Freed From the Grip of Utter Distraction

I was supposed to be successful.  In my family of origin that meant making a lot of money.  Or entering a prestigious profession that would make a lot of money, or at least be a tribute to the family (mainly my father).  When I was a geology major, that somewhat satisfied his expectations.  It held the possibility that maybe I’d strike it rich.  Find the loadstone of wealth.  Dad knew that there was rumor of oil or natural gas, maybe coal, under our farmland in West Virginia.

It was many years later, through my cousin in Bethany, WV, that I heard back that the ministry did not at all meet Dad’s expectations for me.  I was somewhat of a failure in a profession with little earning potential.

He’d made his millions in real estate and dentistry but that was not my path.

As the poet Robert Frost mused, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

Amos, in our appointed reading for this Sunday, rails against the greedy obsession with wealth and power.  All a great distraction from what really counts. 

“Ah, you that turn justice to wormwood, and bring righteousness to the ground!  They hate the one who reproves in the gate, and they abhor the one who speaks the truth.  Therefore, because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.  For I know how many are your transgressions and how great are your sins – you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate.” [1]

It shall all come to naught.  We read every morning in our papers of those who plunder the public purse and trust.  We see them on the 6 o’clock news.  Just the other day 71 co-conspirators were snared in Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s net. 

Here in Los Angeles, the U.S. Attorney General has rounded up 68 defendants, associated with the Peckerwoods, a White supremacist gang operating at the behest of the Arian Brotherhood, a group behind bars.  All is for sale – drugs, trafficked girls, guns, stolen goods – whatever.

Amos urges a better path.  “Seek good and not evil, that you may live…Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.”

Again, the Psalmist also urges a rethinking of priorities.

“So, teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.”[2]

Yes, so often our priorities are all wrong.  Sometimes we were off the track right from the start.  Other times, it’s the lure of the empire’s glitter that has led us astray.

As Dante begins his poem, The Inferno — “In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost…I cannot rightly say how I entered it.  I was so full of sleep, at that point where I abandoned the true way…”

Sometimes — so full of sleep.  Sometimes — so full of our own selves.  Sometimes — so full of all the baubles the world dangles before our eyes.

Perhaps this was the condition of the “Rich Young Man” who approaches Jesus seeking the path to salvation.

When he attests to his life of righteousness, Jesus responds, “You lack one thing…”  When told that he had to give up his obsession with wealth, he went away sorrowful.

You know the rest of the conversation: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” 

For this fellow, money has been that distraction from the “true path” of Dante’s poem.

It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil.  There’s much evidence here.  When one of our Progressive Christians United supporters tried to insinuate himself, attempting to hijack, one of our major grants, our director Peter Laarman advised, “John, when there’s a lot of money on the table, even your friends will behave strangely.”  More evidence.  Sad but true.

In the N.Y. Times last Wednesday there was a glaring example of such avarice in the U.N.  A high-placed official, Mr. Vanshelboim, the Ukrainian director of the U.N. sustainable infrastructure impact investments program.[3]

He met a Brit at a party one evening and steered the entire portfolio of his agency to the guy to invest.  This U.N. dupe got some millions in gifts – among assorted goodies, a new Mercedes, free loans, home repairs and a $1.2 million sponsorship for his budding tennis-playing son Erik – all this from his new best friend forever.   And the U.N.?  It got a song about an ocean.  And…and, the $58 million portfolio disappeared into someone’s wallet.  Still to be recovered.  As President Obama frequently quips, “You can’t make this stuff up!”

As Peter Laarman warned, “Even your best friends will behave strangely when there’s a lot of money on the table.  Let alone, your new BFF you just met at a party.

Joerg Rieger makes clear the conflict between Christ and the world.  The instant one confesses that Jesus is Lord, one, in the same breath, then denies that Caesar and his empire have any divine claim on one’s soul.[4]  Caesar is not the Lord! — one of Caesar’s claimed titles.  Anything, anyone worshiped other than Christ is an idol which will eat your soul…or least, be an utter distraction to what truly is life-enhancing.

Empires in lands of autocracy are pretty easy to discern.  Their demand is: bow the knee and shut up a whole lot and you’ll survive.  Otherwise, it’s the gulag, torture or you just might disappear.  Like Navalny.

In a free society, empire is a much more subtle thing.  Those “powers and principalities” Paul subordinates to Christ may be convention, peer pressure, the enthroned ideas and prejudices between your two ears.   It is whatever distracts you from the mission of the Jesus Movement to justice, equity, freedom and peace. 

It is the “Yes, but” of your inner deliberations that leads one off the true path in the dark of the wood.  It is the self-censorship that temporizes the truth, the temptation to cut corners.

Love of money is definitely at the root of much of idolatry.   But the obsession can also be a metaphor, a token, for whatever has its talons gripping our hearts.

How to free ourselves?  As both H. Richard Niebuhr[5] and Joerg Rieger admit that we all, being fallible humans, make compromises here.

What I find is when I immerse myself in the justice work of the Movement, the compulsion of utter distractions – whatever the siren call – loses some of its grip.

Hal Johnson’s gospel hymn lifts the spirit, “When I’m feeding the poor – I’m serving my Master.  When I’m feeding the poor — I’m serving the Master; ain’t got time to die.”

Just get over yourself.  And the noise in your head.

Ego is the great noise factory for most of us.  And it can lead to astounding disappointment.

Self-absorption is part of what led to the downfall of Hillary Clinton in 2016.  Smug, she thought the election was in the bag as the final months approached.  Thought her wealthy fund raisers had closed the deal.

Not so!  As my mother would say, “Pride goeth before a fall.”

Yes, money can be a distracting, all-consuming idol, BUT, on the other hand it is essential to have enough to live, to send your kids to school and to have a decent retirement with dignity.

I learned from my ministry in the Pico-Union neighborhood of Los Angeles from those I served that poverty is no disgrace, just damned inconvenient.

This is where unions are essential.  They are about (for the most part) a fair, living wage, worker dignity and enough left over for one’s old age.

Working for worker’s rights IS working for the Master – building the Kingdom of Justice.

This we neglect to our peril.  That is what Hillary discovered in 2016.  In his article, “The Worker Revolt,” Eyal Press lists failure after failure of her benighted campaign.[6]  When it came to supporting the blue-color, non-college workers’ agenda, she had a tin ear.

My son Christopher is right.  To win these folks’ votes, one has only to produce for the working class – a living wage, respect, decent health care, good schools, good housing, dignity in old age – you know the drill.  And LISTEN.  Just evidence some respect by showing up and listening.  Get over yourself and listen.

That was not so much the case with Hillary.  “She didn’t visit a single union hall in Michigan or Wisconsin after she became the nominee, in 2016.”  Even when her top staff was telling her to get herself out there!  

One worker on the rope line at a rally in Pennsylvania had to shout to get her attention.  As he stood there in his union shirt, she just passed him by.  Didn’t take his outstretched hand.

“’Hey, Hillary,’ he called out, prompting her to turn around.  “I’m the union president—we really need your help.”  He remembers her saying, curtly, ‘Oh, I will help,’ then leaving.”[7]  She did not get his vote.

While she cavalierly dismissed the Other Guy’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables,” he was crisscrossing the Rust Belt with rally after rally.[8]

Sad to say, it didn’t have to be this way.  Take this as a parable.  Might we all pray that we number our days so that we gain a heart of wisdom.

Yes, self-importance, conceit, ambition, control – they can all be every bit as deadly distractions as money, sex, fame and power – those tokens of empire we so often bow the knee to.  You know the “seven deadlies.”

I find my freedom in listening to the Spirit, surrounding myself with others who have my best interests at heart — AND THEN, getting to work. 

Invest yourselves in others, especially the “Least of These,” and you, too, will find obsession with the unimportant waning – and refreshing Gospel Goodness flooding in.  Life abundant.  Amen.

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[1] Amos 5:7, 10-12, 14-15, NRSV.

[2] Psalm 90:12, NRSV.

[3] David A. Fahrenthold and Farnaz Fassihi, “He Got Millions and the U.N. Got a Song About the Ocean, New York Times, October 9, 2024.

[4] Joerg Rieger, Christ and Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007. 34-35.

[5] H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1951).

[6] Eyal Press, The Worker Revolt, The New Yorker, October 7, 2024, p19.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

October 13, 2024
21 Pentecost, Proper 19

Genesis 2:18-24; Psalm 8;Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-17; Mark 10:2-16

“Freed From the Grip of Utter Distraction”