Today’s readings: Amos 6, 1.4-7; 1 Timothy 6, 11-16; Luke 16, 19-31.
It is not just a matter of pick and choose, but there are items in our belief system which seem to either inflame our imagination or block it.
Today’s parable transposes the issue of justice in eschatological terms: those who now suffer will find solace, those who now enjoy life not bothering at all about the others’ suffering will get a sort of payback. To the modern sensibility this may not be very convincing.
St Luke’s story of the two rich and poor men can be taken as linked to the ending words of last week’s gospel: You cannot put God and money on one and the same level.
You have to make choices. Though the gospel in itself gives no recipe how poverty can be eliminated, it throws light on our personal choices, particularly where the mechanisms that generate poverty and misery are concerned.
Today’s scriptures, particularly Amos and Luke, take up the issue of how far we can be guilty bystanders. In his Letter to an Innocent Bystander, Thomas Merton puts a series of what he calls dangerous questions: “Although it seems to be impossible to do anything but stand and wait, is our waiting harmless, and is it innocent?”
He even dares an answer: “A witness of a crime, who just stands by and makes a mental note of the fact that he is an innocent bystander, tends by that very fact to become an accomplice”. This is what the prophet Amos is suggesting in the first reading when he warns: “Woe to those who feel so safe on the mountains of Samaria”.
Dorothee Soelle, a leading feminist liberation theologian, writes that in the face of suffering you are either with the victim or the executioner – there is no other option. We need to know where we stand.
The issue cannot be simplistically resolvable by referring to the reversal of fortunes, stating that all will be settled in terms of reward and punishment in the world to come.
This would amount to a simple moralistic approach. The scriptures do not stop at that. Honestly enough, we do not need the scriptures to conclude that extravagance is wrong or that ignoring the poor is obscene.
The prophecy of scripture lies precisely in provoking in us all deeper awareness of our responsibilities in the present day. It is a parody of God’s kingdom to believe it will come one day to reverse our fortunes.
The real kingdom of God is work in progress in our lives and in the midst of all that is obscene in this world. It is being built with our own hands and its completion rests in our responsibility. God’s kingdom is a human project, sustained by God’s grace, which makes us never succumb to the prevailing distortions.
We can have no problem with stating that whatever generates egoism and suffering, whatever perpetuates injustice and imbalances, deserves hell. But we need to acknowledge as well that it makes God’s world a less safe place to live in and a worse home for increasing numbers of people. Since man substituted God, he has shown himself to be by far the blindest and cruelest of all the false gods. Just looking around, and it is all written on the wall.
At times we seem to live in a world where the ancient story of a king and his new clothes is very true. As the naked king paraded out in the streets, all admired his clothes foolishly until a child dared point out that the king was naked. Our vocation seems to be that of the child in the king tale, to point out to the truth, to the obvious, which for some reason or other many fail to grasp.
In the midst of all this, the real test of our faith lies not in expecting who knows what from heaven. Faith seems to make us preach the same gospel infinitely, at the same time remaining stuck and victims forever of that same frame of mind we denounce. That amounts to a statement on our part that faith is sterile.
If we choose where to stand, faith becomes empowering and strengthens us to find the true solutions which life provides for those who dispose themselves to receive the truth.