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Letters Twenty-Sixth
Sunday in Ordinary Time |
The Catholic Telegraph
September 30, 2000Being rich is dangerous. This is a recurrent message both in the Old Testament and in the New. The prophet Amos (6.4-7) threatens early exile for those who were leading lives of luxury. Isaiah (5.8 ff.) promises woe to those who are greedy for land. Similarly Jesus says (Lk. 6.24), "Woe to you rich, for you have received your consolation." In this Sunday’s reading James takes up this theme. (Given what we know about the socio-economic composition of the early Church, it is likely that James’s readers would be the victims of the rich rather than the rich themselves. In the verse immediately following our passage, the author addresses himself to the "brothers" who are obviously different people than the rich who have just been rebuked.)
Our passage opens with an invitation to the rich to weep and wail over the chastisements that await them. First of all, their wealth will turn out to be of no use to them. It is already rotten and useless and the clothes and precious metals that were intended to serve as adornment will become an instrument of suffering for them. Their treasure will become their torment when the day of judgement comes. What makes their wealth worthy of condemnation is the way in which they have acquired and used it. They deprived their workers of their just wages (a crime that Deuteronomy [24.14 f.] says calls to heaven for vengeance). They have spent their wealth on lavish living, which only served to fatten themselves up for the day of slaughter. They have oppressed righteous and unresisting poor people to the point that life was no longer possible for them.
As we read about the sins and excesses of the rich that are alluded to in our passage, it is natural for us to feel a certain degree of indignation. What a terrible way to treat other people! How sad to misuse wealth in these ways! Woe to the rich, indeed.
By most standards, most of us are rich. Almost all of us have a comfortable and safe place to live. We have enough resources to guarantee regular and healthy nourishment. Most of us are employed in work that offers guaranteed wages and at least some further benefits like retirement and health insurance. We have means of transportation to take us effortlessly wherever we want to go. We have come to expect comforts like central heating in the winter and air conditioning in the summer. Most of the people who have ever lived on this earth over the centuries have not enjoyed the standards of living that we take for granted. Most of the people who live on this earth now do not live as well as we do. We are the rich.
Does that mean that we fall under the strictures that James levies against the rich people of his time? Not necessarily. Together with the comforts and opportunities that our standard of living brings, we have also learned that we have responsibilities. Most of us try to be generous in sharing our personal resources with those who are less well off than ourselves, needy people here in our country or elsewhere. We contribute to church collections, to civic drives like United Appeal, to special efforts to help alleviate the needs of those who have experienced disaster. We do this, not just out of a sense of pity for the misery of others, but because we are aware that we owe care and concern to others, because we know that what we have is mostly the result of God’s generosity to us and must therefore be used for God’s purposes. Being rich does not necessarily mean being selfish or sinful.
But our state of well being is not necessarily permanent or universal. There exists even here in our prosperous country a whole level of persons who are unable to provide a decent living for themselves. The minimum wage, established by law as the norm to enable people to support themselves, is no longer pitched at an appropriate level. Being able and willing to work no longer guarantees people a share in our nation’s wealth. One wonders how the cries of these people sound in the ears of the Lord of hosts.
In addition to that, the difference between the very wealthy and the rest of us seems to be widening. It seems that middle class people (not to mention the poor) have to run faster and faster just to stay in the same place while others have more that they really know what to do with, more even than their counterparts in other wealthy nations.
We have some responsibilities for these matters, too. Because we live in a democracy, the rules and rewards of our life together are determined by all of us. We are all responsible for the kind of life and the level of well-being that is available to each of us. Solutions to complicated social and economic problems may not always be clear, but that doesn’t mean that we can stop looking for them.
This reading is the last of the Lectionary’s semi-continuous presentation of the Letter of James. The basic teaching of this book of the New Testament is that a living Christian faith calls for practical Christian love. One without the other is not possible.
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Conversation Questions
In what way am I rich?
What use do I make of my riches?
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