A homily by Fr.
Gene Tucker, given at Trinity
Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois on Sunday, August 4, 2013.
“MATERIALLY RICH, SPIRITUALLY POOR”
“The one who dies with the most toys, wins!”
Perhaps
every one of us has seen or heard this statement…maybe we’ve seen it on a
bumper sticker in the car in front of us, or perhaps we’ve heard someone say
it. We may have even said it ourselves.
All humor
aside, the statement characterizes the attitudes of many in our society today...living
out that attitude, many accumulate and acquire all sorts of things. Many of these acquisitions are designed to
amuse us or to offer opportunities for recreation. Other acquisitions fall into the “bigger and
better” category. Our society is
surrounded with “stuff”!
In today’s
gospel reading, Jesus captures the spirit of the age in which He came to be
with us. In the story that has come to
be known as the “Parable of the Rich Fool”, He portrays a highly successful man
who reflects on his accomplishments and his successes, saying, “I will do
this: I will tear down my barns and
build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods….”
To Jesus’
original audience, the rich man would have been regarded as a devout, religious
man who had lived an upright and holy life, piously following the commandments
of God as they are found in the Law of Moses.
The attitude in those days might be captured this way: Live a righteous and holy life, and you will
be successful, for God will bless you for your good deeds and your obedience.
These
ancient attitudes were based on a person’s being able to earn God’s favor and blessings.
But Jesus
continues by saying this about the rich man:
“Fool! This night your soul is
required of you, and the things that you have prepared, whose will they be?”
Jesus’
statement is meant to shock. It is meant
to awaken the slumbering consciences of His audience into seeing the truth of
the man’s spiritual condition.
In so
doing, He turns the expectations of his hearers on their heads.
(It is
worth noting that Luke delights on passing along parables like this one, in
which Jesus reverses the normal course of events and expectations.)
The
attitudes that were common in Jesus’ day persist today. Oftentimes, when we see someone who has a lot
of “stuff”, we might tend to think that they are blessed for what they
have. Maybe we might think that they
have all that “stuff” because they’ve worked hard, or because they’ve created
good opportunities in life.
The bottom
line of the attitudes that are common today, and those that were common 2,000
years ago, have something in common:
Both are based on a person’s ability to earn the things they possess.
Earning a
place in God’s favor lies at the heart of the attitudes of many in Jesus’ day,
as we said a moment ago. So Jesus’
parable, seen in this light, strikes at the suppositions of the Judaism of those
days….Jesus is saying to them (and to us) that we cannot earn our way into a
relationship with God.
Our
relationship with God cannot be a matter of “If I do this for you, you (God)
will do that for me.”
No, our
relationship with God must be based on God’s goodness and graciousness towards
us, and our response, made in faith, to God’s goodness and graciousness.
So we live
faithfully and in faith, not keeping score with God of the things we do, in expectation
that God will respond, deed for deed.
To be rich
spiritually is to live faithfully in relationship to God through Christ,
showing our thankfulness for God’s goodness, God’s graciousness, God’s
generosity seen in Jesus Christ.
The
spiritual reality is that we cannot earn God’s favor. But we can respond to God’s presence in our
lives, for He is the giver of all good and perfect gifts, especially the gift
of Jesus Christ. To live this way is to
live in a relationship of love toward God.
To live otherwise is to live a life based on duty.
May we, by
the power of the Holy Spirit, be enabled to live thankfully and faithfully in
relationship to God the Father through God the Son.
AMEN.
