Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.
Luke 12:15
An astute listener told me after last week’s sermon, “I can see a theme in the last two sermons you preached.”
She was right!
Two weeks ago, we talked about how the goal of the journey of discipleship, a journey that requires God’s help and guidance every step of the way, is to keep maturing in faith.
Consider that as the first level of your spiritual house, with Christ’s life and teachings as the foundation built upon the rock that can weather any storm.
Last week we spoke about how continuing on this journey requires us to continuously reorient ourselves through prayer that reaffirms our allegiance to God alone and breaks the chains of ANY lesser idols that may wish to possess us.
Today, we focus on ONE of the most pervasive of these idols, and one that can derail this journey of faith that leads to spiritual maturity.
Greed.
The dictionary defines greed as “a selfish and excessive desire for more of something (such as money) than is needed[1].”
And if you’ve ever seen the 1987 movie Wall Street with Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen, I’m sure you remember the tycoon Gordon Gekko’s famous speech when he said, “The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind.[2]”
That quote characterized an economic outlook and strategy of the period, and one that still guides many in the pursuit of amassing and accumulating wealth.
Why is greed such an alluring idol?
The main reason Gordon Gekko and so many other individuals, corporations, and governments pursue greed as a policy, is because wealth can often be an insulator for those who have it.
Those who are greedy in financial matters can buy houses in the safer parts of town, pay for private security forces to protect their assets, and can weather the effects of global inflation, food shortages, and climate change better than their poorer counterparts.
There are even some who are so greedy that they are preparing for the time when our planet’s resources will be so used up and depleted that we are forced to search the universe for a new home, while the vast majority of God’s creatures and creation tilts into ruin and instability.
Money and wealth are not good or bad on their own; they are tools that we can use to build up or to tear down.
I know people with very little money who are trapped in greed’s snare, and people with a lot of material wealth who generously give it away and who remain vigilant and free from greed’s grip.
Jesus speaks about how hard it is for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven[3] because the pressure to succumb to greed’s allure is so much greater for those with lots of material wealth.
The hook from the late 90’s hip-hop anthem Mo money mo problems hits the nail on the head, “It’s like the more money we come across, the more problems we see.”
Money alone is not the enemy; it’s greed.
And as followers of Christ, we can never give our hearts and lives over to the hollow idol of greed.
The illusion of security that greed creates is something that Jesus addresses in the Gospel today, and it’s at the heart of his entire teaching ministry.
God, not greed, is the source of our ultimate security, and when we lose sight of this, we slip deeper into the grasp of a false idol, which keeps us spiritually immature.
Rabbi Jesus cautions his followers, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” when a younger brother wants Jesus to make a ruling on his inheritance—the younger brother wants half of the estate when the law at the time was for 2/3 to go to the older brother and 1/3 to the younger.
And then Jesus tells the parable of the rich man whose land produces abundantly.
Rather than seeing the blessing of abundance as something to give away and to build up others, the foolish man sees the abundance as something to hoard.
Whether he builds the bigger barns in order to corner the grain market and reap more profits, or whether he does it to ensure his own food security, the rich farmer is ultimately exposed as having invested wrongly.
Rather than becoming rich toward God—which would mean seeing that abundance as a gift from God to be used as a tool of reconciliation and to serve as a reminder of the constant reliance we have upon God—the foolish man takes God’s gift as license for self-preservation and isolation.
As if the man’s life could be traded for the larger silos he constructs—as if his ultimate security could be bought by building bigger barns.
One look at our world right now proves that Jesus’ teaching is sound.
As a huge portion of the world’s grain and food security is threatened by war in Ukraine, as global fires exacerbated by climate change and flash floods ravage the lands and buildings that store up so much of our accumulated wealth and lives, and as the pursuit of greed continues to widen the gaps between peoples and nations, it is clear that greed cannot give us the security for which we long.
What can we do to both renounce its hold upon us and proclaim God as the only source of the security we seek?
Well, as I said last week, praying for reorientation is a great first step in this journey.
And in order to reinforce those prayers, we need to accompany them with actions.
Generosity can help us let go of the idol of greed—generosity toward our shared mission in the church, generosity toward our neighbors, generosity of heart and spirit toward even those we might consider enemies.
When we are generous, in both indiscriminate giving and discerning giving, we announce to ourselves that our salvation and security are not to be found in the money or thing that we are giving away.
Our life is not found in those things, even though God can bless and use those gifts in ways that extend and build up life beyond us.
When we reorient our lives on God, and we nurture the seeds of generosity in the garden of our hearts and communities rather than the weeds of greed, then we will eventually see the fruits of the kingdom maturing among us.
And when we are generous in sharing the abundance of those fruits with the world, then the security we might have sought in vain through greed will arise in truth through the grace and generosity of our God.
[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/greed