"Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me."
He replied to him,
"Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?"
He seemed to be asking Jesus to be his judge and arbitrator, but was in fact asking Jesus to confirm a judgment on which he had already decided. His question wasn't open to any actual judgment on the part of Jesus. Much as the Hebrew rejected the judgment of Moses, saying, "Who made you a prince and a judge over us?" (see Exodus 2:14), so too would anyone preoccupied with greed be unwilling to welcome the authority of Jesus. This man was willing to use Jesus to advance his own case. But the fact that what mattered to him most was to share the inheritance meant that he wasn't open to any version of Jesus that would not help him achieve that end.
Then he said to the crowd,
"Take care to guard against all greed,
for though one may be rich,
one's life does not consist of possessions."
We may not immediately imagine that it was such a greedy thing to ask his brother to share the inheritance with him. But Jesus saw more deeply into his heart and realized that, even if it was a valid thing to ask, the man wanted it too much. Here he was standing before someone who had much more to offer than merely enforcing rulings about inheritance, whether based on fairness or generosity. He was standing before one who could offer eternal life to his immortal soul, but he couldn't be bothered, because that mattered less to him than his dispute with his brother. He was before the judge of the living and the dead, but asking him to arbitrate family dispute, not even for the sake of family unity, but for rather for the wealth he hoped to receive.
He asked himself, 'What shall I do,
for I do not have space to store my harvest?'
Our greed has the potential to deform our souls. Then, instead of praying to God to discern what we ought to do, we get lost in our own inner monologue. Instead of bringing him our thanks for the good things we have received we congratulate ourselves and pat ourselves on the back. We increasingly lose the sense that everything that we have we have only on loan from God. We forget that we are meant to be stewards of the gifts we have received, and decide to use without reference to giver, without regard for the fact that, at best, they can provide a partial and temporary kind of happiness, destined to pass into nothing.
But God said to him,
'You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you;
and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?'
Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself
but is not rich in what matters to God."
On the one hand, we may not think of greed as our defining characteristic. But on the other, it is hard for mortal beings to remember how temporary are even the necessities of this life. We know that material wealth can solve short-term problems. This can cause us to quickly grow addicted, hoping and expecting for it to do more. We do tend to see financial issues as potentially catastrophic to a greater degree than moral issues. In the moral sphere we have been so spoiled by mercy as to take it for granted and treat it cheaply. But no one has been so kind in the arena of wealth. We therefore see financial ruin as greater sort of absolute evil than moral collapse. This at least tempts us to place wealth above God in the hierarchy of things that matter to us. We should instead be concerned with becoming rich in what matters to God. And we have been told what this is: "to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God" (see Micah 6:8).
Matt Maher - Canticle Of Zechariah
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