Hosea 11:1-11 Psalm 107:1-9,43
Col. 3:1-11 Luke 12:13-21
Lectionary Link
From the words of Jesus, "Take care! Be on guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions."
In Luke's Gospel, one can find the use of three kinds of life, often presented in contrast: bios for physical life, psyche for soul life of emotions, intellect, and volition, and zoe for divine life.
The words of Jesus refer to the divine life of a person, whose origin is believed to be the divine image upon a person's life. In such a human constitutional make-up, there is a hierarchy of the preferred derivation of values for ordering one's life. From the image of the divine within oneself, one is to flood the mind, emotions and wills with the values of the kingdom of heaven, which then guide the agency for what happens in one's bodily life.
Greed is the result of a reversal in the hierarchy of values. From noting that one's body is located in an outer and physical world, one can come to the conclusion that accruing other environment matter to enhance the physical life of the body can become the chief value in life.
The result is that the possessing of more physical things for the sole benefit of one's physical life becomes the chief and driving goal of one's life. One's external treasures becomes the chief value of one's life. My life is valuable because of what I own. I am worth something because of what I have accrued. And if I am on the Forbes list of wealthiest people, then I am the most worthy person in the world. My abundance of possession is the essence of my life.
The assessment of such a view by Jesus is a reality of check of time. Time ages and ends all things physical, the human body, and the ability of a person to enjoys one's possessions beyond one's death. All physical things have a shelf life and they end. Something which ends can only be a temporary treasure.
The way of Jesus and the way of every higher ethical system offers an alternate to the life of greed.
In Pauline epistle writing, greed is classified as idolatry, which is in fact a sin against the commandment of not making replacements for God and trying to act as though human possessions could actually functions as one's high God.
What the continual amassing of material possessions proves is that wealth and stuff can never be God, because discontent with what one now has, only makes one want to have more. It is an endless cycle of discontent. One's amassing of stuff leads one away from accessing the divine that one already has from the image of the divine that is always already upon one's life.
The divine image upon oneself activated is the zoe or the abundant and eternal life quality which Jesus and the attending spiritual tradition refer to. And when we attend to the zoe of the divine image, what kind of treasure do we find? We find the life of the virtues, for they are heavenly treasures which can descend into the life of our minds, emotions, and volition, and become the organizing principle for our bodily lives.
And if we find the heavenly treasure, the treasure of the virtues, what becomes the alternative to greed? Generosity.
The world greatly needs the treasure of generosity to overcome the material distortions of the greedy who are so fat with wealth that the blubber of their weight destroys and hurts those who suffer in dire need beneath them.
The Gospel of Jesus for us is this: Let our lives consist in the abundance of the generosity of God who has given us everything, and who asks us to emulate divine generosity by practicing distributing care with equity to all, especially to those who lack and need to be brought to healthy subsistence. Amen.
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