Greed

Property Problems

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Property Problems” Luke 12:13-21

Rising inflation has us doing a double-take at the cost of groceries.  The war in Ukraine has sent gas prices soaring and made it painful at the pump.  Market volatility has not been kind to our 403-Bs and 401-Ks.  Yet, despite the economic pinch that we are feeling, we live in the world’s most affluent society.  The US has had the world’s largest economy since 1871.  With a GDP of $25.3 trillion, we far outpace our nearest competitor, China, at $19.9 trillion.  The US has the largest population of ultra-high net worth individuals in the world, including 724 billionaires.  Even COVID-19 hasn’t put a dent in the lives of the super-wealthy.  According to Forbes Magazine, the US added 98 new billionaires in 2020 and the net worth of America’s billionaires surged 62% during the pandemic to $4.7 trillion.

All that affluence may not always be good for us.  Several studies have shown that wealth may be at odds with empathy and compassion. Research published in the journal Psychological Science found that people of lower economic status were better at reading others’ facial expressions—an important marker of empathy—than wealthier people. Having more resources can also cause bad behavior. In fact, UC Berkeley researchers found that even fake money could make people’s behavior rude and inappropriate. When two students played Monopoly, one having been given a great deal more Monopoly money than the other, the wealthier player expressed initial discomfort, but then went on to act aggressively, taking up more space and moving his pieces more loudly, and even taunting the player with less money.  Wealth may also cause a sense of moral entitlement. Another UC Berkeley study found that in San Francisco—where the law requires cars to stop at crosswalks for pedestrians to pass—drivers of luxury cars were four times less likely than those in less expensive vehicles to stop and allow pedestrians the right of way. They were also more likely to cut off other drivers.  Most troubling of all, children from affluent households are at significantly greater risk for depression, anxiety, and addiction, perhaps due to greater pressure to excel, succeed, and step into the big affluent shoes of their parents.

Today’s reading from Luke’s gospel presents us with one of Jesus’s toughest teachings about the dangers of affluence.  Someone in the crowd asked Jesus to arbitrate a family dispute about wealth.  The fact that the questioner asked Jesus to rule in his favor, “Tell my brother to share the inheritance with me,” tells us that something isn’t quite right here.  Jesus’ warning, “Take care!  Be on your guard against all kinds of greed” suggests that someone’s attitude toward the inheritance was dangerously close to idolatry.  The Greek word here for greed, pleonexia, means an insatiable desire for more that spawns avarice.

Jesus next told the Parable of the Rich Fool, an exaggerated, cautionary tale about the danger that may accompany wealth.  The rich man in the story had property problems. First, he had an inordinate love of stuff.  When a windfall crop presented him with a surplus, he hatched a plan to build bigger barns rather than part with any of his abundance.  It also seems that he loved his stuff more than he loved his neighbor.  Tony Campolo, who taught for many years at Eastern College and Seminary, says that there are about 900 teachings in scripture about the importance of sharing our abundance.  But the rich man didn’t see his bumper crop as a blessing for anyone but himself. What’s more, the man didn’t see God as the source of his windfall.  His abundance was the blessed outcome of productive seed, fertile soil, ample rainfall, long days of sunshine, and shelter from pests and disease, all things beyond his power and control.  Yet the man’s greatest mistake was his attitude about the future.  He thought he had safeguarded his future by laying up his harvest.  But the future belongs to God—all life comes from God and all life returns to God in God’s time.  It’s no wonder that Jesus concluded his harsh and uncomfortable story with God calling the man a fool.

It’s hard to know what to do with Jesus’s tough teachings about the dangers of wealth.  I don’t believe that Jesus thought that wealth is evil.  Some of the people who surrounded and supported Jesus in his ministry were wealthy.  Joanna the Myrrh-bearer, who waited at the foot of the cross and came to the empty tomb, was the wife of one of the most affluent and powerful men in Israel, Chuzza the steward of King Herod.  Nicodemus was also wealthy and influential.  In John’s gospel, Nicodemus brought 100 pounds of myrrh and aloes to prepare Jesus’s body for the grave.  A one-pound jar of myrrh cost a year’s wages.  Imagine the wealth that Nicodemus had to be able to purchase 100 pounds of the precious stuff. So, Jesus didn’t have it in for rich people. When we look at Joanna and Nicodemus, we see people who used their abundance in service to Jesus and in pursuit of the Kingdom of God.  So perhaps this uncomfortable Parable of the Rich Fool isn’t a condemnation of wealth so much as it is fresh perspective for discipleship in a world that prizes affluence above all else.

The challenge for us is to redefine how we relate to our possessions.  Jesus would first invite us to question how our society prizes possessions.  We live in a culture that tells us that stuff can meet our deepest needs.  Over the course of a lifetime, the average television viewer will spend a year watching commercials – that’s right, a year of our lives wasted on advertisements, designed to tempt us to go buy stuff.  It’s no wonder that we can get caught up in a vicious cycle of consumption, buying to meet the needs that advertisers tell us we must fill.  Social theorists call this relentless drive to consume affluenza, as if it’s a disease, “the bloated, sluggish, unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses.”

In a world dominated by affluenza, Jesus would stress that our deepest needs for meaning and purpose are never met by things.  Those needs are only met by God.  What really matters in life: love, acceptance, forgiveness, grace, salvation, relationship, and dignity, all are found in God—all free of charge.  When we grasp this fact, life finds true meaning, and we are liberated from that vicious cycle of consumption.  We begin to relate to our relative affluence in ways that allow us to make different choices.

Jesus would also have us consider how our relative affluence shapes how we relate to others.  Augustine taught that God gives us possessions to use and people to love.  Sin is when we get that the wrong way around.  We use people and we love possessions.  After all, Jesus taught that the greatest commandment is to love God and neighbor, not God and stuff.  Our affluence, then, is meant to be a resource in expressing our love for God and neighbor.  That’s where Tony Campolo’s 900 scripture references come in handy, inspiring us to share a tithe of our income, provide for the widow, care for the orphan, and shelter the refugee.  Could we think about our relative affluence as a whole lot of love, ready to make a difference in the world?  Now, that’s a paradigm shift. It’s the antithesis of affluenza and the heart of Christian discipleship. Here is more good news: one of the best ways to cut the risk of depression, anxiety, and addiction in affluent kids is to model for them this sort of compassionate neighborliness and to get them involved in serving others and connecting with all kinds of people.

Finally, Jesus would have us remember the true source of our affluence and blessing. The rich man thought he was the architect of his fortune and the guarantor of his future.  But Jesus reminds us that God is the source of our blessing, and the future is held in God’s hands.  That doesn’t mean that we don’t work hard for what we have, but ultimately all we have and all we are—the heart that beats, the air we breathe, the abilities that we parlay into achievement—all these are God-given gifts. 

Imagine if we took a break from the commercials that cultivate our appetite for stuff and instead spent a few moments each day counting our blessings and acknowledging them as a gift from God.  It would be a profoundly reorienting and life changing discipline.  We would find fulfillment and delight in the everyday miracles of watching a child sleep, harvesting lettuce from the garden, or glimpsing a bass jump out of the water in pursuit of its dinner.  If God graces our daily experience with such profound gifts, then we can trust that the future, which is beyond our grasp, will also contain good gifts, whether we are talking about this life or the next.  We can be freed to live in gratitude and grace.

Two words that I hope to never hear coming out of the Lord’s mouth are, “You fool!”  How about you? In the coming weeks, may Jesus and his parable of the rich fool inspire us to make some different choices when it comes to our affluence.  May we find the cure for affluenza in the freely given gifts of God.  May we dare to share our abundant blessings in love of God and neighbor.  And may we trust that God’s future will abound with daily blessings. 

Resources:

Richard Denniss. Curing Affluenza: How to Buy Less Stuff and Save the World. New York: Black Publishing, 2017.

Tony Campolo. Curing Affluenza. Video curriculum.

Scott Simon. Affluenza. KCTS Seattle: Oregon Public Broadcasting, 2014.

David Lose, “What Money Can and Can’t Do,” in Dear Working Preacher,  July 29, 2013. http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2668

Chase Peterson-Withorn. “Nearly 500 People Became Billionaires During the Pandemic Year” in Forbes Magazine, Apr 6, 2021. https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2021/04/06/nearly-500-people-have-become-billionaires-during-the-pandemic-year/?sh=73cc448925c0

Sarah Ruiz-Grossman. “A New Billionaire Was Created Every 30 Hours During the Pandemic” in Huffpost, May 22, 2022. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/billionaire-wealth-covid-pandemic-oxfam_n_6283e951e4b04353eb0a526d

Marcus Lu. “What Does It Take to Be Wealthy in America?” in Visual Capitalist, July 5, 2022. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/net-worth-to-be-wealthy-in-america-2022/

Anshool Deshmukh. “This Simple Chart Reveals the Distribution of Global Wealth” in Visual Capitalist, September 20, 2021. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/distribution-of-global-wealth-chart/

Carolyn Gregoire. “How Money Changes the Way You Think and Feel” in Greater Good Magazine, February 8, 2018. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_money_changes_the_way_you_think_and_feel#:~:text=More%20money%2C%20less%20empathy%3F%20Several%20studies%20have%20shown,expressions%20%E2%80%94an%20important%20marker%20of%20empathy%E2%80%94than%20wealthier%20people. Suniya Luthar. The Mental Price of Affluence in Speaking of Psychology (interview). American Psychological Association, 2014. https://www.apa.org

Luke 12:13-21

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” 16 Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17 And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 18 Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20 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?’ 21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

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Greed

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Greed” John 12:1-8

Monsignor Charles Pope leads a weekly Bible Study at the White House for President Biden.  In more than thirty years of parish ministry, Charles Pope has spent a lot of time in the confessional, hearing sins and prescribing penance.  Father Pope says that greed is the most under-reported of sins.  We tend to think that everyone else is greedy, but we never think that we make too much money or have too much stuff.  Faith leaders in the Protestant tradition say the same thing.  Rev. Tim Keller, the well-known author and longtime pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, relates that he once led a weekly Bible Study on the Seven Deadly Sins.  The week that the study was least attended was the one when he taught about greed.  Keller says, “Maybe the best sign of greed is that you aren’t willing to even admit the possibility that you are enslaved to it.”

Greed is the artificial, rapacious desire for and pursuit of wealth and possessions.  Two of the Ten Commandments speak to greed: the prohibitions on stealing and covetousness.  In the gospels, greed is the sin that Jesus most frequently spoke against, from his warning to tax collectors against collecting more than authorized (Lk 3:13) to his Parable of the Rich Fool, which reminds us that we can’t take it with us and we are truly fools if our worldly goods are more important than our relationship with God (Lk 12:13-21). Indeed, Jesus saw wealth as an idol, cautioning that we cannot serve God and Mammon.

Throughout the Christian tradition, we have been warned about the dangers of greed.  Thomas Aquinas believed that greed is a three-fold sin.  Greed is a sin against neighbor because one man’s riches cannot over-bound without another man being in need.  Greed is a sin against the self because our “affections are disordered” by loving and delighting in material things.  And greed is a sin against God because we scorn the eternal for our love of the temporal.  Dante’s Inferno places greedy souls in the fourth Circle of Hell, where misers, hoarders, and spendthrifts eternally battle one another.  Martin Luther was especially concerned with greed, calling those who are avaricious “money gluttons.”  According to Luther, the greedy man “would have the whole world perish of hunger and thirst, misery and want, so far as in him lies, so that he may have all to himself, and everyone may receive from him as from God, and be his serfs forever.”

Our contemporary understanding of greed takes into account its destructive nature, as well as its acceptance.  Psychologist Erich Fromm saw greed as “a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.”  We may be blind to our own greed and the greed of others, thanks to our cultural context.  We are constantly barraged by marketing that tells us that love is revealed in the gift of a diamond that is forever or a brand-new car with a big bow on top delivered on Christmas morning.  Who doesn’t want to be loving?  Only 2% of Americans think we are wealthy “upper class” people, but on a world stage, we are wealthy beyond the imagining of most. 

We also tend to confuse our wants with our needs, and so the more we earn, the more we spend.  Not many of us are like billionaire Warren Buffet who still lives in the same home in Omaha that he bought in 1958.  Instead, more money means more expense, whether we are socking it away in our retirement nest egg, driving a better car, or moving into that nicer neighborhood.  Our growing affluence isn’t necessarily good for others.  A shocking 2008 study discovered the radical generosity of the poor.  Researchers found that 60% of Americans who live in poverty give their money and time to help others while only 32% of people who live above the poverty line are willing to share.  Author, editor, and theologian Brad Littlejohn teaches that greed is spiritually dangerous because it leads to a false sense of security and an inward-focused self-absorption that allows us to ignore the needs of others.

Our biblical paradigm for greed is Judas.  In today’s gospel reading, the Lord would soon be arrested, tortured, and executed.  But that night, Mary of Bethany did something beautiful.  She anointed Jesus with precious oil of nard, all the way from the Himalayas, purchased at great price.  It was a decadent act of generous love. The indignant Judas denounced Mary before the disciples.  Although he claimed he was advocating on behalf of the poor, Luke tells us that Judas was greedy.  The money spent on that costly anointing could have lined his pockets. Within the week, Judas would betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.  He is the poster child for greed, alienated from his better self, robbing the poor, rejecting the love of Christ, and denying the authority of God.

We’ll be relieved to hear that the remedy for greed is not poverty.  It’s generosity, the virtue of being liberal in giving.  Jesus expected his followers to be generous.  He instructed them to sell their possessions and give to the poor (Lk 12:33-34).  Aristotle taught that generosity is the noble and appropriate mean between two opposing extremes—stinginess and wastefulness. Aquinas saw generosity as a dimension of agape (charitas), the generous love that Jesus taught us, the love that always gives in the best interest of the other.  Martin Luther encouraged generosity, saying, “Possessions belong in your hands, not in your heart.”

Our biblical example of generosity is the poor widow. You may remember that during Holy Week, Jesus took a seat in the Temple to watch folks deposit their offering in the treasury.  Many costly gifts were given, yet the gift that excited Jesus the most was two small coins (copper mites or leptons), given by an impoverished widow.  The Lord praised her generosity, because it was an offering of all she had and all she was—her whole self (Lk 21:1-4).  We remember that Jesus was likewise unfailingly generous, sharing freely of himself to heal, help, and feed his neighbors.  Truly, Holy Week reminds us that Jesus made the greatest gift of all, laying down his life in the ultimate object lesson of God’s generous love for us.

The bad news is that Americans are not as generous as we like to think.  2/3 of us believe that it is important to be generous, yet about half of us give nothing at all to charity.  Only 17% of Americans give habitually, building it into their budget.  Only 16% of Americans make generosity part of their long-term plans, like estate planning and legacy gifts. The definitive survey on Christian giving by sociologists Smith, Emerson, and Herzog learned that adults who do not witness generosity as children, do not practice generosity as grown-ups.  They also found that if American Christians gave in keeping with their income, they would give between $46-85 billion more each year—a generosity that could forever change our communities, where churches remain at the heart of helping vulnerable neighbors and transforming lives.

The good news is that generosity can be learned, cultivated, and grown.  Sociologists point out that being consistently generous involves planning.  It’s a habit that we can intentionally build into busy lives.  This could involve making a formal financial pledge to the charitable concerns that we wish to support, or it could also look like putting dates for volunteering on the calendar.  Studies have found that giving, both in treasure and time, grows when it is routinized and becomes a habit. 

The social scientists say that we are in the right place to become more generous: church.  Local churches are consistent “climates of giving,” places where financial gifts meet known community needs. We get personally involved in ministries, missions, and volunteer opportunities that reinforce the “virtuous cycle” of generosity.  We find that being generous is rewarding because we see the difference that we make in the world, and we become part of a supportive, giving-oriented web of relationships that grows with time.  Within churches, our teamwork builds caring, friendship, and generosity.

Generosity is also grown when we practice it in families and teach it to our children and grandchildren.  Generous parents make for generous kids.  The family that talks about the importance of generosity and practices it together by using those fish banks for OGHS or participating in the Souper Bowl of Caring or walking together in the CROP Walk, these families create a home environment where generosity becomes part of our mental make-up.  Those generous kids grow up to believe that they can and will make a caring difference that can transform the world through their personal generosity.

When we get the better of our greed by growing our generosity, not only does the world become a better and more equitable place, we also return to right relationship with God and with neighbor.  Prof. Will Mari of Louisiana State University, reminds us that it’s not just our stuff that is not our own, it’s our whole lives.  Truly, all we have and all we are is God’s gracious gift. We find ultimate meaning when we devote ourselves to a generosity and service that is “good, godly, and healthy.” Generosity poises us to live the life that God would have us live — open to what may come.  C.S. Lewis in a letter to his dear friend Arthur Greeves in Dec. 1943 wrote, “The great thing about life is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things [that come along] as interruptions of life.  The truth is that what I call interruptions are real life—the life God is sending me day by day.” What is the life that God is sending to us?

God is so generous to us, my friends.  May we live with open hands, open hearts, and open hours, sharing generously of ourselves to the glory of God and for the good of our neighbor.

Resources:

Will Mari. “The Only Bright Spot in American Giving” in Christianity Today, Nov. 30, 2017. Accessed online at christianitytoday.com.

Marika Suval. “Just How Generous Are Americans Really?” on Wisconsin Public Radio, March 9, 2016. Accessed online at www.wpr.org/listen/892341

W. Bradford Littlejohn. “The 7 Deadly Sins in a Digital Age: 3. Greed” in Reformation 21, Nov. 24, 2014. Accessed online at www.reformation21.org.

Charles Pope. “The Seven Deadly Sins: Greed” in Community in Mission, April 2, 2019. Accessed online at blog.adw.org

Doug Ponder. “Seven Deadly Sins: Greed,” Jan. 14, 2016. Accessed online at www.remnantresource.org.

John 12:1-8

12 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” 6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) 7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

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