An Economy of Death
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
Things not to talk about your first month in a new ministry: sex, money, the building repair projects (again, money), the random pulpit propping the sanctuary door open, and your retirement plans. I’m sure you can add to the list. Unfortunately for me, this week’s texts come exactly one month into my new ministry. I could have deviated from my plan to preach from the lectionary and avoided preaching about money. I suspect some folk will preach these texts and still avoid preaching about money! It is funny, isn’t it, preaching and teaching about money to the folks who directly pay your salary - even more so if you are also in a visible remodeling project on the house you just bought.
Today’s Gospel text brings us the story of the rich man who built bigger barns to store his abundant wealth. Walter Brueggemann, in his Money and Possessions commentary, relates the story of the rich man to the Hebrews who labored as slaves to build bigger supply storage for Pharaoh in Exodus 1:11 (84). Presumably without slaves, the main character in Luke’s parable wants to attempt something similar: build more storage space for his goods. He had been blessed with an abundant crop and his response to that was to build more storage space and then to live off the wealth of its sale. Now, I think we can all agree that if a farmer has lots of crops those crops should be stored properly. Had he left them out in the fields to rot, he would most definitely had been a poor steward of the gifts of the land (which are ultimately gifts from God). Big barns for big crops aren’t inherently bad things.
Remember the parable of the talents and the slave who buried his talents in the ground so that he would not lose them and anger his master (Matt. 25:14-30)? When his master returned his talents were taken away and he was cast out. Remember the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), who wasted his inheritance on wanton living? In that story he was an example of a sinner whose return was to be celebrated - his return was celebrated, but blowing all his inheritance was a sign of depravity. Reading the Luke 12 parable of the rich man on its own without these other stories might lead us to say that the problem with the rich man was that he should not have saved his belongings, but should have given them all away to those in need. But, we don’t have a clear message from Jesus that putting ourselves into financial instability is what is required of us. Perhaps the issue is not that the rich man built the barns and stored the goods, but rather that he consolidated his wealth for his own benefit and comfort. He thought, like perhaps we do when our bank accounts are full, that he could sit back, relax, and eat, drink, and be merry.
But did we forget Isaiah’s next words?
For tomorrow we die (Isaiah 22:14).
God didn’t forget.
Perhaps this week’s New Testament readings are really about death and all the things we try to do to ward it off - even things that bring death to others. The reading from Colossians 3:1-11 starts with an “if/then” that rejects this economy of death: “If we have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above…not the things that are on earth.” If we read this with an ontology of wholeness that accepts this earth as the very good work of a present and loving creator, we don’t need to read this as a dualistic rejection of material things. It isn’t that barns full of grain or the bodies that need to eat the grain are to be rejected for the ethereal heights of the soul saved - it is that we are to no longer be bound to the economy of death. If we have been raised from death through our baptisms we must put aside all the ways we use each other, storing up power and goods so we can sit back and feel good about ourselves: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire greed, anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive language, and lies. All symptoms of an economy of death.
Perhaps some of us have barns - although in this present housing economy, I’m guessing very few. But we do have bank accounts, storage units, church buildings, banked vacation hours, and reputations. Barns full of grain aren’t evil - and neither are these other things per se. But, when we are controlled by an economy of death, where we are driven to collect ease for ourselves on the backs of others, barns become idols. There isn’t a direct link between barns full of food and a life of ease unless those barns full of food have been sold to others and money and power consolidated into the hands of the ease-seeking barn owner.
Inequality.org reported this spring that billionaire wealth is up 58% since the beginning of the pandemic - even while many folks in the US struggle with the rising price of, well, everything. A year ago Forbes reported that Moderna had created 5 new billionaires through the sales of their COVID vaccine - a vaccine that not all could access. Inequality.org has labeled this gross inequality as “excessive wealth disorder.” If we zoom out for a global view we could say that one symptom of this disorder was the hoarding of vaccines during the pandemic. We built bigger barns to store our many doses so we could secure ourselves, even while more vulnerable countries scrambled to secure doses.
If excessive wealth disorder, which the rich man clearly had, is a sign of an economy of death, what might an economy of life look like? If we who have been raised to new life in Christ were to handle our goods responsibly but in a way that disrupted the idols of an economy of death, in a way shaped by mercy and generosity rather than greed and usury, how might we and our communities be able to experience the truth that in Christ’s work now and at the eschaton to come there will be no inequalities between folks based on arbitrary measures? In Christ “there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!” (Col. 3:11).