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Home , Greed

“Take Hold of Life” March 8, 2020

2537 Lee Road Cleveland Heights, OH 44118‐4136 1 Timothy 6:17‐19 Telephone: 216‐321‐8880 Rev. Andy Call, Lead Pastor Website: www.COTSumc.org

In 2008, greed was on full display with all its glittering attraction and devastating consequences. Some of the names have been indelibly burned into our permanent memories: Bear Stearns, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. One name you may not remember is that of Jdimytai Damour. On the night of Thanksgiving in 2008, Damour was working as a security guard at Walmart at the Green Acres Mall on Long Island. Overnight, shoppers gathered outside the doors for “Black Friday” sales on toys, DVDs, flat‐panel televisions and other items priced to lure them in for the biggest shopping day of the year. Shortly before 5 a.m., the crowd began to press against the door, jostling to be first in line for the best deals. Damour stood just inside the sliding glass doors, trying to bring order and to hold back the crush of shoppers. Suddenly, the doors shattered and Damour was thrown to the ground. Rather than stopping to help, the crowd continued unabated, rushing into the store and trampling him to death in the process.1 Greed is rampant, from Wall Street to Main Street, among the privileged elite and the stricken poor and everyone in‐between. And its consequences can be catastrophic, both for the body and the soul. Today is the second installment in our sermon series for Lent: and Vices. Of the seven deadly – , greed, , , , , and wrath – greed may be the one we can all agree belongs on that list. Scripture is unequivocal in its condemnation of greed. The Bible says more about money than it does about sex. One of the most oft‐quoted (and misquoted) passages in the Bible comes from 1 Timothy 6:10: “The of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” Note that it does not say that money itself is evil, but the love of money is what gets us into trouble. The Common English Bible graphically renders the consequences: “Some have wandered away from the and have impaled themselves with a lot of because they made money their goal.” I use the word greed for this vice, but in the classic list of the , the word used is avarice. Avarice comes from the Latin root avere which means “to crave.” Avarice is an unhealthy craving, a without limits. While we typically think of greed in relation to money, it can apply to any unhealthy craving. It is this limitless craving itself that is the root of all kinds of evil, even the other deadly sins. James Ogilvy writes, “Greed turns love into lust, leisure into sloth, hunger into gluttony, honor into pride, into , and into envy. If it weren’t for greed, we would suffer fewer of the other vices.” 2 In her book, Glittering Vices, Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung writes: The greedy person’s attachment to can wear many faces – an overflowing shopping cart or a single purchase, a stock portfolio that is aggressive or conservative, a wallet full of credit cards or a safety deposit box with a few carefully guarded treasures, a garage full of expensive cars or a closet jammed full of “great deals.”3

Why is greed so powerful and why is it so deadly? Its power is in deception, a deception that comes in two forms. First is the deception of self‐sufficiency. Acquiring more feels like gaining control. We believe that if we have enough, we won’t need or want anything else. This quest for self‐sufficiency is a lie. First of all, we will never have enough. We are always reaching, grasping for what is next, carefully guarding what we have lest anyone else try to take it away. And the notion of self‐sufficiency is sinful for the very reason that it makes us believe we are responsible for our provision and , a position that belongs to God alone. We have no power whatsoever to provide except by the

1 https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/nyregion/30walmart.html 2 James Ogilvy. “Greed” in Wicked : Meditations on the Seven “Deadly” Sins. Edited by Robert C. Solomon. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield (1999). 3 Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung. Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press (2009), 100. 1

grace of God. All of our carefully conceived plans for self‐sufficiency can be wiped out in a heartbeat through disaster, disease, market fluctuations, and any number of other circumstances beyond our control. told the story of a man who believed he was self‐sufficient. Enamored with his success, he decided to tear down his old barns and build new ones, large enough to store all of his grain, so he could live out his days in ease and plenty. But the man was a fool. He could number his possessions, but he could not number his days. That very night he died. God asked him, “Now who will get the things you have stored up for yourself?” Jesus said it will be the same for all who hoard earthly possessions for themselves and are not generous toward God. The second deception is that acquiring more will bring us . But the more we get, the more we want. Get a new car, and you’ll suddenly notice new cars all around you and start comparing yours to theirs. Move to a new neighborhood, and before long you’ll be scrutinizing whether your house is as nice as your neighbors. The same applies to job, clothes, food, you name it. What we don’t realize is that, while we have been busy acquiring more possessions, our possessions have been acquiring us. Our best defense against the effect of vices is to cultivate their corresponding virtues. In the case of greed, the we need to cultivate is generosity. The ancients called it liberality. The word liberal has been culturally appropriated and politicized, so we say generosity instead. But in many ways, liberality is a better word. It comes from the Latin root liber, meaning “free.” It’s the same root from which the word liberty is derived. That’s fascinating, isn’t it? Why would a word that is synonymous with generosity be related to freedom? As a virtue, liberality/generosity is a balance point between two extremes. On one extreme is greed or avarice, the desire to hoard wealth for oneself. Think of Ebenezer Scrooge, tight with money and miserable to be around. On the other extreme is prodigality, squandering things of value as though they were meaningless. The prime example is the prodigal son, who wasted his inheritance on cheap thrills and loose living. The virtue of liberality is the golden mean between grasping too firmly and holding too loosely. A generous person is characterized by a healthy detachment to things, a person who knows the value of money and possessions but puts them to good use toward things that really matter. Incidentally, it is possible, likely even, for a person to be drawn to both avarice and prodigality. The desire to acquire more possessions means we spend more than we should, then we obsess about earning more for ourselves, which enables us to spend more, and on and on goes the cycle. Our over‐acquisition also leads to over‐disposing, as we dump our old stuff into landfills to make room for the new stuff. Prodigality is merely another form of greed, unchecked and unhealthy desire for the wrong things. Generosity frees us from insatiable consumption and misplaced desire. Like most parents, Jenn and I have worked to help our kids understand the difference between needs and wants. To say, “I need a pair of shoes that fit” isn’t the same as “I need $20 to go to a movie with my friends.” Adults can be just as fickle when it comes to distinguishing between needs and wants. When we focus too much on things we want, we stop noticing how much we have. Over time, we eventually convince ourselves that the things we want are necessary. The longer greed goes unchecked, the more it makes its mark on our hearts. Greed is about distorted values, displaced goals, disordered desire. Oscar Wilde once described a person “who knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing.”4 That sounds like us. 1 Kings describes King Ahab as having everything he could ever need, but he wanted Naboth’s vineyard because of its proximity to the palace. When Naboth refused to sell his family land, Ahab and Queen Jezebel conspired against him, bringing false witness that led to his execution. Ahab took possession of the , land he wanted for produce he did not need, stolen to feed his own ego. The scripture’s assessment is brutal: “Indeed, there was no one like Ahab, who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of the Lord.” (1 Kings 21:25) Throughout this year, we are focusing on and mercy, with Micah 6:8 as our theme verse. “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love , and to walk humbly with your God?” At its heart, greed is a justice issue. Whether through hoarding or wastefulness, greed leads to inequitable, unjust, and unsustainable distribution in a world of plenty, denying the basic necessities of life to some while overindulging others. Basil of Caesarea said, “It is the hungry one’s bread that you hoard, the naked one’s cloak that you retain, the needy one’s money that you withhold. Wherefore as many as you have wronged, you might have (aided).”5

4 Oscar Wilde. Lady Windermere’s Fan. http://archive.org/stream/ladywindermeresf00790gut/lwfan10.txt 5 Basil the Great, cited in Konyndyk DeYoung, 108. 2

Jesus famously said that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Or, as Frederick Buechner phrased it, “for a rich man to get to Heaven is about as easy as for a Cadillac to get through a revolving door.”6 This prompted the disciples to ask, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus replied, “For humans it is impossible. But with God, all things are possible.” Is it possible for us to be free from greed? Can we cultivate virtue so the vices have no grip on our lives? If it were not possible, we wouldn’t bother with this sermon series. Our study is not an academic exercise to disseminate information; it is a scriptural study for life transformation. No sermon series, no matter how brilliant, nor any amount of personal growth strategy can get us there. For us it is impossible. But with God, all things are possible. How do we cultivate the virtue of generosity? How do we learn to let go and put our in God’s provision, to find the sweet spot between hoarding and carelessness? It begins with awareness shaped by prayer and spiritual discipline. One reminder of virtue can be found in a surprising source. If you have money with you – coin or currency – take it out and look at it. In 1957, the words, “In God we trust,” were added to all U.S. currency and coins by an act of Congress signed into law by President Eisenhower. They have been there ever since, despite considerable push back about the Establishment Clause. Regardless of intent, I find it intriguing that that phrase is printed on our money, of all things, the very place we need it. I : what if we thought of those words every time we use our money – every transaction, every purchase, every loan, every payment? Isn’t it interesting that our money makes a claim of itself that we so often fail to make of it, that we place our trust not in our money, but in God? This, friends, is perhaps the most important rationale for tithing. Yes, the church budget depends on our contributions. Yes, “give” is one of the five key practices of discipleship, along with worship, grow, serve, and invite. But it is an act of discipleship precisely because it reminds us that our provision comes from God, not from wealth. When we commit to regular, faithful, sacrificial giving, we are practicing healthy detachment from worldly wealth in a culture that expects deep attachment to our money and our stuff. Bishop William Willimon says that the weekly offering “may be one of the most radical, countercultural, defiant acts the church demands of us.”7 We encourage the standard of a tithe, 10% of our household income, not because we’re desperate or greedy, but because that’s the standard we find in scripture. And when that gift is not the last expenditure each month after we take care of ourselves, but the first commitment we make, we put our money where our mouth is. Tithing is a declaration that our trust is in God, not in ourselves or our wealth. The practice of generosity helps us let go and put our trust where it belongs. Money can do many things when used properly. It makes no promises nor demands of us; we do that to ourselves. Greed is the problem. It is nothing more than a deception that our money or our possessions can make us happy or secure. As followers of Christ, we should be neither stingy nor profligate in our use of resources. Instead, our trust is in God, who alone can promise and deliver all that we need. Then we can take hold of the life that really is life. The of Hebrews urges us, “Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have; for Christ has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’ So we can say with , “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.” (Hebrews 13:5‐6) Let it be so. Amen.

6 Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking. 7 William Willimon. Sinning Like a Christian: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins. Nashville: Abingdon Press (2005), 113. 3