Gospel of Terror
You thought I was going to talk about Islamic terrorism, didn’t you? Sorry—I’m thinking rather of the Gospel of Mark, the verses from chapter 9 which all Catholics heard read at Mass today. They include the warning that it would be better to have a millstone fixed round one’s neck and be cast into the sea than “to cause one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,” as the more recent translations say. This is followed by some of the most dire and most disturbing warnings uttered by Our Lord: “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off…” (The priest who read it today described this as “the Long John Silver Gospel”—hook, peg-leg, eyepatch).
Nothing but the lassitude of habit can account for ability of anyone who believes these words to hear them without fear. It is possible, though, since the sin warned against is not named very precisely, to believe that they don’t at the moment apply to oneself. Less easily evaded, perhaps, is the warning in the Epistle of James (chapter 5), also in today’s readings: “Come now, you rich, weep and wail over your impending miseries…You have lived on the earth in luxury and pleasure; you have fattened your hearts for the day of slaughter.”
I live in a small town which became fashionable some years ago. Well-to-do and downright rich people have moved in, driven property values through the roof, and in general tried to turn it into a quaint little museum. It’s irksome to feel that they look down on those of us of modest means. (My wife grew up here, and it more than irks her.) It’s tempting to me to rail against “the rich.” But I usually bite my tongue, remembering that in relation to most of the world I am the rich. This is true for all but the poorest Americans.
We can and do argue, at length and inconclusively, about why and how such a gross disparity in wealth came to be, and who is culpable for it. Assigning blame is always pleasant and comforting. And the whole passage from James above includes a stern rebuke for those who defraud workers, which is probably not something that most of us do on a regular basis. Here’s the whole passage, in the King James version, which I prefer, although the later translations make that fifth verse more intelligible (and more scary):
1 Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.
2 Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.
3 Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.
4 Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.
5 Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter.
6 Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.
But it seems to me that it’s not only oppression that’s condemned here—there is also a warning against wealth itself, against “liv[ing] in pleasure on the earth.” Those of us who live in the industrialized world don’t have to be rich by the standards of our own society to immerse ourselves in pleasure and comfort. We dare not assume that these warnings don’t apply to us as well as to those still wealthier, to whom we would prefer that God direct his attention.
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