Not Keeping Up With The Joneses

Do you remember singing this folk song as a kid?

You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt.

St. Peter don’t you call me cause I can’t go…

I owe my soul to the company store.

This is kind of the flip side to what “The Preacher” says to us in this week’s reading from Ecclesiastes. He exclaims that “All is vanity”—futile. You work, you save up, you get a good little nest egg close to hatching—and then you croak and some greedy, do-nothing inheritor gets all your swag. Jesus echoes that in his parable about a farmer who suddenly finds himself with a super-abundance and can think of nothing better for it to do than to fill his new “super-sized” barns! But—gulp!—his life is required of him before he can eat, drink, and be merry about it! All is vanity.

That’s similar in tone to Sixteen Tons. Except for the laborer, all is vanity because he can’t get ahead of his debt, let alone put any money aside. Yet both underline the main thread that links the lectionary readings this week—the issue of possessions.

Whether you have the big bucks, or you haven’t two dimes to rub together, God loves you all the same. The problem is—those situations can get in the way of seeing that with clarity. You may feel especially blessed with your abundance, or cursed by your dearth. But you aren’t. God doesn’t look at your credit score before he offers you love, acceptance, forgiveness and a new life in Christ. And God doesn’t reward or punish with earthly goods, either. So don’t put all your trust in your 401(k), and, conversely, don’t let a negative balance sheet make you think God is absent and uncaring.

Because God provides enough for all—equally. In other words the problem doesn’t lie with the producer—but the distributors (oops, that’s us). What if we lived to share instead of to consume or hoard? What if we didn’t always think of the bottom line, but the people it effects? What if we all were able to earn a fair wage? Wouldn’t our work take on new meaning then? Wouldn’t we be living out God’s justice in our communities and our world? Wouldn’t the lines drawn by economic imbalance blur and then disappear?

Maybe. Maybe. You can’t make others share, be fair, or act square. But you can do your part. And if “two and two and fifty make a million” (another old folk song, showing my age here), and with God’s blessing and guidance—the world can change.

And what a legacy that would be to leave to the future generations?!

Peace,

Pastor Tom