10 Pentecost 2007 Zion, Washington

Jesus said, "The land of a rich man brought forth plentifully; and he thought to himself, 'What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?' And 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; take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry.' But God said to him, 'Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So is he who lays up treasures for himself, and is not rich toward God."

No. This is not a parable against being rich. But over the millenia, Judaism has had a long-standing underlying current of belief that wealth is a sign of God's blessing and poverty is a sign of God's disinterest; so, in order to make His point most clearly, Jesus had to use a very rich man. The parable applies as equally to very poor people and to everyone in between. This is the fate of everyone who is not rich toward God.

By the way, the First Reading, from Ecclesiastes, is simply a testimony to the antiquity of cynicism in Judaism. It was written in the fourth century BC, at the same time that the Greek school of Cynicism was growing and flourishing under Socrates' student Antisthenes and his followers Diogenes of Sinope, Crates of Thebes, and Zeno, the founder of Stoicism. Only the last two verses of the entire book give a positive religious twist on the cynicism of the rest of the book, and every scholar agrees that they were added later on by an orthodox rabbi.

Qoheleth, "the Preacher", comes to the conclusion that "all is vanity". And in a way, he's right. Like Siddhartha Gautama, teaching at the same time in India, what was to became Buddhism, Qoheleth recognizes that nothing on earth gives us true and lasting pleasure or profound peace. Qoheleth says, "Don't bother trying." Buddha says, "Detach from it all."

But Jesus gives the world a unique perspective that generates Hope and motivates us to Action. In this parable, He simply says, "Be rich toward God". To put it another way, "Have a lot of God in your life."

St. Paul built on the teachings of Jesus and said all this in terms that most people can understand. He wrote things like, "Put to death what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry... Put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk from your mouth."

He goes on the write, "We are all equal here because Christ is all, in all. Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, long-suffering one another, and forgiving one another... And above all these put on generous love (agape), which binds everything together in perfect harmony."

All of which is to say that putting off the bad and taking on the good are the "fruits" of "being rich toward God". And then St. Paul describes what it looks like to be "rich toward God." He wrote, "Let the peace of Christ rest in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him."

This is the distinction that makes Christianity different: that we start with gratitude to God for all things. Most other religions are pleased to thank God - in whatever mode they perceive God - for extraordinary things or for particular requests being granted the way that they wanted them granted. But precious few, if any, simply start by saying, "Thank you, God". It changes our whole outlook on life and on the blessings and the challenges that come our way. It gives us Hope, ...even at death.

And at a deeper level, when we are "rich toward God", we are not overwhelmed by the those tragedies that are simply part of the nature of created existence: death, disease, accidents, misfortune, wars, and all the other horrors that go along with being human. On one hand, with a life that is built on Gratitude to God, we have a strong vocation to go out and make this world a better place and leave our spheres of influence better than when we found them. On the other hand, we know that, at the end of time, as St. Paul teaches in several places, God will be all, in all, and all created existence will pass through the changes and chances of this life and, in one way or another, rest in God's eternal changelessness.

Which is to say, that we really are called to make this world a better place and to draw all people to God in Christ through the Church, by the grace of the Holy Spirit; and at the same time, to have the common sense to know that all this doesn't depend on us. It's all by God's grace that we do anything that we do.

We live in a good healthy tension between Faith and Action. As we all know, "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions." So we know that it is not acceptable to our Baptismal Vows to God that "after all is said and done, a lot more is said than done." God calls us to Action.

But, over the years, I've encountered good, well-meaning Christians who are painfully burdened by a belief that if they don't, somehow, bring a certain number of "souls to Christ", that, on Judgment Day, God is going to consign them to Hell - and they don't want to go. So they keep count of how many people they've "saved"; not unlike notches on a wild-west pistol or the number of scalps on a Plains Indian's scalp belt. They have taken on themselves the role of Savior, rather than the role of "instrument of God's peace", to use St. Francis of Assisi's phrase. They rejected the tension between Faith and action and embraced only Action. (Episcopalians are more prone to reject that tension and embrace only Faith, which is equally distressing; if "being rich in God" is important.)

The best, profoundest place is in the Via Media, the Middle Way as we Anglicans call it: between both Faith and Action. We have a lot of great treasures that we take for granted, so we don't recognize that there are all sorts of people out there who are looking for God as we see God. There really are all sorts of people out there who want to look at God through the eyes of our Anglican Christian faith, but we take no Action to address their quest for Faith. Shame on us.

At the same time, there are some Anglicans who have also abandoned Faith for Action and seem to have forgotten that God oversees our Church in whatever ways that God sees fit. And that our trials and our tribulations don't need as much of our intervention as they need our prayers and meditations on just what all is happening, so that we might drop down into the deeper mysteries of Christ's Body on earth, which we are pleased to call The Church.

The profoundest place to be "rich toward God" is precisely in the middle of that tension between Faith and Action. Only then can our Faith be continuously growing and only then can our Actions be guided by the Mind of Christ, by the Will of God. Based on gratitude to God, built with the word of Christ, holy wisdom, along with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, which are the tools of our Faith in God; our Actions will have no options except to be holy and compassionate, kind, humble, patient, and forgiving as we have been forgiven.

(As you've heard me say, every Episcopal service includes the Lord's Prayer. What you may not know is that it's part of our Benedictine heritage, because St. Benedict of Nursia called for the Lord's Prayer to be said, at least silently, at every service so that the members of his monastic communities would hear Jesus' phrase "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" and be inspired to forgive every other person who had sinned against them... and to do it then, upon hearing Jesus' holy words of wisdom.)

Another part of our tension between Faith and Action is captured in the latter part of today's First Reading, where the Preacher laments that all the things he had done would be handed over to someone else. (The irony of this is that, because he intimates that he is King Solomon in these first two chapters, Solomon's heritage crumbled under his son and heir Rehoboam. The kingdom split into Israel up north and Judea in the south and the nation never regained its power or its united independence until the end of World War II.)

The other part of our holy and God-given tension is between Attachment and Detachment. Our Faith gives us Detachment. Our call to Action gives us Attachment. Unlike Qoheleth, who gave up in despair, God calls us to give everything our best shot and, at the same time, rely on God to see our Actions through as only God can see our Actions through.

Look at all the good things we have accomplished, because we have engaged our God-given gifts and talents, as well as our time and our energy. We are typical as Episcopalians, in that we are active in doing good to the glory of God and for the common good disproportionately to the general community. And yet we also know that there is no way to insure that the good we do will continue on after us. But it doesn't matter. It's enough that God has inspired us to do the good that we do; and given us the courage to pursue those good things and the grace to accomplish those good things.

The phrase, "What if" does not spring to our lips. We are not distracted by all the possibilities or even some of the probabilities. We are, at our best, steadfast, prayerful, thoughtful, and productive; attached to our projects so far as humanly possible; but not consumed by them, because of our holy faith in God. We are pleased to be the stewards of the riches of creation, but we are not possessed by our possessions; and know, with serenity, that what we don't give away will be taken from us.

There is, of course, the story of the man who did, indeed, "take it all with him". He arrived at the Pearly Gates with great, huge bags of gold. St. Peter took one look at them and said, "Hmm. Paving material."

Even Jesus said, don't lay up treasures on earth that rust or that moths destroy; but lay up treasures in heaven - "be rich toward God". We will always understand that God is good, so long as we don't expect God to treat us as gods or to expect earth to be heaven.

It really is a holy balance between Faith and Action, between Attachment and Detachment. And through it all, we will be able to rest ourselves gently in the deep serenity of the Peace of God which passes all understanding and have no fear or anxiety when God whispers in our ear, "This night your soul is required of you."

Jesus said, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls."