| I have a trainspotters fascination with misquotations in books and film which supply me with a rich diet of dinner party factoids. Did you know that Humphrey Bogart never said ‘Play it again, Sam’ in Casablanca. Ingrid Bergman’s character Ilsa Lund said, "Play it once, Sam, for old times' sake.’ Then she said, "Play it, Sam. Play As Time Goes By.’ Although it was the name of a film by Woody Allen. John Wayne did not say in Hondo ‘a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do’. He actually said, ‘A man ought'a do what he thinks is best.’ Captain Kirk never said ‘Beam me up Scotty’. What he actually said was, ‘Scotty, beam me up,’ in Star Trek IV, although the misquotation may have been in circulation years before. This brings me to a more pertinent misquotation: ‘Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die’. It is often attributed to the Greek philosopher Epicurus who lived around 300 BC, or taken to be the motto of the Epicureans – who adhered to the philosophy of Epicurus. The Epicureans believed that the good life was one of maximum pleasure and minimum pain. There is no evidence that either he or his followers said it. But the idea was clearly around in biblical times. For example: ‘A man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and be merry.’ (Ecclesiastes 8: 15) ‘Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die.’ (Isaiah 22: 13) ‘If the dead are not raised, `Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.' (I Corinthians 15: 32) ‘Relax, eat, drink, be merry…but God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night you life is being demanded of you.’ (Luke 12:16) Let us put the quotation into its context. The story which is traditionally called the Parable of the Rich Fool’ is peculiar to Luke and of a piece with Luke’s intense concern with matters of economic and social justice. If you were to extract from his Gospel the material that you find in Luke and nowhere else you would discover how much of it is devoted to matters of money and power. You will recall that I have repeatedly said that Luke expects the Gospel to make the world a better and more just place to live. ‘Blessed are the poor, not ‘blessed are the poor in spirit’. A man in the crowd asks Jesus to adjudicate in a family dispute over the proper apportionment of an inheritance. Some of us probably know how disputes over the terms of a family will can damage relationships between family members. One’s share of the will can be taken to be hurtful sign of how much you were loved and valued by a close family member. I have a friend whose sister has not spoken to him for months because he received a much more generous share of the inheritance than she did. The scenario here is somewhat different. The claimant is a younger son who is trying to extract a larger share than that to which he was legally entitled, but nevertheless thought was his due, perhaps because he considered himself more greatly loved by his father. In the Jewish law of the time, the elder brother was entitled to a double portion of the inheritance. If there were no sons, then the inheritance would be divided up among the daughters, who would then be required to marry within the tribe in order to keep the testator’s possessions within the tribe. Jesus refuses to play the role of inheritance divider, even though Moses had handled a similar request, because he does not want to play a part in satisfying the greed which Jesus discerned at the heart of the man’s invitation. He tells a parable instead. The rich fool is clearly not economically foolish. He has a capacity for making lots of money. In biblical terms, there is nothing wrong with this per se. Wealth can be a sign of God’s goodness and blessing. Think of Jacob’s son Joseph or Job – who possessed, then lost, then re-possessed great wealth. However, the wisdom tradition of the bible is full of warnings about the prudent use of wealth. The NT provides the most succinct statement: ‘the love of money is the root of all evil’ (1Timothy 6:10). Incidentally, this is often misquoted as ‘money is the root of all evil’. We are given a privileged window onto the rich fool’s private thoughts. And we discover how remarkably self-centred this man is. He has had a bumper crop and his obsessive thought is how to put it all to his own use. His thoughts cascade with possessive pronouns, my crops, my barns, my grain, my goods, and my soul. He is exclusively concerned with what he wants rather than what he, or rather what others, need. The rich fool’s soliloquy exposes his deepest commitments and reveals what he holds most dear. I recall an interview with one of the heirs to the Rockefeller fortune shortly before he died. He was asked what he felt about the prospect of leaving his vast fortune behind. He replied with jocular semi-seriousness that the thought of taking it with him was somewhat burdensome. His father J.D. Rockefeller, who founded Standard Oil, is thought by pundits to be the richest man that ever lived. What is striking about Rockefeller Senior however is the way he employed his vast wealth in the forty years of his retirement for charitable purposes. His fortune was mainly used to create the modern systematic approach of targeted philanthropy with foundations that had a major effect on medicine, education, and scientific research. For all we know the rich fool may have been a good observant Jew in all other respects. He may have affirmed his belief in god, but his whole approach to life reveals that he is in truth a practical atheist. He manages his life, his possessions, and his plans for the future as if there were no god. The rich fool does not seem the least bit interested in leaving a legacy, an irony which Jesus no doubt intended delicately to drive home. He is a deeply stultified and atomized individual. The parable poses a challenge for each and every one of us. We come to Church regularly. We pray, we recite the creeds, we receive Holy Communion, we gather for coffee afterwards. But if others were to have access to our inner thoughts, overhear our soliloquy, what would they hear? Where do our hearts really lie? You can usually gain insight into a person’s fundamental commitments through scrutiny of their attitudes and use of money. Rockefeller made unimaginable sums of money, but he gave a great deal of it away, He was, incidentally, a devoted Northern Baptist and supported many church-based institutions throughout his life. He wanted to leave a legacy, not for his own glorification, but as a mark of a man who did not think only about himself but also about others, about the community. If we truly love God, we will also love our neighbour, and if we truly love our neighbour, then it is a good indication that we have drawn close to God. People who truly love God leave a legacy, not just if financial terms but in other marks of neighborliness that leave their imprimatur on succeeding generations. And you can quote me on that. AMEN. |
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