NewCreation

Homily for 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Welcome, my sisters and brothers, to this, the homily for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time. And this week we move on in the Gospel of St Luke and we jump almost a chapter from 11:14 to 12:13 in St Luke's Gospel. I think the reason is that the parts in between come in Mark and Matthew as well, so we get to read them during different years, whereas today's Gospel is only to be found in Luke. In other words, everything here in today's Gospel is unique to Luke. So that's why I think that we jump. And it's rather more important than it seems at first sight. Let's have a look. Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." Teacher, master. But Jesus said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" Actually, the word is not "friend," the word is "anthrope" — literally "human." In favor of translating it "friend" rather than "man": if we address someone as "a man" or "human," that's too pompous. But "friend" is not what it says, but it's probably more like "dude" — it's probably more like the informal way of referring. It's how, for instance, when Saint Peter was accused of being close to Jesus when he was in the high priest's courtyard, his response to the people who accused him was, "Dude, I'm not that guy." That's the kind of language that was being used. But nevertheless, it is worth remembering that the word "human" here suggests that there might be a rather stronger meaning to what's going to come next than is apparent. "Dude" or "human, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" Well, this is a very good question, because of course the principal arbiter, judge, or arbitrator over the people of Israel was Moses. And strangely, no one appointed Moses to be judge or arbitrator over the people of Israel. The tale is actually told very nicely in the book of Exodus, where Jethro notices that Moses has got himself sucked into being arbitrator and judge for all the people. Jethro – that's Moses's father-in-law – persuades him to have a change of practice. Moses's father-in-law saw all that he was doing for the people and said, "What is this that you're doing for the people? You sit alone, while all the people stand around you from morning till evening." Moses said to his father-in-law, "Because the people come to me to inquire of God. When they have a dispute, they come to me, and I decide between one person and another, and I make known to them the statutes and instructions of God." Anyhow, Jethro quite rightly says, "That's going to wear you out. Give it up. Divide the task. Let other people do that for the lower-down things. You just dedicate yourself to telling people about God." So that's in the background here. Jesus is actually reminding us that the whole idea of being an arbitrator or a judge over people is a bad idea, and he refuses to be it. It's one of the key factors, actually, in Christianity, that there is no overseeing judge amongst us. The only judge is Jesus as crucified and risen Lord. But there's no arbitrator over and above any of us. The only way that squabbles can be sorted out is between us. So by saying, "O human, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" Jesus is actually making the absolutely key point: "I refuse to become, if you like, a religiously decisive figure over you. The only learning about God will be between you." And then he gets to the heart of the matter, because what was the problem which the lad – the dude – had? He had a problem with his brother, and it was about dividing the family inheritance. In fact, it's the classic problem from the beginning, which comes again in parable after parable and story after story: how is the inheritance going to be divided? But there is an inheritance; there's something to divide. So Jesus says to them – it's clear at this point he turns to the crowd and says – "Take care, be on your guard against all kinds of greed, avarice, covetousness, pleonexia, fullness of desire, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." And that's the key thing which he's now going to fill out. He's saying to the people, "You're going to have to work out between yourselves what is good and where your abundance comes from." So then he tells them a parable, and I'm going to ask you to excuse me – I will use silly language once again, because I think that this is rather a comic parable. I think its comic nature is somewhat disguised by our translations, but it is hinted at in the Greek and becomes even clearer in the Aramaic — which I should say I come across second hand, not first hand — because it brings out how much Jesus is caricaturing a certain psychology. So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to use slightly not-suitable-for-work language to engage in the characterizing of the psychology. So here our translation says "the land of a rich man produced abundantly." Essentially, it begins with the land; it doesn't begin with a rich man. It doesn't say "behold, there was a rich man whose land..." It talks about the land of a rich man produced abundantly. And apparently in the Aramaic — sorry — it's "the land of a rich man by himself." That which in Greek comes as "a certain rich man," in Aramaic is "by himself." It indicates this is a person without family, without descendants; he's just a single rich man. And his land produced abundantly. And apparently, again, the language behind the abundance in Aramaic suggests a threefold super-harvest: a bumper harvest three times more than normal. Okay, well, if you're a rich man and have a three-times-normal, larger-than-normal harvest, the first thing you know is that the price is going to go down. There is so much that the price everywhere is going to be much cheaper this year for buying grain, because there's much more supply than there is demand. A sort of basic farming economy 101. So what does he do? Does he make the abundance available at a cheaper price so that more people have more, more easily? No. He says — and here it says "he thought to himself" — well, this is the first time that we get the word which in Greek is "soul" or "life," and in Aramaic is nafsha. Nafsha is the neck. The Aramaic world, if you like, exteriorized the active, sensitive part of their discerning life to the neck, the throat — quite literally. And I suspect because it was also the place where the lifeblood could come out if the throat was cut: this was, you know, it was your throat that's on the line. Whereas — as you will not be surprised my knowledge of America suggests — it's your ass on the line in American. That's because it's considered to be an area that's threatened in some way; people that are presumably frightened of penetration. Here it was the throat that was the decisive thing that was on the line. We're going to see that the throat makes four appearances here, so I'm going to ask you to translate that as "ass" each time, just because that brings out the comic element in what Jesus is talking about. So here we have this single man, and his land has produced abundantly. So he consults his throat. He says to his ass, "What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?" In other words, if I sell them to everybody I get a low price. I need to store them so that I can save them for a poor harvest year, and that I can get bumper money from them. So then he says, "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 the grain — and in fact the Greek is "fruits," so it's not just grain, it's grain and all the other kinds of fruit that have also come in abundantly: dried peas, beans, etc., etc., many of the other things that go alongside in a good farm. So he's going to pull down his walls and build bigger ones, and raise up — again, the Aramaic suggests raising up to heaven. It's rather a little hint of the Tower of Babel there, the pointless Tower of Babel which didn't get anywhere. "And I will store all my grain and my goods, and I will say to my" — my throat — "I'll say to my ass: 'Ass, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, and be merry.'" But God said to him, "You short-sighted guy" — that's apparently what the Aramaic means. "You short-sighted person." The Greek is aphron: "you fool." It doesn't seem good that we have Jesus calling someone a fool, given what he says about fools earlier. But the short — "you short-sighted guy," we would say in American, "you ass." But that's the other meaning for the word "ass." But God said, "You ass, this very night your ass is being required of you" — because again, it's the same word — "your throat is being required." That's why you get the four mentions of the throat 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." Okay. Why the four times of the throat, the four times of the ass? Because it shows that this person, by himself, is in a purely solitary bubble. Everything is concerned with his throat, his ass. 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 wants 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's this going to work out for me?" And this brings us back to the question of the inheritance. The presupposition is there is abundance, there is an inheritance, there is an abundance of a harvest. What is it going to look like not to have someone decide for us who gets what? That's a question of clash of rights, impossible to work out, especially amongst brothers. 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 they can be required of them at any moment — who is it who is able to use what they've been given to spread God's generosity? That's the only question that he's saying. So this is part of the transformation of desire which is so much part of St. Luke's Gospel. It suggests that there's always something prior to us, there's always an abundance, and it's never self-starting. It never starts with me. 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 for God's riches to reach others.