Ken Overberg, S.J.

26th Sunday, Sept 30, 2007

Today’s readings all speak of the danger of riches—or, better, the love of money.  In last week’s first reading, we met Amos, a prophet who lived around 750 BCE.  Focused, blunt, even fierce, Amos challenged his society’s structures and the people’s attitudes.  Today we hear from Amos again, a typical passage in which he thunders against the rich who ignore or oppress the poor.  The cities he mentions were conquered and destroyed, and the people sent into exile.

Luke’s Jesus also expresses his concern about wealth.  Jesus tells the story about Lazarus and the rich man.  Notice that the rich man is being censored NOT for being rich but for his lack of hospitality.

We may be tempted to respond to our readings with “Oh no, not again.”

For we are, by comparison with our sisters and brothers around the world, among the very rich—whatever our present debt and worries.

Still, let’s try to be attentive—not out of guilt but a desire to respond to our God.  Maybe we, who as individuals and community do hear the cry of the poor, will hear a new message for our lives in this very old word.

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Many countries, including our own, are having severe problems responding to the poor stranger at their door.  Immigration, of course, is only one of many pressing issues in our world.  Poverty, sickness, oppression of women, violence of all kinds—it’s all so overwhelming!

What can we do?

Scripture scholar Walter Wink offers sound advice.  In his Engaging the Powers, he writes: “We human beings are far too frail and tiny to bear all this pain….  What we need is a portable form of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, where we can unburden ourselves of this accumulated suffering.  We need to experience it; it is part of reality….  We are to articulate these agonizing longings and let them pass through to God….

But we must not attempt to mend it all ourselves, but to do only what God calls us to do.”

Wink quickly adds:  “By now I sense certain social activists bristling with impatience….  We have all known Christians for whom prayer is a substitute for action, who dump on God the responsibility for doing what God’s groaning in us is seeking to impel us to do.  But action is also no substitute for prayer….  Social action without prayer is soulless; but prayer without action lacks integrity.”

We cannot do all things, but we can do some thing—giving our time for a specific project, giving our treasure to support an agency, giving our talent to change an oppressive structure.  All of us can start with the recognition of the god Mammon that Richard described last week, the Power of our materialist, consumer society to infect our sense of what is really important in life.

Who is the Lazarus in your life? How will you respond?