greed

Don’t Be Afraid

/ cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Luke 12:32-40

There are some things that just don’t go together. Toothpaste and grapefruit juice, for example. Baseball and sushi, even if you can buy sushi at Oracle Park. A “certified organic” label on a pack of cigarettes. And the phrase, “Do not be afraid,” followed shortly by “Sell all your possessions.”

These words are part of the response that Jesus gave to the man who approached him in last week’s Luke passage. The man asked Jesus to mediate an argument he had with his brother over property. Jesus declined and then told the parable of the rich fool who built bigger barns for all his grain. The lectionary skips the verses that come right after that parable, which include Luke’s version of the familiar passage in Matthew about the lilies of the field. In those verses, Jesus says not to worry about what you you’ll eat or what you’ll wear. God knows you need those things, says Jesus. So don’t worry – besides, he adds, can you add a single hour to your life by worrying?

That’s where we pick up with Luke 12:32-40. “Don’t be afraid” might feel like an unreasonable admonition right now, even without the instruction that immediately follows it to sell all our possessions. I receive dozens of texts every day from politicians telling me to be afraid – and give them money. Even if I don’t respond with a contribution, these doomsayers have a good point. Things are scary right now.

“Don’t be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell all your possessions, and give alms.” How do these ideas fit together, and is there any good news here?

First, notice that it’s God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom. Like a loving parent, God takes delight in giving God’s children good things. This is what God is like. Not a rule-enforcer, a power player, or an authoritarian tyrant; rather, a parent who delights in giving gifts.

Second, God gives us the kingdom. Use kin-dom, reign, whatever word you choose if “kingdom” sounds too patriarchal. The kingdom of God is the way Jesus described what this life on earth would be like if God were our only king. The point Jesus makes here is that we neither earn the kingdom nor create it. We can participate in it, and as Christ’s followers, we are called to do so. But God’s promise is to give us the kingdom.

Then Jesus tells a parable about being ready. In Scripture, Jesus describes the kingdom of God as “near.” Dorothee Soelle writes that when Jesus spoke of the nearness of the kingdom of God he was never speaking of an event in the future, at some date on the calendar yet to be decided. “Jesus and the Jewish people of his time do not think in linear terms but in relationships, above all relationships to God. In Jesus’ language there is not even a word corresponding to the word ‘future.’ The next day is called ‘what is to come.’ … ‘What is to come’” – the kingdom – “is expected not only by suffering men and women but also by God, with longing and hope.” Soelle writes, “The nearness of God cannot be measured in intervals of time, but must be measured in the strength of the hope which is spreading among people.”

That is what readiness looks like: “The strength of the hope which is spreading among people.” In the verses the lectionary skips, Jesus says, “Strive first for the kingdom …” and you’ll have all you need. This is because in the kingdom of God, everyone has enough. Is this a pie-in-the-sky fantasy? No; God has given the world all that we need for everyone to be clothed and fed. As Mahatma Gandhi put it, “Earth provides enough to satisfy [everyone’s] need, but not [everyone’s] greed.” What might happen if enough people lived as though this is true? How might that strengthen the hope which is spreading among people?

So then, what is a faithful response to “Sell all your possessions”? In many ways, it would be easier to work for the kingdom if we abandoned our lives entirely and started over. But most of us have responsibilities and attachments we’re not going to abandon, and that it wouldn’t be kind, ethical, or faithful to abandon. What Jesus is expressing with these words is urgency. It is a wakeup call. Last week’s parable of the rich man pointed to the folly of attaching to possessions. What is it about our attachment to possessions that is folly, that gets in the way of our participation in the kingdom and needs to be urgently addressed? Is it the way we ignore the toxic impact of mining the rare earth minerals required for our technology? Or the fact that only one-tenth of the world’s greenhouse gases are emitted by the 74 lowest income countries, but those countries will be most affected by climate change? Or the fact that cheap clothing has a hidden cost: the exploitation of vulnerable labor forces, especially children? Is it the fact that a fraction of billionaires’ wealth could end starvation and homelessness? Or is it simply that we measure our worth by the quantity and quality of stuff we own?

By clinging to our possessions, are we helping to create a sense of scarcity? As Parker Palmer writes, “The irony, often tragic, is that by embracing the scarcity assumption, we create the very scarcities we fear. If I hoard material goods, others will have too little and I will never have enough. If I fight my way up the ladder of power, others will be defeated and I will never feel secure. If I get jealous of someone I love, I am likely to drive that person away. …. We create scarcity … by competing with others for resources as if we were stranded on the Sahara at the last oasis.”

Author Barbara Ehrenreich was asked in an interview what she would give up to live in a more human world. She answered, “I think we shouldn’t think of what we would give up to have a more human world; we should think of what we would gain.” Don’t be afraid, says Jesus. Don’t be afraid because God has something better in mind. It’s God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Dorothee Soelle and Luise Schottroff, Jesus of Nazareth (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2002).
Jaya Nayar, “’Not So “Green’ Technology: The Complicated Legacy of Rare Earth Mining,” August 12, 2021, https://hir.harvard.edu/not-so-green-technology-the-complicated-legacy-of-rare-earth-mining/
Ruma Bhargawa and Megha Bhargava, “The Climate Crisis Disproportionately Hits the Poor. How Can We Protect Them?” January 13, 2023, https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/01/climate-crisis-poor-davos2023/
Suha Fasih, “The Fast-Fashion Dilemma: Unraveling Forced Labor in Global Supply Chains,” October 21, 2024, https://lawjournalforsocialjustice.com/2024/10/31/the-fast-fashion-dilemma-unraveling-forced-labor-in-global-supply-chains/
Mark G. Miller, “A fraction of billionaires’ wealth could end starvation and homelessness,” March 5, 2025, https://millermarkg.com/2025/03/05/a-fraction-of-billionaires-wealth-could-end-starvation-and-homelessness/

Rich Toward God

/ cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Luke 12:13-21

I was disappointed to learn that the old adage, “Money can’t buy happiness,” isn’t actually true. To tell the truth, it never made intuitive sense to me. I knew from personal experience as a struggling student as well as observing parishioners that if you don’t have enough money to cover basic expenses, it causes unhappiness in the form of anxiety. So money definitely buys relief from anxiety, which perhaps is not the same as happiness. Nevertheless, studies now show that real happiness improves as income increases, and continues to rise alongside one’s bank account with no clear upper limit. Still, I wanted the saying to be true. As a person who has chosen a career guaranteed to keep me free from excessive wealth, I wanted it to be true that once basic needs are met, people are equally happy.

The parable in this passage in Luke doesn’t dispute the new research. However, it does suggest that the happiness that comes with wealth isn’t what really matters in the long run. Responding to a request for financial advice from someone in the crowd, Jesus warns against greed, which ancient philosophers believed to be a form of depravity and a lack of self-control. He explains, “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions,” and then tells the parable about a rich, apparently happy man. We hear the rich man’s inner monologue: He wonders how to store his overabundance of crops and belongings, and the obvious solution is to build bigger barns. That’s when God shows up, a rare occurrence in a parable, and tells him he’s a fool. He’s going to die that very night, and, as another old saying goes, you can’t take it with you. “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Jesus doesn’t say the man is wicked. He doesn’t say he’s evil. He says he’s a fool. Given that money can buy happiness, what makes this man a fool? He’s a fool, says Jesus, because he stored up treasures for himself, when he should have been “rich toward God.” But what does “rich toward God” mean?

Maybe the man isn’t “rich toward God” because he only considers his own interests, needs, and desires. The conversation he has with himself is utterly self-focused. Has he grown apathetic to the needs of others because of the insulation that his wealth provides? He seems to have no concern outside his own comfort and contentment. He has no empathy for others; no sense of the needs of his neighbors; no sense of how his blessing could be a blessing to others; no sense of connection to anyone. It is foolish to live locked in your own little world, oblivious to the presence, humanity, and needs of others.

Perhaps he isn’t “rich toward God” because he has made wealth his goal. Has wealth replaced God in his heart? “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12:34) A 2003 study describes “the money and happiness paradox”: Even though having more money is associated with happiness, seeking more money impairs our happiness. The study found that people with strong financial success goals reported lower satisfaction with family life, friendships, and jobs. It found that “the greater your goal for financial success, the lower your satisfaction with family life, regardless of household income.” This paradox teaches that money boosts happiness when it is a result, but not when it is a primary goal, or as one researcher noted, “It is generally good for your happiness to have money, but toxic to your happiness to want money too much.” When money becomes our God, it jeopardizes our happiness.

Maybe he is not “rich toward God” in the way he seems to assume he alone can take credit for his wealth; that his wealth belongs to him and him alone. Psalm 24 teaches, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it; the world, and those who live in it.” Our lives and possessions are not our own. They belong to God. We are merely stewards of them for the time God has given us on this earth. Elisabeth Johnson writes, “We rebel against this truth because we want to be in charge of our lives and our stuff.” God’s surprise announcement is a stark reminder that, ultimately, control of our lives is an illusion. Sooner or later we learn that no amount of wealth or property can secure our lives. No amount of wealth can protect us from a genetically inherited disease, for instance, or from a tragic accident. No amount of wealth can keep our relationships healthy and our families from falling apart. In fact, wealth and property can easily drive a wedge between family members, as in the case of the brothers fighting over their inheritance at the beginning of this passage.

Maybe he isn’t “rich toward God” because his focus on his own comfort ignores God’s good Creation. We aren’t told this man achieved his wealth by misusing other people or exploiting the planet, but we know this accounts for much of the extreme wealth in our world today, as well as the historic levels of income inequality we’re witnessing. Jesus follows this parable with Luke’s version of the “lilies of the field,” concluding, “Instead, seek God’s kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well” (Luke 12:31). In God’s kingdom, Jesus’ metaphor for the world governed by God’s love for all of God’s Creation, everyone has enough because people share, people do not hoard, people do not exploit others or the earth so that the earth can sustain all God’s creatures. In other words, people love their neighbors as themselves and it is apparent in the economy.

In our consumer culture, our worthiness is measured by what we own, can afford to buy, and the power that comes from vast sums of money. This makes it a hard sell convincing anyone that the happiness generated by wealth isn’t what really matters. But we only need to look around us to see the tragic consequences of wealth that insulates people from the struggles of the rest of the world and contributes to the destruction of the planet. It is abundantly clear that it is not “rich toward God.” It is, in fact, foolish.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Aimee Picchi, “Yes, Money Can Buy Happiness: the More Wealth You Have, the Happier You Get, Research Finds,” July 26, 2024, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/money-buys-happiness-study-finds-rich-are-happier-research/.
Cynthia Briggs Kittredge, “This is a funny story. We laugh. But we’re laughing at ourselves,” July 17, 2019, https://www.christiancentury.org/lectionary/august-4-ordinary-18c-luke-12-13-21
John Jennings, “Does Money Buy Happiness? Actually, Yes,” February 12, 2024, https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnjennings/2024/02/12/money-buys-happiness-after-all/
Elisabeth Johnson, “Commentary Luke 12:13-21,” August 4, 2019, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-18-3/commentary-on-luke-1213-21-4

Bread of Life

/ cjwhitt / Leave a comment

John 6:24-35

I confess I often find John’s Jesus annoying.  He speaks in code and then seems to scold people for not getting it.  In this passage, he declares, “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”  He is offering himself as metaphorical bread.  But what does that even mean?  What does it mean when so many people need real bread, real water; when way too many people would dearly love never to be literally hungry or thirsty again?  Just last week, the United Nations reported that progress in fighting global hunger has been set back 15 years, leaving around 733 million people going hungry in 2023, equivalent to one in 11 people globally and one in five in Africa. 

I agree with biblical commentators that by equating himself with bread, Jesus is saying he is essential for life.  Some commentators explain that Jesus is not referring to physical life, but “eternal life,” a phrase Jesus uses in this passage.  Many if not most Christians have been taught that “eternal life” begins when we die.  Brian D. McLaren posits that what Jesus actually meant by “eternal life” might better be translated “life of the ages,” or “life to the full.” Jesus was not proclaiming what Diana Butler Bass refers to as an “elevator religion,” focused on getting people up and away from a troubled earth to heaven.  Rather, Jesus came to be the savior of the world, this world, the world that God so loves (John 3:16).  God’s primary mission, embodied in Jesus, is saving the earth and its inhabitants from human evil and folly.  Thus, “I am the bread of life” must mean something more important, more earthly and more urgent than, “Believe in me and you’ll go to heaven.”

This passage follows John’s version of the feeding of the five thousand.  In John 6:1-24, a crowd is following Jesus to hear and be healed by him.  They grow hungry, but Jesus’ disciple Philip says, “‘Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.’”  They learn that a boy in the crowd has five barley loaves and two fish, clearly not enough.  Yet after giving thanks to God, Jesus distributes the boy’s meager contribution, and everyone has enough to eat.  As McLaren writes, “When I was a child, these stories were explained to me as evidence of Jesus’ supernatural power … But now … I see that Jesus is engaging in powerful prophetic drama, demonstrating through sign and wonder a radically different economy, one that doesn’t depend on spending more and buying more, but on discovering what you already have and sharing. … This is a different economy, indeed – one based on contemplative gratitude and neighborly sharing, not consuming more and more, faster and faster.”

So, what makes Jesus “bread” – what makes him essential to our survival?  I’m borrowing liberally from Brian D. McLaren:   

  • Jesus reveals a God who loves us not because we are so deserving and loveable, but because God is so loving, without limit or discrimination.
  • In case after case, Jesus calls people to repent from the goal of growing their personal wealth portfolios, and instead he calls them to grow their good deeds portfolios for the common good, especially the good of the poor and marginalized.
  • He challenges people to believe there could be a better, more human, more satisfying alternative to the economy of the Roman Empire, and to our own economy of unsustainable consumer capitalism.
  • In story after story, we see that the driving motivation in Jesus’ life is love.

It comes down to this: What is it that will save this world?  Hate, or love?  Fear, or love?  Indifference, or love?  Violence, or love? Greed, or love? 

Jesus as “bread” also reminds us of the Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist.  Doug Gay and Werner Jeanrond write in the introduction to their treatise on theology and economics: “The central Christian practice of sharing in the Lord’s Supper is a definitive sign of how all that comes from God is to be offered back to God and shared with our neighbors.” They quote Chris Wigglesworth: “The economy is for God which means it is for my neighbor; it is for my neighbor which means it is for God.”

Sometimes poetry helps these images clunk into place.  This communion prayer comes from a Christian base community in Lima, Peru:

God, food of the poor,
Christ, our bread,
give us a taste of the tender bread
from your creation’s table;
bread newly taken from your heart’s oven,
food that comforts and nourishes us.
A fraternal loaf that makes us human;
joined hand in hand, working and sharing.
A warm loaf that makes us family;
Sacrament of your body,
your wounded people.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:

“Fight against global hunger set back 15 years, warns UN report,” July 24, 2024, https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/07/1152451

“The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2024,” published by UNICEF, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, International Fund for Cultural Development, World Health Organization, World Food Programme, https://data.unicef.org › wp-content › uploads › 2024 › 07 › SOFI2024_Report_EN_web.pdf

Brian D. McLaren, The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion Is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian (New York: Convergent, 2016)

Brian D. McLaren, Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crisis, and a Revolution of Hope (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2007)

Calum I. MacLeod, “A Place at the Table,” August 5, 2012, Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, IL, https://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2012/080512.html

I Shall Not Want

/ cjwhitt / Leave a comment

Psalm 23

“I shall not want,” says the psalmist. My first thought is that everybody wants something. Some things we want are good: I want children to grow up feeling valued and loved; I want the unemployed to find work, and the unhoused to find homes. I want the planet Earth to continue to support human life. I want school children to be safe from gun violence. I want quite a lot, really.

But the psalmist in Psalm 23 isn’t saying he’ll never desire anything. What he means is he is free from want – he has what he needs. A better translation of verse 1 is, “I lack nothing,” “I have everything I need to live a healthy, peaceful life.”

We know this doesn’t apply to everyone, locally or globally. In Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond’s book, Poverty By America, he explains that the United States is the richest nation in the world and yet we have more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Almost 1 in 9 Americans lives in poverty, including 1 in 8 children. There are more than 38 million people living in the United States who can’t afford the basic necessities. At the same time, we see billionaires hoarding money they couldn’t spend in a lifetime while their workers struggle to get by on two jobs. So, you have to wonder: Is there a way that this verse – “I have everything I need” – can be true for everyone? Because if there isn’t, this psalm could feel like a cruel joke, a gloating paean to privilege.

The beginning of the verse gives us a clue to what the psalmist means. “The Lord is my shepherd.” We’ve heard this psalm so often that the power of those words may be lost on us. The Lord is my shepherd, says the psalm, and then it lists all the basic necessities a shepherd provides for the sheep: food, water, and protection. In the second part of the psalm, the gracious host also provides for these needs.

Psalm 23 affirms that life is essentially a gift, a gift from the shepherd. And even though the psalm is spoken in the first-person singular, we know that the shepherd cares for the entire flock. It’s fine for one individual, this psalmist, to sing a song of gratitude and trust for what the shepherd provides. It’s not okay for any one sheep – or for any one person – to assume God has singled out just one individual or even just one group of individuals for the abundance of God’s gifts.

What if we lived as though, “The Lord is our shepherd”? When we say, “The Lord is my shepherd” we reject the claims of anyone else who seeks that status. It’s like saying, “The Lord is my shepherd – you’re not.” Who is the “you” in “you’re not”? It depends on who or what is oppressing us. In some countries, tyrannical regimes try to take the place of trust in God. In our culture, we’re bombarded with ads telling us we need a new car every few years, we need to wear the latest fashions, we need the newest iPhone even if our current phone works fine. Wealth is status, security, and the measure of a person’s worth. It’s not surprising that our society is characterized by what Alan Greenspan once called “infectious greed.”

But consumer culture is not our shepherd. Greed is not our shepherd. The Lord is our shepherd. A few years ago, a world hunger summit in Rome concluded that there’s enough food in the world today to feed everybody. Hunger isn’t caused by a lack of food but by the fact that some people don’t have the money to buy food. The problem isn’t supply. It is distribution. The Shepherd has provided enough for the basic sustenance of life. That is how “I shall not want” can apply to everybody. What this means is that the Lord is not the problem. We are. As Mahatma Gandhi put it, “Earth provides enough to satisfy every [one’s] need, but not every [one’s] greed.” Or as Matthew Desmond puts it, “America’s poverty isn’t for lack of resources. We lack something else.”

In order to address poverty in our nation and world, I agree with Desmond that the most important step is acquiring that “something else” that we lack: We need the will, the desire; we need to become “poverty abolitionists,” as Desmond puts it. That is our calling as those who trust that the Lord is our shepherd. The psalm doesn’t tell us we won’t face challenges, enemies, even death, but God has given us all we need to meet them. And: we have God. The focal point of the psalm is, “Thou art with me.” The whole Gospel tells us God is with us. Jesus was called “Emmanuel,” and that means “God with us.”

God is with us. Author Barbara Ehrenreich was asked in an interview what she would give up to live in a more human world. She answered, “I think we shouldn’t think of what we would give up to have a more human world; we should think of what we would gain.”

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.