Credit Card Wisdom

Homily for the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A
I hate to ignore people, or things, but sometimes, I just have to. Take the mail, for instance. Each day, as I go through my stack of mail, there are always some letters or envelopes that I ignore. Nothing from a parishioner, of course, or a friend, or anything to do with my role as pastor. But it seems that every day, without fail, the mail comes with something that I have deemed worthy of ignoring; and the most often culprit: the offer of a new credit card. I am perfectly skilled at sending these credit card offers directly to the trash can – a perfect plot to ignore something that I don’t need. And it’s not just in the mail. My ears and brain have been pretty thoroughly trained to ignore – or tune out – credit card commercials on TV. But this week, something happened.

This week, about half-way through my usual ignoring of a credit card commercial, something caught my ear. This is what I heard the voice in the commercial say: “We are a nation of consumers. And there’s nothing wrong with that. After all, there’s a lot of cool stuff out there. The trouble is, there's so much cool stuff, it’s easy to get carried away. If that happens, this material world of ours can stop being wonderful and start getting stressful.” By this point, I am riveted; this is no ordinary credit card commercial. In fact, parts of it sound an awful lot like the Christian gospel. The voice goes on: “But what if a credit card company recognized that. What if they admitted that there is a time to spend and a time to save. What if instead of encouraging us to spend more, they actually helped us to spend smarter. Maybe then we could have a better quality of life and be in a better financial position while we're living it. We could have less debt and more fun.” My skill of ignoring credit card mailings and commercials had hit an obstacle. Who knew that the advertising department of a major credit card company had been reading the Book of Ecclesiastes and the First Book of Kings. Clearly, they want to help us be like Solomon.

Now, it’s not a perfect comparison, but it’s worth thinking about. God tells Solomon that he will give him whatever he desires. There is so much cool stuff out there, and we consumers are naturally attracted to it. Imagine – we could have whatever we wanted – it would be so easy to get carried away which, according to the commercial, would lead us into credit card debt; or, according to the Bible, would lead us into idolatry. But remember what Solomon asks for – not riches, not victory in battle, not long life – he asks for wisdom, the ability to make good choices, an understanding heart that can distinguish between right and wrong. And this is exactly what this credit card company is offering – a certain kind of wisdom, knowing when to spend and when to save, keeping us from going into debt by knowing how to make the right financial choices. This credit card company wants to help us be like Solomon, to choose wisdom first of all.

But there’s one difference. Solomon chose wisdom – and that is all he chose. For most of us, our downfall is that we might try to develop wisdom first, but then ignore that wisdom in order to satisfy every desire, to accumulate all the things that we think will make us happy. The difference between the credit card commercial and the gospel is that the commercial sees wisdom as a means to another end – the goal of personal gratification. But the gospel sees wisdom as the one pearl of great price – as that one thing that we are willing to give everything we have to gain. For us Christians, wisdom is the goal. And if we have wisdom, then there is nothing else that we need.