NEVER ENOUGH

In the Gospel reading for this Sunday, August 3, Jesus warns his followers to “avoid any kind of greed.”  I'd like to share with you a reflection that may bring this Sunday’s message close to home.

Do you remember the scene from the movie version of the musical "Oliver!"

where young Oliver is holding out his empty bowl and speaking for a hundred hungry orphans, as he asks from “More?” This is a poignant and powerful portrait of the human condition. There's something about us that is always left unsatisfied. We're forever seeking and striving as if answering some inner voice that keeps nagging, “There’s more!” 

No matter how much we have, our insatiable yearning soon returns. This constant incompleteness is the source of our greatness: all human creativity, all ambition and our accomplishments are a response to this built-in urge to complete ourselves. 

Our attraction to “more” is also however, at the root of one of the major vices in the New Testament: Greed. The Greek word is pleonexia, the word that Jesus uses in the gospel reading today.  Usually translated “covetousness,” or “greed,” pleonexia is a combination of pleos, “more,” and exo, “have.” The underlying idea is “wanting more,” or, maybe better, "being addicted to 'more.'" 

Pleonexia makes it onto several New Testament lists of nasty habits. The long litany of pagan vices at the beginning of Romans, for instance, includes “every form of wickedness, evil, greed (pleonexia), and malice;… envy, murder, treachery and spite. (Rom 1:29)”   In Ephesians it's on a short list of sins that are particularly contrary to the Christian ideal: “Immorality or any impurity or greed (pleonexia) must not even be mentioned among you, as is fitting among holy ones (Eph 5:3).”

Augustine of Hippo (354 -430 AD)

St. Augustine, with typically brilliant insight, reveals why pleonexia is so deeply rooted in us. For him, all human hungers and all our yearnings of whatever kind are simply different facets of one single deep, inborn desire: the desire for God. For him, pleonexia is one of countless misguided versions of our thirst for God. If Augustine is right, then we don't need to suppress our need for "more" -- in fact, we couldn't even if we wanted to! But what we need to do is to work at keeping our desires directed to their true object. Instead of letting created things be the center of our longing, we try to keep our eyes on God. St. Paul once wrote, "If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.(Col. 3:1-2)" 

This may be a lot easier said than done. One place to start, though, is with the advice in the last sentence from Colossians: "Think of what is above." I know how easily my mind can get filled with concerns about class preparations, ,……., I know how easy it can be -  even in a monastery - to forget what life is ultimately about. 

Our materialistic consumer culture has made pleonexia  into a major religion. Every Sunday practitioners of pleonexia flock not to churches but to shopping malls. They devote hours a day meditating on the offerings on Ebay. In an economy that depends on ever-increasing consumer spending, pleonexia is not a vice but a virtue. Human happiness, we're told, depends on our buying more and more stuff, and consuming more and more goods and services. But no one seems to notice the built-in paradox: no matter how much we have, none of these ever brings final satisfaction-- they always leave us standing barefoot like young Oliver, empty bowl outstretched, still needing "more," wanting “more,” and looking for "more." Our culture accepts this and our economy depends on it.

A century before St. Augustine, the early monastics of the Egyptian desert had another insight into our constant need for more. They realized that once you put God at the center, you stop needing more and more, and in fact, require less and less. Living in caves or simple huts and owning nothing, they got to the point of going without food for days at a time. St. Francis of Assisi, too, turned pleonexia on its head and refused to own anything. 

These extreme examples can be more than just quaint studies in fanaticism. They can be jarring reminders to us Christians who live in a culture that praises pleonexia.  

Their message is a bedrock truth of spirituality for any Christian, from the parent with a house full of children, to the cloistered nun with a vow of poverty, once God truly becomes the center of your life, you need less and less of what the world has to offer in order to be truly content. 

The constant search for created things that preoccupies so many other people doesn't hold any attraction any more. My longings are now aligned in one single direction -- I'm hungry all the time for God.