There are riches, and there are the Bible's riches

Sermon. 31 July 2022. Trinity 7 (Year C)

·        Ecclesiastes 1.2, 12-14; 2.18-23

·        Luke 12.13-21

 

It can be hard to follow Jesus.

Some of the time, a lot of the time,

maybe most of the time, maybe almost all the time,

it can be hard to follow Jesus.

And let me be clear: here by “follow”, I mean “understand”.

It can be hard to understand Jesus,

long before we ask how easy it is to put his words into practice.

Jesus is and remains strange to us,

in ways the Church is not always comfortable owning.

 

This means, of course, that we can give hearty thanks,

when we have reason to think we have understood Jesus.

Today may be one such day.

We can name it, with ease:

don’t rely on your possessions;

don’t make storing up stuff the meaning of your life.

The cliché stands: “You can’t take it with you”,

and you never know when that will apply.

There is no condemnation of wealth in Jesus’ words here today,

just a clear-eyed warning not to get attached to your riches,

whatever form your riches take.

 

Of course, this being the Holy Gospel, it is not that simple.

 

I believe all that I have said applies,

but there are other forms of detachment we are called to.

Surely there is something shocking for us

in how Jesus introduces his story.

He says: “Man, who appointed me

a judge or an arbiter between you?”

[anthrope, tis me katestesen kriten e meristen eph’hymas?]

Think it through.

Jesus here refuses to be

the one who makes the decisions, who sorts things out.

That must make us at least a little uncomfortable.

How can it be that we can turn to Jesus.

to make a decision or sort things out,

and he says no…

he says that is not his role?

 

Modern scholarship is pretty clear about this:

Jesus is in many ways squarely within the Judaism of his day

-         little of his teaching is actually revolutionary -

and Jesus is perhaps

-         I’ll say this bluntly –

perhaps especially close to the Pharisees

(we can talk about this afterwards).

But! But here he does differ from the leaders of the other Jewish groupings.

He does not want to be one who gives rulings,

in accordance with the guidance revealed at Sinai.

 

You may be wondering, by the way, why I am phrasing this point thus.

Why do I speak of “the leaders of the other Jewish groupings”?

Why don’t I just say: In this, Jesus was not like the Rabbis?

Well, I refrain deliberately,

because that same scholarship also says

that in Jesus’ day, “the office of rabbi” had not really been formed.

You didn’t train to “become a rabbi”.

That came later.

Yes, of course, the New Testament knows the word “rabbi” (‘rabbi).

But it means something less technical.

It’s a form of address, and means little more than “Sir”.

 

But if we dwell on how Jesus was different from other Jewish leaders,

we avoid a painful task I am bringing us back to,

of having to reflect on

how Jesus says his role is not to settle matters of dispute between us.

This is Jesus’ sovereign decision.

We are not likely to think the matter was too hard for him.

We are not told that it was a particularly convoluted case.

There may well have been a right answer he could easily have given.

But Jesus’ sovereign decision

is not to settle the matter of dispute.

 

Accepting this is the greater detachment,

harder (I say) than detachment from riches.

It may be our task – our shared task – our human task – our Christian task -

to find ways forward through our disagreements and estrangements.

 

Let me say one thing about the parable Jesus brings.

We are rarely if ever told of the tone in which any of the characters speak.

So we the readers have to supply the tone.

And in this case it’s very tempting to imagine, well, some dramatic anger.  

So we imagine Gd shouting:

“You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you.”

But that is our interpretation only.

No less likely is that Gd speaks with pity, with compassion, with sadness.

‘You fool, [you poor misguided one]!

This very night your life will be demanded from you.”

 

Something similar can be said about our first reading.

Ecclesiastes sits within the Wisdom literature

of the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible.

Wisdom literature tells us how to live.

But, again, we are not told of the tone it uses in its instruction.

Consider, for example, all the ways in which one might hear just one verse from the Book of Proverbs [1.22]:

“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing
    and fools hate knowledge?”

Try it out, some time!

 

But it might also be said that a change of tone will only get you so far.

The whole Book of Ecclesiastes is difficult, however you pitch it.

It presents a scepticism

which we might say does not fall short of cynicism.

“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
    says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
    Everything is meaningless.”

Some of us will know the older translation

(which sticks closely to the Hebrew):

“Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”

And let us be clear

that even the section from Ecclesiastes which people find most uplifting, chapter 3, beginning:

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven”

and goes on about

a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace…

well, however poetic it all is,

what it may be saying is that

all we ever do is react naturally to natural occurrences.

What we think of as

our most considered and deliberate responses

to extreme, even unique situations

is actually us just taking the line of least resistance

when faced with the perfectly normal and repeatable.

There is never any reason for drama or dilemma;

there is never any excuse to think of yourself as a hero.

Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

 

So, we may think in today’s readings

we are being given a manageable morsel of wisdom –

“don’t get too attached to perishable possessions” –

something which pretty much every venerable worldview insists upon.

But we don’t have to dig too hard to find a much sharper message:

·        we cannot reliably turn to Jesus to settle our disputes;

·        we cannot reliably turn to the Bible
to find reassurance that ultimately everything makes sense.

 

That is not the note on which I want to end.

Rather I want to speak quite personally.

Speaking personally, the sheer fact that Ecclesiastes is in the Bible

is one of the things that gives me hope

(when everyday forms of hope are harder to come by).

Whatever the Bible is,

it is not a collection of pious texts

put together by religious people

for the edification of others.

It contains much that is shocking,

shocking for those who see their role as the edification of others.

I invite you to have a think, over the course of the coming week,

about other Books in the Bible

which defy the expectations of those who think

biblical teaching is just memorable words encouraging safe behaviour.

The Bible offers so many rich foods, over and above that bland diet.

Surely these are our riches.

Surely, pondering them is at least part of what makes us rich toward Gd.

I commend these riches to us all.

Amen.