Abundance, Moral Witness & the NC Protests Luke 12: 13-21, Colossians 3:1-11

Despite being offered as a warning against all kinds of greed, the story of the wealthy landowner presents us with a man who isnt really much of a villain. He comes across as a pretty normal guy, a sensible man who has had remarkably good fortune. He doesnt mean harm to anyone, and his response to his good fortune can even be seen as being fairly prudent, if maybe a little bit self-serving. And yet, he is the star of a parable that ends badly. The man is able to capture and store the abundance of God, and saying well done! to himself, he builds bigger barns to accommodate his wealth. Now it was time to relax, party and coast into the good life. Except, of course, his life is demanded of him that very night. God asks him then, The things you have prepared, whose will they be? So it is, says Jesus, with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God. To Jesus mind, this falls under the umbrella of all kinds of greed. Which brings up a tricky question for all of us: At what point does comfort become greed? At what point does our need for security cross the grim threshold that leads to avarice? At what point does our fear of scarcity (or our fear of losing the things we have) take over our life, to the point that the fear becomes our life? When is that moment when, by laying exclusive claim to the abundance of Gods creation, we turn it into a zero-sum game? Rarely can we point to the moment, in any of our lives, when that happens. Nor can the man in the parable. It probably didnt happen the day he realized that he was sitting on a cash crop. Nor did it happen the day he razed his barns, and built them up bigger. And yet, it did happen. Greed had to begin at some point. And so Jesus gives us wise words: Be on your guard. Yes, Jesus loves us. But I get the impression that he doesnt trust us so much. He probably doesnt trust us to ride a wave of prosperity to the threshold where comfort meets greed, sagely discern which way the wind is blowing, and then magnanimously turn back towards the good side. Rarely do we human beings work like that: our fear, our hunger for security, our vanity, all these things take root in our lives and bind us to the earthly things that surround us. So much so, that we forget the eternal. Thats a lot of what this passage is about: seeing the abundance of God as a gift that is supposed to snap us out of our self-centered little worlds and see the presence of grace around us. Yet the earthly things dont quit, they crowd out the heavenly things, they compete aggressively, and indeed stealthily, for our hearts. Paul uses vivid imagery to make this point in the letter we read this morning: Put to death whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry.)i Paul offers us a great insight in that footnote: the deepest problem of greed isnt stinginess. The problem is that it is idolatrous. It replaces God with things that, while seductive, have nothing to do with the holy.

These things keep us from being present to the eternal, and the very abundance that comes with it. The landowner completely misread the meaning of this gift. He got his windfall, and thought that it was the prosperity gospel bearing fruit. But the abundance was something different: this gift was more about the sweetness of life that God offers to us. If he was truly present to the gift, keeping it to himself simply wouldnt have made sense. Just two weeks, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Short, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the U.S., spoke of Gods abundance in words the clearly recalled the imagery of todays Gospel passage. She said, God gives us abundance, but were only going to know the sweetness of that basket of fruit if its shared. Anybody who tries to hoard it might be able to enjoy one piece, but not the whole pile. That person is going to spend his energy protecting what he has from somebody who might come and ask for a piece.ii Bishop Katharine may have been recalling the parable of the landowner, but she was speaking of something very specific: she was referring to North Carolina, and the protests in our state capitol that have received national attention. I realize how tricky it is to address this in a sermon, as the protestors include a great many people, with varying desires and messages. What I want to do is speak of the church folks who are involved, speaking of priests, ministers, rabbis, bishops, and laypeople, who have been part of the protests in Raleigh against legislation that they believe disproportionally impacts the poor, the elderly and the vulnerable. iii They are there because, as Bishop Curry told the Episcopal News Service last week, Christian moral witness must always focus on how to help and support the vulnerable, the weak, and the poor.iv Certainly, the issues at the core of the debates are complex. And I am not going to suggest that the protestors have it all figured out, and that the legislators do not. But I do want to say that I believe very firmly that the church has an important witness here, and we ought to be listening to it. In matters of poverty, ethics and public policy, the church most certainly has a voice, imperfect though it may be. It is a voice which draws on centuries well, millennia, really of moral witness, going back to the Hebrew prophets and continuing to our present day. Throughout history, the church has (when it was properly being the church) witnessed to the reality that our economic life is intimately tied to our religious life. William Temple worked to make this same point in the 1940s. Temple was the Archbishop of Canterbury during the Second World War, and he spoke of how the in the economic and public life of Britain, the Christian moral witness had been marginalized. He wrote, in Christianity and Social Order (and being that this is an Archbishop of Canterbury, try reading this in a British accent) that The claim of the Christian Church to make its voice heard in matters of politics and economics is very widely resented, even by those who are Christian in personal belief and in devotional practice.It is commonly assumed (that religion is one department of life,) and that it is playing the part of the busybody when it lays down principles for the guidance (of other areas.)v

Archbishop Temple rejected that. He didnt suggest, mind you, that clerics and other church folk should start writing policies and laws simply because they were familiar with scripture. But he did, however, argue that economics are subject to noneconomic criterion such as justice and equity. He believed that economic shaped character, perhaps moreso than any other formative influence, and as such, assuredly the church must be concerned with it. Three decades later, an Episcopal Priest and ethicist named Earl Brill (from NC!) put this another way. He pointed out that economics were (duh) complicated, and that ethically speaking, an economy that is contracting is no good for anyone and is especially hard on the poor. So there isnt much room for simple moralism. But, the church can put forward principles (much as Archbishop Temple did in the 1940s) around which we can shape both our common life and our faithful witness. Christians would maintain, he wrote in 1979, that economic growth should be accompanied by an increase in social justice, by widening opportunities for the poor, the outsider and the oppressed. vi When that does not happen the church is right to speak up. Or, as I think happens most often, when we tell ourselves that an increase in growth is going to be accompanied by an increase in equity, but a critical look (and the experience of memory) tells us that its probably not going to actually happen that way, then the church ought to speak up. Speaking up means putting ourselves out there, getting into the public sphere, even if it also means being wrong on occasion. You may read in the news what many of the folks are saying at the protests, and you may not agree with everything you hear. I know that I dont. But what I do want you to do is take the conversation seriously, in particular when it raises questions about poverty, and the care of the poor and the weak. Let us not forget that concern for those who have been left behind are at the heart of our story of faith, from the Hebrew scriptures, to the Acts of the Apostles (as we read in our class this morning), to the parables of Christ, to the witness of the present day. In our gospel passage, we are reminded that the economic sphere of life is not to be balkanized, separated from the faithful sphere of life. The landowner is confronted with this reality much sooner than he expected. But lets close by remembering his story, and why it is told as a warning to us. His story was one of greed, but we see in the story that he wasnt particularly avaricious. He didnt hold anyone in contempt, he didnt actively do anyone harm. But when his life was demanded of him, we see that he sure did miss the mark. He had things. He had comfort and security, he had luxury, but he lacked something more precious, something that was before him the whole time: he did not have the sweetness of life that came from trust in God. The great message of this parable is one, ultimately, of abundance, and what we do with it. The abundance of God is a gift, a holy gift, and what we do with it gives shape to our entire lives. The Rev. Bernard J. Owens Proper 13, Year C

St. Andrews Episcopal Church, Greensboro NC August 4, 2013

luke 12:13-21
Someone in the crowd said to him, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me. But he said to him, Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you? And he said to them, Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for ones life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. Then he told them a parable: The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops? 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. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry. 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? So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.

Pauls letter to the Colossians, 3:1-11, NRSV http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2013/07/30/north-carolinians-stand-up-for-the-poor-vulnerable-onmoral-mondays/ iii Bishop Michael Curry. http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2013/07/30/north-carolinians-stand-up-for-thepoor-vulnerable-on-moral-mondays/ iv ibid v Temple, William, Archbishop of Canturbury. . Christianity and Social Order 1941. Italics added.
ii vi

Brill, Earl H. The Christian Moral Vision. New York: The Seabury Press. 1979