On Wealth

Our topic is wealth. At the onset, I’ll admit to adhering to the first definition of wealth in the Oxford English Dictionary, namely, wealth as ‘the condition of being happy; wellbeing’. Though Jesus did not have the OED on hand, it is my contention that what is at stake in the parable he hear this morning is the question: what is true wealth? For Jesus, it is being rich toward God. I’ll come back to Jesus’ response in a moment. For the time being, I would like to suggest that we get very muddled when we apply ourselves to a kind of wealth – a kind of wellbeing – that that has as its goal the taking and use of possessions for control and security; and wealth or wellbeing that is aimed at the giving of life; for life is a gift and is meant to be received with gratitude.

It is sometimes thought, but rarely said in public, that Jesus hates rich people. Think of all the speeches and sermons you have heard over the years that pits the champion of the poor, Jesus, against all the greedy rulers and leaders of his day. What we miss when we read the gospels too quickly is the relationship of wealth to living well. In the tradition of the Old Testament, when it comes to living well, what we are talking about is wisdom.

Recall if you will the story of the two brothers who come to Jesus seeking a judgment to their dispute over their inheritance. We find this episode in the twelfth chapter of St. Luke. In response to the brothers, Jesus provides the parable of the rich farmer who benefited from several good harvests which led to the building of ample storage facilities. Following the rich man’s announcement that life is pretty good, we read, “But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”   Instead of giving a customary judgment, Jesus frames the concerns of the brothers within the deeper question of being wise before God. There is a way to live well and a way to live poorly, Jesus seems to be saying. The rich man lives poorly – he is not wise - because he asserts thankless control over what can only be understood as a rather gracious gift: a superabundant crop. This isn’t about God punishing rich people, notes Fred Craddock, there is nothing here of graft or theft; there is no mistreatment of workers or any criminal act. Sun, soil, and rain join to make him wealthy. He is careful and conservative. If he is not unjust, then what is he? He is a fool, says the parable. For his efforts he is visited by God who reminds him that his very life is on loan and maybe required of him at any time by the God who granted him life in the first place. Instead of wellbeing, the farmer settles for something less, a state not-quite becoming of a mature human person; he settled for what he has over who he is: a choice of possessions over being.  And this, Jesus declares, is not the source of true wealth.

To consider the contrast between possession and being is to recognize the difference between what you are and what you have. You are a body; you have a hat. Someone might want to say that we have a body, but it would be a curious usage of ‘have’ since I don’t think many of us would say that a body is something we put on or carry around or place on a rack, like we might a hat. Someone may give you a hat or you may purpose one; bodies are never purchased they are always given, a body, like life itself, can only be a gift.  Despite our best efforts, nothing can bring itself into existence. Always we receive life or our being from another. What this means is this: possessions are fine and good and necessary for human existence but to be wise, to seek wellbeing, is to recognize that who we are fundamentally is not able to possessed for the sake of control or security. Who we are is a matter of gratitude, of learning to see that the very fabric of our being is a sheer gift.

When we consider the giftedness of life, then we can better understand what Jesus is getting at when he speaks of being rich towards God. This, supposedly, is wisdom. Being rich towards God, I suggest, is not doing anything for God as though God needed our help. God has no needs, for God is eternal and changeless. Being rich towards God is recognizing his gift to us, recognizing ourselves as his gift, thanking him. If this sounds rather pedestrian, then well and good; it’s meant to be a lesson in wisdom, in living well, not the uncovering of some unheard of teaching that up until this moment has been buried in a cave. In being rich towards God we are acknowledging that what matters first is what we receive and not what we have through our efforts, or what we desire in order to take the world for our own use. What matters first is that we are loved. To receive life and being from God is axiomatic to a Christian understanding of love.  And love is always a gift.

One question still remains: how has any of this got to do with wealth, with wellbeing? The human animal, and human society in general, flourishes, not to the extent that is possesses riches like the man in the parable, but to the extent that we give life to each other, to the extent that we imitate the creativity of God who is the source of all life and being. To think in these terms is to understand how bizarre it is that the word ‘market’ is often used as a metaphor for human society. Don’t get me wrong, markets are surely a good and necessary part of living together, as are law courts and a nice cup of coffee; but none of these are a useful model for what human society essentially is. If the church has anything to say about human society it is this: we do not live well by building ever more secure fences of possessions around ourselves, but by giving to others space to live. In our attempts to give space for others to live, we imitate our God who gave us life and showed us how to live by sending his Son, Jesus to live a human life in all its fullness. That fact that Jesus ended up murdered by the government is a reminder that living well, loving fully, just might get you killed.

To accept the giftedness of life, and see this as preceding any attempt to define human living as the accumulation of stuff, even good stuff, is to begin the journey towards wisdom. No amount of good will come through speaking about life as a gift if it isn’t accompanied by a certain form of life. The Austrian-born philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, once remarked to his friend Drury that, “if you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different.” The difference when it comes to wealth comes through supplanting our incessant need to congratulate ourselves for being rich or powerful or clever, with a manner of life that reflects gratitude. Gratitude is an opening of life to God and each other that recognizes that human flourishing is not a gated community but a community center; human flourishing is not interiority but exteriority; human flourishing is being rich towards the source of all goodness and mercy and love. This might sound like more pie-in-the-sky idealism. On the contrary, I dare say it is the difference between living well and barely living at all.