Greed Versus Mercy

 Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Luke 16:19-31:

“Ladies and gentleman, greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.” Most of you probably recognize that speech by Michael Douglas from the 1987 movie Wall Street. What might be less known is that the speech was not really the creation of the screen writer of the film, but instead came from the person on whom Douglas’ character was based, Ivan Boesky. Speaking at the graduation ceremony for the business school at the University of California at Berkley, Boesky said, “Greed is alright, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.” That was just a few months before he would be arrested by the SEC for insider trading to which he would plead guilty to one charge and pay a then record individual fine of $100 million. But before all that happened, he turned against his former compatriots and while collecting information against them for the SEC was allowed to continue doing insider trading making millions in profits until the SEC had enough information to also indict Michael Milken who was then forced to pay what is still the record individual penalty of $600 million. In response to the actions of wall street in the 80’s, congress passed a law that called for life in prison for certain financial crimes, and if you are wondering how many bankers or wall street execs have been subject to that penalty, the answer is less than one. What other studies have also found is that the average sentences for financial crimes are half those of other federal crimes. Who says that crime doesn’t pay, and that greed is not good?

And so today we look at the deadly sin of greed. In some of the other seven deadly sins we have looked at, we have talked about different types of sins, or several sins that have been grouped into one idea, but that’s not the case here. Greed is greed, and of the deadly sins this is probably the one that has the most indoctrination and support from the general culture. And of course you can be greedy for lots of things, power, possessions, accomplishments, conquests, but the thing we most often hear about greed surrounds money. And while we often talk about rich people being greedy, greed itself is not dependent upon the amount of money that we actually have. You can be greedy and only have a dollar to your name, and you can be greedy with a million dollars in the bank; the same way as you can be generous as a millionaire and generous with only a dollar, as the widow was with her two mites contributing all she had to the Temple. Money is value neutral, as we heard in that passage from 1 Timothy, which is often misquoted as saying that money is the root of all evil, it actually says that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Therefore, greed is about an attitude of the heart, and most often plays itself off at the expense of others who are around them, with a total lack of care for them. which is why greed made the list of the seven deadly sins because remember that they came out of the earliest monastic communities, and these sins were considered to be the things that would destroy community, and so it’s how greed plays itself out in community, in relationship with others, that makes it so problematic.

In the parable we heard from Luke’s gospel this morning, we are told about two men. One of them is wealthy, wearing purple and fine linen, which tells us not only about his wealth, but also about his power as the Roman Empire had rules about who could wear purple, which was expensive, and how much could be worn by whom. You didn’t want to upstage people more powerful than you by wearing more purple than them. But in his wealth and power he must be a great deal maker. We are also told that he feasts sumptuously. Hopefully you remember that eating sumptuously was part of the sin of gluttony, and he’s not doing it occasionally, but every single day. And he is also doing it behind a gate, where we find the second man, Lazarus, a beggar laying there, who is in such bad shape that the dogs lick his sores, not a pretty picture, we might say hashtag loser, and he is hoping to satisfy his hunger with just the food that falls from the man’s table. Now Lazarus is the only character named in any of Jesus’ parables, which should tell us something right away about where the story is going. Some of you may remember being told that the rich man’s name is Dives, but that’s the Latin word for rich, and so it’s just a misattribution. But both men die, although the only one we are told is buried is the rich man, probably with all the pomp and circumstance that goes with the death of a prominent or rich person. And then we get to the heart of the story.

After their deaths, Lazarus is carried off to be with Abraham, an unusual piece of the story, but is tapping into Jewish mythology, and our ideas of heaven and hell have much more to do with Dante than they do with scripture. But across a great chasm is the rich man, and he is being tormented, and in seeing Abraham and Lazarus on the other side, he calls out “Father Abraham, have mercy on me.” And we begin to see the irony of the story begin to be played out. Lazarus had been begging for mercy at the man’s gate, and was denied it, and here the man is crying out for mercy over the chasm, and he too will be denied it. The fate and the chasm serve the same purpose in this story; to separate two groups. To keep a certain type of people away from another group. By installing his gate in life, the rich man had shut himself off from the world, putting a divider between himself and everyone else that he didn’t consider worthy, and now the same thing is happening to him after death, except now he is on the outside looking in. he is now the one crying out for mercy. And yet, even in his cries for mercy, he still sees himself as being the one in charge, the superior person, the one to order others around, because he tells Abraham to send Lazarus on over and to cool his tongue with water. He wants Lazarus to be his servant. So his asking for mercy is not because he has seen the error of his ways in having ignored Lazarus, and we should note that he knows his name, so this is not some nameless beggar on the street, but he only wants mercy because he is now the one in need.

In the Beatitudes, Jesus says, blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. What makes this Beatitude significant, or different, is the fact that it is reflexive. Those who give mercy will receive mercy. In the other beatitudes, people receive things that are different from what they give, but in this one it’s the same. If you give mercy you will receive mercy. It’s sort of like Jesus’ claim that to receive forgiveness, you must also give forgiveness. The rich man wants to receive mercy, but there is no evidence that he ever gave mercy and so it is not there for him to receive. The Greek word for mercy, also has the connotation of pouring out, like oil being poured out of a pitcher, or we might see it as pouring ourselves out for others. That mercy, or to be merciful, involves giving of ourselves, giving of our things, giving of our honor and status, even giving of our lives to someone else who is in need, someone who needs mercy, and that is the opposite of greed. Greed says we want to make things our own, and therefore we cannot share them or give them up. We have to hold onto them. And the difference between gluttony and greed is that with gluttony, at least when it’s about food or drink, there is a point at which we cannot do anymore, but that’s not true with greed. Greed never says enough, because we always want, we always need more, and that becomes the opposite of faith and so it gets in the way of having true relationships with others, and most definitely with God.

We have talked very briefly about the differences between the beatitudes in Matthew, which is what we have been covering, and those found in Luke in chapter six. So, in Matthew, Jesus says blessed are the poor in spirit, but in Luke it is blessed are the poor, and it is followed up by a woe, or a curse, that says “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” That seems to match Abraham’s response to the rich man, that in his life he received good things, but now it is Lazarus who is receiving comfort. That there has been a switch in fortunes. It’s also similar to Mary’s response to finding out that she is pregnant, also found in Luke, and known as the Magnificat, in which she says “God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” There is certainly an economic judgment being made here, but it’s also theological, that if people are seeking their god through money or through things then they have to be sent away empty, because there is never enough to fill them, they will always be searching for more.

And when we want and need more and more and more, then we cannot be rich in good works, we cannot be generous and ready to share, instead we are storing up the treasurers of the world, rather than those of the kingdom. More importantly, in scripture if someone has a demon in them they are said to be possessed, but what is it that we call things we own but possessions. And so it often turns out that we don’t control our possessions but instead that they in fact possess us. Our possessions possess us, and their place in our lives far outweighs their true importance. They become our masters, and as Jesus says, you cannot have two masters. And so the rich man is finding out that because he never showed mercy in his own life, that he is not going to receive mercy in the life to come. Now it’s not clear if this a statement for all time, but it should at least stand as a warning for us, but I think we should see ourselves not necessarily as the rich man here, although all of us are rich by the standards of the world, but we should definitely see ourselves as the one of the brothers whom the rich man wants to warn. We should hear Abraham saying to us “if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even is someone rises from the dead.” Of course we have testimony to us of someone who was raised from the dead, who when asked what was the greatest commandment, and we keep coming back to this, and he said “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  And then he concluded by saying, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

I have here a $20 bill, who would like it? What about if I wrinkle it all up, and wad it up, do you still want it? What about if I step all over it and get it all dirty, do you still want it? What about if I tear it in half, do you still want it? Funny that we still want this because of the value that we have assigned to it, even though it’s just a piece of paper with green ink. But what do we do with people who have been stepped all over, who are dirty, who have been bent down and torn, beaten up and bruised by life, and who feel thrown away, un-valuable, unwanted and unloved? The rich man is not tormented because he was rich, he is tormented because he did not show mercy, he did not show compassion, he did not show generosity, he would willing pick up dirty money, but stepped over the dirty man at his gate, and maybe, just for fun, he said “get a job.” God sees this as a piece of paper, potentially useful in helping to bring about kingdom issues, but that life is not about this. Life is about people, about living in right relationship, about valuing each other not by what we have, but by who we are which is beloved children of God.

There is a story attributed to Rabbi Haim of Romshishok, but is now found in most religious cultures, in which a man asks to be given a glimpse of the afterlife, and he is taken into a room and the people are miserable, crying and weeping and they are all skinny, even though the table around which they all sit is covered with food. But they cannot bend their arms, and thus cannot feed themselves. The man is then taken into another room identical to the first, except in this one everyone is happy and joyful, there is a huge party at this heavenly banquet because while they cannot feed themselves, they can feed each other, which is what they do. You can be wealthy and generous and merciful, and you can be poor and greedy, but you cannot be greedy and merciful, nor can you be greedy and love your neighbor or love your God.

Psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl said that he found that those who were most likely to survive the rigors of concentration camps were not those who horded food, but those who shared, and it was because those shared realized that there was something more to live for. There was some higher purpose for their lives, and in sharing with others, in showing mercy, in turn they found mercy, they found meaning, they found purpose, they lived into loving God and neighbor. The judgment that is made against the rich man is not about his wealth, but about how his lives and loves and his failure to help Lazarus, the man in need, the failure to practice mercy. Jesus says blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.