Sharing Resources

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 17, 2022
Amos 7: 1-9; 8:1-2,11-2;  Ps. 89; 1Timothy 1-9a, 10b-11, 14; Luke 13: 18-21; 17-25
 
        Perhaps you saw in the news this week the story about the corporation Patagonia and what its owner has planned for its future. Environmentalist, rock climber, and founder of the company, Yvon Chouinard, who is 83, in agreement with his family, has given Patagonia away to a set of trusts and organizations devoted to fighting climate change and preserving wild lands. (NY Times, 9/14/22.) The company, valued at $3 billion, will continue to operate as a for-profit clothing manufacturer, but all its profits will be devoted to protecting the environment, and distributed by the Chouinard family and its advisers. The family, instead of receiving a tax write-off, will pay $17 million in taxes to enact this arrangement. Chouinard said, “Hopefully this will influence a new form of capitalism that doesn’t end up with a few rich people and a bunch of poor people. We are going to give away the maximum amount of money to people who are actively working on saving this planet.”

        Our readings today all focus on God's love for people who are in need and for those who are marginalized, and how we can love as God does by sharing our own resources. At Wilderness Worship Tuesday, out at Harrison S.P., I was reflecting on God’s love, and how gratuitously generous God’s creativity is. God has scattered beauty everywhere, just out of love for all creatures. Even in the places no one ever looks, there is beauty, by God’s grace. God’s creativity seems to be motivated by God’s generosity. So the question for us is how to show that same kind of compassion and generosity, and how to ethically manage our own blessings. I think these readings give us some good answers.

        Amos foretold doom for the people of Israel if they did not turn away from greed and violence, and his prophecy came true when the Northern Kingdom was defeated by the Assyrians. Amos in our first reading criticized the way merchants in Israel mistreated the poor, cheating them out of full measures of grain, selling them inferior products, overcharging them, even taking them as debtor servants when they could not pay their bills, keeping their sandals as “IOU’s”. Amos challenged Israel to find a new way of distributing wealth in their society, of protecting the immigrant, the disabled, the widow, and the orphan; in other words, to find a way to make sure everyone had what they needed.

        The Jewish folk song version of Ps. 89 that we sang reminded us that it is up to us to cooperate in God’s plan of building a world from love, to find creative ways to make our economy and workplaces and communities places of care for all.

         The author of 1 Timothy encouraged us to pursue righteousness, devotion, love, patience, and gentleness, and not to fall into the temptation and trap which is the pursuit of wealth. Be content with having enough food and clothing, he said, and also, the love of money plunges many people into ruin and destruction.
           Luke devoted all of Ch. 16 of his Gospel to addressing how to handle wealth, which implies that his congregation included many wealthy people. He related a story Jesus told that described a crooked businessman forgiving the interest, his own little cut, that he was charging his employer’s debtors, in order to assure that they would help him out after he was fired by his boss. Luke seems to trying to convey that Jesus thought generosity made good business sense.

        So how are we being challenged to reimagine the distribution of resources in our society? Yvon Chouinard, Amos, the Psalmist, Timothy, and Jesus all seem to be asking the same question: what does generosity mean for us now? Our present brand of capitalism seems to be making the rich get more and the poor get less all the time. Are creative experiments like Yvon Chouinard a step in the right direction? How do we each manage our own resources to help make sure our neighbors have at least enough to live with human dignity? What do you think?