July 31, 2022
Paulist Fr. Rich Andre preached this homily on the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) on July 31, 2022 at The Paulist Center in Boston, MA. The homily is based on the day’s readings: Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:21-23; Psalm 90; Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11; and Luke 12:13-21.
Our readings this week are on a theme older than Christianity itself: the dangers of wealth. But if we dig deeper, there’s an even deeper, more challenging theme here: it’s about the foolishness – or the vanity – we have in thinking that we can control every aspect of our lives.
Most of us, to some extent, want to be self-sufficient. Think about it. We live in a country that prizes autonomy. We live in a city that championed independence and threw off tyranny. We worship in a community that is extremely wary of external authority. Deep down inside, a lot of us believe that if we exercise our intellect and save up a lot of money, we each can be in total control of our destiny. But the religions of world tell us no: we are not God. To believe that we have total control is foolishness and vanity.
Christianity encourages each of us to make time for a type of prayer called adoration. A colleague of mine once described adoration as “recognizing that God is God, and we are not.” God sustains us at every moment of our lives. Let us ask God to continue to show mercy upon us.
I often say that the most influential event in my life was the Great Depression. Yes, it ended 35 years before I was born, but it deeply, deeply influenced my parents and grandparents. For example, my father was ashamed to throw anything away. Or maybe it wasn’t shame. Perhaps he lived in fear of the scarcity his family had experienced in the 1930s. At our house, we had a collection of old toasters that had broken over the years. My dad wasn’t very handy. I guess his thinking was that if there was an apocalypse but the power still worked, he’d find someone to fix one of the 6 or 7 toasters in the back of the garage.
It’s easy to respond to today’s readings by saying, “Well, I don’t need to worry. I’m not that wealthy.” After all, we all know countless books, plays, and movies that address the dangers of wealth. Even if we’re not as powerful as Oedipus Rex, as hedonistic as the great Jay Gatsby, as selfish as citizen Charles Foster Kane, as isolated as Norma Desmond on Sunset Boulevard, or as greedy as Gordon Gecko on Wall Street, there something about these stories that resonates with a much larger segment of the population.
I don’t know about each of you, but The Onion, the satirical newspaper, once ran a fake horoscope that describes me all too well. It said: “People say you’re a control freak, but if you had your way, they’d say it a little slower and maybe even a touch louder.” Vanity of vanities! I come by it honestly. I used to be an engineer, and for decades, I was involved in a variety of musical ensembles. Engineers have to think of everything that could possibly go wrong, and then stop it from happening. Classical musicians spend hours rehearsing the exact sounds they will make weeks or even months in the future. When I became a Paulist novice, I discovered that the actions I considered to be prudent and responsible were seen by my brothers as over-the-top and micro-managing. I’d like to think at this point that I’m a “recovering perfectionist.” You can make fun of me, friends, but when it comes down to it, most of us wish we had more control over our lives.
Control. It’s one of the main ideas in Jesus’ teaching today that can hit us right between the eyes. We are tempted to see this person in Jesus’ story not as foolish, but as wise. Even if we don’t have wealth beyond measure, what’s our idea of success? If we envision a life in which everything always goes our way, or a life in which we have the resources to comfortably address any adversity, our dreams aren’t much different than those of the person in Jesus’ story! In a time of worldwide pandemic, eroding democratic institutions, and increasing environmental disasters, we are faced with tricky questions about what we should endeavor to control and what is beyond our control.
We struggle with other aspects of the rich fool’s folly. For example, the fool clung too tightly to his worldly possessions. Do we? [Pause.] As a vowed religious, thank goodness I don’t hold onto practically useless things like broken toasters… or do I? When I was preparing to move out of my last apartment that I had on my own, I was kind of insulted that the local St. Vincent de Paul Society did not think that my old furniture was good enough to be donated to a family in need. Even after taking most of my furniture to the dumpster and downsizing in my six successive moves over the past 18 years, I probably still have too much stuff. Nevertheless, when I come across something that I haven’t used for years, my first instinct – and my second instinct and my third instinct – is to find a logical place to store the item, rather than to question whether someone else needs it more than I do.
The fool in Jesus’ story was materialistic, greedy, and selfish. He never thought to share his wealth and posessions with his neighbors in need. But maybe even more tragic than everything else, he refused to trust in God.
Trust. To trust in someone is to rely on them, to place our welfare in the other person’s hands. Do we trust in God? [Pause.] Think of the Bible and the lives of the saints. The story repeats itself thousands of times: a person struggles with adversity, the person places their trust in God, and God provides, although God doesn’t always do so in the way that the person expected, or on the timeline that they initially desired. At this point in my life, I’ve taken some major leaps of faith, and God has led me to a future better than anything I could have imagined for myself. But despite all of that, it’s still hard for me to let go of control. I often catch myself praying, “Thanks for the gifts, Holy Spirit; I’ll take it from here.” In other words, I’m always willing to trust in God… once I’ve run out of other options!
Friends, Jesus said it plainly: one’s life does not consist of possessions. To be renewed in the Spirit, we must put aside greed. And yet we struggle to internalize these great truths – we want to believe the reverse. True security is not about fencing ourselves off from others, but trusting that God can handle whatever comes our way. And so I end with four familiar sentences that sound trite despite their profundity:
- May God give us nothing we want, but everything we need.
- Let us live simply so others may simply live.
- It is in giving of ourselves that we receive, and…
- It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Preview photo credit: quotecatalog.com/Flickr/CC BY 2.0