St Francis de Sales & St Mary Magdalene

View Original

Dives

What is the lesson for rich people and rich footballers of the story of the rich man that comes up to Jesus and advertises his virtues? Is there any scope for a spirituality of the poor man?

Elsewhere in the gospels, outside of the scene with the rich young man in the gospel this last weekend, Jesus identifies the problems that are associated among spiritual gurus with the enjoyment of riches and comforts and property, as per the story of Dives and Lazarus, in which the tables are suddenly turned round on the rich man at his top tables when he discovers that it was the poor man sent to his gate that was the blessed one, and when he realises that in the next world he is suddenly bereft and poor, deprived of his riches and deprived of some of his skills and talents and gifts, having only now the consolations of nice memories for his riches and his treasury. Lazarus is comforted for all his sorrows and sadnesses by the bosom of Abraham. So like the Dalai Lama, Jesus sets forth the lessons to be learnt from not only possessing lots of riches but also of enjoying them endlessly. To begin with, they create a dependency on comfort and make the disciple unfit for the risks of the kingdom of preaching. The rich man is unable to take risks - he is too conscious of comforts. But notate bene, when Jesus meets the concrete instantiation of a rich man, the rich young man, he does not reject him as if it were an ideology of rejection that he was practising, as if he were a socialist icon calling the other side scum, but rather analyses boy's inner spiritual condition, conducts a dialogue with him, discusses a bright future with the apostles for him, and imparts one salient cost of discipleship. Jesus though looks at him and loves him - he does not judge as the political men of the moderne world  judge based on their politics of envy and socialist resentment - he does not dismiss the boy just because he is rich, rather he does not judge or condemn him, merely analyses his spiritual condition. Now don't get me wrong, the apostles were all rich, had been, so when Jesus explains the weakness of the young man, and produces one of the finest spiritual maxims of the ancient world, the camel passing through the eye of a needle, the apostles are astonished and estonished. Why? Because the apostles were not poor men, they had had their own businesses on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, they were used to marketing their products, their fish, and so on, so that is why they find the saying of Jesus so surprising, since they were the Donald Trumps of the ancient world - keen to get on in the world. They were matter of fact businessmen. So Jesus reminds them that attachment to riches is attachment to comfort and so the rich young man whoever he is will not take the risks that are needed for the kingdom of preaching. This is not a general maxim for the whole of society as socialist and marxist re-readings of the gospel would have it trumpeted, dragging the bodies of the rich around behind their chariots like Achilles dragging Hector at the sad battle of Troy, but rather this is a specific maxim and solution addressed to a specific young man - it cannot really be erected into a general philosophy for the whole of society. Space forbids it. Jesus was not a maverick socialist ideologue - he was a kindly and gentle spiritual director - his preferred mien. So footballers be at peace, some christians do misunderstand the gospels as primary texts.