A Scriptural Reflection on the Readings for September 26, 2010 | Carl E. Olson
As I noted last week, we can often struggle to rightly handle our material possessions, not to mention the sense of importance that can come from belonging to a certain social group, clique, club, or profession. What we do with our money and position in life is a good barometer for measuring our priorities and, in a very real way, gauging our spiritual lives. When wealth is used predominantly for personal pleasures and constant extravagances that go beyond our normal needs, we can quickly find ourselves caught in a thick morass of moral complacency.
It is initially a bit humorous, but ultimately urgent, to consider the warning of the prophet Amos against the temptation to become a self-satisfied couch potato. “Woe to the complacent in Zion!” we hear in today’s first reading, “Lying upon beds of ivory, stretched comfortably on their couches…” That self-indulgent complacency, warned the prophet, would soon to lead to a rude awakening: exile at the violent hands of the Assyrians.
More importantly, such complacency results in exile from God and the life of the covenant. Again, the great sin of the Israelites was not that some of them possessed wealth, but that they did not care at all about those who had less, who suffered, who lived in poverty. “ ‘They do not know how to do right,’ says the Lord, ‘those who store up violence and robbery in their strongholds’.” (Amos 3:10).
The same issues of complacent sloth and self-satisfied arrogance are at the heart of the famous story of Lazarus—which is Greek for “Eliezer,” meaning “My God helps”—and the unnamed rich man. As St. Jerome noted in his commentary on this story of Jesus, the rich man “is not accused of being greedy or of carrying off the property of another … or, in fact, of any wrongdoing.”
This might seem strange, as the story is sometimes taken as a wholesale condemnation of wealth. But Jerome explains that the rich man’s sin is not located in what he owns, but what he refuses to own up to: “The evil alone of which he is guilty is pride.” He won’t admit his own need for God, nor will he acknowledge his responsibility, as a descendent of Abraham who has been given much by God, to take care of the poor man who wastes away in the shadow of his door. When we love wealth, we cannot love God, nor can we love our neighbor.
Thus, Christ “did not object to the riches of the rich man,” Augustine noted in a sermon, “but to his impiety, infidelity, pride, and cruelty.” Those are the same sins condemned by Amos, and they take the rich man into the exile of eternal torment, condemned by his own cruelty to thirst vainly for a single drop of water. He cried out desperately for the mercy he never even considered showing to Lazarus, but he had already cut himself off from the true Israel, the bosom of Abraham. While living, he had the Law and the prophets, but he ignored them. He chose temporal wealth instead of eternal riches, and so lost his sonship and birthright.
His tormented exile is a reminder, as today’s epistle from Paul declares, that the man of God—by the grace given by Christ—must pursue righteousness, devotion, faith and love. That is how the child of God enters into eternal life, which is the everlasting wealth of union with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the September 30, 2007, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)
Readings:It is sometimes said that money is the root of all evil. (George Bernard Shaw quipped that the lack of money is the root of all evil—but that’s another column.) Of course, it is not money itself that is evil; rather, as Paul told Timothy, “the love of money is the root of all evils” (1 Tim 6:10). As today’s reading indicate, the desire and pursuit of wealth and the comforts it can buy can finally lead to spiritual ruin and poverty, as well as eternal torment.
• Am. 6:1a, 4-7
• Psa. 146:7, 8-9, 9-10
• 1 Tim. 6:11-16
• Lk. 16:19-31
As I noted last week, we can often struggle to rightly handle our material possessions, not to mention the sense of importance that can come from belonging to a certain social group, clique, club, or profession. What we do with our money and position in life is a good barometer for measuring our priorities and, in a very real way, gauging our spiritual lives. When wealth is used predominantly for personal pleasures and constant extravagances that go beyond our normal needs, we can quickly find ourselves caught in a thick morass of moral complacency.
It is initially a bit humorous, but ultimately urgent, to consider the warning of the prophet Amos against the temptation to become a self-satisfied couch potato. “Woe to the complacent in Zion!” we hear in today’s first reading, “Lying upon beds of ivory, stretched comfortably on their couches…” That self-indulgent complacency, warned the prophet, would soon to lead to a rude awakening: exile at the violent hands of the Assyrians.
More importantly, such complacency results in exile from God and the life of the covenant. Again, the great sin of the Israelites was not that some of them possessed wealth, but that they did not care at all about those who had less, who suffered, who lived in poverty. “ ‘They do not know how to do right,’ says the Lord, ‘those who store up violence and robbery in their strongholds’.” (Amos 3:10).
The same issues of complacent sloth and self-satisfied arrogance are at the heart of the famous story of Lazarus—which is Greek for “Eliezer,” meaning “My God helps”—and the unnamed rich man. As St. Jerome noted in his commentary on this story of Jesus, the rich man “is not accused of being greedy or of carrying off the property of another … or, in fact, of any wrongdoing.”
This might seem strange, as the story is sometimes taken as a wholesale condemnation of wealth. But Jerome explains that the rich man’s sin is not located in what he owns, but what he refuses to own up to: “The evil alone of which he is guilty is pride.” He won’t admit his own need for God, nor will he acknowledge his responsibility, as a descendent of Abraham who has been given much by God, to take care of the poor man who wastes away in the shadow of his door. When we love wealth, we cannot love God, nor can we love our neighbor.
Thus, Christ “did not object to the riches of the rich man,” Augustine noted in a sermon, “but to his impiety, infidelity, pride, and cruelty.” Those are the same sins condemned by Amos, and they take the rich man into the exile of eternal torment, condemned by his own cruelty to thirst vainly for a single drop of water. He cried out desperately for the mercy he never even considered showing to Lazarus, but he had already cut himself off from the true Israel, the bosom of Abraham. While living, he had the Law and the prophets, but he ignored them. He chose temporal wealth instead of eternal riches, and so lost his sonship and birthright.
His tormented exile is a reminder, as today’s epistle from Paul declares, that the man of God—by the grace given by Christ—must pursue righteousness, devotion, faith and love. That is how the child of God enters into eternal life, which is the everlasting wealth of union with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
(This "Opening the Word" column originally appeared in the September 30, 2007, edition of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper.)
Should we update the language here: “Lying upon beds of ivory, stretched comfortably on their recliners…”?
Posted by: Ann Applegarth | Monday, September 27, 2010 at 09:02 AM