Father Christopher Zugger

In the gospel today, Luke writes in verse 13 that “Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”   What was this? A man who had the responsibility of splitting their inheritance among his siblings has apparently disinherited them – he’s not following the rules of either God or Man in doing so. This fellow is calling out for simple justice. But what does Jesus answer him? ¹⁴ Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” ¹⁵ Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” After this he gives this parable about a rich fool.

This entire chapter in Luke 12 deals with the shortness of life, with the reality that God can call us at any time. It is a warning of the danger of being attached to wealth, to power, to things. We have begun the Fast before the Nativity. If you go out into the world on a daily basis, if you watch commercials that interrupt streaming and network television alike, you quickly realize that for most of the American population, the emphasis in November and December is on acquiring stuff in preparation for the Nativity.

Christmas is reduced to maxing out credit cards, piling one’s treasures under the tree, finding romance like a Hallmark movie, something called the magic of Christmas, or stories about Santa Claus. There is little about the trek of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem in her last weeks of her pregnancy, about the baby who was born in a cave for the sake of our salvation in the world that we live in.

Yes, this is the theme that I hammer at every year, and pretty much every priest and minister in America worth their salt will be emphasizing this during the Advent season and the Christmas shopping season. We are taught to acquire things, even to acquire people in terms of controlling others. The lessons of radical love and service get thrown aside at this time of year, the very time that is supposed to celebrate the birth of the true God and true Man who lived a life of radical love and service.

Ironically of course, we will stop on Thanksgiving Day at a good meal and take some time to be grateful for our lives, but then we may sit and watch football or go shopping for more stuff. Christians are meant to live differently – and it is our obligation as Christians, both for us here today and those who will watch this video in the future, to live a life that is different from that of the secular world. Even in the Age of Faith in medieval Europe both Eastern and Western Christian sermons are recorded as warning people to live in the realization that God can call us at any time and we must be focused on spiritual growth, spiritual benefits, and to live in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Saint Cyril of Alexandria in the 4^th century, certainly an Age of Faith, had to point out to his congregation that the rich man in the parable fails miserably. He writes about the rich man “He does not raise his eyes to God. He does not count it worth his while to gain for the mind those treasures that are above in heaven. He does not cherish love for the poor or desire the esteem it gains. He does not sympathize with suffering. It gives him no pain nor awakens his pity. Still more irrational, he settles for himself the length of his life, as if he would also reap this from the ground.”

Christ died on the cross and rose from the grave so as to show me the way to heaven and to a true level of intimacy with the Trinity. Stuff gets in the way of that. Everything that I do in my work, my relationships with others, how I drive my car, how I treat others at the store, what I do on my team at school – all of those things are supposed to be reflecting that I put God first. I should be taking time out every day, maybe several times a day, to sit with God and be quiet with God.

The spirit of Christmas is not a Hallmark movie, or Santa Claus, or more stuff under the tree. It is knowing what I am preparing for, and trying to live so that if God does call me tonight or tomorrow or next week, I am willing to go and ready to go. That’s a big challenge in this busy world where too often we may just flop into bed without even the Sign of the Cross. It is a challenge that each of us is up to, because we have the grace and power of the Holy Trinity with us and in us through God’s grace and through the sacraments that we have received. By all means let us have a happy preparation for Christmas, but also a truly special one, and one filled with spiritual power, not stuff. Christ is among us.