The delusion of wealth
Money can't buy happiness, but it can make us sin
Homily preached by the Rev. Jonathan A. Mitchican at St. Laurence Catholic Church in Sugar Land, TX on Sunday, September 29, 2024 - The 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time in Year B
(James 5:1-6 and Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48)
Some of you may remember the old sixties sitcom Gilligan’s Island. It was about a group of people who go on a boat tour that’s only supposed to last for three hours, but then a storm leaves them shipwrecked on an island in the middle of nowhere, and they’re forced to survive there together. One of the people stranded on the island is a millionaire named Thurston Howell, III. The running joke throughout the series is that he continues to act as if it matters that he has a lot of money, demanding that the other castaways treat him differently, even setting up a little country club that consists just of him and his wife. He’s oblivious to the fact that on this island his money isn’t going to do squat to save him. One of his more memorable sayings was, “It’s important to surround yourself with people who appreciate your wealth.”
James would have some choice words for Thurston Howell, III. “Come now, you rich, weep and wail over your impending miseries,” says James. Well, don’t hold back, James, tell us what you really think! He tells the rich that their wealth is going to corrode and burn their flesh, and he accuses them of stealing from their workers in order to line their own pockets. For James, wealth is a problem. And not just for him. The whole Bible tells us that wealth causes us to sin. Jesus says this many times. “You cannot serve two masters, both God and wealth.”
This runs counter to the values of our culture. We’re trained to see wealth as something good. We treat guys like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk like celebrities because they have a lot of money. We idolize wealth in movies, music, and fashion. Wealth can open doors for you. It can get you into the best schools, the best restaurants, even the best jobs. And because of that, we assume–often without realizing it–that a person’s wealth corresponds with his or her goodness. A person who’s wealthy must have worked hard to get it, so we should admire that person. But a poor person is probably lazy or a criminal. But none of this is true.
Why is wealth a problem? The Bible and the early Church Fathers define wealth as having more than you need while others don’t have enough. St. Basil the Great said, “The shoes you allow to rot belong to the barefoot. The money in your vaults belongs to the destitute. You do injustice to every man whom you could help but do not.” This is a particularly big problem when it comes to the uber wealthy, people who have more money than they could possibly spend in a single lifetime. The four richest men in the world earn about fourteen million dollars every hour. If Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk spent a million dollars every single day, without interruption, it would take them more than five hundred years before they would run out of cash. The Scriptures and the teaching of the Church tell us that this is obscene in a world in which there are also many people who are starving or without homes.
But lest we think that James is only talking to the uber wealthy and not to us, keep in mind that most people around the world live on less than two dollars a day–and I don’t mean what two dollars would buy in poorer nations, I mean they live on less than what two dollars would buy us right here in the USA. So if you have enough money not only for food and clothes but for more than one car or more than one streaming service, congratulations, by global standards, you’re wealthy. What James says applies to you too.
Whether we realize it or not, most of us think of wealth not only as a comfort but as a form of security. Wealth will keep us safe. It will prevent others from taking advantage of us. It will keep us healthy and happy. And if we believe all that, then we’re just as delusional as Thurston Howell, III was thinking his money would help him on that island. Wealth doesn’t make us happier, it keeps us anxious and stressed, and it can’t stop us from growing old, getting sick, or dying. But subconsciously, we think it can, so we put our energy into growing and keeping our wealth. We find ourselves more concerned with our excess than our neighbor’s need. Money doesn’t have to be a bad thing. You don’t instantly become a bad person because you have money. You can use your money to help people. In fact, that’s what God says you ought to do. The wealth you have is only yours because God wants you to give it away for the sake of others. But we often can’t do that, because wealth has become our god, and we cling to it, even if it kills us.
Jesus says that if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, you should cut it off, because it’s better to enter the Kingdom of God maimed than not to enter at all. It’s a metaphor, of course. We shouldn’t actually cut off our hands and feet. But the point is that we should take seriously our need for God. We shouldn’t tolerate things in our lives that lead us away from God, because they will only lead us to death. So if your wealth causes you to sin, perhaps you need to cut it off. We should all ask ourselves these questions:
What can I do to keep my heart free from the love of wealth?
How does the way I view wealth affect how I treat people?
How does it affect the society I live in and the way as a society that we respond to the poor?
These aren't easy questions, but they’re important, because they help us to realize how much we’ve hidden from ourselves our inner emptiness and our need for God. We try to fill the void inside of us with all kinds of things, but in the end only God will satisfy the longing of our hearts.
When God came to be one of us, He chose not to be rich, but to be poor. In the Eucharist, it’s the Body and Blood of a poor man that feeds us. And yet in that poor man’s Body and Blood we will find a greater treasure than anything money could ever buy us.