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Doug Huron Amos 6: 1a, 4-7 We are deep into Ordinary Time, and nothing much is happening. Some of you may recall that I once likened Ordinary Time to the end of the baseball season, with the home team long since out of contention, just playing out the string. But unexpected things, remarkable things, can happen as the season winds down – maybe a no-hitter by a young pitcher just called up from Double A, or an aging veteran who hits for the cycle. And so too, the readings during Ordinary Time may offer up gems. The past two Sundays, we have real virtually the entire 16th chapter of the Gospel according to St. Luke, which has 31 verses. Last week, we read verses 1-13, and today it’s 19-31. Why were verses 14-18 omitted? Why didn’t we just read all of chapter 16? Let’s see what those expurgated verses say: The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this [that a person cannot serve both God and wealth], and they ridiculed him. So he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God. And then seemingly out of the blue, Jesus says in verse 18: “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.” Why are these verses omitted? Perhaps the lectionary munchkins, mindful of the skyrocketing divorce rate in this country, did not want to offend divorced folks by calling them adulterers, if they happened to remarry. But that raises an intriguing question: what do you do if you flat out disagree with something that Jesus says? Or what if you agree, but feel that Jesus’ barb is aimed at another, not you? The rich, for example, take a beating in both testaments, this week and last. Last Sunday, Amos railed against those who cheated the poor. And today he condemns idle “loungers” – the coach potatoes of his day – because they don’t care about what has become of Israel, through lack of faithfulness, the “ruin of Joseph.” If anything, Jesus is harder on the rich. In Luke last week, he said that a person must choose: she cannot serve both God and wealth. And today a rich man is condemned to eternal damnation, not for affirmative evil-doing but simply for being indifferent to Lazarus. Even Paul gets into the act, telling Timothy that the love of money is the root of all manner of evil, and that the rich are obliged to be rich, not just in money, but also in good works, generosity and readiness to share. We have heard all this before, and we probably paid it little mind, because it was aimed at other folks – the rich – not at us. Guess what, friends? As it happens, we are the rich – most of us, anyway. Certainly this is true if we look at the world, the entire planet. But it’s also true if we consider only this country. So this message – that there are two strikes against the rich – is directed at us, like it or not. Paul tells us that the love of money is the root of evils. I would amend this to say that the need for money is the root of evils. And this is more insidious. None of us loves money. But quite a few of us might need it, very much, at various points, In the late ‘70’s, Bruce Johnson persuaded me to buy what was then a group house, on Lamont just opposite Dunstan and Barbara, a house I suppose is today a million dollar mansion. I could afford to buy this particular house, because housing prices in Mount Pleasant were then much more reasonable, but also because I was earning a decent salary at the White House. That changed in January 1981, when the Reagan folks unceremoniously gave us the boot. I initially set up a small law firm with my good friend, Eileen Stein. We did okay financially – we paid our bills – but we never really prospered. We didn’t earn much for ourselves, and money was tight for Anne and me. So, I needed to sell the house on Lamont that I had bought two or three years earlier, and which had been paying for itself through the rent I was getting from the various tenants. I think there were four or five. I put the house on the market, and received an offer that would realize a tidy profit. But of course, the contract was contingent on the purchaser being able to occupy the premises. This proved easy for all but two of the tenants. These two – a young, single mother and her son, and a depressed man named Walter – could not get it together to leave. I enlisted Bruce’s help, and we managed to get rid of Walter. I don’t remember how. But the single mom was tougher. She and her son had no place to go. Finally, Bruce found her an apartment in Northeast, and one night he and I moved her over, using my small pickup truck. It was a nice apartment, but she did not want to go. She had to, though, because I had to be able to sell the house. I needed the money. I was callous, hard-hearted. I tried to be decent about it, but in the end what mattered was to get her out. The need for money is the root of much evil. We all need to be aware of that. We are the rich. Yet paradoxically, most of us certainly need money at one point or another. I earlier posed two questions. What do you do if you don’t think that what Jesus is saying applies to you? The answer is easy: you should recognize that it probably does, and act accordingly. The other question, though, is harder. What do you do when you disagree with something that Jesus says? I assume that most of us don’t believe that people who divorce, and then remarry, are guilty of adultery. And yet Jesus is saying just that. The first thing to recognize is that Jesus does not lay down hard and fast rules. As he says, in the omitted passage from Luke 16, “The law and the prophets were in effect until John came; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is proclaimed.” And the kingdom of God is not a place with stringent rules. Jesus makes that clear by saying, with sarcasm, “it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one stroke of a letter in the law to be dropped.” The kingdom of God is grounded in love, not law. It is not that Jesus does not respect the law. Its precepts serve us well, most of the time. And so the rich man is condemned to damnation because he did not follow the law, as least in his treatment of Lazarus. Jesus says that he should have listened to Moses and the prophets. But law is not love. Let me repeat: Jesus does not lay down rules. Instead, he always seems to challenge the listener at the point of maximum vulnerability. So, perhaps the Pharisees had a penchant for jettisoning their spouses, and going after trophy wives. That was certainly not acting with love, and Jesus was hitting them where it hurt. But we need to be cautious, extraordinarily careful, anytime we seek to justify our actions by saying that Jesus is talking to the Pharisees, not to us. On occasion, that might be true. But those occasions are exceedingly rare. It is much harder to live by love than it is to follow the law. But in the kingdom of God, love is the animating principle. It may not always be easy to discern what love requires. But we are called upon to do no less. Amen. |
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