Pentecost 11

Pentecost 11 (Luke 12:13-21) “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.”

Greed is a distortion of generosity.

Our Heavenly Father designed the human soul to be an open channel of grace. The Bible describes this aspect of our nature as the open heart from which flows the well springs of living water.

Greed is one of the seven deadly sins that corrupt the fundamental principles of love. This corruption is only possible as a consequence of the original choice our species made to separate from God.

Separation produces a deeply rooted existential pain in our souls. That pain warps the original virtues with which God adorned the soul. That trauma to original virtue distorts the way we think, the way we feel, and the way we make choices.  Actual sin in thought word and deed proceeds from this distortion. The process ends in physical death.

Our Heavenly Father sent His only begotten Son into the world to reverse the process of separation, sin and death. Jesus just doesn’t teach about the truth of the human condition, Jesus is the original pattern of Truth.

By thought word and deed Jesus manifests the original pattern of humanity. When we study the teachings, works and life of Jesus Christ we see the fullness of the original blessing our Heavenly Father intended for all of us, for each of us.

Jesus is the Good News that God just doesn’t have love; God is love.

In the parable of the rich fool, Jesus tells us a story about a particular individual. That story has universal application.

The rich man is lost and unwilling to be found. The distortion of separation from God has led him to seek wealth. It is a vain attempt to ease the existential pain that separation from God brings. As with each of the seven deadly sins, greed is subject to the law of diminishing return.

The law of diminishing return states: the more you get the more want and the less you enjoy.

For a person lost in the distortion of greed there is never enough. There is only a gnawing desire for something different and something more. There is a certain pleasure in the desire, the longing, the yearning anticipation that just one more thing or one more level of wealth will bring happiness. There is a momentary rush of satisfaction in attaining a goal: a bigger house, a larger bank account, a better job. That moment passes quickly for the soul lost in greed.

Jesus reveals that greed is part of a process. The process is the spiritual decay of the soul. The process is the distortion of desire that is trapped in a feedback loop of demand that can never find satisfaction.

The rich fool is rich in the abundance of material possessions. He is foolish in his choice to hoard those possessions. He has so much that his barns cannot contain everything he has and everything he desires.

As he tears down his barns to build bigger barns he reaches the end of the process of separation and sin. The end of the process is death. In the world as it is presently constituted, death comes to everyone. Death annuls all contracts, ends all projects and defeats fulfillment of desire.

Death does not destroy desire. The desires we choose to cultivate in this life remain with us in the next life. Death does end our ability to fulfill those desires on our own terms.

The greedy soul retains the disposition of greed at death. But, death stops the process of accumulation and hoarding.

Death tears down the barns, makes the accumulation of possessions unattainable and no longer provides satisfaction to the soul. The illusion of wealth through temporary possession of things evaporates to reveal the poverty of a soul lost in a greed that can no longer claim ownership of any material object.

Mother Teresa once advised: hold all things lightly.  Moses and the prophets never taught that money or material possessions are evil. Jesus does not teach that wealth is immoral or sinful. It is not the money or material possessions; it is the obsessive desire.

St. Paul identifies greed as a form of idolatry. A basic principle of scripture is that we become like who or what we worship; and, we become how we worship. Greed is a distortion of love that worships things and uses God and other people to acquire and possess those things.

Is there some material object or pursuit you hold tightly? Are you living with the illusion of control through possession? What object or desire is more important you than loving God through worship, loving others through generosity and loving yourself through a commitment to yield your sins to the Holy Spirit to be transformed back into their original virtues? Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.