Sunday. Lk. 12: 32-48
'Sell your possessions and give alms. Get yourself purses that do not wear out, treasure that will not fail you, in heaven where no thief can reach it and no moth destroy it. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also'.
Try this little experiment sometime. The next time you see a young male taking pride in his brand-new sports car, take a sharp, hard object and scrape some of the paint off the body-work. Then observe how the scream that instantly emits from his lungs strongly suggests that his nerve-endings do not stop at his body's extremities but that they continue right on into his car! (Okay, I was joking. Please do not attempt this!) When Jesus asks us to get rid of possessions it is for a very good reason. Possessions are dangerous because our personality and our soul tends to drift right on into them. How will you ever know who you are if you cannot distinguish between yourself and your car? Jesus Christ did not become incarnate, suffer, die and rise from the dead to save your car! He did all this to save you! The reason we invest so much emotion and waste so much spiritual energy on possessions is because we are not aware of our own personal value in relation to God. And it is only in relation to God that we can know our real personal value. The gospel today is telling us that your brand new sports car is basically a ball of rust! At least it is well on its way to being a ball of rust. As it begins to detiorate you will suffer with it. This gospel is telling us to 'get purses that cannot wear out and treasure that will not fail us.' What is this 'treasure' that will not fail us? My guess is that the 'treasure' is eternal life. Why? Because it seems to me that, as wonderful as this life is, with all the love and beauty we are gifted with, nevertheless it is doomed to frustration because of the eventuality of death, and let's not forget sin either. St Paul speaks about this somewhere and even suggests that this frustration has been built-in to creation by God. Why would God do this? It seems obvious that it is to make us hope and desire for something better and more permanent. Namely eternal life, i.e. life that is not subject to sin, disappointment and death. The deadly thing about our attachment to posssessions is that it 'short-circuits' our desire that is meant to be directed to God, the giver of eternal life. By the way, as an aside, my broadband connection is not working lately. Apparantley it is being 'short-circuited' by the CCTV system we use to monitor the cows calving here in the monastery farm. A 'short-circuit' happens when an electric current fails to reach its assigned destination but instead is diverted elsewhere. When our desire for God, and the eternal life he longs to give us, is 'short-circuited' by our desire for possessions, then it is time to call the 'heavenly electrician and ask him to fix it for us. But do we want to be fixed? Perhaps it is okay if you do not want to be 'fixed' because you are in good company with the rest of humanity. However, today's gospel is asking us to take a second look at our possessions and to consider asking God to help us to stop investing so much hope for happiness in them. We can pray to ask him to help us to realize and to understand how infinitely more attractive is the eternal life he is holding out to us, an eternal life that can be enjoyed even now. If God gives us this great gift then that sport-car will lose its addictive allure and you can scratch away at all that paint-work to your heart's content... and there will be no screams... at least if there are, they will not be quite so instantaneous!