4 August 2019
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Luke 12:13-21 begins with a prayer to Jesus asking him to tell someone’s brother to share the inheritance. Jesus’s response is instructive: “Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?” We are, of course, free to ask Jesus for what we want, but if we do so in a genuine spirit of loving recognition of who he is, then we must also accept that he is free to respond to our prayer however he wishes, even with a question like this one that might seem to frustrate our requests. One could oppose to this response last Sunday’s gospel, Luke 11:1-13 in which Jesus says “ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” But we ought not separate this affirmation from its context. Jesus invites us to ask for very specific graces (he has just taught us his own prayer to the Father before making this affirmation) and he instructs us to ask for the good things that the Father wishes to give us and not anything else. The Father who is good will not give you a scorpion if you ask him for an egg. But nor does he wish to give you a scorpion if you were to ask for a scorpion (say, if you like the jolt of its venom, but don’t want to have to deal with its paralyzing effects). It is in his nature to give good things, so we ought not ask him for evil ones.
In light of all this, we can reflect on the folly of the one who hoards material riches in today’s gospel, even constructing greater storehouses to keep them, when there are so many people in need. Does this rich man not see that the great harvest given him would reap an even greater one if it were used for love rather than an illusory self-security, which actually offers no eternal protection? Does Jesus hoard his riches as the eternally begotten Son in order to insulate himself from the world, or does he not rather pour out all that he has and is out of love, and thus reap an eternal reward, not for himself but for us, of salvation in love? If we have such a great Lord, we ought to do the same, if we wish to be truly recognized as his subjects. Or would we rather be recognized as subjects of another lord, who goes by the name mammon, to whom we would offer our souls in return for the whole world? Would that we would choose the God of Jesus Christ instead!