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The Readings today challenge us to reevaluate our attachment to the things of this world, to avoid greed and avarice (Gospel), to be realistic about the limitations of this life and passing nature of things (First Reading), and to realize that "your life is hidden now with Christ in God" (Second Reading).

A preacher notices a woman in the congregation who begins to weep as soon as he begins to preach. Thinking he has made a big catch he preaches with even greater fervour. The more he preaches, the more the woman cries. Finally, the preaching over, it is time to give testimonies. The preacher points to the woman and says, “Sister, I can see you were mightily moved as we proclaimed the word of God. Now can you please share with us what it was that convicted your spirit so much.” The woman hesitates, but the pastor insists so she comes up and takes the microphone. “You see,” she begins, “Last year I lost my he-goat, the most precious thing I possessed. I prayed and cried much over it and then I forgot all about it. But as soon as you came out to preach and I saw your beard, it reminded me all over again of the he-goat. I still cry whenever I remember it.” She did not remember one word of what the preacher said.

Possessions are necessary for life. But possessions can assume such an importance in one’s life that they become obsessions. When one is so consumed with the things that one could have, so much so that one no longer hears the urgent call of God, then one has indeed got one’s priorities all mixed up. Such is the man in today’s gospel who asks Jesus to come and make his brother give him his share of the family inheritance. Jesus is not against him having more wealth, nor is he against justice being done between the man and his brother. Jesus is rather disappointed that after listening to all his preaching, the first concern of this man still remains his share of the inheritance. This man is in the same position as the woman who has brooding over her lost goat while the words of life were falling on deaf ears. Like the woman, this man also could probably not remember one word of what the preacher said.

Jesus, fearing there could be more people in the crowd like this man, turns and says to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15). Greed? What greed? The man was only asking for justice to be done between him and his brother. Shouldn’t a man of God be concerned about fairness? O, yes. Jesus warns us that greed comes in different guises, even in the guise of justice. Have you ever heard a respectable man opposing plans to improve conditions for welfare recipients: “I’ve worked and paid taxes all my life. How can the government spend my money on welfare recipients who do nothing but sit down and do drugs everyday?” Sounds like an argument for justice and fairness. But it could indeed be greed in disguise. That is why Jesus warns us and emphasises it: “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed” Greed can be upfront or subtle, conscious or unconscious. We must be on our guard against greed in all its forms.

To illustrate his point Jesus tells the Parable of the Rich Fool. When you read the parable you ask yourself, “What wrong did this man do?” Think about it. The man did his honest work on his farmland. The land gave a good harvest, as expected. The man decided do build a larger storage for the crop so that he could live the rest of his life on Easy Street. Except he did not know that the rest of his life was less than twenty-four hours. Jesus uses him as an illustration of greed even though he took nobody’s money. He did not do something wrong. His greed lies in what he did not do. Sir Fred Catherwood is quoted as saying that greed is “the belief that there is no life after death. We grab what we can while we can however we can and then hold on to it hard.” Now you see why the rich man qualifies as an example of greed. Now you see why Jesus was so hard on greed. Greed is the worship of another god. The name of that god is Mammon or Money or Materialism. Today’s gospel invites us to believe in the God of Jesus Christ who alone can give eternal life and not in the god of this world who gives us the false promise of immortality through accumulation of possessions.

One of the most popular and most misunderstood Reformation sayings of Martin Luther is the statement, “Sin boldly, but believe ... even more boldly.” This saying, which he made in his letter to Philipp Melanchthon in 1521, is often understood in such a way as to suggest that what we do in the physical body does not affect our standing before God, so long as we believe in the heart. This is the Reformation principle of sola fide (“by faith alone”) taken to the absurd extreme. If all that we need for salvation is nothing but faith alone, than ethical behaviour is irrelevant. In today’s 2^nd reading, Paul confronts a similar false belief in the Christian community of Colossae.

The Colossians believed, and rightly so, that they had died and been raised to new life with Christ in baptism. What they failed to appreciate was that this mystical experience had practical implications in their day to day living. They gloried in their new spiritual status as born again Christians, but in their daily lives, there was little difference between them and their non-Christian neighbours. There was a disconnect between their faith and their life. In today’s passage, Paul tells them that this dichotomy between faith and life is wrong Christianity. Their faith view of themselves as people who have been born to new life in Christ should be seen in the way they choose to live their lives from day to day. He uses four strong words of command to point out areas of their lives that must be brought into conformity with their faith. These four imperatives are: “seek,” “set your minds,” “put to death,” and “do not lie.”

The first two commands, “seek the things that are above” (Colossians 3:1) and “set your minds on things that are above” (verse 2) look like two different ways of saying the same thing. They refer not to specific concrete actions but to ways of thinking, to attitudes and dispositions of the heart and mind. True faith colours the way we see reality, it transforms our value system in such a way that we can sing with Isaac Watts in the hymn When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,

When I survey the wondrous cross / On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss, / And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast, / Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most, / I sacrifice them to His blood.

Faith is not just a declaration that we have received Jesus as our personal Lord and Saviour. It is something that continues to work in us, transforming our personality from within and conforming us ever more perfectly to the image of the Creator God within us (verse 10).

The last two commands “put to death” and “do not lie” refer to concrete actions. In the Latin Vulgate, the word used for “put to death” is mortificate, from where we get the word mortification. It is the discipline of self-denial, of saying no to our natural human tendencies that may lead us to sin. Hence the Colossians are advised to “Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which is idolatry” (verse 5). Paul singles out greed for a special condemnation, equating it to idolatry, the worship of another God. As we see in the story of Jesus’ encounter with the Rich Young Ruler (Luke 18:18 ff), attachment to wealth could prevent well-meaning Christians from hearing and heeding the voice of God in their lives.

Finally Paul dwells on the command, “Do not lie to one another” (verse 9). The Greek used here actually means, “Stop telling lies to one another.” The Colossians were telling lies to one another by teaching that it did not matter whatever one did in the body so long as one believed in the heart. A heresy is a lie, and Paul wants them to stop it. Do we sometimes tell similar lies to ourselves in order to rationalise and justify our clinging to old sinful habits while continuing to tell ourselves that we are born again Christians? The message for us today is loud and clear, “Stop telling yourselves such lies,” for, as James tells us, “faith without works is dead” (James 2:26).

They bring home to us a point every Christian must continually renew and nourish in his soul: the awareness that we are pilgrims in this world and just "passing through" on our way to true life: eternal union with God in heaven. Keeping this perspective throughout our lives enables us to grasp the true value of created things and use them to help us reach our ultimate goal. In this sense, keeping fresh in our minds and hearts the "principle and foundation" of the spiritual life will enable us to avoid the danger of over-attachment to what is not God, or substituting creatures in the place that belongs to him.

The message from Ecclesiastes challenges us with a view of life on earth as essentially vanity and purposeless, since it seems no matter how wise or virtuous a man may be, there is no lasting profit to him. It reminds us that life is filled with anxiety and loss and we should not put all our hopes in this life. This useful corrective is complemented by the New Testament vision of eternal life which is not explicit in the book.

St. Paul motivates the Colossians with the hopeful vision of the life of the new man in Christ, reborn in him and given new life which begins now on earth and is brought to completion in heaven. The earthly, immoral passions have no place in this new man in the image of Christ and must be put aside so that Christ may live fully in us. Furthermore, all people without distinction of race or creed are called to share in this new life he preaches. He offers the hopeful vision of a new kind of life Christians should be living, as if they already have one foot in heaven, while even now in this life.

The Gospel of St. Luke has Jesus warning severely against the sort of desires that keep us chained to this limited and passing world – greed, avarice, selfishness, love of pleasure and comfort – and the lack of the virtues that should link us to our ultimate destiny: ignoring God and ignoring the needs of our neighbor in our self-obsession.

Here we can see the permanent validity of St. Ignatius´ Principle and FoundationMan is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord and by this means to save his soul. All other things on the face of the earth were created to help him attain this goal. Therefore, he must use them insofar as they help him to attain his goal, and avoid them if they hinder him…

This is the real wisdom of the ages that we must continually return to reflect upon. All the things we acquire and possess are just means to an end and it is all too easy to become attached to the means and forget the ultimate end of all things. Every Christian needs to examine himself regularly on whether inordinate attachments are beginning to crowd out the true goods in our life, that is, the things that most help us achieve our end in life.

Jesus calls the man hoarding his harvest a "Fool", because that very night his life will be asked of him. And to whom will his wealth go? He cannot control it after he dies, and "you can´t take it with you". All we can take into eternal life is the good we have done for God and for others, and all the rest is like the mist that evaporates in the morning sun.

A man once saved his money all his life, and as he was nearing death, he donated millions to a concert hall that he wanted to have named after him in order to preserve his memory and fame. Yet within a few years of his death another man did the same thing, and the first donor´s name was removed. All his work and wealth brought but a few years´ notoriety and fame, and then he was forgotten. Store treasure for yourselves in heaven…

Today´s Readings invite us to challenge the faithful to some serious reflections on "where their treasure lies." To what extent do we live preoccupied with daily worries about material things, when in truth we have all we really need? Some people put so much security in material things like the fool in the Gospel of Luke, yet it is in vain, since we can never have total control, since our lives belong to God. Such worries in a man should make us concerned if there is real faith and hope in God, or just in one´s self… Where is the place for God in the life of a person like this? It seems God is sidelined…

The Gospel also indicts the fool for having no trust in God and also for having no concern to share his goods with the less fortunate. Are we giving of our abundance? Do we give to the point of sacrifice?

Do we spend time with God, or is all our time spent on our own pleasure and comfort? Are our lives God-centered, or centered on the self? Often we think we are good people because we don´t deliberately do anything to hurt others, and while that is good, it is not enough for one who has been redeemed by Christ and given new life in him. Can we say that God is the center of our lives?

Kind of depressing readings at first glance, aren’t they? The opening lines of today’s first reading are quite famous, but I think quite misunderstood or mistranslated.  I had to do a little research, actually, to find out what the original Hebrew might have been and what it was indicated by it.  Most of our translations use the word ‘Vanity’, but that word has the meaning today of excessive self-love, especially of our physical appearance. The original word used in Hebrew “hebel” is ‘something that is transitory or passing, and has no substance’, and so the real sense of this passage is that the transitory things of the world are not to be chased after, but only the thing that lasts – the eternal God – is worth chasing after.  Everything else will die away, but God will not. So, the author of the book of Ecclesiastes is often seen as very depressing, and that is borne out by much of this reading, but he does give us an alternative to the fleeting nature of our real world.

Ecclesiastes tells us that we shouldn’t work so hard to gain money or fame or property because those things are meaningless in the long run.  Instead we should work at our relationship with God, because that will be the thing that lasts. This church structure that we are sitting in right now which has seen a fire and been rebuilt almost a hundred years ago, is still standing while many of its parishioners are in the surrounding graves outside. There will come a day when this church building , too, will disappear, and all of us will be in our graves.  What will be important then, says Qoheleth is our relationship with the only thing that lasts – our God.

Even the psalm today, Psalm 90, strikes this same note of putting our trust only in God and not in physical things. The psalmist explains that when we are born we are like blades of grass springing up anew at dawn, but by evening wither and fade. The psalmist prays that we can gain the wisdom that lets us see that God is our end, and so live our lives on a path to that end, shouting joy and gladness all our days because we seek the Lord. Let this new place of worship be where we can shout joy and gladness to the Lord, and keep us on that right path.

The reading from St. Paul today is also on the same target. St. Paul says: Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. Put to death, he says, things that tie us to the earth and put on a new self, directed to God, in the image of God. In this image there is no division, there is only unity and as Paul says, Christ is all in all.

Finally, as we get to the Gospel reading, we can see why these other readings were chosen today. In today’s Gospel someone who had been listening to the teaching of Jesus and obviously respected him, asks Jesus to solve a problem.  His brother, presumably an older brother, has inherited everything of the father when the father died. This young man, knowing that Jesus preached equality and sharing with the poor, asks Jesus to tell his brother that he should share his inheritance with him. But Jesus declines, and tells the man that he is not a lawyer or arbitrator, and that it was, in fact, possible to be rich, but not attached to one’s possessions. Then Jesus tells a parable which relates to the situation of the two brothers, but also validates the earlier readings that we have heard today.

The parable is this: A man who was very rich had a really good harvest year. So good, in fact, that he didn’t have room to store it all. Now, he could have given away the extra to the poor, but Jesus does not even bring that up.  He says that the man decided instead to build a larger barn, one which would hold all the harvest, because he intended to use the harvest for many years, and sort of retire into a life of leisure. But God calls the man a fool because he didn’t know that that very night he was going to die and someone else would get to use the treasure he had stored up. Then Jesus says: Thus it will be for all who store up treasures for themselves, but are not rich in what matters to God.

On the first level he is addressing the young man’s brother perhaps who is being selfish in not sharing his inheritance.  On the other hand, he is talking to us and saying that we need to put our trust in God and not in fleeting material things, just as we heard in the other readings.

This, then, is a pretty consistent message, isn’t it. It is telling us quite strongly, rationally and figuratively – not to get attached to anything of this world – Paul even gave us a list of those things – like sex, money, greed for possessions – because we are all going to die and they will no longer be important.

I saw a documentary a few weeks ago about ancient Egypt. The Pharaohs  thought they ‘could’ take it with them, and so they were buried with all their greatest treasures locked with them in the pyramids.  The lesson was driven home to me when you watched the archeologists and museum directors marching off with all those treasures while the bodies lay cold in their coffins. You really can’t take it with you.

So, apart from the obvious moral implication for your own lives – don’t get too attached to material things – we might also look at this church building and say that we shouldn’t get to attached to it, either.  God has indeed blessed us with a bumper crop, but we need to share our blessings, we need to find ways to build up our accounts in heaven. That is one of the most important things we have to look at over the next few months. How can we give back some of the blessings which have been bestowed on us.  God has put  us here for a reason.  I hope that with the other parish here, we might work together and help even more.  That will come.  For the time being, let us thank God for this wonderful blessing of a place to worship and grow in God’s love, never forgetting what it is really all about and what it is that lasts forever.

By Bishop Kasomo Daniel

The Bishop of The Society of St.Peter and Paul  (SSPP)