Ordering our Loves for the Love of God
A sermon by seminarian Paddy Cavanaugh on the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (C), September 24, 2022.
Amos 6:1a, 4-7; Psalm 146; 1 Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31
Alas for those who are at ease in [Arlington],
and for those who feel secure in [Martha’s Vineyard],
Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory,
and lounge on their couches [at Virginia Seminary]
Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile,
and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away. (Amos 6:1a; 4-7)
I hope Shearon is not beginning to regret inviting me back for a second year. The intent behind my creative liberty with the cutting words of the prophet Amos was not to add shock value, they’re plenty shocking enough on their own, but to try to retune our ears so that we might comprehend the full weight of what is being said. The lessons appointed for today are all about money; they’re about what our relationship with wealth and poverty reveals about our relationship to God.
Now if you grew up anything like I did in the South, speaking candidly about money was on a short list of improper topics, which, if brought up, were reliable ways of getting yourself disinvited from future dinner parties. However, seeing as how our Lord Jesus Christ broached the topic, and he is host of the dinner party for which we are gathered this day, I am inclined to prioritize his conversational lead over whatever Emily Post has to say about manners. So let’s talk about religion and money.
The prophet Amos’ fiery condemnation, or ‘naming and shaming’ of those in Israel who live lives of gross overabundance while neglecting the needs of the poor among them is one of the most common themes spoken about by all the prophets. Amos happens to be the most prominent example of this. His concern with rampant economic inequality is not just a concern about a disordered earthly economy, but it is concern about a breach of covenant with God and God’s divine economy.
Now, a word about this tricky word economy. Think about it for a moment, what does this word conjure up in your mind? I personally think of adjustable interest rates, inflation, price indices, and other fiscal mysteries that are understood only by God and those of you who work down the Federal Reserve. The word economy, however, is derived from the Greek word koinonia which appears twenty times in the New Testament and means partnership, participation, and community. Therefore economy in the broader sense is not just about money but it is about the fundamental ways in which we weave our relationships to one another and to God. Economy describes the fabric of our common lives, which the prophet Amos insists is torn and frayed when the few enjoy great excess at the expense of the many.
God, however, desires to empower us to be menders of these ruptures in our material relationships so that wholeness in our spiritual relationships might be restored, lest we cast ourselves into a self-imposed exile from love. In short, God desires for us to be concerned about the poor because the wellbeing of the entire human family depends on it. And it is a particular kind of caring for the poor that the Old Testament prophets encourage us towards; one in which the poor are treated not only as objects of charity but as subjects who have something real to offer to the common life; to our koinonia. In treating them otherwise through charity alone we can fall into a misguided attempt to assuage our first world guilt without confronting the disordered relationships which necessitate our charity in the first place.
Our global economies produce enough wealth to satisfy world hunger, to provide housing and improved security for all. So why is it that there is still hunger, lack of access to basic healthcare, and entrenched poverty, not only in the global south, but on our very church steps? The problem, St. Paul says in his letter to Timothy, is a fundamental misprioritization of what we think is most real and what is actually most real. He writes:
As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.
It’s a difficult paradox to wrap our minds around. How can it be that our resources, our worldly treasure, which affords us and our families a safe and secure life – a life we can feel, and touch, and perceive with our senses; a life that grants us the stability to then give of our abundance, is somehow not actually what is most real. But instead, what is real, and what we are to place our trust in, is an intangible promise, a mystery of faith, a seemingly incredulous – ridiculous even – hope that God, not our 401k or my Church Pension, is the foundation of reality. Now we are flirting with some dangerous ideas. If you say that too loudly at the office or in some Church finance meetings I’ve been to, you may find your social life getting rather difficult. However it’s the reality that our Gospel presents us with. The market can dispense only earthly rewards, but the promises of God are both earthly and eternal.
This is not some prosperity Gospel message which tells us that our steadfast faithfulness will be rewarded with worldly riches, but rather it tells us that our steadfast faithfulness is manifest in how we distribute and relate to worldly riches. Because how we relate to money is a way in which we relate to others. Again, koinonia, economy, a web of communal relationship.
I believe that money itself is value neutral. It does not possess some uniquely evil property that is antithetical to the spiritual promises of God. St. Paul is right and clear to say that the love money, not money on its own, is at the root of all kinds of evil because money at its most basic level is simply an expression of energy; energy that can be leveraged for good or for evil. We go to work and we trade our precious resources of time and labor for money, a symbol of our efforts, which can be traded for other things. These things that we trade our money, or our energy, for reveal something about our core values. We value our families, so we trade money to clothe and feed them; we value our Church community and so we offer our money for its upkeep and mission. We also love other things. Like the rich man in the parable, I love feasting sumptuously and wearing fine linen.
Today’s lessons challenge us to interrogate whether those loves and values are appropriately ordered and to be aware of the consequences of when our loves are disordered. In Jesus’ parable he describes a deep chasm that emerges between the poor man, Lazarus, and the rich man who possessed much in this life but ultimately possessed less than Lazarus when he used his resources to estrange rather than to connect. The moral here is that the true value of our riches and our energy is in how they might be used to bring us more fully into koinonia – into community and communion – with one another. The Eucharist itself helps to orient us to this truth. Holy Communion, like the lessons, upends, or perhaps more accurately, turns right what is unright in our relationships with God and neighbor.
Participation in the risen life of Jesus Christ through Communion invites us into a new, reordered economy of social, economic, and spiritual relations. When we receive it we become one with Jesus and one another and are strengthened then to act as if we are truly one body. This one body is then tasked to participate with Jesus in the renewal of the world.
When the parishioners of St. Andrew’s in the affluent vacation town of Martha’s Vineyard mobilized their resources to provide food and housing for the forty-eight Venezuelan asylum seekers who were flown onto the island this week, I could not help but believe that their actions were in some way informed by their hearing of the Gospel and by their practice of Communion, week in and week out. So let them be an example to us and us to the entire world about what is possible when we allow love to unbind us from the burden of our sometimes disordered pursuits.
Because in loosening our grip on our fleeting treasure, we find that our hands are suddenly freer. Free to reach out, like Lazarus, like beggars, and receive the gift that is eternal. Amen.