No Spiritual Distance
The centerpiece of our passage for today is the so called ‘Parable of the Rich Fool”. Unlike Jesus’ parables that are often vexing and open to an annoyingly wide range of interpretations, the meaning of this one is crystal clear and even stated upfront…
Greed is a bad idea and must be guarded against.
Caring too much about one’s possessions? Also, a bad idea!
Building bigger and bigger structures in which to store up ones possessions? Not a wise move!
Telling half-truths to your soul to justify your own pleasures? Also not advised!
Forgetting that you could die any minute while thinking that your wealth will secure your future?
Well that’s just plain silly, and God says as much. “You fool,” God says to the rich man. No need for an interlocutor. No beating around the bush here.
The parable is unambiguous and needs very little unpacking but for one important caveat. If we read it too quickly, we may be tempted to think the man is a fool because he is rich. The text says nothing of the sort. Jesus says nothing of the sort, neither here nor elsewhere. The man is a deemed a fool not because he is rich but because he misunderstands and misuses his riches. As Peter Gomes is fond of saying, “Wealth is not a sin, but it is a problem.” Ultimately, this parable addresses the problem that is wealth.
In her book, “The Soul of Money,” the writer Lynne Twist recounts a story of speaking at a fundraising event for a hunger related project. The event was being held in a church basement in Harlem. Twist was far more accustomed to giving her pitches in corporate boardrooms and at gala events where 4 or 5 figure donations were not uncommon. Nonetheless, her hunger organization found a resonance with those gathered at the church that night. After she had spoken, one woman stood up and said the following. “Girl” she said, “my name is Gertrude and I like what you’ve said and I like you’. “Now, I ain’t got no checkbook and I ain’t got no credit cards. To me, money is a lot like water. For some folks it rushes through their life like a raging river. Money comes through my life like a little trickle. But I want to pass it on in way that does the most good for the most folks. I see that as my right and as my responsibility. It’s also my joy. I have fifty dollars in my purse that I earned from doing a white woman’s wash and I want to give it you.”
Gertrude was no rich fool. In fact, Gertrude is the antithesis of the rich fool, one who feels an obligation to think about and care for others, and to give generously and joyously. Can we imagine what a different place the world would be if everyone, rich and poor, saw generosity as a right let alone a responsibility? Its fair to say that for Gertrude wealth was not a problem. The kind of wealth that trickles rarely is. But because money is a lot like water, because it can rage like a river, and flood out virtually every other concern, wealth can be and is a problem for many of us. The Rich Fool had the kind of wealth that flooded and swept away the value of his own possessions. So he needed a new barn, a new dam, a new financial derivative if you will, to capture and control and to expand its flow. Rather than acknowledging its source outside of him, rather than letting wealth flow in and out of him as a means to some greater good, his wealth became an end in itself. His wealth had become a problem! Did you notice how unapologetically self-centered the rich man is? Me, my and I are used12 times in the short parable while he makes no reference whatsoever to others, to God who gave him the land in the first place, to workers who helped harvest, to what his neighbors might think about or do with the waste of his tear down.
Just think of this Rich Fool for a moment. We all know him or her. It could be a parent, or brother or a relative, a co-worker or a friend. It could even be a spouse. The Rich Fool could be whoever makes us feel better about our own financial habits, and yet let’s face it, there’s a rich fool within each of us, is there not? It’s probably just part of a constellation of voices that are inside our own heads. It’s the one that drowns out all the other voices with really compelling, really reasonable, really slick, convincing and convenient half-truths that justify more of our financial decisions than any of us would care to admit. When the voice of the rich fool speaks from within or around us, it can all too quickly drown out the voices of others – the voice of our conscience, the voices of the poor, or even that still small voice of God. What’s worse, the rich fool in us can sometimes only hear the rich fool in our neighbor, and so we get a water-soaked, money-saturated view of reality that compares our wealth with those who have more instead of those of who have less. Martin Luther King once said “Moral principles have lost their distinctiveness. For modern man, absolute right and absolute wrong is a matter of what the majority is doing. Right and wrong as a matter are relative to the likes and dislikes and the customs of a particular community. We have unconsciously applied Einstein’s theory of relativity, which properly described the physical universe, to the moral and ethical realm.”[1]
Setting aside our own warped theories of relatively, I wonder, how well do we know the flow of wealth in our lives these days? Are the rivers raging and drowning out the voice of God and others? Before you answer, consider these facts. According to Global Rich List.org and based on research from World Bank Development Research Group, if your income is over $50,000 a year, you’re in the top 1% of the richest people in the world. If you’re income is over $12,000 a year, you’re in the top 12% of richest people in the world. Seen is this light, its safe to say that we are all rich. We all share this problem!
Ultimately, the problem with wealth is that it can lead us to act as if we are self-made, on the one hand, and self-sufficient on the other. Because wealth can flood us, intoxicate us even, with the power to provide for ourselves and for our loved one, we can all too easily lose sight of the elemental ways that God provides for us all – the land on which we build, the air we breathe, the water we drink. The more wealth we have, the more vigilant we need to be about our fundamental creaturely dependence on God. The more we need to realize that our resources are never ours for the taking but they are ours for the sharing. Without a deep-seated awareness of our dependence on God and others, the rivers of wealth, yours and mine, will flood the plains of all other concern and all concern for others!
Quoting King again, this time from an eloquent sermon on this very passage, he says of the Rich Man’s problem, “Whether we realize it or not, we are all “in the red”. We are everlasting debtors to known and unknown men (and women). We do not finish breakfast without being dependent on more than half the world. When we arise in the morning, we go into the bathroom where we reach of a sponge which is provided by a Pacific Islander. We reach for soap that is created for us by a Frenchman. The towel is provided by a Turk….In a very real sense, all life is interrelated. All [people] are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality. The rich man tragically failed to realize this.”
Even more tragic, most of our contemporary culture fails to realize this. We need daily bulwarks of wisdom against the raging rivers of wealth that flow in and all around us. We need daily to remember our reliance on God and our interrelated to others. We need daily and weekly practices or prayer, worship and building community that will allow the rich fool in each of us to stay in constant dialogue and relationship with God and with the poor. We need living examples.
I’ll close with a story. A dear friend of mine, Randy, is a community organizer in New York City. He has committed the better part of the last decade to workers rights. At his wedding a few years ago, the rabbi who had known him for years and who was about to become his father in law, gave Randy one of the most incredible compliments I have ever heard. Under the chupa, surrounded by loved ones, he said among many other wonderful and true things, “Randy, there is no spiritual distance between you and the most oppressed worker.” No spiritual distance! What a testimony. What a way to measure one’s life and one’s commitment and one’s interrelatedness to others. What a way to speak of being rich towards God. As much as a compliment, it was an ongoing charge for Randy and perhaps for all us, to always be closing the distance set by the waters of our wealth.
So I ask you again, how well do you know the flow of wealth in your life? Where is it taking you? Rather than letting our wealth lead us to ever more preoccupation with our goods, our possessions, our investments for the future and our provisions for our own, we need our wealth to guide us to consider whether we are what we ought to be, whether the world is what it ought to be. We need to ask whether the lives of our neighbors – youth on our city streets, people in Haiti, those who harvest materials for our cell phones, the workers who bring food to our table, are what they ought to be. May whatever wealth we have been given be for us a means to know the right, the responsibilities and the joys, not merely of our generosity, but of our fundamental interconnectedness to all that is. Whether we are separated by vast oceans, raging rivers, small streams or tiny trickles, may we always work to close the distance, spiritual and material, and so may we let the true blessings of God flow freely, through us, and to us all! Amen.
[1] King, “I Have A Dream: The Quotation of Martin Luther King, Jr.” New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1968. p. 145