It had just been eating at him. He’d been pretending to listen, but he couldn’t think of anything else. The anger was eating him up. So when Jesus paused for a breath, he just blurted it out, "Rabbi, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me!"

It was awkward, the way he blurted it out, but it was, after all, the kind of thing Rabbis did. Laws of inheritance were part of the Law of Moses, and Rabbis gave rulings on such things. But something about the way this guy asked it — not asking Jesus’ opinion, but only his seal of approval on the man’s predetermined outcome — something about the way this was eating the guy up so that he couldn’t help himself but blurt it out, something about this guy showed Jesus that he was eaten up with greed, covetousness, wanting more of what you already have enough of.

"Friend," he says, "I’m not getting into who did what between you and your brother." He’s thinking, "Because you have a bigger problem." So, turning to the crowd, Jesus says, "Take care, be on guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." Then he tells the Parable of the Rich Fool. You know it: it starts off with a man who is already rich: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly." And he thought to himself, "Self! What should I do? I can’t even store all this grain! How can I thank God for this abundance and use it for the spread of God’s kingdom? Where can I sell it? How can I tithe this wealth? How can I use the proceeds to fund a head-start program, an after- school program, a drug rehab center? How can I use this grain to feed the poor? This is such a nice problem to have! How can I use this bounty for God?"

No, he didn’t think that. He thought to himself, "Self! What should I do? I can’t even store all this grain! I need to build bigger barns! Tear down the old ones! Then I can relax, and eat, drink and be merry. Then I’ll be in fat city."

And God says, "You fool, fool, fool! You die tonight. And what good will all your riches be?"

Jesus looks at the crowd, at the man with his head down, and says, "So it is with people who are rich in treasures and poor toward God."

There’ll be a time, in the fall, when we’ll ask you to give money to St. John’s. People hate that. "I don’t like talk about money in church," they say. "I grew up in a church where that’s all they talked about." But that’s not all we talk about. We don’t talk about it very much. But when we do, invariably we get the reaction from somebody, "I don’t like to talk about money in church."

Well, duh. Money is the symbol of one of our greatest areas of struggle, and often failing, as human beings. We know that we were created wonderful, in God’s image, and yet at the same time we seem to have a character flaw that makes us want to not trust God, that makes us want to do it on our own, be in control, gather power. Theologians call that the Fall. I call it, "There’s something wrong with us; we ain’t right!"

And for many of us, money is where we most struggle with what’s wrong with us. So, while I know that lots of folks grew up on churches that were self serving in talking about money, so that it was just fund-raising, we don’t do that; so when somebody here says they don’t like it when we talk about money, I think, "Well, duh. You don’t like it because you’re busted!"

And aren’t we all? I don’t need to tell you that Jesus was right, that trying to find security through possessions is foolish; you all know that. We all know that. But we have to hear about it again and again because it seems to be part of our nature, our "We ain’t right" nature, that we just don’t do very well resisting the lure of money and possessions to exploit our "ain’t right" desire to be powerful, important, secure, comfortable, exempt from hardship and tragedy. Money represents one of our most serious weak spots.

We all know how easy it is to say, "I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones," instead of saying, "How can I use this abundance for God?" We all tend toward the foolish, and unless we resist, we’ll have a grand funeral, maybe one at which we’ll even be praised for our generosity, but God will greet us and say, "You know, you sure were one big fool." And at that point, I think most of us, with the perspective we’ll have then, will look down and say with embarrassment, "I know; I was a fool."

So we know that. We know how foolish each of us can be chasing meaning and security in money and things. But what about all of us, what about "us" as a society? Can’t the rich man in the parable be a people, a nation? I think so. And I’m afraid that, as a nation, we are exploiting that human weakness to want to build bigger barns.

Now, when we talk about the moral implications of how our society deals with money, we’re sailing into waters where faith and politics intersect. I know that some people don’t like that. You are welcome to disagree with what I say. Let’s go to lunch, and you can tell me point for point why I’m wrong. I’d love that conversation. But God help us if we think we can’t have that conversation, think we can’t say anything in response to the cries of the poor, because we’re too timid to criticize the government.

In the class I taught on the First Amendment last week, I pointed out that "Separation of Church and State" protects the church from the state, not the state from the church. The founders of our country thought the faith communities must be beyond the reach of the government so that they could freely exercise an important function that benefits both church and state. That function is to serve as an independent moral critic of the government. I wouldn’t want to let Thomas Jefferson down, so here goes.

Last spring, the House of Representatives approved new tax credits for the children of families earning as much as $309,000 a year. Very little was done for children of poor families. These wealthy families that got the credits have already benefited from tax cuts of over $2 trillion dollars. More than half the benefits of those tax cuts are going to the wealthiest one percent. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office forecasts deficits totaling over $2.75 trillion dollars over the next ten years. The chairman of the Federal Reserve says the tax cuts might force cutbacks in Social Security. Are we willing to ignore the needs of poor children and the elderly so that the rich can get richer, build bigger barns? It’s not our money that’s making fools of us; it’s our greed.

While all of this is happening, more children are growing up in poverty in America than in any other industrial nation. Millions of workers are making less money today in real dollars than they did twenty years ago. Working people have to put in more hours just to stay in place. Forty-four million Americans cannot get the basic health care they need, and eight out of ten of them are in working families. These are people who are working hard, and can’t make it. It’s not our money that’s making fools of us; it’s our greed.

Our greed cannot be concealed. In 1960, the top twenty percent were thirty times more wealthy than the bottom twenty percent. Thirty times. Four decades later, the top twenty percent are seventy-five times more wealthy than the bottom twenty percent. Seventy-five times! That might not matter so much if the bottom twenty percent were rising, but just perhaps not as fast. But no. Well-documented research shows that working families and the poor "are losing ground under economic pressures that deeply affect household stability, family dynamics, social mobility, political participation, and civic life." It’s not our money that’s making fools of us; it’s our greed.

We know that money represents one of our serious weaknesses as a species. We have allowed that weakness to be exploited, so that the wealthy, who need it the least, get a disproportionate share, and we have lost the concept that we have a duty as citizens to pay taxes so that our country can be fair and equitable, merciful and kind, so that we will have the resources to respect the dignity of every human being. Can you imagine a politician today speaking of the duty to pay taxes as the sacrifice we make for freedom and democracy? Can you imagine a politician today speaking of the need to ask us to sacrifice? I doubt he or she would have a chance of getting out of the primaries.

Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was murdered for this view, said:

How beautiful will be the day when a new society, instead of selfishly hoarding and keeping, apportions, shares, divides up, and all rejoice because we all feel we are children of the same God! What else does God want . . . but the conversion of all, so that we can feel we are brothers and sisters.

That, of course, is not our world. Our world is reflected in the second verse of our offertory hymn (583). We will sing: "O shame on us who rest content while lust and greed for gain in street and shop and tenement wring gold from human pain, and bitter lips in blind despair cry, "Christ hath died in vain!"

Christ has not died in vain, but he has been hijacked by a religious and political agenda that makes him unrecognizable. How we spend our money, as individuals and as a nation, has moral implications and we need the moral guidance of the real Christ, the real Christ who proclaimed, "The Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor," the real Christ who fed all of the 5000, the real Christ who broke the rules to feed the hungry and heal the lame on the Sabbath, the real Christ who showed kindness to the prostitute, a healing touch to the leper, who treated tax collectors (and women) as children of God. The real Christ — who drove the money changers out of the Temple — has been hijacked.

What are we to do? Bring him back. (Don’t worry; he’s good at making return appearances!) Bring him back! We need the real Christ to lead us, to offer us moral guidance. Because we all so want to build new barns, it’s such a seductive longing of ours. But I don’t want any of us, or our nation, to hear the real Christ greet us with these words, "You fool! You stored up treasures for yourselves, but were not rich toward God."

The Rev. James H. Pritchett, Jr. St. John’s Episcopal Church, College Park, GA