Deacon Tom Writes,
“Real Wealth”
St.
Paul instructs us to “Think of what is
above, not what is on earth”. Good, practical advice of our need to build a spiritual
legacy but, unfortunately, one in direct conflict with our earthly way of
thinking. Take the man in the parable today. He is not just successful; he is very
successful. He is having a bumper crop and so he makes a decision to
tear down the existing barns and build bigger ones so he can store much more of
his harvest. Consequently, he will acquire more and more wealth to provide a
safe and secure future for himself and his family. Yet, rather than being the
poster child for ingenuity and entrepreneurial enterprise, this parable ends
with this enterprising farmer standing before God (to whom we must all render
an account) about his spiritual net worth, or lack thereof.
Jesus
tells this parable in response to a request to settle a dispute over an
inheritance problem, an issue we might be tempted to think is a contemporary
problem. Jesus understands the dispute; we are never satisfied. He seems to have put his finger on the crux of the
problem - Greed! This parable is
intended to remind us that we are more
than what we possess.
Two
thousand years have passed and I don’t know if we have heeded Jesus’ warning
about greed. The blockbuster movie “Wall Street” is over twenty years old. Remember
the famous scene in which Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) spews that classic
line -“Greed is good…greed in all of its
forms has marked the upward surge of mankind”. Well, if nothing else, the
past twenty years has dispelled that myth. Oh, it has worked for the top 1%, but not for everyone else.
We have all witnessed and experienced the horrific damage that greed has
spawned around the world. It has shattered the lives and dreams of hundreds of
millions of people. It has unleashed a cynicism and hopelessness that is
running rampant today. It is causing discontent and worry in the hearts of many
mothers and fathers seeking to improve the quality of life for their children. No,
greed is not good. It is a capital sin, one that can ruin not only this life,
but steal from us that eternal life that Jesus won for us by his death and resurrection.
St.
Paul writes that our lives are, “hidden
with Christ in God”. If we
place our hope and trust in him, we no longer have to, “store up treasures for” ourselves, for we can claim the inheritance
Jesus has secured for us, eternal life that already has begun to run its course.
Enjoy
the Day!
Deacon
Tom
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