Luke 12:13-21 (NRSV Updated Edition)
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said 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.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
Colossians 3:1-4 (NRSV Updated Edition)
So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
~
"In 1998, [before the Sunday of Proper 13C,] the big news story of the week involved a $295 million power ball lottery. We have these great conversations with ourselves about how we would use that money. We, of course, would give most of it away, wouldn't we? We fool ourselves about being beneficent, loving people by how we would reach out to others from our own little Paradises where we are in complete control.
"The fact that we have this habit of talking to ourselves about what we would do with such lottery winnings is a great clue that we are in the same boat as the rich fool, when we allow ourselves to play such games. How did we get into such a state?
"Genesis 2-3 shows us. First of all, it shows us that Paradise is living life in creative dialogue with the Creator. The man and woman walk and talk with God in the garden. But one of the creatures intervenes as a rival to God, and the man and woman listen to it instead, placing themselves in rivalry with God. We lose Paradise when our primary dialogue partners become other creatures or ourselves.
"But through Jesus Christ, right at the moment of death, the one thief [on the cross in Luke 23] opens his life to dialogue with God and is immediately in Paradise. Isn't this of what Paradise consists? Life in dialogue with God's desire?"
- Paul J. Nuechterlein, from Reflections and Questions on the Luke 12:13-21 (link in comments below)
~
"I am attempting to describe for you the form taken in my life by the irruption of the extraordinary grace which I received [...] Of course, I am describing schematically something which was a non-schematic whole, and which I have taken several years to begin to understand. First there was the perception of the absolute non-involvement of God in all that violence, then the perception of my non-innocence, and of my idolatrous and violent manner of having been caught up in all that. And then, at root, what began this whole process of beginning to untie myself from the idols I had so assiduously cultivated, what I had never dared to imagine, the profound “Yes” of God, the “Yes” spoken to the [...] boy who had despaired of ever hearing it.
"And there, indeed, I found myself absolutely caught, because this “Yes” takes the form, not of a pretty consolation for a spoiled child. Rather, from the moment it reached me, the whole psychological and mental structure by which I had built myself up over all the previous years, began to enter into a complete collapse. For the whole structure was based on the presupposition of a “No” at the center of my being, and because of that, of the need to wage a violent war so as to cover up a fathomless hole. The “I”, the “self” of the child of God is born in the midst of the ruins of repented idolatry.
"A further point in this narrative, if you can bear it. In the months following this incident, I had to give a theology course. I called the course: “Fix your minds on the things that are above,” taken from Paul's letter to the Colossians. Ironically, I managed to give the whole course, which has even been published in book form, without tumbling to the significance of the verse which follows the one I had chosen: “for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”
"But it was exactly this that, at last, I was learning. The whole of my previous life had been marked by an absolute refusal to die. The absolute refusal to take on my baptismal commitment.
"Of course, because I was unable to imagine that my “self”, the “I” who will live forever, is hidden with Christ in God. And that was why I had to fight all those battles. The “I” who was present in all those battles was the old Adam, or Cain, a “self” incapable of understanding that it is not necessary to seek to shore up for itself a place on this earth, to found a safe space, to protect itself violently against violence. The “I” of the risen one only becomes present when, at last, the old “I” is put to death. [...]
"In its place, being something rather like a still small voice, something which I can in no way possess, nor grasp, is the “I” from which I now start to live. The “I” that is hidden with Christ in God, little by little, and somewhat tentatively, begins to build a new life story in the midst of the ruins of the previous collapse."
- James Alison, Faith Beyond Resentment, pp. 39-40
~
"[The 'rich fool' in the parable] by himself is in a purely solitary bubble, everything is concerned with his [soul/self], it's the only thing that matters. He doesn't seem to be aware that the land giving abundantly is already God giving abundantly. And if God gives abundantly, maybe what God is that he should be a good administrator and be able to give more things to the poor people so that they are able to get food at cheaper prices this year because of the abundance, that they should share in the abundance. But no, his thinking is entirely based on 'how is this going to work out for me?'
"And this brings us back to the question of the inheritance [at the beginning of the Luke passage]. The presupposition is, there is abundance, there *is* an inheritance, there is an abundance of harvest. What is it going to look like, not to have someone decide for us who to give what - that's a question of clash of rights and is impossible to work out, especially among brothers - [but] who is going to get with the program of sharing abundance? Who is going to, rather than storing up treasures for themselves, which leads to nothing at all, because their [life] can be required of them at any moment, who it is who are able to use what they have been given to spread God's generosity? That's the only question [...]
"So this is part of the transformation of desire which is so much part of St Luke's gospel. It suggests that there is always something prior to us, always an abundance. It's never self-starting, never starts with [myself], it's always 'someone has given something to me, how am I going to share it, how am I going to spread it out?' Being rich towards God means allowing myself to become the channel of God's riches to reach others."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2022 C" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2j-1uWX9K0)
[Source of quotes from Paul Nuechterlein and James Alison's Faith Beyond Resentment, and for analysis and discussion on all the lectionary texts for this Sunday:https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-c/proper13c/]
No comments:
Post a Comment