+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
So last week I dodged the homiletical bullet and managed to not talk about money; we interpreted the parable of the unjust steward as pertaining to sin and forgiveness rather than financial wealth. I don’t get that chance this week, considering all of our readings deal with money and love of the same. I think I mentioned in this pulpit before a psychologist I once knew who claimed that all modern, western people suffered from five psychological complexes: mother, father, sex, death, and money. I don’t know whether this is true or not, but these are certainly topics we don’t like to think about too deeply or for too long, and we certainly don’t want to talk about them. Too bad we can’t avoid it this morning. Oh well.
Most of you have heard me say before, but it bears repeating, that the great spiritual danger of wealth is that it encourages the development of a false soteriology. That is to say that it gives us something we can convince ourselves will solve all our problems, including the problem of sin and death, other than the grace of God. In this way, I think the preferential option for the poor is less a moral judgment than it is an empirical fact. That it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven without God’s special, providential act is just the simple truth of the matter.
Here is the most disappointing news for those who have wealth, and it is something I hesitate to mention for what will become obvious reasons. Simply being beneficent isn’t going to cut it. We all may be ready to agree with the proposition “you cannot buy your way into heaven” in the abstract, but don’t some of us sort of believe it, anyhow? If only one gives enough to charity or to the church, if only one directs one’s philanthropy to effect the most good possible, cannot one be assured of pretty swanky digs in the hereafter? Well, no. Perhaps you can see why I don’t like to say this too loudly. If people think this way, they might be apt to be more generous, and that could solve a lot of real problems. But maintaining too much reserve in sharing this difficult news is even more dangerous, because we’re back to relying on ourselves, in this case our own outward generosity, rather than on God’s grace.
Note what Abraham did not say to Dives from across the great chasm fixed between heaven and hell. He did not say, “well you’d be here if only you gave ten percent or fifty percent or ninety percent of the good things you enjoyed in life to Lazarus.” Should he have done that? Of course. But not because he thought he would thereby merit salvation. That gets it the wrong way round. He should have done it, because he realized at the first that his wealth was never going to save him, that only God could do, that all his money was itself a gift of God (as are all things), that the purple and fine linen garments and sumptuous feasts were a veil which obscured his profound spiritual poverty.
You cannot buy salvation, but what about happiness. You also cannot buy happiness. This is a cliché, but I think it’s true without being a truism. At least it’s not a truism in English, in which we have too many definitions for “happiness”. You knew I was eventually going to go down a Greek rabbit-hole, right? Wealth either can procure or is itself the definition of ολβος or ευτυχια, and these words for happiness are close to the ideal sort of life in the non-philosophical Greco-Roman mythological worldview. Whether you can procure this yourself by a combination of hard work and bribing the pagan gods or if this is entirely dependent on however Fortuna’s wheel is spinning for you is a matter of debate.
This, however, is not what the New Testament means by happiness. Nor, by the way, is it what Aristotle talked about (in case you like ancient philosophy) or Aquinas (in case you’re a Thomist) or the Westminster Shorter Catechism (in case you are of a more Reformed bent). All these in one way or another claim that the goal of human life (in this world and the next) is happiness, and I would contend along with them—and contra Kant and the accepted orthodoxy of a large part of philosophical ethics over the last two centuries—that it is the aim of moral reasoning. But happiness in what sense?
There are two Greek terms to consider here: ευδαιμωνια and μακαριος. The former was the preferred term of the philosophers, but doesn’t appear in the New Testament (perhaps because it has the Greek word for demon right in the middle of it, though that is an oversimplification of the meaning in context). The latter is the term used throughout the New Testament, and it is a near synonym. In all events, this word for “happiness” is alternatively translated “blessedness” or “beatitude”, and it suggests something much deeper and permanent than cheerfulness or good fortune. It is, I’d say, the state of being at peace with God and the world, established in hope, and able to maintain trust in the almighty amidst all the changes and chances of life. This, I think, is the state of which St. Augustine famously said in which our restless souls find rest in God.
All that is sort of complicated, metaphysical stuff, which is where my theology-addled brain usually goes, so how do we make all this practical? Forgive me for one more Greek term: αυταρκεια. This is the word translated in our Epistle this morning as “contentment.” This was a favorite word of the stoic philosophers, but Paul uses it in a slightly different sense than they do. He gives us some very practical advice, here:
There is great gain in godliness with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of the world; but if we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content.
The way to achieve this lofty spiritual state of Happiness [with a capital “H”] is simply to rely on God’s Grace and be satisfied with what you’ve got if you’ve got enough to survive.
What happens naturally after this simple commitment to the proposition “that’s enough” is amazing. We stop ignoring Lazarus at the gate; we actually help him out. We stop insulating ourselves from the problems around us, like those at ease in Amos’ Zion. Maybe we can contribute in some practical way to the grievous ruin of Joseph, or maybe all we can do is pray for God’s blessing on those in distress, but stuffing ourselves with lamb and veal and wine and napping on ivory beds wasn’t going to make us any happier in any event, only more deluded.
And here we have the great irony of the life of Christian virtue. Doing all these good works to justify ourselves isn’t going to get us one whit closer to God and salvation or happiness. But once we take that step of admitting our utter dependence upon God and commit to living with that being enough, a virtuous cycle kicks off. As St. Paul promises– we do good, we are rich in good deeds, we are generous. And as we practice these virtues we become more-and-more content and hopeful and happy; and doing these things becomes like second-nature, because it literally is–we’ve shed the nature of Adam and taken on the nature of Christ Jesus. And finally we may take hold of the life which is life indeed.
+In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.