This is my homily for yesterday, the 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B. The readings for yesterday are here.
A few weeks ago, I hit a milestone: I turned 60. Starting a new decade in my life seems a time to take stock, to see how my life has been going so far and to think about what comes next. Am I on the right path?
In light of today’s Gospel reading about the perils of wealth for discipleship, I don’t mind sharing: I’ve spent much of my life in pursuit of wealth, at least sufficient wealth to support a certain lifestyle – the lifestyle I suppose we all aspire to or enjoy here in our local community. As a young man, I went to college for a number of reasons, some more lofty than others, but among them certainly was the desire to be able to get a decent job after college and establish a foundation for a career. When I was in my 30s, I went to night school and got an MBA to position myself for further career growth and success. In my work life, I’ve hustled and sought promotions. While I’m not one who has been obsessed with getting rich, I’ve never objected when an employer has offered me more money. I don’t think I’m unusual in this regard. The things we want in our lives: a decent place to live, decent transportation, a decent education, decent health care, the opportunity to travel and have fun – they all cost a lot of money. We all have incentives to earn more, and then still more.
As a man now in his 60s, I need to start thinking about retirement. Presumably, either I’ll retire sometime in the next 10 years, or my employer will make that decision for me. After I retire, I’ll need money to live on. This topic of retirement income is one of those necessary but uncomfortable topics which I must face but might prefer not to. Funding our retirements is supposed to be a dispassionate, rational topic: all about planning ahead and making prudent preparations. But in fact, it’s extremely emotional. I’ll mention two emotions that come to me in thinking and talking about this retirement stuff. The first one is fear. This is what frightens me: I’ve worked and saved to be able to retire for this many years, but I may actually live for that many years. What if I outlive my savings: what then? I want to be able to have a comfortable retirement, and also leave some money for my wife and kids.
That fear generates another emotion: desperation, to grasp and clutch on to whatever savings I have, because it might not be enough, and I don’t really have any prospects for more coming in. As far as I know, there are no jackpots in my future. I don’t have any rich relatives who are going to leave me a bundle.
This picture I’m painting of myself, as an aging guy, clutching onto his wealth in fear and desperation, probably isn’t a very attractive one, but I think it’s a common one. I once worked for a wealthy guy who confided in me that the great organizing principle in his business and personal activities was to avoid getting sued. Fear that someone would sue him and take away the pile of wealth he had worked so hard to build up for himself and his family was a consideration in virtually everything he did. It cast a shadow over every aspect of his life. I realized that great wealth may not actually solve all my problems; it actually may introduce new ones.
Into this swirl of possession and clutching and fear and anxiety steps Jesus of Nazareth, with this teaching about wealth which we’ve just heard. Just get rid of it! says Jesus. Sell your property and possessions and give the proceeds to the poor. In essence, he’s telling the rich man, Go and make yourself poor. Then you can have eternal life.
That is so contrary to our human nature – our clutching, possessive, fearful human nature - that his disciples were “exceedingly astonished” to hear it. Nevertheless, it’s a teaching which I think we need to take quite literally and seriously: our wealth, which we’ve worked so hard to accumulate and we wish to guard so jealously, is a barrier - an obstacle - to eternal life. If we have just a little wealth, then we have a just a little barrier to step over. If we have enormous piles of wealth, then we have enormous, towering barriers to climb over.
I’ve been around the block enough to understand that many of us organize our lives around accumulating more wealth. Jesus is saying: that stuff is ephemeral. It comes and goes. It doesn’t last forever, and neither do our lives. Jesus’s advice is: let eternal life be your organizing principle. Eternal life isn’t ephemeral. It really does last forever.
When eternal life becomes the organizing principle of our life here on earth, things look very different. If we happen to possess wealth, the key thing is: what do we do with the material gifts we’ve been given?
Notice I said “gifts”. Some folks may bristle at my calling their wealth a gift. If you happen to be someone who inherited wealth, or won a lottery drawing, then maybe your wealth really is a gift. But if you’re someone like me, who has whatever I’ve accumulated through hard work and hustle and making my own decisions and taking risks, then “gift” doesn’t seem like the right word, does it?
But “gift” seems the wrong word only if we’re looking at this through the eyes of our lives here on earth. Remember: we’re trying to look at this now through the eyes of the kingdom of God. And through those eyes – which is the true and right perspective – any wealth, any money or securities or property we’ve accumulated, really are a gift. All the material things of the world don’t really belong to us. They belong to God. We don’t truly own them; we’re just their stewards. That means that God is allowing us to care for them on his behalf for a little while.
What does that mean, exactly? Well, today’s Gospel reading suggests that God is more interested in poor people getting what they really need, than in rich people getting even more of what they don’t actually need. As stewards of God’s property, we should do what the master wishes. We should help those who are poor, and that shouldn’t mean just skimming away a little excess. God wants us to be generous, even at the risk of diminishing our wealth. Addressing the need, rather than preserving existing wealth, should be our guiding principle.
I talk all the time about ways you can help people in need around here. We have alms boxes in the narthex; every penny you put in there goes to a worthy cause. We have a different good cause every week. No doubt, many of you have causes and charities you already donate to.
Or, you could do what the rich guy did in today’s Gospel reading. He declined to follow Jesus. He turned down his chance for eternal life. He continued to clutch onto his wealth, and he walked away sad. But my plea to all of us today is: Let’s not be like that guy. Don’t walk away sad. Don’t organize your life around preserving your wealth. It doesn’t last forever. Our lives don’t last forever. Examine your life through the eyes of the kingdom of God. Ask yourselves: what gifts has God made me the steward of? What does he want me to do with these gifts?
Some people think the rich young man was Joseph of Arimathea. I don't think that was likely, Joseph would have probably been older? But a couple things we do know about the young man; that Jesus loved him, and that He wasn't finished with him yet. We don't know the rest of his story.
ReplyDeleteI hear you about retirement worries. I am ten years older than you. We have retirement funds, but nothing like what the money gurus say you "should" have. But so far with living simply and being careful, God has taken care of us in retirement. I imagine we would be considered rich in many parts of the world. It isn't easy to gauge what you will need. "Teach us to number our days aright."
I retired at age sixty. Well actually sixty and a half. I had planned to do that ever since I was 44 when I took a position at the mental health board level which put me into the Ohio public employees retirement system which allows for early retirement at age 60.
ReplyDeleteI planned all my finances so that when I retired at age 60 I was able to pay off my house and live on a monthly income that was equal to the amount that I lived on (much less than what I earned) while I worked. I am going to be eighty next year. My net worth is the same as it was when I was sixty. I always plan for having everything I need if I have an average life expectancy. At sixty it was 80 years, now it is 88 years.
My whole system has been based on two principles: First saving a lot of money placed in conservative holdings much like they recommend for when you are retired. Second being very careful what I spend my money on. I use credit cards to track expenses: Visa are capital like expenses: computers, books, CDs, better clothes, furniture. MasterCard for things this disappear: food, gas, etc. Discover for in between things that last for a few years: socks, mulch. I have never invested directly in the stock market.
Worked well probably because I did not marry or have children. Might have worked well if I had married a woman who was willing to manage money in the same fashion as I do. I was also able to work in the public mental health system with its less salaries rather than the corporate world If I had married and had children I might not have been able to do that.
My experiences when I was part of the senior management led me to believe that I might have done very well in the corporate world. If I had gotten an MBA rather than I Ph.D. maybe I could have made my fortune by age 40 or at least 50, retired and had 40 or 30 rather than twenty years of scholarly leisure. Of course I may still be able to do that by living to 90 or 100. Not really planning on it. I have accompanied enough family members in their eighties to know that it is often not easy.
I have never organized my life around acquiring wealth, but I have been very careful in managing and preserving it. That is the way my parents lived, it worked well for them and it has worked well for me.
I was fortunate to have begun my employment under the old Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS). I also was not a big spender, so I saved quite a bit. So I consider myself gifted, blessed, lucky. I have no worries unless the country collapses which is a possibility. I just need to figure out what to do with what I have and the years I have left. Biden keeps reassuring everyone that taxes won't be raised on those making $400K/yr. I don't make anything near that but I wouldn't mind my taxes being higher if it resulted in betterment for everyone. More wars and arms escalation, no thank you.
ReplyDeleteI have grappled with these teachings for a lot of my life - especially after leaving the state of financial insecurity that I grew up with and joining the "professional, upper middle class". We have been fortunate financially - but we were also careful with our money. We did not use our home equity as a piggy bank to pay for luxuries as some people we know did, ending up with a big mortgage still to pay off when they retired. We mowed our own lawn, painted our own house, and cleaned our toilets ourselves, unlike most of our neighbors. It adds up - we have been married 49 years and live in the house we moved into the day after we came home from our honeymoon. My husband, 7 years older, had saved a good down payment, and he chose to buy a new house from a builder, one large enough that would allow us to stay put "when the first child is born". It was built during our engagement - most of the other families had 2 kids and were "moving up" because they had outgrown their starter homes.
ReplyDeleteI still struggle with this and other passages in the gospels. We did not collect SS until 70 1/2, partly in order to max the payments for long term security. My husband did not fully retire until he was about 75. I gave up work at about 68 because of my hearing. We didn't really want to retire as both of us got a lot of satisfaction from our work, but very often the system, or circumstances, forces retirement.
We are financially comfortable. Two of our three sons are on track to be even more comfortable than we are when they retire in 20 or 30 years, barring a total economic catastrophe. The third son should be OK because of his wife's retirement plan (as a freelancer, he doesn't have one and has not had work in 18 months). Anyway, my early years included a lot of financial insecurity and that is something I still cling to - a fear of not having enough money (my mother did not - but her children earned enough to be able to buy her a nice retirement condo in a beautiful development and pay for a few luxuries for her now and then like a nice vacation).
I fear losing our financial security, even though it is unlikely. And I think Jesus was talking about that - not just about accumulating and holding on to material wealth, but not trusting God enough to let go of the need for financial security. It is an entirely rational fear - we all know what poverty looks like in our country, and American poverty is insignificant in absolute terms compared to the poverty that millions of people around the world face every day. That reality raises more questions as many of the world's poorest people are christians. Is their trust in God misplaced? What else do we grasp on to - our self-image? The desire to be a big shot in our community (including in religious environments)?
How does our "greed" manifest itself? Greed for a monetary fortune is one kind of greed; greed for "fame" is another. What else? Power, prestige, privilege. When I think about it, I can think of lots of ways we are "greedy" that aren't just for material wealth. What are we attached to? A desire for financial security is one thing, but not necessarily the worst attachment, except for maybe the very rich who grasp and grasp for more, at the expense of others.
Buddhism emphasizes detachment - from material goods, but also from other things - fear, vanity, ambition, pride, etc., some of which are morally neutral, but which often become traps and obstacles to the spiritual life. I think Jesus taught the same thing.
Brilliant, Anne. That would make a wonderful homily or witness talk.
DeleteAnne says How does our "greed" manifest itself?
ReplyDeleteYou have essentially expanded the concept of greed to that of the theological concept of "concupiscence" (which unfortunately has been narrowed to that of sexual desire in most people's minds). It is central to the Catholic notion of sin. Essentially after the fall we became less rational and less oriented toward God.
The desires for money, power, and status were all included in the medieval concept of being "worldly." The idea being that while pursuit of all these things was o.k. if ordered by reason and to the service of God and others, there was a high probability of becoming greedy and therefore sinful. The purpose of religious life was to abandon worldliness through poverty, chastity and obedience.
Around the time of Vatican II theologians began to recognize that "greed' can distort our intellectual and spiritual lives. Karl Rahner talked about intellectual concupiscence, the greed that comes when we see everything through the eyes of only one intellectual discipline and/or ideology. Congar introduced the notion of spiritual worldliness (which has been popularized by Francis) We can pursue spiritual goods for money, power, and status. Merton recognized spiritual pride as the tendency to attribute all our spiritual gifts and experiences to ourselves rather than God.
Ignatius taught that most things in life are morally neutral; the important thing are the ends for which we use them. We can use fear, anger, ambition, pride, etc. for good ends. The whole aim of discernment is to recognize all our impulses toward good and evil, and discern the Holy Spirit. A part of Jesuit spirituality is to become indifferent to health and sickness, poverty and wealth, etc. recognizing that they all possible paths to God. However after becoming indifferent, Ignatius does recognize a higher level, i.e. we are allowed to asked God for the gift of being like Jesus, e.g. to be poor, humble, despised, and persecuted.
Ignatius sounds like he was a secret Buddhist ;).
DeleteJack - what a wonderful reflection!
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