What'll we do?
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Reading 1ECC 1:2; 2:21-23
Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth,
vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!
Here is one who has labored with wisdom and knowledge and skill,
and yet to another who has not labored over it,
he must leave property.
This also is vanity and a great misfortune.
For what profit comes to man from all the toil and anxiety of heart
with which he has labored under the sun?
All his days sorrow and grief are his occupation;
even at night his mind is not at rest.
This also is vanity.
Responsorial PsalmPS 90:3-4, 5-6, 12-13, 14, 17
R. (1) If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
You turn man back to dust,
saying, “Return, O children of men.”
For a thousand years in your sight
are as yesterday, now that it is past,
or as a watch of the night.
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
You make an end of them in their sleep;
the next morning they are like the changing grass,
Which at dawn springs up anew,
but by evening wilts and fades.
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain wisdom of heart.
Return, O LORD! How long?
Have pity on your servants!
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Fill us at daybreak with your kindness,
that we may shout for joy and gladness all our days.
And may the gracious care of the LORD our God be ours;
prosper the work of our hands for us!
Prosper the work of our hands!
R. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Reading 2COL 3:1-5, 9-11
Brothers and sisters:
If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above,
where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.
Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.
For you have died,
and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
When Christ your life appears,
then you too will appear with him in glory.
Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly:
immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire,
and the greed that is idolatry.
Stop lying to one another,
since you have taken off the old self with its practices
and have put on the new self,
which is being renewed, for knowledge,
in the image of its creator.
Here there is not Greek and Jew,
circumcision and uncircumcision,
barbarian, Scythian, slave, free;
but Christ is all and in all.
GospelLK 12:13-21
Someone in the crowd said to Jesus,
“Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.”
He replied to him,
“Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?”
Then he said to the crowd,
“Take care to guard against all greed,
for though one may be rich,
one’s life does not consist of possessions.”
Then he told them a parable.
“There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest.
He asked himself, ‘What shall I do,
for I do not have space to store my harvest?’
And he said, ‘This is what I shall do:
I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones.
There I shall store all my grain and other goods
and I shall say to myself, “Now as for you,
you have so many good things stored up for many years,
rest, eat, drink, be merry!”’
But God said to him,
‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you;
and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’
Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves
but are not rich in what matters to God.”
The Imperative of Growth
We are surrounded by so many shocking examples of greed that we take it all for granted. Daily we read of people stealing millions of dollars in most creative ways. 'Victorians blow 2.6 billion on pokies' shouts a headline today. http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victorians-poker-machine-losses-rise-to-26-billion-20160724-gqch5g.html It's the gambling-led recovery in which many lose, and some one gains.
Meanwhile this homely little parable talks about the problems of a farmer with a super harvest and nowhere to store it. 'What shall I do?' he quaintly says. Today he'd probably expand his business, take-over another farm, swallow the competitor, perhaps in time take over the whole country.
Greed runs the modern world. Where survival is no longer an issue, the economic motivation becomes greed, pure and simple. National economies are structured on growth and greed. Millions spend their lives not in production of useful things, but in manipulating money, making money out of money. Put your money to work. One person's gain is another's loss.
Trading shares of ownership is one way, but trading in futures is better when your ship comes in. Buying and selling, that's all you've got to do, and if you have enough units even tiny margins will add up to millions at one hit. More and more and more.
Our healthy need for security, security of the home, of the food supply, of a steady job, health services, retirement income and aged care. goes bonkers, corrupted by greed. They say: 'Money is the root of all evil', but it's not. Greed is. Greed corrupts. The greed for more power corrupts the one who has power.
What'll we do?
This gospel makes two points: It won't last: you will die, and, Wealth is worthless unless you're rich in godliness.
Some say the global economy based on trading shares on the Stock Exchange is already dysfunctional, allowing the richest few to skim the cream of the top because they can. Some say unlimited growth is a fraudulent prospectus, because resources - material and human - are not unlimited. Security gone mad is found underground in buried silos with thousands of rockets wait, at the ready, armed with nuclear explosive enough to kill all life on earth [Helen Caldicott]. "We'll say who can come to our country": the boast of the richest refusing to share empty spaces with those who have no home.
I don't suppose; anyone reading this will know how to sort out the world economy or the national greed. We can only look with clear sight at these aberrations and re-affirm what common sense tells all. This is already a useful exercise, when common sense is being drowned out by the advertising and propaganda of the economy of greed. Common sense:
A. It won't last: you will die. This is hard enough to accept for each one of us, but for nations it seems impossible. I often wonder whether the leaders who so boldly proclaim: We will be great again! are really stupid or just pragmatic, determined to get the people's trust with any lie. No nation lasts forever. Having reached their full potential it would make sense to share their wealth, and their leadership as widely as they could. But nationalism is blind.
B. Let's translate "godliness", "what matters to God", and call it for what it is: JUSTICE, TRUTH, COMPASSION, RESPONSIBILITY, CARE FOR THE WEAKER, CARE FOR MINORITIES, CARE FOR THE EARTH, and so on.
What a difference had that farmer solved the predicament of his superharvest by saying: I know what I'll do. I'll share my good fortune with my workers, and with my village, and give more books to the school, and provide a hospice for travellers in our town...
He could have done that. Plenty of our contemporaries are doing this in wonderful ways. Governments, however, are not only blind, but locked together in some dance macabre towards mutual doing to death.