Beyond The Dreams Of Avarice

“So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God”

—The Gospel of Luke

Please forgive me if you find me swanking about the place as if I owned it. But, you see, I had forgotten that I’m a millionaire. Just rolling in the stuff. Got in sackfuls. The lucre’s just busting out everywhere.
I feel, in fact, as if I am writing this week’s meditation for Forbes Magazine. You know, from one millionaire to another.
Because I mean, dash it all, that what with one thing or another, some of you may have forgotten that you are millionaires, too.
What, not true? Not millionaires?
Au contraire.
The take-away from Luke’s reporting of the words of Jesus requires a Brink’s truck and a good vault at a bank.
Or, no, it doesn’t.
Our capital gains have nothing to do with the stock market. Neither Dow nor Jones—what crazy, amped up, knee-jerking reactionaries those two Wall Streeters are, eh?—can diminish our wealth one little bit.
We fear neither bull nor bear.
Why?
Jesus said so.
Someone asks Jesus to tell his (the speaker’s) brother to divide up the family inheritance rather than hogging it all. “Take care,” Jesus responds, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’
Then Jesus tells the parable of the rich man whose farm lands gave him so many bumper crops that the granary should have been made by Ford or Chevy. So large a harvest does he get that his existing barns can’t hold it all and he decides to tear them down and build bigger and better ones for his grains and goods.
“And I will say to my soul,” the farmer continues, “‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink and be merry.’”
But, God doesn’t endorse this fiscal policy and calls the man a fool because “this very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”
Pertinent question. God’s usually are.
“So it is,” Jesus goes on to explain, “for those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
Rich toward God.
What a phrase, and one that can be interpreted several ways. It can mean, of course, that we should share our time, talents and treasure to bring the kingdom of heaven closer for people in need.
But, as I read the lesson, it struck me more forcefully that acting rich toward God means acting like, well, we are rich.
Not because of our own fiscal accumulation but because the wealth that matters to our soul is the love and grace freely given to us by God. And God is not stingy with that love and grace.
We got it by the Brink’s truckload.
But “being rich toward God” means acting like we know it, opening our hearts and souls to the deposits of love and grace that God has for us.
“Toward God” means pointing ourselves, inclining our heart, mind and soul in that direction, and moving toward that love and grace. It means acting like the millionaires we truly are.
It also means being generous millionaire philanthropists and sharing that love and grace with others to bring them closer to the kingdom of heaven.
Sharing it like we’re just rolling in the stuff. Got in sackfuls. The lucre’s just busting out everywhere, falling from the pockets of our soul.
Because we do, and it is.