Loves The Wayward Israel
In this passage, God takes on the persona of a heartsick parent, addressing the wayward Israel. Like a parent called to the emergency room to rescue a drug-addicted, runaway child, God seesaws back and forth between anger and gentle caring. The Lord recalls, in poignant imagery, the early episodes of this child's life, like teaching him to walk, sweeping him up in a loving embrace: "I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them" (v. 4). In verses 6-7, God the parent turns stern again, vowing retribution for Israel. But then, in verses 8-9, God again turns gentle, crying, "How can I hand you over, O Israel? ... my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger...." In verses 9-10, Hosea is again speaking, warning Israel to beware of God, who "roars like a lion."
New Testament Lesson
Colossians 3:1-11
Put Earthly Passions To Death
Paul now makes the transition from the didactic (teaching) section of his letter to the hortatory (moral advice) section: "Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God" (vv. 2-3). Because Christians have already died to this earthly life, we are to put to death anything within us that belongs to it: "fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry)" (v. 5). Sinful speech is singled out for special attention: "anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language," as well as lying (vv. 8-9). In words parallel to his better known "new creation" teaching of Galatians 3:27-28, Paul urges the Colossians to "clothe yourselves with the new self": "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!" (v. 11).
The Gospel
Luke 12:13-21
Parable Of The Rich Fool
As scholars of the Law of God, rabbis were sometimes called upon to serve as judges in minor legal disputes. This is what happens in this incident, as a man comes up to Jesus and asks, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me" (v. 13). Jesus' first response is to dismiss the case: "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" (v. 14). Helping a petitioner untangle a complicated probate question is not Jesus' idea of what he has been placed on this earth to do. He has more important concerns. Rather than addressing the legal question directly, Jesus decides to turn it into a teaching moment for all who are listening: "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions" (v. 15). He amplifies this teaching, then, by telling the Parable of the Rich Fool. A spectacularly successful farmer has yet another bumper crop, but he has a problem: his barns are already full. So he decides to tear down his barns and build even larger ones. With the harvest safely stowed away, he resolves to relax and enjoy his affluence -- but God interrupts his reverie, informing him that he is going to die that very night: "And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" (v. 20). "So it is," Jesus concludes, "with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God" (v. 21). This parable is a perennially difficult one for our culture, for we have been conditioned to value thrift, hard work, and savings. The successful farmer embodies all these virtues. Yet, when we read the story from the viewpoint of a subsistence economy, it becomes clear that the farmer already has, stored up in his old barns, far more than he will ever need. It is his act of building new barns, rather than distributing the surplus to the poor, that is sinful. When is enough finally enough?
Preaching Possibilities
Jesus tells a parable about a man with a clutter problem -- only his problem is not cluttered consumer items -- as so many of us have to deal with -- but grain. We do happen to know the circumstance that leads Jesus to tell this parable. A man comes up to him, saying, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me" (12:13). The text doesn't tell us so, but it's likely this man is a younger brother. His older brother, who's got charge of their parents' estate, has evidently declined to cut him in on the family inheritance -- something that's technically his legal privilege to decide, but which most observers, then or now, would agree is mean-spirited and selfish.
Jesus, wisely, refuses to step into the middle of this family spat: "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" (Jesus doesn't want to be put into the position of having to declare which brother's greed has more merit than the other's.) But he does issue a rather stark warning about the danger of greed. After that, he tells them this parable.
It seems there's a certain man -- a farmer -- who has had an exceptionally good harvest. His barns are already full to the rafters, for the previous year evidently produced a bumper crop as well. So what does this lucky farmer do, but pull down his existing barns and build even bigger ones? This fellow's so tickled with his good fortune that he starts talking to himself: "Soul" -- he says to himself -- "you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry!"
But then Jesus surprises us with this ominous note: "But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God" (12:20-21).
Storing up treasure for himself is exactly what this fortunate farmer has done. "And what's wrong with that?" most people would be quick to ask. Gotta have a savings plan. Gotta have a few investments -- a nest egg for the future, a hedge against inflation!
Yet Jesus is clearly talking about more than the ordinary amount of savings. This farmer already has a full barn -- on most farms, a barn would provide enough storage capacity to see its owner through just about any famine. One can only wonder what this exceedingly cautious farmer said to himself at the end of the last growing season -- after he'd filled his barn up to the roof. Did he say, "Now I can relax, for a change, and not worry about the future -- thanks be to God"?
If he said that then, how swiftly he forgets now! How easily his capacity for anxiety is slowly, imperceptibly, adjusted upward! When he sees this year's bumper crop of newly harvested grain, piled high on the ground outside his already full barn, he could have said to himself, "What does it matter? I've already got enough. I'd better give this latest harvest away!" But, no -- over the past year, quietly and insidiously, greed has done its dirty work, insinuating itself deep inside the farmer's soul. It's caused him to forget the meaning of the word "enough." And so he builds himself a bigger barn.
The Old Testament -- the scripture Jesus and his listeners recognize as authoritative -- demonstrates a strong ideal of sharing. This is often overlooked by those who profess to teach the Bible. When farm fields are harvested, there is a clear instruction to purposely use an inefficient farming method -- to actually leave some of the harvest lying out in the field (Leviticus 19:9).
The practice of going back into a farm field to scavenge the leftovers is known as "gleaning." It's what keeps Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi alive, when they come back into the land of Israel after losing both their husbands and their children, and therefore sinking into poverty. All over Israel are farm fields that have been inefficiently harvested -- on purpose. These two women pick up stalks of wheat lying on the ground that the reapers have left behind. Off to the edges of the fields, Ruth and Naomi rejoice to discover entire plants that haven't been harvested at all. These the farmers have intentionally left, free gifts for people such as them. It's probably the oldest example in human history of public assistance.
What if those farmers had decided to harvest it all, and simply build bigger barns to store the surplus? Ruth and Naomi would have starved.
A new sort of occupation to emerge in recent years is that of "personal organizer." Some of them charge as much as a hundred dollars an hour. What these people do is come into a home, interview the people who live there about lifestyle and needs, and proceed to suggest organizing "solutions" -- everything from helping these clutter-challenged people throw out that lifetime collection of National Geographic magazines to assembling more efficient storage racks for the bedroom closets. One personal organizer calls herself a "clutter therapist." She recognizes that the problem of clutter is not so much the clutter itself, as the mental state that makes it difficult to throw things away.
The clutter problem we have -- as a society -- is something no personal organizer consultant can help us solve. People like that could help us straighten out a messy attic or basement, or deal with a file cabinet stuffed full to overflowing. If they're really good, they might even help us understand, psychologically, what makes it so hard to loosen our grip on all the junk. But as to the other, more general sort of clutter -- the ever-increasing expectation of what the word "success" means, and how much is truly enough -- only a soul-renewing experience can help us deal with that.
"You're going to die," God says to the farmer in the parable, "tonight. What good will your brand-new barn, filled to overflowing, be to you then? You can't take it with you." God calls the rich man a "fool."
Notice that's very different from what anybody else would think to call him. Jesus gives us not a single hint, in this parable, that the farmer has been anything but a righteous, upright, hard-working citizen. He's plowed his fields, planted his seed, kept the weeds at bay -- why, he's probably followed every tip the University of Judea agricultural extension agent gave him. There's no suggestion he ever took advantage of his hired hands, or colluded with other farmers to form a grain cartel. This guy's done everything right -- but God tells him that, in the most important accounting, he's done everything wrong.
Finishing off his parable with a sort of moral, Jesus observes, "So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God" (12:21). Jesus never says it's wrong to be rich. What he does say is that there's a distinction between ordinary riches and being "rich toward God."
So what does it mean to be "rich toward God"? Preacher and social activist William Sloane Coffin has a pretty good handle on it. Coffin once observed, "There are two ways to be rich: make a lot of money or have few needs." Those who are rich toward God keep their needs under control. With many of us, our perceived needs continue to grow explosively throughout life. The threshold of what constitutes "enough" is ever-expanding. It's a kind of soul inflation -- and for many people in our culture, it's just as much a daily fact of life as the economic kind. Those who are truly rich toward God know how to say "no" to advertising. They don't think those neighbors, the Joneses, are people they need to "keep up with," especially. When the barn is full, they seldom feel the urge to go out and build a bigger one.
So how do we solve a clutter problem? Some would say we've got to attack it from the bottom up: cleaning out the attic or the garage one dusty old box at a time. The only problem with that advice is that most of us are oh-so-easily distracted. We're likely to get bogged down sometime between the first box and the second. We quickly lose the ability to see the forest for the trees.
The only way to attack a clutter problem is not from the bottom up, but from the top down. We've got to cultivate our ability to see the big picture: to see ourselves for the rich people we are -- compared to the rest of the world, anyway -- and to be absolutely ruthless in asking ourselves what it is we truly need.
Prayer For The Day
Teach us, Lord,
every day,
that gentle discipline
of letting go.
Our fingers grasp tightly
the things we fear to lose:
but they are only things, after all.
They are created by you,
that we might enjoy them for a time
then pass them on to others.
May that act of passing them on
begin, for us, here and now.
May we never again seek to merely store
that which you have meant to be enjoyed. Amen.
To Illustrate
Stuff is important. You gotta take care of your stuff. You gotta have a place for your stuff. Everybody's gotta have a place for their stuff. That's what life is all about, tryin' to find a place for your stuff! That's all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a house. You could just walk around all the time. A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you're taking off in an airplane. You look down and see all the little piles of stuff. Everybody's got his own little pile of stuff. And they lock it up! That's right! When you leave your house, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. 'Cause they always take ... the good stuff; the shiny stuff; the electronic stuff. So when you get right down to it, your house is nothing more than a place to keep your stuff ... while you go out and get ... more stuff. 'Cause that's what this country is all about. Trying to get more stuff. Stuff you don't want, stuff you don't need, stuff that's poorly made, stuff that's overpriced. Even stuff you can't afford! Gotta keep on gettin' more stuff. Otherwise someone else might wind up with more stuff. Can't let that happen. Gotta have the most stuff....
-- George Carlin, Brain Droppings (New York: Hyperion, 1997), pp. 36-37
***
The truth is that life in America has improved so much in the past century that we have forgotten what it is to struggle. We hear whines that schools are overcrowded today. Actually, the ratio of students to teachers has gone from 30:1 in 1955 to 19:1 now. We hear whining about pay. Yet total compensation, adjusted for inflation, has tripled since 1947, and the cost of necessities has plummeted. Food in 1950 represented about one third of a family's total expenditures; today, it's one seventh....
America's Gross Domestic Product is greater than the next five countries combined. Our unemployment rate [of around five and a half percent, at the time the article was written] -- while higher than it was before the 2001 recession -- is still lower than the average U.S. rate in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Unemployment in France is 9.6 percent. In Germany, 10.4 percent. And we're complaining!
Two thirds of Americans now own their own homes. We have more cars, more children in college, more cultural institutions. We work shorter hours ... On the whole, we're more prosperous than any other nation in history -- and far better off than we were in the past.
-- James K. Glassman, "Whine, the Beloved Country!" The American Enterprise, June 2004, p. 48
***
When political pundits speak today of Americans "voting their values," they usually mean one thing by that phrase: questions of sexual ethics. Yet what is conspicuously absent, from most so-called moral discussions, is any mention whatsoever of that other great moral topic: money.
In the Bible, money issues are just as much a part of morality as questions of sexual ethics. Here are a few verses that make this clear:
Be sure of this, that no fornicator or impure person, or one who is greedy (that is, an idolater), has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.
-- Ephesians 5:5
Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry).
-- Colossians 3:5
Why is it that those who are looking to uphold a so-called "biblical morality" are so quick to quote the first part of such verses, but completely ignore the second? We have it right there, in black and white: it couldn't be more clear than it is in these two verses. The Bible considers greed to be just as serious a moral failing as sexually licentious behavior. Yet we Americans conveniently drop greed from these lists of moral failings. We believe that a bigger barn is always better.
***
For greed can have a very pretty and attractive cover for its shame; it is called provision for the body and the needs of nature. Under this cover greed insatiably amasses unlimited wealth. But if the heart expects and puts its trust in divine favor, how can a person be greedy and anxious? Such people are absolutely certain that they are acceptable to God: therefore, they do not cling to money; they use their money cheerfully and freely for the benefit of their neighbor. In fact, in this commandment it can clearly be seen that all good works must be done in faith and proceed from faith. People are generous because they trust God and never doubt but that they will always have enough. In contrast, people are covetous and anxious because they do not trust God. Now faith is the master workman and the motivating force behind the good works of generosity, just as it is in all the other commandments.
-- Martin Luther, commenting on Exodus 20:15 ("Thou shalt not steal") in "Treatise on Good Works" (1520), Luther's Works Vol. 44, (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress), pp. 106-109
