Greedling

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
February 15, 2009

Greedling
1 Timothy 6:9-10

We’ve all done it.
Received a greeting card:
a Valentines card,
or Birthday, Christmas….
from grandparents, an aunt, an uncle….
We tear open the envelope,
but even as we are taking out the card,
even before we read the loving sentiment
printed there,
our eyes are searching,
furtively, but purposely,
looking, looking --
surely it’s there:
something green,
something wonderful:
$10, $20, perhaps two or three bills,
the money, perhaps the giftcard,
we are sure must be in the envelope somewhere.

Some years ago the comedian Rich Hall
coined a word for that act,
that searching;
he called it “greedling”.
(Rich Hall, Sniglets)
I’ve always loved that word;
it is so wonderful descriptive.
And I cannot deny it: I’ve done it.
In fact, my sisters and I raised it to a high art
as we were growing up.
We may not think of ourselves as greedy,
but most of us are guilty of “greedling.”

Greed has become an enormously popular word
these last few months
as our economy has imploded.
I searched the word just on the New York Times
and got more than 10,000 results!

More often than not
we find “greed” keeping company with words like,
“banker”,
“executives”,
and “Wall Street”.
And for good reason --
We have read of astounding,
breathtaking greed on the part of many executives,
many bankers,
many Wall Street traders and workers.

We’ve heard of salaries and bonuses
paid out to individuals
totaling not just millions of dollars,
but tens of millions,
even hundreds of millions of dollars.
Even when the money hasn’t been paid out as salary or bonuses
we’ve heard of money ladled out thickly
to coddle and comfort senior executives
with things like cars and drivers;
private planes,
and retreats at hotels and resorts
that no one would confuse with
Massanetta Springs or Meadowkirk.

When I graduated from the Wharton School
in 1978 with a Masters degree in Business Administration,
I was offered a job on Wall Street
at a salary of $22,000 per year.
It was a handsome salary at the time.
My classmates and I spoke of the day
when we might make it to the top
and earn $100,000 per year.

Thirty years later and $100,000 is one day’s pay
for many of these men,
and they have almost all been men,
whose pictures have been on television
and in the newspaper.

Greed has grabbed hold of our economy,
our society,
as it never has before,
and I fear it is choking the very life out of us.

The children of Israel were still short of the promised land
when God warned them through Moses
of the danger of greed.
Decade after decade,
century after century,
the prophets of God warned the people,
and the words consistently fell
on deaf ears.

How many times does Jesus speak of
how dangerous the pursuit of money can be,
how corrupting?
Now Jesus did not condemn the wealthy,
nor did he say that having money was
by itself a bad thing.
What Jesus taught and teaches us still
is that our accumulation of money,
our focus on money,
our obsession with money
distracts us from God,
turns us from God,
turns from discipleship.

We read our Lord’s words to the rich young man,
“If you wish to be perfect, go,
sell your possessions
and give the money to the poor”
and we prefer to skip to the next passage.
(Matthew 19:21)
We forget, though,
that Jesus was not advocating
that everyone give away everything;
He was teaching us to keep our focus,
keep our priorities, keep our hearts,
our eyes, and our minds firmly on God,
and not on golden idols.

Zacchaeus, the corrupt chief tax collector,
kept half his wealth,
but Jesus appears to be have been fine with that,
because he was confident that Zacchaeus
finally had his priorities straight.
(Luke 19:8)

It was the sixth century pope Gregory the Great
who gave us the list of what we call
“The Seven Deadly Sins”.
We don’t find the list in the Bible
but all the sins are grounded in biblical teachings.
Avarice, or Greed, is among the worst of the sins.
Dante followed Pope Gregory’s lead
when he constructed Purgatory
in his Divine Comedy
and put Greed near the top of Purgatory.

Greed turns us from God;
it separates us from Christ.
Even the smallest feelings of greed, of avarice,
even seemingly harmless greedling,
tells us something troubling:
that our priorities are wrong,
our focus misguided,
that we are more intent on storing up
treasure on earth
than we are on storing up
treasure on heaven.

What does the Bible teach us
about worldly goods and treasures,
things and money?
They are things that rot and rust,
decay and disappear.
And what of the rich themselves?
Old Testament, Psalms, Proverbs,
New Testament: throughout the Bible
we find passages like this one:
“the rich will disappear like a flower in the field’
in the midst of a busy life,
they will wither away.”
(James 1:10-11)

Our nation is now deeply mired
in the most severe economic downturn
since the Great Depression.
We’ve had two major economic downturns in the last ten years,
and both were caused by bubbles,
the inflated values of things,
as we got greedy and tried to cash in,
first on technology stocks,
and then on, of all things, our homes.
It may be the greedy financial executives
who get the press,
but avarice affects us all, every one us
and it is richly fertilized by envy.

Why don’t we learn from our mistakes and missteps?
Why is the Bible filled with the same warnings
over thousands of years?
In a book I was reading the other day,
the author condemned the rich:
“There are men of wealth…,
honored because [they are] prosperous,
who heap up riches and hoard them,
and live in magnificent selfishness.
They build palaces and fill them sumptuously;
but the poor starve and freeze around about them.
And yet their names are heralded.”
These were words that could have been written
just last week.
But in fact they were written by the preacher
Henry Ward Beecher in the 19th century
in response to the excesses
of the “robber barons” of the “gilded age”.
And the words were quoted in a book written
in the 1920s by the preacher Henry Emerson Fosdick
to condemn the bubbly excesses of the “Roaring 20s”.
(The Meaning of Service)

Will we ever learn?

The letter to Timothy reminds us
that it is not money that it is evil;
it is the love of money that gets us in trouble.
“Those who want to be rich
fall into temptation
and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires…”
(1 Timothy 6:9)

We are trapped by senseless and harmful desires:
we want more things, more wealth,
more security
more comfort.
And in the process we turn away from God,
away from Christ
and go down the path of greedling
even if it’s just a little at a time.
It does not matter at all
that we are long way from Wall Street,
and our bank accounts
a long way away from a million dollars.

It was greed that has left unable to do something
as simple as buy a jar of peanut butter
for fear of salmonella.
When he learned that much of his product
was testing positive for strains of salmonella,
what did the president of the
Peanut Corporation of America do?
He told to his subordinates
to get those peanuts processed,
turn them into peanut butter and other products,
get them out the door
and turn them into money.
His customers included the school lunch program
for inner city children,
and men and women serving in our armed forces.
At least 8 people are dead,
and more than 500 made seriously ill,
all because of greed.
(“Peanut Products Sent Out Before Tests”,
New York Times, February 11, 2009)

Greed is everywhere in business, from Wall Street
to a peanut processor in Lynchburg;
from the retailer who specializes in “bait and switch”,
to the supermarket chain
which blithely sells dairy products past their “sell-by” dates
hoping customers won’t notice.
Who among us has never wondered about
the estimate the mechanic has just given us
for our car to be repaired?

Paul teaches us to be transformed
by the renewing of our minds,
and we need to transform our approach to business
to squeeze greed out
and put ethical behavior back in.

Contrary to the popular belief,
businesses are not run to make a profit.
The business executive who says
the sole responsibility he has
is to maximize profit for his shareholders
is guilty of bad economics
and bad business management.

That’s not just my opinion;
that’s what the dean of business writers,
the great teacher and scholar Peter Drucker
taught throughout his lengthy career.
Profit is never the goal;
It is the result of well-run business.
A business should have as its focus
the production of a product
or the provision a service.
Do it well and efficiently,
and the company will be profitable,
a result of its focus on its core business.
The business that makes profit its goal,
has made greed its goal.
It may be successful,
but it probably won’t last long.
(The Practice of Management)

Drucker also taught that
the wise and responsible business executive
understands that his business is part of the larger society,
larger community, and so has responsibilities
to customers, suppliers, workers,
and the community within which it operates.

As disciples of Jesus Christ, we understand
that we are to take our faith into the workplace,
take our faith not to convert the worker in the next cubicle
but to bring honest, ethical,
responsible and faithful behavior into the workplace.
As disciples of Jesus Christ
we know that in addition to the annual review
we get from our supervisors,
there will come a day when
we will have another review,
a life’s review,
when we stand before our Lord.
We don’t have to give up climbing the ladder of success,
or working to make a larger paycheck.
We just have to remember who we are really working for.

If it is a profitable life we want,
then all we have to do is look to the Word to guide us,
and then we will learn,
“not to set our hopes on the uncertainty of riches,
but rather on God
who richly provides us with everything
for our enjoyment….
[so that we can] ... do good,
be rich in good works,
generous, and ready to share…
that [we] may take hold of life
that really is life.”
(1 Timothy 6:17ff)
That...
is the Word of the Lord.
AMEN