SERMON PREACHED AT St MARY’S, Nth
OAMARU
EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
(July 31st) 2022
Hosea 11: 1-11
Psalm 107: 1-9, 43
Colossians 3: 1-11
Luke 12: 13-21
Tucked away in a
series of teachings about expectation and judgement Luke has Jesus throw in a
conversation about wealth. Wealth!
A week ago I could
talk breezily about Mercs and Porsches because you and I both know I’m never
going to own one! Dreams are free, and critiques are cheap when fingers are
pointed firmly, if only in satirical ways, at others. But as we all know, when
we point at others three times as many fingers point back at ourselves. Now I’m
not going totally to spill my guts here, but, hey, what are the three pointy
fingers saying to me?
You know, things are
tightening at the moment. Belts, that is. I’ve been feeling miserable, not only
because Putin is acting like a prat, and plastic sludge is endless, and species
are dying, (except Nepalese tigers I believe, and now people are complaining
because there population is expanding again), and Mother Earth Papatuanuku is
overheating. But I like most of you –
and let me know if you’re an exception – I’m feeling the pinch.
Feeling the pinch?
What pinch? What am I feeling compared to the daily struggles of the those
living in Eritrea, where crops have failed again? Madagascar, Somalia, Yemen …
this list is terrifying enough before we even add countries where turmoil is escalating,
governments tumbling, hope fading.
It was of course ever
thus to some degree. Many of the countries struggling today were struggling yesterday.
Images from Eritrea in the 1980s tore at the world’s soul. Other countries have
suffered then, too: Bangladesh, Nigeria … on and on goes the list.
One outcome is compassion
fatigue. What can I do? In my book on Revelation (he says modestly) I suggest
that whatever else the day of judgement might be – and we toss judgement out of
our faith at great peril – we of the global north will have much sorry saying
to do: Neither the judgment images of the Book of Revelation, nor this Jesus
encounter with a money-grasping man, nor the man in the story Jesus tells to
him, allow us room to think we can saunter nonchalantly into whatever “heaven” is, whatever “eternity”
is.[1]
Neither though are
they entirely a thing of terror: the news of Jesus is good news, not horror.
But we are challenged to look at ourselves. And sometimes when we fail to do
that God does it for us, and expectations and even empires and civilizations
crumble because we have failed Justice and Compassion 101. Welcome to the
months since bugs escaped a Wuhan market: our stripping mother nature bare (“earth
is a witch and we still burn her,” as Christy Moore powerful chants) is hurting
all creation. At the very least we are experiencing payback time as nature, God’s
agent, calls in some debts.
That too is to some
extent unfair. God knows if those in an Eritrean camp right now have done less in
a lifetime to damage the world and its ecology than I probably do, actively or passively,
in a month of Global North lifestyle. And I say that even without owning a Porsche
or a mansion, or, as, Dr Townsley yet again reminded us, a da Vinci painting
that sold in 2016 for $450 million dollars. That’s a lot of provisions for a lot of starving children.
Earlier in the liturgy
we undergo a small rite that reminds of our participation in sin, exploitation,
lovelessness, all the attitudes and behaviours that run counter to Gospel. We
hear a priest say that God forgives us. Yet I believe that there is still, in
whatever judgement is, a need for further recognition of our wrongdoing. How
many people could have eaten this past week if I had eaten less, used fewer
commodities, burned up less power? Am I at least to some extent the man storing
grain in his barn?
Are the ecological and
economic collapses threatening God’s earth a foretaste of what the New Testament
writers call the orgé, the wrath of God?
And while today our news services remind us that the suffering is greater in
Global South or Third World countries, if there is life beyond death, as this
Jesus parable presumes, may I not be the one to whom the words “you fool” are
directed? We have a doctrine of forgiveness, yes, but I think God may ask us to
look deep into the eyes of those who are suffering before the final absolution
is pronounced.
No one should like preaching
in this way. I preach to myself. But right from the beginning, as Mary the
Mother of Jesus proclaims her Magnificat, Luke has been warning us that the
lenses of God’s judgement are not to be dismissed airily. There are strong
hints in this passage about sharing – the man in the parable failed to share his
wealth. Grain, as it happens, the likes of which Mr Putin’s obscene behaviour
has almost stolen from the most desperate on earth. But I am not guiltless
either: I fail to live up to the motto I tout, live simply, so others may
simply live. We will find later in Luke’s writings, in the Book of Acts, that
the early Christians – for a brief period – shared their goods in common, precisely
so the naked could be clothed, the hungry fed, the widows given hope. We know form
Paul’s letter to the Corinthians this idealism quickly died – yet in that death
we stand roundly chastised. Chastised, but not, pray God, condemned. Not quite.
What can we do? Now,
insanely, I water down my own argument. Perhaps as a preacher I too am afraid
to look too deeply at myself. At the very least I am challenged to reassess the
weight of my footsteps on the lives of others, the lives of those who come
after us, the lives of those less fortunate than us in the present, the lives
of species and of the planet itself. I
am challenged to tread lightly for creation, neighbours, whanau, the future.
I inevitably fail to
live up to the harsh demands of my own musings when I'm confronted with the
greedy man and his barn. When confronted too by the grasping man who provoked
the parable in the first place. He like the two sons in the so-called prodigal son
parable wanted to have his cake and eat it fast and furious. Jesus would have
none of it.
I’m challenged yet
again to look at my life, to wonder how better I can benefit the community
around me, to thank God that in a universe where, as Paul puts it, all fall
short of the glory of God, there is still forgiveness in the encounter with
Jesus. One day.
Amen.
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