Word to the Wise
Monday, October 20, 2008 - Monday in the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
[Ephesians 2:1-10 and Luke 12:13-21]"There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, 'What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?' And he said, 'This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, 'Now as for you, you have so many good things store up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!'"
The optimism of this wealthy man cannot help but remind me of so many who have put their faith in the stock market and the whole global financial system and are now suffering from collapse! The current crisis shows that their faith was built on a structure of greed and bad debt. Yet, in a strange way, this crisis illustrates the power of faith, even if it is a mistaken faith. The entire financial system operates on "confidence!" As long as those with money to lend or invest have "confidence" in companies or borrowers the system works well. But when the lenders get greedy or the borrowers prove to be unreliable, the whole structure comes tumbling down! This kind of faith is at one and the same time strong and fragile! Witness the wild swings in the stock market recently! Jesus' parable is a reminder to us of the only investment that is worth our lives. The rich man with the expansion dreams is told, "You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?" Not to him, that's for sure! And there are many who are suffering great losses as a result of the current crash who put meager savings in certain banks or who have 401K accounts! The big "players" shrug and move on, but the smaller folks don't have that kind of resources. The problem with guys like this rich man is that when they crash, they take down a lot of people who had "confidence" in them. Today's parable reminds us of the uncertainty of human institutions of wealth and the certainty of faith in God. Will the lesson be learned? AMEN
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