Rich Toward God

Luke 12:13-21

A group of psychologists ran a test where they watched people play a game of Monopoly. They set up hidden cameras and watched how players behaved, interacted, spoke, ate as they moved around the board. Here’s the catch, though: the game was rigged. “The combination of skill, talent and luck that help to earn you success in games was rendered irrelevant” (1) by a simple coin flip before the game began, which determined one of the players to start off with twice as much money, the ability to roll both dice and not just one, and to receive double the salary every time they passed “Go”. What the psychologists were looking for was whether being a privileged player in a rigged game changed the way those players regarded themselves and the other less-privileged players.

Here’s a bit of what they noticed: from the outset, most players were aware that something was up, they noticed the discrepancy; as the game progressed, the privileged players started moving their pieces around the board louder; the privileged players were more likely to make “non-verbal displays of power” (2) and celebratory gestures in response to perceived success (fist pumps, grunts, hand clapping); the privileged players were more likely to consume (evidenced by how many pretzels players ate from a bowl on the table); another thing that developed as the game went on was that the rich players started acting meaner towards the less fortunate players (“less and less sensitive to the plight of the other poor players, and more demonstrative of their material success, more likely to showcase how well they were doing”(3)). Now here’s what the researchers found really interesting, these games lasted for fifteen minutes each and at the end of the fifteen minutes they asked the players to talk about their experience in the game. “And when the rich players talked about why they’d inevitably won in this rigged game of Monopoly, they talked about what they’d done to buy those different properties and earn their success in the game. And they became far less attuned to all those different features of the situation, including that flip of a coin that had randomly gotten them into that privileged position in the first place.”(4)

This is just one of many tests run by these psychologists to look at the impact of privilege on social, ethical, and moral behavior. In another test, participants were given $10 and told they could do with it as they wished, even share it with others. It turns out that those with lower incomes had a higher likelihood to share, and those with higher incomes were less likely to do so. In another, researchers observed motorist behavior at crosswalks in California (where the law requires yielding to pedestrians). They observed that more expensive vehicles were much more inclined to break this law than the less expensive vehicles were, as if drivers of more expensive vehicles felt inclined to their own right of way. In yet another test, individuals were given an opportunity to roll “virtual” dice on a computer game and promised the opportunity of a $50 gift card if they rolled higher than a certain amount. In this test, however, the computer program was rigged so that the dice wouldn’t ever roll that high. People were asked to self-identify their perceived sense of wealth at the onset of this experiment, and the results, shockingly, showed that those who self-identified as wealthy were more likely to cheat, to lie, to claim that they had rolled higher than was possible in order to win the prize.

[***I think it's important to note that in most of the above tests participants were asked to self-identify. Thus these results reflect those who choose to self-identify as wealthy, not necessarily those who have the most money.***]

The overwhelming conclusion of all these tests is that as people’s wealth increases their feelings of compassion and empathy decrease, and feeling of entitlement and self-interest increase. These are the psychologist Paul Piff’s words, not mine: “the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to pursue a vision of personal success of achievement and accomplishment to the detriment of others around you.” (5)

And these are Jesus of Nazareth’s words, not mine: “Take care! Be on guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Here are more words from Jesus, in fact these are the opening lines of his “Sermon on the Plain”: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” Just a quick aside: there is no “sermon on the mount” in Luke’s Gospel, that’s Matthew’s version. The author of Luke has Jesus teaching from a “level-place”…perhaps a reference to the voice of one in the wilderness crying out that “every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low.” The other thing that differs between Luke’s and Matthew’s accounts of this famous sermon is that Luke’s text includes not only blessings to the poor, but also “woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”

Take today’s text, alongside the opening line of Jesus sermon on the plain, alongside John’s proclamation in the wilderness, alongside the language of Mary’s Magnificat in which “the powerful are brought down from their thrones,” and “the lowly are lifted up” and “the hungry are fed with good things” and “the rich are sent away empty,” and we get a picture of the powerful party platform of the Kingdom of God, according to Luke. It’s a dream of justice and equity that seems rather unsettling to those of us accustomed to the American dream, in which we believe that equal opportunity to succeed and prosper is available to anyone so long as they make smart choices, apply themselves, and work hard. The American dream tells us that a person’s lack of success and prosperity is indicative of their lack of effort. The American dream also tells us that sometimes it is acceptable to put our own interests above the interests of people around us. But the American dream also blinds us to the “coin-flip.” The American dream is just one of many ways that a privileged class has moralized greed and turned self-interest into a perceived cornerstone of society, such to the point that the poor vehemently defend a dream that disenfranchises them as the only hope of salvation from a rigged system.

For example, the poor are disproportionate supporters of the Prophets of the “Prosperity Gospel.” But to those prophets, Jesus cries, “woe!” “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.” Just like it takes our eyes time to adjust after leaving a dark theater, it can take time to adjust to the restoration of sight brought to us by Jesus. The Kingdom vision opens our eyes to the “coin-flip” and seeks to shift our perspective on the source of power from worldly wealth to the cosmic Creator. This is the vision toward which Jesus seeks to draw his audience’s focus when he shares the parable of the rich fool. The parable paints a picture of covetousness as foolish—in direct contrast to the widespread belief that when it comes to money and material wealth, more is merrier. “The craving to hoard not only puts goods in the place of God but is an act of total disregard for the needs of others.” (6) It’s not that wealth is evil, but the belief that wealth can save us from suffering, or rescue us from remorse, or protect us from peril, or deliver us from danger…that belief has got to go. The man in the parable isn’t evil, or a malicious law-breaker, per se, we aren’t told that he has lied or cheated his way to wealth, nor is there any evidence that he has mistreated or underpaid his workers, he has simply planted wisely and worked hard, and “sun, rain, and soil join to make him wealthy.”(7)

This man is not evil, yet, he’s described as a fool. Why? Remember what Paul Piff said about how, “the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to pursue a vision of personal success of achievement and accomplishment to the detriment of others around you.” This detriment to others is in direct contrast to the cornerstone of the Kingdom of God whose rules and regulations boil down to “Love your God” and “Love your neighbor.” Fred Craddock puts it simply in his commentary on this parable: the man in the parable is a fool because he lives “completely for himself, he talks to himself, he plans for himself, he congratulates himself.” Here’s another way to look at it, in the NRSV translation of this parable, the rich man speaks only 60 words…11 of those words are either “I” or “my.”

I lit a candle and sat in the sanctuary on Wednesday morning. I tried to empty myself, to sit in silence, to empty myself of selfish thoughts and focus on God for an hour. That’s really tough. I don’t know if you should take heart or be worried that not even your pastor can do this…but I’m trying, and I hope to get better at it. One of the ways I tried to empty myself and focus on God was by holding this text in my heart and mind and mediate on what it was saying to my soul. I was practicing a version of the breath prayer we used earlier, focusing on areas of stress and anxiety, breathing them out, making room for God’s peace. Here’s what came to me as I sat in prayer and meditation. Some of you might have seen the picture of the candle I shared on Facebook along with this short insight: “the breath teaches us that there is life in letting go.”

Here’s my train of thought on this…imagine if instead of a surplus of grain the man in the parable was concerned with the air around him. “How can I breathe more of this air?” he wondered to himself. “I know,” he finally though, “I’ll hold my breath, expand my lungs bigger and bigger, fill them with more and more air. And for whatever I cannot store in my own lungs, I’ll build a vacuum and suck air into tanks to store up. That way I will have an abundance of life!” We would think this man a fool, would we not? We only need but so much air to survive, and it always surrounds us. Invisible but life giving, a great illustration of the power of God. Why is it so easy to see the stockpiling of air, which is essential for life, as foolish, but so difficult to see that same foolishness in the stockpiling of money and material wealth?

It’s because the cornerstone of our society shifts our perspective, locates power in wealth and praises the pursuit of prosperity as wise and responsible, even if that pursuit is at the expense of the poor. This is the dark theatre into which the light of God’s Kingdom so brightly shines. Interrupting the relentless recidivism of the rich, offering good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of God’s favor. What a shock this recovery of sight is! Jesus doesn’t shame the poor for being lazy or not working hard enough, but accuses the rich of being blinded by greed, cold and compassionless towards the needs of their neighbors, of selfishly and foolishly storing up life where it won’t benefit them. Indeed, whether rich or poor, Jesus’ teachings crumble the faith we’ve built on the foundation of self-interest, and calls us to rebuild our faith on a firmer foundation, the love and grace of God.

Jesus’ teachings call our attention to the consecutive coin-flips of conquest and colonization which have unfairly stacked the deck in favor of some at the great expense of others. Jesus’ teachings call our attention to the compassion of God seeking to flip creation back to its original and intended “very goodness”—back before the temptation to stockpile “fruit from the wrong tree” infatuated us with self-interest. The Gospel of Jesus Christ reveals God’s radical and revolutionary justice to be against the perpetuation of self-interest that was masquerading as the “Pax Romana”—the “social order” that kept Caesar in a position of privilege. The claim that “Jesus is Lord” was, and still is, subversive. This Lordship locates power in love, not in wealth. This Lordship overturns the power of the privileged few, restores worth to the lowly, praises compassion and condemns greed. This Lordship was viewed as such a threat that it ultimately led to Jesus’ persecution and crucifixion as a criminal. This is because Jesus’ teachings revealed how the system was rigged. The moralization of greed had become a cornerstone of Roman social order, such to the point that the poor actively defended the Lordship of Caesar by whose taxes and policies they were egregiously disenfranchised, demoralized, devalued, and victimized. The chief priests, and scribes, along with Herod and his soldiers, acting as cronies of this rigged system, treated Christ with contempt, mocked him, ridiculed him to the point that Pilate, who could find no fault by which to condemn Jesus, ultimately gave the power of his conviction over to what seems like a democratic process. He let the people decide Jesus’ fate. But these people were frightened, they knew that showing allegiance to Jesus would get them in trouble with the people in power, the people to whose power Jesus' message love and mercy was a threat. So what did they do? They followed their fear and called for the crucifixion of the only one who offered them life in abundance.

Living richly toward God has to do with our vote of confidence in the grace of God. It is not a vote for liberal or conservative values, it’s not a vote for a particular party platform: it’s a vote for a Kingdom platform. Justice is not owned by the Democrats or the Republicans, but by God alone. Living richly toward God means doing God’s justice, loving God’s mercy, and walking humbly with God. Living richly toward God means setting our politics aside and resting all our laws and labors on the commands to love God, and love our neighbor. Living richly toward God looks a lot like collecting a monthly hunger offering and pouring months and months of planning and preparation into putting on a powerful and meaningful week of Vacation Bible School. Living richly towards God looks a lot like inviting neighborhood children over for dinner and a movie, like gathering with friends to pray and knit quilts for those who are sick or in mourning, or like volunteering to share music at a nursing home. Living richly toward God looks like giving up all we have, giving up our dependence on self, giving up our greed, and following Christ. The rich young ruler who was asked to do this went away sad because he was blinded to the benefit of such selflessness. But if care and compassion are set as the cornerstone of God’s kingdom, what fear of want will we have there? “Do not worry”, that’s next week’s sermon. Living richly toward God means being motivated by mercy instead of money. Living richly toward God means trusting God above all else.

Can we really do that? Can we really trust our God to save us? I got about this far in my sermon when I noticed the time: it was 10:45 on Friday morning. I’d promised a friend that I’d be present for his grandmother’s funeral at Southminster Presbyterian Church at 11:30. So, I folded up my laptop with this question still on my mind. I showered, an act that always reminds me of my baptism, and went off to a service of worship in which the baptism of my friend’s grandmother was proclaimed “completed in death.” The service opened with these words of Scripture from 1 Peter: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose great mercy gave us new birth into a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead! The inheritance to which we are born is one that nothing can destroy or spoil or wither.” This reminded me immediately of Paul’s faith, found in his words to the Colossians: “So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”

Living richly toward God means letting go, letting go of our self-interest, our fear, our sense of control, letting go of our old life and the ways of the world that governed it. Living richly toward God means letting God give us new life and a new commandment to govern it: “Love one another.” This isn’t any form of human-established order, “love one another” is God’s established order, as it was in the beginning, on earth as it is in heaven. Friends, let us live richly toward God, let us love one another.

Amen.

References:

1)Paul Piff, “Does Money Make You Mean?”Ted Talk. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ8Kq1wucsk> July 27, 2016.

2) Ibid.

3) Ibid.

4) Ibid.

5) Ibid.

6) Craddock, Fred. “Luke” from Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Louisville, KY. 1990, John Knox Press. p 163.

7) Ibid.