Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Last week, my homily reflected on a disciple’s relationship with wealth. I said three things: that God has a special care for the poor and that God lifts up the poor; that the New Testament model for a disciple’s relationship with material things is “stewardship” as opposed to “ownership”; and, that a good steward tries to develop a “spirituality of stewardship,” i.e., a disciple relates to the material things and people in his or her life not according this his or her own whims and fancies, but in a way that God intends.
In today’s readings, the church invites us reflect to more deeply about our relationship with wealth, but with a different emphasis. The emphasis is on the kind of people we must strive to become, as we handle wealth. The readings also tell us about the kind of people we should not be. As an aside, today’s reading are replete with imageries. I am going to us these imageries to draw out the three practical implications.
1. The Scandal of Riches. Imagine this for a moment: People lying upon beds of ivory…, stretched comfortably on their couches…, eating lambs and calves set aside for the temple sacrifice…, drinking wine from expensive bowls…, and anointing themselves with the best oils! This was Amos’ way of describing the economic scandal of his time. Let me describe a modern day scandal. You have probably heard the news story about Epipen. In 2007, the wholesale price for Epipen was $56.64. Between 2007 and 2015, the price rose to $317.82 — a 461% increase. In the same period, Mylan CEO Heather Bresch's total compensation went from $2,453,456 to $18,931,068 — a 671% increase. In 2008, the company’s reported spending on lobbying went from $270,000 to $1.2 million. When I read this information to some of our staff, they said, “How do these people sleep at night?” The biblical question would be, “What kind of person conducts himself or herself this way? The question for us would be: What kind of people are we; and, when it comes to wealth or riches, how do we conduct ourselves?
2. The Scandal of Selfish Obsession. The second image is found in today’s gospel reading. Try to picture this for a moment…“a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who would gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps that fell from the rich man's table. Dogs even used to come and lick his sores.” How did the poor man get so overlooked? Perhaps, because that is how much the rich man was into himself, or perhaps, because his obsession with riches had blinded him. Either way, it was a scandal. So there are questions we can ask today? Why are there hungry people in our country? Do you know that both in our school and at St. Helen’s school, there are children who would be hungry during the weekend if the community did not care to send food with them? This is the United States of America - the largest economy in the world and the richest nation in the world! How did we get here? Do we not have enough to feed everybody? Or, is it that those who have, are too much into themselves? Or, are our riches blinding us? The moral of Jesus parable is applicable to every one of us whether we are rich or not very rich. We can be so caught up with our selves that we can become insensitive to the needs of the poor. We must be on the look out, because possessions have the power to blind us.
3. Eternal Pursuit. The first reading and the gospel reading together are making another important point - that our relationship with wealth reveals our character. The punchline for today’s readings is: “But you, man of God, pursue righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness” (1 Tim 6:11). As Christians, we may be rich or poor. However, our character must reveal a people who pursue righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness. The bigger point of today’s readings is that a disciple is invited to live life from the perspective of eternity. The choices we make —whether it is in regard to wealth, riches, priorities, profession, faith — have eternal implications. Little did the rich man know that Lazarus and him would be trading places in eternity. When he did come to know that, he wanted his relatives to know his fate, least they too end up where he was. The rich man’s relative may or may not have known what he wanted them to know, but we sure do. Today’s scripture are telling us that the way we live today has eternal implications. Let us then, live carefully, pursuing righteousness, devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness.
For the second week in a row, the gospel acclamation is, “Though our Lord Jesus Christ was rich, he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” In the Eucharist, Jesus, who is rich becomes poor, so that we might become rich. As Jesus enriches us, may our enrichments help other people’s poverty.
- Fr. Satish Joseph