David Romanik
Christ Church Cathedral
September 30, 2007

Jeremiah 32: 1-3a, 6-15
1 Timothy 6: 6-19
Luke 16: 19-31

How many of us remember that first place we lived in that we could truly call our own? Was it was a tiny studio apartment on a high floor of a building with a view of a city skyline? Was it was a suburban condominium with wall-to-wall carpeting and marginally functional central air conditioning? Was it some ramshackle farmhouse in the sticks with minimal insulation but charm to burn? Or was it, as it is in my case, a basement apartment near an Indian restaurant in Boston that has a magnificent view of the super’s storage closet? The location or condition of the house does not matter; what made these places from our histories so special is that they were so utterly ours. Here was the first time we were able to hang things on the walls with impunity, with minimal regard to the myriad pinholes that would be left behind. Here was our first opportunity to stock the refrigerator with whatever we saw fit, turning food that ought to be eaten sparingly at most into main courses and relegating vegetables to last resort status. But what truly made that place home, far apart from picture hanging and junk food eating was a simple act that occurred at the beginning of each month: the writing and mailing of the check to the landlord. Yes, as soon as money, that ubiquitous and dangerous means of interacting with the world, was brought into the equation, our sense of ownership and self-interest took on a new urgency as we became paying customers rather than the beneficiaries of parental largesse.

Of course, this situation, while universally true at some point in our lives, is no longer relevant to many of those gathered here. I can still count the number of rent checks I’ve written; if I asked the average person here how many mortgage or rent payments they have made in their lifetime, the answer would be something closer to “countless.” Nevertheless, the truth revealed by placing one’s signature on that monthly check is relevant to all our dealings with the world. You may roll your eyes about the obviousness of this statement, but everywhere we turn, things cost money: cars, food, televisions, dry-cleaning, cable, books, cell phone service, doctor’s appointments, trips to amusement parks, clothes, vacations, movies, the list could go on forever. The upshot of all of this is that we all have a finely honed sense of how much we ought to be paying for things, how valuable things are. There are, almost exclusively, three responses to hearing how much something costs: “Wow! What a bargain!”, “That’s highway robbery!”, or “I guess that’s reasonable.” This predisposition to assigning monetary value to the things we use everyday invariably leads us to make judgments about their importance and worth—how often do we say, even if something is a little pricey: “well it’s worth it”? In other words, monetary value becomes equivalent with genuine value.

But just so you don’t think this is a beginning of a socialist jeremiad against the consumerist excesses of modernity, let us turn to that ancient polemicist, Jeremiah, who, in the passage appointed for today, is not consigning us to the eternal flames for our iniquities, but is boring us with a passage that reads like the excited musings of an investment banker. “And I bought the field at Anathoth for my cousin Hanamel, and weighed out the money to him, seventeen shekels of silver. I signed the deed, sealed it, got witnesses, and weighed the money on scales. Then I took the sealed deed of purchase, containing the terms and conditions, and the open copy; and I gave the deed of purchase to Baruch son of Neriah…saying, "Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Take these deeds…and put them in an earthenware jar, in order that they may last a long time” (Jer. 32:9-12a, 14). Why is Jeremiah so excited about a fairly uninteresting real estate transaction? After all, this isn’t Trump Tower; it’s some fallow field in the middle of Judea owned by Jeremiah’s cousin. The reality is that it’s not the property itself that is of interest to the prophet, it’s the fact that he is making the transaction at all. This is the promise of the eventual restoration of business-as-usual during the siege of Jerusalem by the very unpleasant Nebuchadnezzar. The passage concludes “thus says the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land” (Jer. 32:15). When a group of people has a legitimate currency with which they can purchase things, that is a sure sign of stability even in the face of external adversity. Money and the assignment of monetary value to things were therefore centrally important to Jeremiah and the rest of the house of Israel because they reinforced the collective sense of belonging that was being assaulted from all fronts.

Jesus understood this universal preoccupation with money. You’ll remember that the last two weeks of gospel lessons have been about finding lost coins or distributing inheritances or forgiving debt inappropriately. Now we arrive at a challenging lesson that seems to offend our conception of the infinitely just and merciful God. I remember hearing this story of Lazarus and the rich man during my childhood, and had always imagined that the more unfortunately fated person in the story had done something terrible to deserve his punishment. But in a moment of ambiguity, Jesus only mentions that the rich man “feasted sumptuously every day” (Luke 16:19) and that Lazarus “longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table” (16:21). And to further confound matters, we don’t hear from Jesus that Lazarus had been a particularly righteous individual, only that “the dogs would come and lick his sores” (16:21). Certainly, this is a pitiable state to be in, but why did angels immediately carry him to the bosom of Abraham upon his death? Frustratingly, when the rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus to “dip the tip of his finger in water to cool [his] tongue” (16:24), Abraham merely states the obvious: “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony” (16:24). Thanks, Abraham. I’m fairly certain that the rich man was aware that he was in agony; he was looking for the reason for his torment. Frankly, so are we.

The letter to Timothy begins to shed some light on the misfortune of the man whom Abraham will not permit Lazarus to succor, though the clarity that emerges is murkier than we might like. I’m sure that we can all appreciate that “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil,” and can understand that the quest for riches can result in wandering away from the faith (1 Tim. 6:10), but the writer of the epistle still does not tell us why! Why is money such a bad thing? Was the whole early Christian community a group of proto-Marxists who were heralding a revolt of the proletariat? Are those Desert Fathers and Mothers who lived in caves in the wilderness of North Africa the only group of people who have ever demonstrated authentic Christian piety?
Maybe, but I don’t think so. Remember what Abraham said to our rich man in agony: “during your lifetime you received your good things.” Our poor and pathetic rich man, informed by the experience of his vast material wealth, had determined what was good in terms of its monetary value, and that is where his error lay. His error was not that he had money, or even that he had not shared it. Rather, the rich man’s ultimate mistake was that he saw everything, including his fellow human beings, in terms of their value. And we all know from historical and personal experience that as soon as we begin to consider the value of a person, that is when we begin to think of them as less than us. Judgments about a person’s comparatively inferior health, strength, intelligence, courage, financial status, or competence eventually and invariably degenerate into pronouncements about that person’s intrinsic worth, or more likely, worthlessness. Far from serving as a force for unity and belongingness, as in Jeremiah’s day, money in this context serves as a force for exclusion and divisiveness, which are antithetical to the Good News of Jesus Christ. The Christian message is that that our prejudiced, limited human values fall away in the presence of the infinite God. Christ came to earth not only to be the infinite God among us, but to compel us to recognize the infinite God in one another. Jesus shatters our logical preconceptions about what is valuable and supplants them with the Truth that, no matter our perceived human value, we all have an equal share in the Kingdom of Heaven. Like the brothers of the rich man, we may not be convinced that God dwells among us and in us “even if someone rises from the dead” (as Christ did) (Luke 16:31), so we must encourage each other to “fight the good fight of the faith” (1 Tim. 6:12) and take hold of the abundant eternal life that is all of ours to share.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.