josephholubsermons


 

August 1, 2010
Pentecost 9
Luke 12:13-22

THE CRUCIBLE OF GREED

"Be on your guard against all kinds of greed..."   Luke 12:15

This passage has two parts.  The first part is, “Be on your guard.”  The second part is, “Against all kinds of greed.”   "Be on your guard against all kinds of greed," said Jesus.   Let’s take a look at the second part first and reflect for some moments upon “all kinds of greed.”

Greed is pervasive and greed can easily become pathological.  Examples of what we might call pathological greed are all around us.   Certainly a name in recent years that has come to be synonymous with greed is Bernie Madoff.   By all appearances Madoff was a generous philanthropist who served on the boards of several non-profit institutions and did charity work for many others.  People who knew him said he was a very nice man.  Yet, Madoff is infamously known for running the largest Ponzi Scheme in history defrauding thousands of investors out of billions of dollars throwing individual lives and organizations into financial hardship and chaos.   

"Be on your guard against all kinds of greed," said Jesus.   

There are, of course, many other individual examples of greed we could identify, but greed goes far beyond the individual.  What is most insidious about greed is that it can become systemic and collective, infecting entire structures and systems.

For example, greed in the corporate structure has undermined the hopes and dreams of many average people and dealt a devastating economic blow.   Systemic greed shows its face when corporate CEO’s can receive millions upon millions of dollars in salary, bonuses and buyout packages with companies that are at or near insolvency.  Many would say we saw greed manifested in companies who accepted public bailouts but didn’t essentially change the way they did business when it came to executive compensation and bonuses. 

This feeding frenzy of greed has become incredibly transparent with little sense of shame or apparent concern – the reason being that greed is more and more becoming accepted as normalcy as a culture of greed is fostered and legitimized.  Companies, including many Fortune 500 companies, have reduced work forces, salaries and benefits, cutting costs to make ends meet, but yet have turned around and continued to pay ridiculous salaries, bonuses and perks to the CEO’s and upper crust of the powerful and the privileged. 

You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that when profits are consolidated and doled out only to the select few at the top, much less is being channeled back into the economy through the workforce that created the profits to begin with.  Combine that with the fact than many companies have reduced or discontinued  healthcare assistance and other benefits, the end result is that many workers are making less while costs continue to rise.   This was a burning concern of the biblical social prophets:  the gap between the rich and poor gets wider, and more people are thrown into deeper levels of poverty that are very difficult to escape.

"Be on your guard against all kinds of greed," said Jesus.   

Certainly the current recession of the last two years has numerous causes, but one major factor, according to most experts, was an assortment of reckless lending practices and unwise financial policies that were designed to make fast and bountiful profits, but in the end was a house of cards destined to collapse upon itself.   

"Be on your guard against all kinds of greed," said Jesus.   

I read that this year’s #1 overall NFL draft pick signed a five year contract worth $78 million.  He has yet to play in one NFL game.  I don’t blame or begrudge him, but the professional athletic enterprise is merely another example of systemic greed and how greed grotesquely creates a collective value system that places higher value on people who can throw, kick, catch or hit a ball than people who teach children to read and write and critically think.  And those of us who call ourselves fans, might whine about it a little, but for the most part we offer our support of the whole culture of greed by logging on or lining up to get our tickets.

"Be on your guard against all kinds of greed," said Jesus.     

This past week I devoted time to reading the works of and listening to audio presentations of two contemporary spiritual teachers, Eckhart Tolle and Thomas Keating.  Tolle and Keating come from different spiritual traditions but their teachings are remarkably parallel on many points.  Keating is a Trappist Monk of the Christian tradition and Tolle is not aligned with any particular tradition, but incorporates Christian, Buddhist and Hindu principles in his teachings.

Both authors emphasize that we humans live, much of the time, with a misplaced sense of the self that we mistake for the real self.   Keating calls it the “false self “and Tolle calls it the “ego.”  One of the points they each make is that the “false self” or “ego” confuses self-gratification for happiness, looking for happiness and identity through the voracious pursuit of things, material things as well as other “things” like power, control, status, security, things that make one feel superior to others.  The investment the “false self” makes in things for gratification is so total and so complete that the “false self” loses itself in the thing(s) it seeks.   The “false self” becomes inseparable from the thing(s) it perceives it needs, desires, wants and must have.  Insidiously, the false self has a voracious appetite that cannot ever be satisfied and can never have enough of what it seeks, always desiring more and even more.   

• If the “false self” or “ego” needs to be in control for gratification it can never control enough – it will always strive to control and impose its will more and more in every situation. 

• If the “false self” needs some form of security for gratification, it will never be secure enough, always seeking more security and never be gratified. 

•  If the "false self" needs a certain body image for gratification it will become obsessed with weight loss, or figure enhancement, or exercise, or muscle building or whatever.

The “false self” relentlessly advances its agenda for gratification.  It is willing to sacrifice most anything or anybody to achieve gratification.  Sometimes we may hear the cliché applied to someone, “He or she has a big ego!”   Well, it is more a matter of a very insecure ego that voraciously and aggressively pursues whatever thing it perceives it needs for gratification and always justifies the tactics it uses to get that thing.  It is no wonder that there are social problems, skirmishes, conflicts and outright wars when you get 6 billion people acting out of their "false self." 

As I pondered the thoughts of these spiritual teachers including Jesus’ teaching in today’s gospel, I realized that the “false self” or “ego” is the crucible in which greed is fostered and nurtured.  It is a closed system.  It’s a box that is guided by a twisted logic and amoral set of values.   When we look at the greedy Bernie Madoff’s of world or the greedy corporate paradigms from outside the box, we may be shocked and scandalized they would do such greedy things.  However, if you are inside their box it all seems very logical and reasonable and certainly not wrong or immoral.  From inside the box the “false self” is very adept at self-justification and self-delusion. 

Even Christianity has gotten into the act in a so called “prosperity gospel” movement that uses religion to justify self-indulgence. 

Here is how the culture of greed works and how we are all involved.  Ego identification with things for personal gratification and identity creates an intimate attachment to things, an obsession with things, which in turn creates our consumer society and economic structures  where the only tolerated measure of success is more, more, more, and even more!  Marketing experts know this and design their strategies to appeal to the “false self” in search of gratification.  Both Tolle and Keating describe this unchecked striving for more and infinite growth as a cancer-like disease.  The sole goal of a cancerous growth is to grow and multiply itself, unaware that it is bringing about its own destruction by destroying the organism of which it is a part.   Greed for more of whatever thing the “false self” desires, is willing to use and abuse anything or anybody to achieve its goal.   Tolle in describing the corporate culture of greed says, “Their only blind aim is profit. They pursue that aim with absolute ruthlessness.  Nature, animals, people, even their own employees, are no more than digits on a balance sheet, lifeless objects to be used, then discarded.”[i]

I'm am a big Star Trek fan. If you are, you know all about The Borg.  In Star Trek the Borg are part humanoid and part machine. Their mission is to take over the galaxy and absorb all other races into themselves, transforming them into Borg. They are unrelenting in their mission and cold-hearted in their tactics. When they approach another race of beings they announce they are going to assimilate them and they punctuate it by saying "Resistance is futile."  The Borg are a parody of avarice and greed. Greed is voracious in its mission, and its inevitable result is to turn the heart to machine like coldness toward others in its relentless pursuit of the thing it desires and needs.

Jesus told a parable about all of this in today’s gospel.  The rich man in the parable was living in the little box of the “false self” and greed.  The rich man could not conceive of anything outside of building bigger barns to accommodate his wealth.  He could not imagine anything else to do with his wealth but protect it, save it, invest it, increase it and use it for self-gratification.  There were, of course, all sorts of places to "store" his wealth: the stomachs of the hungry for beginners, but he couldn’t conceive of it.   Why?  He was confined inside his little box of the “false self” that limited his world view to self-gratification and blinded him to the way of the Kingdom of God. 

The first part of the verse is, “Be on your guard.”  The word in Greek there (φυλάσσω)  means “to watch” or “to be aware.”  The unique and beautiful thing about Jesus was that he did not derive his identity from a “false self” or from “ego.”  He was disengaged from the “false self” and “ego” and derived his identity from his relationship with God and the love of God which he embodied and related to others. 

This is what energized him to live a life of self-giving love. Being disengaged from the “false self” empowered him to say and embody things like, “Turn the other cheek.”  “Do not judge”  “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  “Give to those who beg from you”  “if anyone takes your goods do not ask for them back.”  You see, these are all things that are offensive to the “false self” and “ego.”  The false self cannot handle such gestures of grace and love, especially toward those who offend us or those we do not like.

In my own spiritual journey I am experiencing Jesus as one who challenges me to step back from my “false self” and ego and “become aware” of and observe my own “false self” indulgent madness.   He challenges me to disengage from my “false self” on its greedy quest for gratification to see it for the sham that it is and discover my true and authentic self that is rooted in relationship with a gracious and loving God. 

On my spiritual journey Jesus challenges me to trust him that the way of the “false self” and greed is not the way to fulfillment and joy;  not the way to being filled;  not the way to abiding peace;  not the way to genuine purpose; not the way to the experience authentic self.  But rather it is found in his way; taking up our cross and following; loosening my greedy grasp, using my resources to minister to others and to build up the kingdom of God.

It is perhaps the most gigantic shift in thinking and radical change of attitude that people living in a culture of greed and self-gratification could ever make.  Jesus leads us into a counter-cultural way of living, giving and loving that a culture of greed will never understand, but a way that leads to a God-filling that a culture of greed can never give.   Amen.