I read a sign outside one Church which says: “Do not wait for the hearse to take you to Church.” They’re words for one who has no room for God. Wealth and possessions are typically blessings from God. If you’re wealthy, count yourself as blessed by God. Yet, possessions can assume such importance in your life that they easily turn into obsessions, and in no distant time, become, rather, curses. For this reason, the book of Ecclesiastes calls them “vanity.” Vanity upon vanity, the preacher says, all is vanity.
To illustrate how possessions turn some people into mindless, stupid idols of themselves, the story is told about a certain wealthy man who made his wife promise him that she would put the sum of $25,000 in his casket upon his death. He supposedly would need that to start life in the next world. Before his death, he made sure he reminded his wife about the deal. In keeping with the promise she made him, the wife wrote him a check of $25,000. He’ll have a hard time finding a Wells Fargo in hell!
In the course of my ministry as a priest, I have come in contact with many rich and poor people. I have met many rich people who amazed me by their simplicity and humility. IF Johnson was wealthy and loved children for whom he bought school supplies at the beginning of each school year. He would dedicate a full day to go from school to school and class to class to distribute school supplies to poor kids. Everyone loved and remembered him, not for his wealth, but for his kindness to the poor. I have also met rich people who see nothing else but the amount in their bank accounts, their gold and silver, their mansions, their cars, their degrees, and so forth. And I pity them because they add burden upon burden on themselves in effort to enthrone the god Mammon. The mindset that success is predicated on what we own is based on a fallacy that was very clear to the philosopher, Qoheleth, who regards such as vanity. “In his riches, man lacks wisdom; he is like the beasts that are destroyed.”
The rich fool in today’s parable was foolish, not because he was wealthy. He did nothing wrong by working hard on his farmland and wisely deciding to increase his storage space when the land produced great harvest. Up to this point, he was wisely doing the right thing. But everything changed when he started thinking that he could live forever on Easy Street, with his wealth to support him, only he didn’t know that the time left for him was less than 24 hours.
If you’re wealthy, don’t feel guilty about it. Many rich people are great and holy people who serve God and others with their wealth. No suggestion is made that the poorer the wiser. In fact, several people are poor because they’re unwise. Gather all the poor and homeless in our city and give each a million dollars. I bet that in a month, several of them will be back in the streets. The word “fool,” which Jesus used for the rich man is not just reserved for rich fools. We have rich and poor fools, educated and ignorant fools, with limited thinking and no good sense. I was once taught a class by a “foolish professor,” so lacking in common sense that he turned his classroom into a podium for promoting liberal orthodoxy. Sadly, he’s still one of those corrupting our young. To all, Paul admonishes: “Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.”
Fr. Chukwudi Jo Okonkwo