On my recent vacation, I spent six enjoyable days in Lyon, France. The only challenge was that I speak only a few words of French. Thankfully, I was traveling with others who could speak better French than I. As I tried to navigate my way through a foreign culture without speaking the native language, I noticed a pattern. When I needed to order a croissant by myself in a boulangerie or say something more than bonjour, I would become anxious because I needed to find a way to communicate. And so, I would resort to the few stock phrases I knew, most of which are centered in the first person. Je ne parle pas français. “I don’t speak French.” Admittedly, that’s not a very helpful thing to say, especially if the other person doesn’t speak English, and it’s a bit strange to say you don’t speak French in French. But I did it. When I was pressed to speak with a native French speaker, I always spoke as if I were traveling alone. Even if I was with another person, I would use the first person singular, not first person plural, and this seemed to be prompted by anxiety. When put on the spot, I focused on myself.
As enjoyable as traveling in a foreign country can be, if you don’t speak the native language, it can be a lonely experience. But there was a solution to the linguistic loneliness I encountered, and it involved shifting into the second person. Parlez-vous anglais? If I was lucky, my interlocutor would respond, oui. And then, I could mercifully continue the conversation in English. When I acknowledged that someone else was in the picture, things usually turned out much better for me.
The rich man in today’s Gospel parable seems only aware of the first person singular. Consider his self-consumed monologue. The rich man speaks only to and within himself. He becomes so turned in on himself that he resorts to addressing his soul as if it were another person. This is the closest he comes to using the second person. Otherwise, it’s as if the rich man is the only character on the scene.
In the Christian tradition, there’s a theological phrase that speaks to this condition: incurvatus in se, or “curved in on oneself.” This is the condition when a person becomes so turned inwards on herself that she becomes a little world unto herself. No one else is in the picture. Everything is about her. The self is all that matters. The self is worshipped in place of God.
This is the world of the rich man in Jesus’s parable: incurvatus in se. Visually, we might imagine him as a rattlesnake coiled up so that the eyes are staring at the rattle. But outside this enclosed, narcissistic world, there’s another world that’s so much larger. The man simply can’t see it.
Anxiety and fear are the primary emotions roiling around in the pitiably distorted world of the rich man. And this is rather unusual if you read the parable closely. After all, we’re told that the man has every reason to be happy and grateful. But he seems to be neither. His land has produced a huge bumper crop, which should be cause for rejoicing. If the rich man were healthy enough to stand up straight, he would be able to see that there’s much more to the picture than his own emotions and concerns.
But the rich man is only capable of speaking in the first person singular. He’s apparently unaware of how to address anyone in the second person, except for his own soul. His conversation begins a vicious cycle of narcissism. What starts as a gift—the bumper crop, that is—is immediately turned into a problem by the rich man. “What should I do?” the man asks. Turning more and more inwards on himself, he begins to ask himself questions. He needles a blessing into a curse. There’s a problem, and because he seems to be the only person in the picture of this drama, he must search for the answers within himself. The end goal is clear: with a proper solution, he can rest content, be at ease, and have no more troubles. This is the purpose of the man’s worries: moving to a place of ease so that he can enjoy a long, sated life.
But perhaps we shouldn’t be too hard on the rich man. Can’t we identify with his worries? Which of us has not been sucked into a cesspool of worrying from time to time? Worrying takes a kernel of something that could be potentially bad or, in the case of the rich man, actually good, and needles it until it becomes a massive problem to be solved. Worrying, after all, usually only knows how to speak in the first person singular.
And just when the rich man’s internal monologue is the most acutely self-centered, another voice enters, unbidden and carrying judgment. God speaks. God interrupts the self-consumed cycle of the rich man’s planning and worrying with a loud call in the second person. What the rich man can’t see is that his life might not last past the present day. He can’t see that his life doesn’t even belong to him.
Although God doesn’t say it in Jesus’s parable, we might imagine what God could say in the second person to the rich man after calling him a fool. Can’t you see, you fool, that the solutions to your self-created problems are right before your eyes? Don’t you have a neighbor with barns to loan for your bumper crop? Isn’t there a hungry neighbor who could benefit from your abundant harvest? Isn’t there another farmer who might have advice for your so-called problem? Don’t you know, rich man, that your abundant harvest is a beautiful gift from me?
It’s a bit difficult to find fault with the rich man because his internal monologue probably seems all too familiar. We excuse worrying by justifying it as concern for another, but is it always really so? We worry about a loved one’s well-being, but is the real worry about how their misfortune will affect us? Some worry about their children and keep them on a tight leash, but is this for their well-being or because they’re too afraid to let go? Others worry about having enough savings for the future or enough money for college tuition, but is this really proactive, constructive worry or a lack of trust in God? Which of us has not experienced the vastness of God’s abundance in our lives and yet made it into a problem?
Which of us with a bumper crop of savings in the bank and a decent pension plan has not obsessively worried about whether a deeply unstable economy will have enough barns to hold it? Which of us has not tasted the rich man’s delectable vision of storing up material goods for the future to ensure a retired life of ease? How many times have we continued to hold our extensive, anxiety-ridden conversations only in the first person singular?
The language of the Christian life is perpetually reminding us that it has little to do with the first person singular. From the rites of baptism and marriage to the dialogues of the Mass, we speak constantly in the first person plural or the second person. Any purported Christian who lives, breathes, and speaks only in the first person singular is not really a Christian.
The first person plural or the second person language of our faith is why we show up here each Sunday. There’s no such thing as being a follower of Jesus in isolation. There can be no such thing as planning for a life of ease funded by our abundant store of resources while others starve and thirst. As Christians, we can never dare to talk about my money or my life. None of what we have belongs to us. It all belongs to God.
The great tragedy of the rich man’s story is that all the answers were in front of his eyes. God was always in the picture, although the rich man couldn’t see it. The man couldn’t see that his abundant gift from God was not a motivation towards anxious resourcefulness but a call to peaceful generosity. The rich man couldn’t see that there was anyone else in the picture but himself.
We are never alone in the picture of our lives. God, of course, is always on the scene, prompting us, encouraging us, convicting us, forgiving us, and guiding us. When one person doesn’t have enough, it’s because we are only speaking in the first person singular. Our lives are shared lives within a fellowship of people. And even when it seems like there will never be enough to go around, God has always given us enough.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
July 31, 2022