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21st Sunday after Pentecost
October 5, 2008 Sermon by The Rev. Bill Van Oss, Rector
                                                                                       Readings                                                                                    
 

If you have been paying attention these past few Sundays to the scripture readings we’ve been hearing – especially the Gospels – you may have been struck by a powerful theme and we hear it again today.

Powerfully, we hear of the danger of greed. A couple of weeks ago we heard a parable about workers in a vineyard. Some worked all day in the scorching heat; others were hired much later and worked only an hour, yet all were given a full day’s pay.

“It’s not fair!” the all-day workers cried. “We deserve more!”, but the vineyard owner says “be satisfied with your pay and go home.” “Be satisfied.”

Then there was the parable of the “unforgiving servant.” The one who, after having his Master forgive him his huge debt, refuses to forgive a fellow servant’s tiny debt, a lesson on the destructive consequences of greed.

Then there was the great story of Jesus driving the money changers out of the temple. “You have made my Father’s house a den of thieves,” Jesus says.

Jesus is angry because poor people are being taken advantage of. Good, faithful poor people come to the temple to offer an animal sacrifice to God and they are charged an exorbitant sum. The money changers are greedy and take advantage of simple, religious folk. Jesus gets angry at their greed and confronts them.

And then today’s parable of the wicked tenants: Unsatisfied with being given just a share of the harvest, they want the whole thing (greed) and not only do they not want to give the landowner his share, they want to steal his property as well and they kill his son to get the inheritance.

Greed is a powerful, destructive force. Perhaps that’s why Jesus talks about it so much. Greed can corrupt and destroy.

Just look around. We are in danger of having our financial system collapse because of greed. Right on the heels of Enron and several other corporate scandals where executives enriched themselves while stealing the pensions of their employees.

Our economic system is in peril, because people who made millions of dollars wanted tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, and people might lose homes, jobs and retirement accounts because of this greed: A modern day parable, frighteningly real.

Greed is a powerful and destructive force. It was the Roman Philosopher, Seneca who said, “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”

We live in a culture of more. I like to call it the “Oreo Cookie Syndrome,” that is, if one is good, three must be great, five is fabulous and seven is stupendous. More, more, more, if I just have more, I’ll be happy. But our greed is killing us. It’s robbing us of our soul, sucking the life out of us, because “more” is always beyond our grasp.

This past week our Jewish sisters and brothers celebrated their holiest of days, Rosh Hashana, the beginning of the new year. With a haunting cry from the ram’s horn, or shofar, signaling the beginning, Jewish people are called to reflect, to examine their lives, examine their relationships. A 16 year-old boy took over blowing the shofar from a 95 year old member at Temple Israel up the hill. It is a haunting cry that symbolizes internal wailing, and the soul releasing itself and speaking to God.

Souls strangled by the things of the world, released to speak to God. This is what we need.

A clarion call to prayers, confession and introspection – to examine our relationships with God, with each other, with money and all the things we so often allow ourselves to focus on and to control us. “It’s a cleansing of your soul” one member of the temple said. A cleansing from greed, and grasping and the inability to say “enough;” being freed of the envy of those who have more and being satisfied with less.

Each of us is called to examine our lives and to look critically at the world around us. The stories and Parables of Jesus have much to teach us about ourselves, and God, and one another.

Like the laborers in the vineyard, we sometimes complain that life is not fair, that people who haven’t worked as hard or as long as we have are prospering while we toil in the sun. Jesus teaches us to be satisfied and grateful for what we have and like the money changers in the temple, our economic system can harm people who are poor and vulnerable, like people forced into bankruptcy because they lack health insurance.

Jesus teaches us to challenge the ways the lowly and poor are exploited and taken advantage of and to work for justice, respecting the dignity of every human being. And like the wicked tenants in today’s Gospel we can be constantly unsatisfied and unwilling to say “enough,” grasping for more when all we really need is enough.

Jesus teaches us God’s desire for us to live in peace and harmony, to be satisfied with less and able to distinguish needs and wants. Greed is seductive and destructive. It corrodes the soul and fractures community.

May we hear a clarion call this day to examine our lives in the light of Jesus’ teaching – that we might be freed from insatiable appetite for more and greed that corrupts and destroys.


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