Goods versus Good

My downstairs neighbor Barbara asked me before Mass this morning whether or not we had received- or wanted- the Ikea Catalog that came with their Sunday Star Tribune. She and I agreed that we were both at the point in life where we are practicing Divestiture... that is, we are shedding material things acquired through the years rather than acquiring even more.

I thought of that catalog in reference to today's Gospel reading, about the man who kept accumulating material goods but neglected the more basic and essential good of his soul (Luke 12,13-21).

"Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me." He replied to him, "Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?" 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."

Then he told them a parable. "There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, 'What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?' And he said, 'This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, "Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!"

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."

Whether one is twenty years old and just beginning to acquire life's goods or seventy years old and shedding them, this Gospel lesson rings true. Our worth and mission bear no intrinsic relationship to the amount of worldly goods we possess. In fact, gospel values would tell us just the opposite. Those things we treasure so much, the cars, and toys, and homes and clothes which society uses to define us often can hinder our line of sight to God.

However, God is not simply in the moving business, requiring that we get rid of the things which clog the way to Him. Qoheleth only had the first half of the divine equation in today's Old Testament Reading from Ecclesiastes: all is vanity. True as far as it goes. But the final goal of our lives is much loftier than that.

It reaches to the heights pointed to by our Second Reading in the book of Colossians (3,1-5.9-11.) God isn't simply interested in tearing down our old lives. He is building a new Home for himself, a heavenly home with its roofline in heaven and its floor in the human heart. That is the soul we will be required to present before God after death.

" If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory. Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry.

Stop lying to one another, since you have taken off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed, for knowledge, in the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all and in all."

I keep hearing the words of the Evangelical Missionary-Martyr Jim Elliot, whose life and death were both built studily toward the eternal Good. He wrote the following in his diary in 1948:

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose."

First Fruits is You

We've been particpating in a concept at our parish called "First Fruits." It's really a lot more than a stewardship program or a round-about way of getting dollars in the door. It's about discipleship under the Lord Jesus and a way of living the Life.

Today's First Reading recounts the source of this "first fruits" concept. Each year Israelites were asked to bring to God the first produce from their crops (Leviticus 23:11) . The priest took the portion and offered it to God in thanksgiving for all that God had given.

Similarly, we are asked to give a portion of our substance to God through the Church- time, talent, treasure.

Today I've been thinking about the future. What might I offer to God? I could go a lot further in obeying the evangelical counsels- which deal (among other things) with food, power, and the thought life.

But even if I were to give up more personal options on how to spend my money, my time, my energy, I could still withhold myself from God. It could end up sounding something like this: "ok, Lord, you can have this part of me. Aren't I grand and spiritual for making this sacrifice?"

But somehow I think that idea misses the real point of First Fruits. Really, all that we have, all of who we are, belongs to God in the first place. Unless we recognize that fact, all of our sacrifices are really nothing more than a great big shell game with the Divine. It's really about total abandonment to God.

I realized this last Wednesday afternoon after I was being prayed for at the Companions of Christ Conference. At one point in the prayer time all I could do was cry out "Lord, all that I want is YOU." As I prayed those words, I realized that my whole life has to be given to God, not just my time, not just money, not just my sex life. And all of this happens BEFORE a word is said about vocation. It's just part of the great divine exchange program.

His riches for our poverty.

His obedience for our rebellion.

His purity for our unclean-ness.

God gives us all of who He is in Christ and His Spirit. It seems to me that once that work is recognized and appropriated, the giving back becomes a part of living,.... not an obligation, but a joyful surrender of self.

Sometime earlier this month I read in the Office of Readings these words from 2 Corinthians. Paul is speaking about the Macedonian churches and their generous response to his collection on behalf of fellow Christians in the Holy Land. "First they gave themselves to the Lord, and then to us through the will of God" (2 Cor. 8:5).

That's what I purpose to do. God give me strength.