August 04, 2019
18th Sunday Ordinary C
1962 (57 years ago) the Beverly Hillbillies entered our homes. “Listen to my story about a man called Jed, a poor mountaineer barely kept his family fed…†It was a TV sitcom about a family in the Ozark Mountains who strike it rich and move to Hollywood. It was a phenomenon with spinoffs “Petticoat Junction†and “Green Acresâ€. There is another story of the Joad family moving from Oklahoma to California during the Great Depression: “The Grapes of Wrath†by John Steinbeck. It was a time of bank failures, drought i.e. the Dust Bowl, foreclosures and widespread poverty. Farmers from Oklahoma became migrants on Route 66 on their way to California searching for jobs, land, dignity and a future.
In our Gospel a disgruntled brother asks Jesus to “tell my brother to share my inheritance with me.†Rabbis could assume the role of arbitrator in such matters but Jesus refuses to do so. He admonishes the crowd: “Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions.†He tells a humorous parable of a rich man building bigger barns to store his bountiful harvest. You detect the humor when the rich man talks to himself: “Self -- you got it made. Recline, dine, wine and shine.†God says: “You nitwit. This very night, ‘they’ are demanding your soul of you.†The Greek text does not literally say “your soul will be required of you†but “they are demanding your soul of you.†Our possessions claim our soul! As Clarence Jordan, a Greek New Testament scholar, comments: “This guy didn’t die. Something more tragic happened to him. He lived in bondage to the very things he thought would serve him. ‘They’ demanded his soul of him.†(The Substance of Faith and Other Cotton Patch Sermons)
Jesus puts it simply just a few verses later in the Gospel according to St. Luke: “For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.†(Luke 12:34) A missionary, who spoke at early Masses this weekend, told us of his 85-year-old uncle who called the bank everyday to make sure his money was still there. Certainly, we can be concerned about our means to “live on†as we grow older if we appreciate that true treasure is not kept in a bank! It is not a matter of what we possess or amass but in what matters most to God.
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17th Sunday Ordinary
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19th Sunday Ordinary C
