Gray hair, swimming pools, Florida, and
pickle ball tournaments. This is what comes to mind whenever the word
“retirement” is mentioned.
But is this how we should envision
retirement?
Jeff Haanen, CEO and founder of Denver
Institute for Faith and Work, has reflected on this question. He notes that we
spend a good part of our working lives preparing financially for retirement.
But seldom do we prepare for the non-financial aspects of retirement. The idea
that people should work for thirty or forty years and then spend the remaining
twenty or even thirty years at the beach is not an especially inspiring one. To
be sure, most hard working people sense a need for rest after retirement. And
that need is legitimate. But they also sense the emptiness of the “life’s a
beach” paradigm.
Interestingly, there’s no biblical
category for retirement. On the contrary, the Bible gives us the distinct
impression that the most productive years of a person’s life begin in old age.
Consider Abraham, who left Haran for the great adventure of faith to which God
called him when he was seventy-five years old (Gen. 12:4). Or consider Moses
and his brother Aaron. Moses was eighty and Aaron was eighty-three when they
first spoke to Pharoah about their fellow Israelites, enslaved in Egypt (Exodus
7:7). Later Joshua led the Israelites into the promised land when he was a mere
seventy or eighty years old!
Even if we make allowances for
exaggerations of age in the Old Testament, the message is abundantly clear.
These persons were their most productive in their twilight years. There’s an
old saying that rings true in their case: for the fool, old age is a winter;
for the wise, a harvest.
Our gospel lesson contains a parable
about a fool, a very rich one, to be precise. He is a successful entrepreneur.
He applied himself to his business, amassed wealth for himself, and at the end
found himself in a rather enviable position. After looking at the books, he
comes to the realization that he no longer needs to work to make a living. He
can take an early retirement.
At this point, someone might ask:
“What’s wrong with that?” “If he didn’t lie, cheat, or steal to amass his
wealth, why should we begrudge him his success? He worked hard for what he has.
Should he not be rewarded for his labors? Isn’t there a Proverb in the Bible
that praises the hand of the diligent, which maketh rich?” (Prov. 10:4).
Bible student Chelsea Harmon is right
in saying that if that rich farmer was alive today, he might have won an award
from the chamber of commerce. And we would likely find ourselves uncomfortable
challenging the man about his right to an early retirement. We are an affluent
people very much concerned about our retirement plans, and about enjoying what
we deserve through our “work,” having earned a little heaven on earth, as we’ve
already mentioned.
It’s important to note that the Bible
nowhere condemns wealth as such. It’s not money that is the root of all evil,
but rather the love of money. It’s not wealth itself that is at issue in the
parable; it’s one’s attitude towards wealth. How do we regard what God has
given us? Does it serve us, or do we serve it? Jesus recognized the power that
money can wield when he warned elsewhere that we cannot serve two masters. We
must choose either God or money, and not both.
The man in the parable goes astray, not
in amassing wealth, but in hoarding it.
When he realized that the abundant yield exceeded his storage capacity, he
thought to himself: what should I do?
Note the first person language in what
follows: “I have no place for my crops…I will build larger barns
to store all my grain and my goods.” It’s all about “me” and “my”
and “mine.” He’s evidently not interested in sharing his abundance with others,
but in keeping it for himself.
Note also that he’s consulting only
with himself. The original language brings this out more clearly than our
translation. The word that occurs here actually means to “discuss” or to
“debate.” Now these two activities assume
at least two or more persons. One cannot discuss a matter with oneself. And one
can hold a debate in one’s head only by imagining another who takes the
opposing view.
The soliloquy
here is not sad, but pitiful. This wealthy, self-made man has arrived; he’s
made it. All his dreams have come true. All he needs now is an audience for his
arrival speech. But who is there? Family? Friends? There is no mention of them.
Who will share in his joy?
Elsewhere in
Luke’s gospel, the father in the parable of the prodigal son had a community
ready to share in his joy on the return of his son. And the shepherd and the
woman call their friends and neighbors to share in their joy over the recovered
sheep and coin. These people have a community around them. But this man? He
holds only a lonely dialogue with himself.
The man who
pursues wealth is often lonely. Here the figure of Scrooge, from Charles
Dickens’ novel A Christmas Carol, comes to mind. Scrooge is the lonely, bitter old man who plans to spend Christmas day by
himself counting his money. Only grudgingly does he give the day off to his
employee Bob Cratchit, who wishes to celebrate Christmas with his wife and
children.
The famous
oil tycoon John Paul Getty was one of the richest Americans who ever lived. Yet
despite all his wealth, he was filled with regrets. Having been married and
divorced five times, he said at the end of his life that he would gladly give
all his millions for one good lasting marriage.
The man who
pursues wealth for himself has misplaced priorities. His highest priority is
amassing wealth, not loving people. The teacher in Ecclesiastes observes:
“There was a man all alone; he had neither son nor brother. There was no end to
his toil, yet his eyes were not content with his wealth. “For whom am I
toiling,” he asked, “and why am I depriving my soul of what is truly
good?” This too is emptiness– a miserable business (Eccl. 4:8).
In contrast,
Jesus teaches elsewhere in Luke’s Gospel to use worldly wealth to gain friends
for ourselves, so that when it is gone, we will be welcomed into heavenly
places (Luke 16:9). This helps us to understand what Jesus means when he says
in another place not to store up treasures on earth, where moth and rust
destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but instead store up for
ourselves treasures in heaven (Matt. 6:19).
But this
makes no sense to the man whose heart is set on the pursuit of wealth. And in a
post-Christian culture, it makes no sense to many today. We tend to hoard our
possessions because we believe this life is all there is; at least that’s what
our culture conspires to impress on us.
“Relax, eat,
drink and be merry.” This is the last line of the dialogue the man holds with
himself. It sounds very much like the old saying the Apostle Paul cites in 1
Corinthians 15:32. If there is no resurrection, if this life is all there is,
then “let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
This is the
mantra that guides contemporary life in a secular world. Messages on social
media contain the word: YOLO. It’s shorthand for: “you only live once.” “Life
is short; enjoy it while you can.” There’s no sense of a future with God, and
no sense of living by the values of his Word in this now-or-never approach to
life.
We may think
that this man’s practical denial of God liberated him to live his best life
now. But in a culture in which this practical denial of God is the norm, this
is not at all the outcome. When people assume that this life is all there is,
that death is total annihilation, they place more and more emphasis on safety,
security, and risk reduction. There is a corresponding narrowing of life
This is what
author Charles Eisenstein observes in his important essay “The Coronation.” He writes that the mantra “safety first”
comes from a view of life that makes survival top priority. Correspondingly, it
depreciates other values like fun, adventure, play, and the challenging of
limits.
Other
cultures had different priorities. In his now classic work, The Continuum
Concept Jean Liedloff showed how many traditional and indigenous cultures
are far less protective of children. They allow them risks and responsibilities
that would seem outrageous to most people today. But these cultures believe
them to be necessary to teach children self-reliance and good judgment.
Eisenstein
thinks that people here retain some sense of this willingness to sacrifice
safety in order to live more fully. But in a culture that labors relentlessly
to maintain us in its systems of fear, it is difficult. For example, we have a
medical system in which the worst possible outcome, marking the physician’s
ultimate failure, is death. And yet all the while death awaits us regardless. A
life saved actually means a death postponed.
Eisenstein
continues by noting that the ultimate success of a program of “safety first” is
the triumph over death itself. Failing that, the culture will accept a
facsimile of this triumph: denial rather than conquest. Ours is a culture of
death denial. We hide away corpses, we fetishize youthfulness. Even our
obsession with money and property—extensions of the self, as the word “mine”
indicates—expresses the delusion that the impermanent self can be made
permanent through its earthly attachments.
The man in
our parable is disabused of this delusional thinking on the day when he hears
the voice of God: “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of
you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (Luke 12:20).
The person
who devotes himself to the pursuit of wealth does not seem to prepare himself
for this moment. It’s as if he sees in his wealth an indefinite extension of
his life, as Eisenstein reminds us. It’s as if he sees in wealth the power to
save him.
But this is
foolish. What happens to the one who trusts in his wealth and boasts about the
abundance of his riches? He dies, like everyone else. And he discovers that no
amount of money is ever enough to ransom his life.
And he must
leave the fruits of his toil for those who did not work for them, as the Teacher
in Ecclesiastes complains.
Elsewhere,
the Apostle Paul reminds his young protégé Timothy that we brought nothing into
this world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and
clothing, we will be content with that. Those who want to be rich, however,
fall into temptation, and are ensnared by many foolish and harmful desires,
which plunge them into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root
of all kinds of evil (1 Tim. 6:9-10).
But Christian
faith presents an alternative. It proclaims that life does not consist in the
abundance of possessions. But if not, then what does life consist in?
Our epistle
lesson helps answer this question. In it, the Apostle Paul tells us that Christ
is our life. The soul will never be satisfied with the things that are on
earth, because it was not made to be. It was made for Christ. That is why Paul
counsels us to keep our minds set on things above, where Christ is seated at
the right hand of God. When he, Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then we
also will be revealed with him in glory.
There is a
classic hymn, which I’m sure you know, which echoes these verses in Colossians
3:
Turn your
eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in
His wonderful face,
And the
things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light
of His glory and grace.
This
realization that Christ is our life changes our hearts. As a result, we no
longer see things as we once did, including how we should best spend our
retirement years, making them count for eternity.
In this connection,
Jeff Haanen, whom we mentioned at the beginning, suggests that we should see
retirement as retiring “from” something “to” something else.
He urges us
to reconceive, reimagine this phase of life in light of Christ. How should it
appear in this light, which makes everything here below appear differently?
When asked for his own re-definition of retirement, Haanen had this to say:
To retire is
to lay down our past work identities, and enter a new season of rest, renewal,
and re-engagement as elders filled with wisdom and blessing for a coming
generation.
Let that sink
in. If our retirement is guided by such a vision, then we cannot help but be
rich towards God. Amen.