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Well, it’s finally going to happen. Capt. James Tiberius Kirk is actually going to make it into space. I should clarify that it’s William Shatner, the actor who played Kirk in the original Star Trek series. At the age of 90, the Shat is taking a free ride this month on a Blue Origin rocket to garner some publicity for private citizens going into space and apply a little leverage to the Discovery Channel to do a documentary on one of these soon to be more frequently occurring Blue Origin flights. He will be up there for all of ten minutes. Good on him…, I guess.
Well, there’s a tale to be told here. If you didn’t know, Blue Origin is owned by the mega-billionaire Jeff Bezos who owns Amazon. He and his chief competitor and also a mega-billionaire Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX fame are vying for NASA contracts to build the rockets NASA will use in the future as well as trying to make spaceflight accessible to private citizens. The catch is that you got to be filthy rich to get a ride on one of these rockets. Space is no longer the final frontier. It’s now the playground for the wealthy.
Bezos’s and Musk’s efforts to capitalize on space travel do not come free of criticism. Bill Gate’s, another one of those mega-billionaires and the creator of Microsoft also known for his philanthropy here on earth, has recently criticized them saying that there is too much that needs to be done here on earth for the world’s wealthiest to be playing rocket men especially during a pandemic. He didn’t quite say it like that though. Others have criticized Bezos as well. Amazon made shopping easy during those COVID lockdowns but at great risk to Amazon employees. Some say that if he’s got money to send The Shat into space, then he can afford to pay his Amazon employees a lot better. After all, they are at considerable risk of catching COVID due to their job.
And here begins my rant on wealth inequality. Did you know that during 2020 in the midst of all those lockdowns when so many down to earth working people were suddenly having trouble making ends meet the combined wealth of the world’s billionaires (according to Forbes, that’s 2,095 people), their wealth increased by 3.9 trillion US$? That’s 1.86 billion a piece if things were equal among them. The real estate moguls made a lot in 2020 resulting in making housing really unaffordable now for most people. Did you also know that the combined income of wage earners in the same period went down 3.4 trillion US$? I don’t know about you, but that makes me want to be sick. I don’t want to sound judgemental, but how many billions of dollars has it cost Jeff Bezos to be able to call himself the one who put Capt. Kirk into space and all the while 3.1mil children per year die of malnutrition and that’s not saying how many simply suffer from it.
Let me fill you in on some more wealth trivia. According to the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report for 2019 (That’s pre-COVID. It’s worse now.) 53.6% of the world’s working adults made less than $10,000 that year accounting for 1.4% of that pie we call global wealth. 34% of the worlds’ population makes between $10,000-100,000 and accounts for 14.7% of the pie. That’s people like us who pay the bulk of the taxes in most Western industrialized countries. If you’ve been doing the math, that’s 87.6% of the worlds adults making 16.1% of the pie we call global wealth. If you cut a pie into eight slices, that’s one slice. Almost 88% of the world’s working adults are eating only one slice of the pie of global wealth.
Well, what about the other 12.4% of working adults who take in the rest of the pie? That’s 83.9% of Global Wealth. Well, 11.4% of the world’s working adults made between $100k-$1mil accounting for 40.5% of the pie. The rest, 1% of the world’s working adults who make more than $1mil, they are eating the other 43.4% of the pie. That’s 1% working adults eating almost half the pie while 54% of working adults are trying to share 1.4% of the pie. That ultra-wealthy 1% are trying to go to space while the children of the 54% are dying of malnutrition. Am I alone in thinking these extremes are not only unacceptable, but frankly immoral if not criminal?
Unfortunately, we in the middle majoratively don’t see it that way and rather blame the 54% of working adults making less than $10k for not picking themselves up by the bootstraps and getting a job and pulling themselves out of poverty while the wealthy 12.4% are saying they make the jobs possible, so don’t tax them. But maybe, if those ultra-wealthy paid taxes like the rest of us, we as a society might be able to do something about those children suffering and dying from malnutrition. But wealth, the love of wealth, skews our perspective.
Well, I’m supposed to be preaching from the Bible I guess I should get on with it. Looking at the Gospel of Mark, there’s this wealthy man here in our reading. He seems to be the epitome of what Old Testament scholars call the Deuteronomic Principle. The last few chapters of the Book of Deuteronomy are full of blessings and curses. Blessed you will be if you keep the commandments and statutes and ordinances of the Law and cursed you will be if you don’t. Many people, then and now, interpret them to be saying if you are faithful to God, he will bless you with wealth and health and other goodies. The Book of Job is biting critique of that sort of thinking.
This wealthy man comes to Jesus asking an odd question: What must I do to inherit eternal life? It’s odd because an inheritance is typically not earned. Granted you can get yourself written out of a will and lose your inheritance, but an inheritance typically isn’t earned. It is granted because you were born or adopted into a family.
Moreover, the inheritance he is after is eternal life. Eternal life was also a rather odd request for a Jew? “Eternal life” is an idea is rooted in a very Greek philosophical and cosmopolitan way of thinking rather than your typical Jewish way of thinking. Eternal life doesn’t refer to what happens after you die. Rather, it describes a quality of life associated with God or the gods because only things divine are eternal. So, this Jewish man is asking for a life that’s filled with God. It could also mean the quality of life that people will have after the resurrection. But again, that would be a God-filled life as Jesus promises in verse 30.
Jesus’s answer to this question inclines me to believe that it’s a quality of life that he’s after rather than a duration of life. Jesus referred him back to what Jews rather than Greeks typically thought about: the commandments. If he wants a life filled with God then he must keep the Commandments. The man’s answer is eye-opening. He had done that all his life, but something was still missing. He’s like the song by the Irish rock band U2, “But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” He seems quite frustrated and disillusioned. He’s received the blessing of wealth et al that the Deuteronomic Principle promised, but there’s something missing…and fortunately for him he can’t build a rocket to try to find his answer in the heavens above the Earth.
(Oddly, most people who have gone to space and looked back at the Earth have had what could be called a profoundly spiritual experience. They’ve realized there’s more to life than “me, myself, and I” and have felt a sincere calling to come down to earth and make the world a better place.)
Well, Jesus looked intently at this faithful, yet disillusioned man who had it all but was missing the heart of the matter, Jesus looked intently at him and loved him. Yes, Jesus felt love for the man. This is the only person in Mark’s Gospel that Jesus is said to love. The type of love mentioned is that agape love, the unconditional, selfless, even sacrificial love. Jesus showed this love to that rich man by speaking the truth to him in love. He didn’t say, “Count your blessings, Buddy. You got it all. You made the grade. People are envious of what you have. Don’t worry. Be Happy. Read some Deepak Chopra and learn how to meditate. Take some anti-depressants and go on an adventure. Build a rocket. Buy a yacht. Surround yourself with some young vixens like Solomon did. You’ve got it all. Just enjoy the blessing and be happy. Eat, Drink and be merry.” Jesus didn’t say that. This wealthy man was a man of faith. He knew something wasn’t right and sensed there was more to life than wealth.
The truth Jesus spoke to him in love was not good news that made the man feel good about his blessings. He didn’t tell him to count his many blessings. He told him to share them. Jesus told him to divest himself of all that wealth; to sell all his possessions and give to the poor and build a treasure in heaven and follow Jesus. The God-filled life, the life of the Kingdom of God is not found in the blessing of wealth. It is found in sharing the abundance of what we have and being a student of the Jesus’ way of life which is living in accordance with being beloved children of God. To this word of truth, the rich man responded with shock, some translations say great sadness, and it could also read that he responded with darkness.
Beloved children…Jesus had just told his disciples “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God as a little child, will never enter it.” We often understand this in a way that idealizes the naïve trust that children have. But there is another way to understand it. Instead of saying “Welcome the Kingdom of God like a little child would welcome it” read it as meaning, “Welcome the Kingdom of God like you would welcome a little child into your life.” Compare that to Jesus telling his disciples that it is darn nigh impossible for the wealthy to enter the Kingdom of God…but…with God all things are possible. Wealth can’t buy the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom needs only to be welcomed like we would receive a little child into our life; you know, love it and care for it.
The Kingdom of God is peace, righteousness, and joy. It is community founded on justice, on economic fairness established through sharing, on equality among people, with safety and health for all. The Kingdom of God is at had just as Jesus proclaimed and it is found among small gatherings of people who follow Jesus and live according to that one difficult and risky commandment that he gave to his disciples that we love one another as he has loved us…and that should affect how we handle our wealth. Like little children are to us, the Kingdom of God, is a great joy and wonder to love and to watch grow. Children are a miracle, but oh so fragile and easily hurt. Who hasn’t prayed, “God don’t let me ruin my kids.”? So also, the Kingdom of God. It’s here, among us, and yet we can ruin it with neglect.
Maybe the way we welcome and rear little children is the way we discover and welcome and steward the Kingdom of God. We have fallen into the mistaken belief that the best way to provide for our children and for the future generation is to amass wealth that we may provide them with an inheritance that will ensure their security. The truth of the matter with this way of doing things is those who have, who are relatively few in number, get absurdly more than the majority who do not have enough and whose children are dying of malnutrition and disease – things that come with poverty. Moreover, the resulting disparity in wealth disillusions people and causes a great deal of resentment to grow which results in violence. Our pursuit of wealth also comes at the expense of the environment.
This might be a more appropriate Christmas sermon than a Thanksgiving one, but born in our midst, in our very midst, right here among us small little gatherings of Jesus followers is the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom will grow and become the future of humanity. It is at hand and indeed coming. We will inherit it if we simply welcome it and love it as we would love and sacrifice for the well-being of children. Maybe we will discover it in the way we rear the next generation of children.
Maybe the Kingdom of God will become more visible if we by example teach the our children and grandchildren that we are entrusted to rear that instead of seeking a good paying job so you can have a comfortable and financially secure life and enjoy nice stuff, they should strive and see us strive to: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength…and love your neighbour as yourself.” Instead of teaching them by example the lesson of pursuing and amassing wealth, we teach them by example to be stewards of wealth and to be satisfied with enough and make a spiritual discipline out of sharing our abundance with others who have less. Maybe we also by example teach them to be stewards of this beautiful creation rather than being a virus and a parasite upon it. Maybe we teach them by example to seek justice, love kindness, and to walk humbly with God by making the people we elect into government stop catering to the wealthy and start making the hard decisions to save the environment, improve global health care, improve global access to fair wages, and I could go on but I think I’ve depressed you enough for now. Happy Thanksgiving. Amen.
