Proper 13, Year C -- Homily at the 8 o'clock Mass

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23
Psalm 49:1-11
Colossians 3:1-11
Luke 12:13-21

Saint Paul begins today’s epistle reading from his Letter to the Colossians with a curious statement. Urging his readers to leave behind the old unregenerate ways that characterized their lives before baptism, he exhorts them: “Put to death what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”

For years, that last phrase always puzzled me. Of all the other vices that he mentions, why does Paul single out covetousness in particular as “idolatry?”

The answer lies, I think, in the respective meanings of the words themselves. “Covetousness” means inordinate desire for wealth and possessions. And “idolatry” means putting something less than God in the place of God as the object of our faith and worship.

It follows, then, that covetousness is idolatry precisely to the extent that we seek in earthly wealth and possessions the fulfillment, happiness, and security that only God can give. Covetousness becomes idolatry when we begin to put wealth and possessions in the place of God as the ultimate object of our trust and hope.

This theme of covetousness as idolatry recurs through all of today’s readings. And this sermon this morning is one of the few in which I’ve ever been able to connect an obvious common theme connecting all three lectionary readings – the Old Testament, Epistle, and Gospel, as well as the Psalm.

To take the Old Testament reading from Ecclesiastes next, there the Preacher repeats his pessimistic refrain: Vanity, vanity, all is vanity! The essence of the Preacher’s complaint is that he spends all his life toiling to accumulate possessions, but then must die. So, he doesn’t get to enjoy the fruits of his labors, and this seems unfair. Even worse, someone who didn’t work for them gets to enjoy them all—and who knows whether that person will be wise and use the inheritance well, or a fool who will squander and waste it all?

The message of Ecclesiastes is not that hard work and commitment are futile and hence to be avoided, but rather that they are best undertaken for their own intrinsic value in the present rather than for some hypothetical reward in the future. Better in this life to work at tasks that we enjoy, or even better at tasks to which God has called us, than to spend a lifetime working at a job we hate in the hope of a retirement that may never come.

Psalm 49 echoes the theme by reminding us that no amount of earthly wealth can save us from death. Death is the great equalizer. All alike die: wise and foolish, high and low, rich and poor. And once we’re dead it doesn’t matter how much we owned in this life. We can’t take any of it with us.

The farmer in today’s Gospel reading is not a bad man. There’s no suggestion that he’s become rich by theft, graft, corruption, manipulation of the market, or oppression of his workers. Rather, through sun, soil, and rain, God has blessed him with abundant harvests and hence great wealth.

But he’s a fool. And, in significant ways, we’re all like him. Deep down, one of our greatest fears is the fear of death. One way we attempt to deal with that fear is by the acquisition of earthly possessions, whether in the form of material wealth, fame, or power. In other words, as Saint Paul says, we commit the sin of idolatry by looking to our earthly possessions to give us the sense of safety and security that can really only come from God.

And so, when the abundant harvests come in, the farmer in the parable thinks he’s got it made. He says to himself, “You have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry.” But it’s a completely false sense of security, for his life is required of him that very night.

The rich fool’s mistake is his failure to recognize that both his wealth and his life are gifts of God. Once we recognize that everything we have comes from God—indeed, that life itself is God’s gift to us—then we begin to learn to trust God to provide for us all that we need, both for this life and the next.

Once we have that trust, we no longer need to hoard possessions in the futile attempt to derive from them the security that only God can give us. Instead, we begin to find the freedom to be generous, to share, and to give, just as God has been infinitely generous with us.