"Greed" always comes off like such a harsh term. In our present day and age, the term "greed" is usually prefaced with the term "corporate"... In the media we always hear about companies like Enron that have bilked ordinary citizens out of collective billions of dollars. Last time I was standing before you, we played word association with "Samaritan". What do you immediately tend to think? "Samaritan? Oh, good." Now if we were to play word association with "greed", one might think "oh, corporate." Or "lawyer".

Either way, the idea of greed is comfortably distant from the ordinary citizens that companies exploit. It is a vice belonging to these non-human entities, or some anonymous band behind them called "shareholders", whoever those are. But it is certainly not us, the ordinary, decent, hardworking taxpayer.

Generally, we prefer terms like "fiscally responsible" or "enlightened self-interest". After all, we are ordinary, decent, hardworking taxpayers (though not too many taxes, thankyouverymuch). We don't ask for much, just what we've worked for. We want what we're owed and we want what's fair.

So did the man in the crowd that spoke to Jesus. He just wanted his fair share of the family inheritance, and I'm sure that no one here would deny him what was just and fair. Yet when asked to arbitrate, no doubt on account of His growing renown as a rabbi of great integrity and wisdom, Jesus not only refuses to on practical grounds - being that family arbitration is not His job - but He goes on to give a rather puzzling admonition against greed. He tells the man that life is not filled by having lots of things, lots of money or possessions or other signs of comfort and wealth.

This warning by Jesus, which goes so far as to tell a story about rich man who tries to save up his wealth but finds himself dead the next day, seems puzzling because the man from the crowd isn't asking anything we would consider wrong. If anything, he's asking for something good, that is, justice and fairness. Why, then, would Jesus give him such a warning?

As much as we might not care to admit it, "self-interest", enlightened or otherwise, has entered into the fabric of our society as a value taken for granted. Of course you have to look out for yourself first. This doesn't mean you don't help other people, but you have to keep number one in mind and make sure you're not taken advantage of. We just accept this as the natural ordering of things, and don't look to analyze it too deeply.

There are, every now and then, a few souls with the courage to take a long, hard look at these assumptions and then go on to make the plain statement that has long been taken for granted. One of these individuals was Ayn Rand, a capitalist philosopher who lived from 1905 to 1982, for whom the most formative experience of her life was being a refugee from Communist Russia. However chilling one finds what she says, one at least has to respect the fact that she had the courage to understand and accept the ramifications of the assumptions that motivate our society.

The core of her philosophy was the idea that selfishness is the primary moral virtue, and that it's opposite, selflessness, was immoral and outright evil. "If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject," she recommends. Defining her terms, she states "The basic principle of altruism is that man has no right to exist for his own sake, that service to others is the only justification of his existence, and that self-sacrifice is his highest moral duty, virtue and value." Going on, "Do not confuse altruism with kindness, good will or respect for the rights of others. These are not primaries, but consequences, which, in fact, altruism makes impossible. The irreducible primary of altruism, the basic absolute, is self-sacrifice - which means: self-immolation, self-abnegation, self-denial, self-destruction - which means: the self as a standard of evil, the selfless as a standard of the good."

As if in direct response to Jesus' admonition that love of money is the root of all evil, Rand insists that "Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips, and guns - or gold. Take your choice - there is no other..."

And as if in direct response to the Christian ethic of sacrificial love and humble serve to our fellow human beings, "It only stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master."

"My philosophy..." she tells us, "is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

And quite a lot of deeply philosophical talk it is. But we don't have to look very far to see the example of these beliefs in practice, especially amongst those who don't know it is her beliefs they are practicing. The official line regarding the Alberta Advantage is that the hard-work and determination of rugged individuals built this province into the debt-free economic powerhouse that it is today. Envious of our created wealth, talk of social responsibility - usually from easterners, the poor, the sick, the aged and the students - is not a call to generously help our fellow human beings, but rather the reach of grubby paws into our wallets, looking to take advantage of us. It matters little that our affluence is a consequence of settlers accidentally finding a patch of land with some oil underneath it, jealously guarded with unregistered pistol in hand, without which Alberta would be the Newfoundland of the West, riddled with mad cow, desertification and untapped tourism potential because of our government's poverty.

But enough about selfishness. We might also speak of the economy... That ethereal, hard-to-define "thing" - nearly divine - that we are all apparently beholden to helping. Whatever helps the economy is the last word in any discussion and taken for granted as the political platform of every party. In short, one might define this "economy" as the process of us buying things so that there is enough money around for people to have jobs so that they can buy things. Of course we need a degree of production so that we can at least eat and wear clothes and sleep under shelter (and God knows how people survived before Adam Smith and Henry Ford made our labour so specialized and efficient). But what of this "economy" thing? What is its true cost?

1920's Harvard economist Thomas Nixon Carter gave us the following dreadful portent of the future that promised less "hard-work and determination": "It is quite possible that increased leisure would be spent in the cultivation of the arts and graces of life; in visiting museums, libraries and art galleries, or hikes, games and inexpensive amusements... it would decrease the desire for material goods. If it should result in more gardening, more work around the home in making and repairing furniture... and other useful avocations it would cut down the demand for the products of our wage paying industries..."

Victor Lebow, another economist, speaks even more frightfully - and this time I'm not being facetious - of the requirements in maintaining America's post-World War II economic boom: "Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and using of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction in consumption..." Again, take a look around you, at the mall and the billboards and the television commercials, the product placement on everything from the evening news to cattle horns in India, to corporate sponsorship of the arts and arts that look more like advertising, to our monthly buy-something days and the great high festival of consumerism every December, and ask if consumption hasn't become our way of life, our dominant cultural value, and even our religion.

It isn't so shocking. Paul isn't the only one saying that the way of greed and the way of Christ are incompatible. Ayn Rand also stated that "Since time immemorial and pre-industrial, 'greed' has been the accusation hurled at the rich by the concrete-bound illiterates who were unable to conceive of the source of wealth or of the motivation of those who produce it." That takes care of pretty well all the Apostles and Jesus Himself. When speaking of Christianity, Rand, who was an avowed atheist, expressed her contempt by saying that it was ultimate form of evil because it KNEW selfishness to be a virtue and persisted in preaching against it. Finally she was driven to declare "THE CONCEPT OF GOD IS DEGRADING TO A MAN"

Some philosophers come frighteningly close to getting it right, but just as they draw close, they run off and draw the totally wrong conclusions. Rand was right in that the way of greed, selfishness and competition which constitutes the prime values of our society is incompatible with the way of life Christ taught us. She just went in the wrong direction by preferring greed, selfishness and competition. These are the ways of an old world, an old way of being, that hasn't worked for 10,000 years, and shows no signs that it is going to work or "save us" in any way, shape or form in the future, despite the promissory notes of politicians and economists.

Fundamentally, the Christian faith is about relationships... Being in rightly lived, reconciled relationships with God, each other and Creation. And at the core of this reconciliation is sacrifice. It was through God sacrificing His heavenly glory that He became incarnate in Jesus to teach us and lead us in this new, reconciled way of being. And what comprises this reconciled way of being? As He taught us through word and example, it is to live with generosity and sacrificial concern for the well-being of others. It is to be forgiving, with generosity of spirit, to let go of the offenses of others against us and too offend others only as necessary to provoke them to reconciliation themselves. It is to be willing to endure suffering and injustice without looking for revenge or forsaking justice ourselves. It is to be willing to let go of and sacrifice this life to keep our eyes on the things above.

Our reconciliation through sacrifice became most clear when Jesus was nailed to the cross and lain in the tomb. In our human finitude and alienation, we were powerless and even unwilling to reconcile ourselves to God. So God did the most selfless thing by incorporating us into Christ in our Baptisms, so that He may endure the consequences of all our powerlessness and alienation in our stead. He abnegated Himself, suffering everything including Hell, so that ultimately in God's love and power we could be raised along with Him into unity with God. This is what Bonhoeffer referred to as "costly grace", which is costly because it cost the life of Christ, but grace because it raises us with Christ into new life. There is no relationship worth having that does not require selflessness and sacrifice.

If, when we consider the selflessness and sacrifice required of genuine relationships, we think of exploitation and masters and slaves, suspecting everyone else of wanting to be master over us, then in reality, we are enslaved to fear... Fear of being vulnerable, fear of being taken advantage of, fear of losing our identity. Ultimately, it is fear and insecurity that is at the heart of all selfishness, and the conquering of fear by love that is at the heart of all selflessness.

So in being called to this new life through Baptism into Christ, we are also called to put away the old life and all its selfishness. We are to put to death the idol created out of our own ego and desires, and in so doing put to death our selfish desire for things and money, which is greed. We are also called to put to death our selfish desire that uses other people for our own physical pleasure, which is fornication, for our own insatiable and self-damaging wants, which is impurity, and for disordered passions which would put our lesser goals above the God's goal of reconciliation. Even anger, wrath, malice, slander and abusive language selfishly place ourselves as an idol, because they put our sense of offense at the centre. We are angry, wrathful and malicious, slanderous and abusive because we greedily hold on to our sense of entitlement or our ambition. We may feel that we are entitled to an apology or to revenge, or to whatever concoction we affix the label of "justice" to. Or we ambitiously seek our own advantage, and think that by stepping over others by gossip and insults we can climb whatever ladder we wish to or are told to.

Those are the things of the old life, of fear and insecurity. Put away ambition and seek the peace of reconciliation's simplicity. Put away entitlement and seek the peace of reconciliation's forgiveness and mercy. Put away selfish ego and desires and seek the peace of reconciliation's promise that we shall find true identity and fulfillment in relationship. Be rich toward God by experiencing what can only be experienced in selflessness, the unity in which there are no men or women, slaves or free, Goths or "normals", rich or poor, barbarians or civilized, the religious "in" and the religious "out". Be lead by cords of human kindness and bands of love, never forgetting and never returning to the Baals, the idols, of self and wealth and ambition which would destroy us by the sword, consuming and devouring us.

To quote thinker Mark Burch, "Mature Civilizations after having sufficiently provided necessities of life turn their energies to higher goals: spiritual development, learning, art, the promotion of justice and peace and cultural development. Any society that simply goes on to produce more and more of what it already has [too much of] is stuck in a kind of perpetual cultural immaturity." That mature civilization sounds a lot better to me than the kind of world built and judged by abundance of possessions.

Amen.