Dives Inc.

A Sermon delivered to All Saints Anglican Church on September 30, 2007, based on Luke 16: 19-31

Imagine for a moment that you are living in the 1190’s in Italy – Umbria to be exact. Your father, Pietro di Bernardone, has created a financial empire and you are the young heir to this fortune. Let’s call this enterprise Dives Inc. The core business of the company is high-end Cloth Sales, mostly woolens, but also fancy silks and brocades, purchased by Pietro at the market in Champagne, France and brought back to your town with great care and at great risk –over the mountains – a distance of some 700 miles.

Now, your father is a sharp business man and he prospers and does quite well in his business. People are just beginning to have coined money, and through the course of doing business, it happens that Pietro ends up with a lot of coins, gold and silver. The old families, the landed gentry, have lots of land but very little actual coinage.

Yours is a time of turmoil. Civil war in Italy has created a situation in which a lot of the servants attached to the land have gone off to war and eventually gained their ‘free-agency’, taking their labor with them. Now there is an increased need to hire labor to work the farms of the gentry. But the gentry don’t have a lot of coins, gold or silver laying around. Most of their wealth is in the land. So they’re in a bind. As the need for ready cash increases some, of the poorer gentry end up approaching Pietro with offers to sell their farms to get needed cash. He buys up a dozen farms at a good price and begins to grow crops, and to breed horses and mules. His workers begin to make their own tack- bridles, bits, saddles, etc and later on to make carts for the animals to pull.

With every new product line, Dives Inc. rakes in the cash. Pretty soon, other small business men in the town come to ask Pietro for loans to help their businesses. So Dives Inc. gets into financial services, offering loans and banking services. On his annual trips to France to buy cloth, Pietro realizes that carrying around large sums of cash, or gold and silver is cumbersome, so he collaborates with the other international merchants, rulers, and even the Pope to create instruments of credit and other vehicles that make international trade easier.

Now the journey to France is dangerous, and Pietro has to hire men to provide security for his entourage. He soon realizes that he can also provide security services to other merchants and townspeople, and so is born the Security Services division of Dives, Inc.

The organizational chart of this company would likely look something like this:

Cloth Sales (Core Business)

AG Division:
-Farm Holdings
- Produce -
- Animal Breeding
- Tack Items
- Carts

Financial Services:
-Loans
-Banking
-International Instruments of Credit
-Joint Ventures

Security Services:
-Caravan Protection
-Private Security
-Estate Monitoring.


All in all, a very modern, diversified operation. And best yet, family owned – which means that you, dear heir, stand to inherit everything! Not only that but Papa Pietro is very indulgent and does out the money like it was going out of style! This in turn means lots of partying and new clothes and Fun!

The only hitch is that Papa expects you to work in the family business – to stock the shelves, make deliveries, to visit the peasants that do the sewing of garments and to cajole them into producing more in their miserable little huts, and in general to prepare to take your place as one of the leading citizens of the town.

If you haven’t guessed already, your name, lucky heir, is Francis di Bernardone of Assisi, Umbria, Italy, son of Pietro, an archetypal Dives. By an ironic twist of ‘fate’, one of the “world’s most persuasive exponents of poverty… first played a part in the birth of capitalism” (Francis of Assisi: A Revolutionary Life by Adrian House, pg. 31).

One of Francis’ friends, Angelo di Tancredi relates how initially Francis was “so intent on the business of making money” that he ignored a beggar man who had come into the shop asking for alms. ‘On reflection, he realized that if the beggar had asked for money in the name of some prince he would have given it. After that he decided he would never refuse anything asked in God’s name… ( House, pg. 32).

God was also working on Francis’ attitude towards lepers. Angelo tells us that “Besides being incapable of looking at them [the lepers] he would not even approach the places where they lived… and if he gave them alms he would do it through someone else, turning his face away and holding his nose… (House pg. 57). Now these houses where the lepers lived were called ‘lazar’ houses, after the biblical beggar Lazarus in our reading today. The rich man is often called ‘Dives’, Latin for ‘rich’.

Francis was determined to overcome his distaste for the lepers, but ‘it took a huge effort to stifle his revulsion. One day he met a leper when he was riding near Assisi. Despite his overpowering horror he dismounted, gave the man a coin and kissed his hand. The leper gave him the kiss of peace in return. Francis then knew that to win a complete victory he must follow this first attack on his phobia with a second.

Anglelo writes, “ Some days later he took a large sum of money to the lepers hospital and gathering all the inmates together, he distributed it, kissing each of their hands.” On his deathbed, Francis referred to this episode in the opening words of his Testament: “This is how God inspired me, Brother Francis, to embark upon a life of penance.” (House pg. 58).
And this dear friends is one of the things caused French scholar and agnostic Ernest Renan, to say, “After Jesus, Francis of Assisi has been the only perfect Christian’ (House, pg. 9).

Now contrast Francis’ reaction to that of Dives, the rich man in our reading, who went about in extravagant purple clothes (that could have come from Pietro’s shop in another era) and fine linen underwear, feasting sumptuously and ignoring the poor man, Lazarus.

If you’ll remember from last week, we talked about the four levels of charity according to Ancient Hebrew wisdom:
-The highest is to provide a job for one in need without his knowledge that you provided it.
-The next, lower level is to provide work that the needy one knows you provided.
-The third level is to give an anonymous gift to meet an immediate need.
-The lowest level of charity, to be avoided if at all possible, is to give a poor person a gift with his full knowledge that you are the donor.” (pg. 26 in Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life, Lupton).

Any of the above gestures may have saved the Rich man from Hades. Instead, Dives ignores the poor man, who had specifically been placed at the rich man’s door in order to find help. This earns him the angel-escort to his place in Hades that he so richly deserves.

(By the way, this is the place that teaches us that Angels do indeed attend us on our way to eternity. Also, there is what we can call an intermediate state between death and our final resurrection. During this state we are conscious of our existence and surroundings, whether torment or enjoying Father Abrahams’ presence. There is a gap fixed between heaven and hell such that there can be no traffic between the two – and by extension it is forbidden for the living to try to contact the dead.)

In contrast to Dives, Francis confronts his revulsion in obedience to the Lord and while technically, Francis gave at the lowest level, the radical nature of his gift actually seems to have fractured the giving schema altogether, elevating his gift into the realm of legend, or hall-of-fame status.

The teaching of Jesus is that if you’re rich, you better enjoy it now, because if you unjustly ignore the poor, then God will not forget! Remember Christ’s words in Matthew 25:40…” as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” And to the rich young ruler he says, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Mt. 19:21, Lk 18:22.

Francis is our picture in the flesh of someone who actually did literally what Jesus said. His example is awesome and intimidating. While most of us really cannot quite fathom this level of self-giving, perhaps we can relate to this:

The other night, I was listening to the “Infinite Mind” as I was coming home from work. John Hockenberry was commenting on a time in his life when he became fascinated with shoplifting. He observed that shoplifting became attractive, not because he was in great need, or was seeking thrills, but because he could change his identity so easily. With different stuff came a different sense of who he was in the world. His stuff defined him as a person. When he realized how easy and artificial this was, he was brought up short. It suddenly became all too clear that he needed a more intentional approach to things, so he stopped stealing and started paying for things. In this way, he was able to regain an appropriate sense of himself in relationship to stuff.

Now this is not to say that every one of us can do exactly what Francis did. Even those who came after him within his lifetime often could not keep the same radical lifestyle. Many wanted to be able to live in monasteries and to have the use of things just as other monks did. There were also those who desired to remain in their homes and families but to follow the ideals of the Christ-man Francis. For them, he wrote what we call a Third Order rule. The emphasis here regarding things is, as it is with the CoJ ‘detachment’ from things. In other words, we don’t get our sense of meaning or fulfillment from our stuff, we get it in relationship with God first, then in other relationships – our spouses, families and friends.

The Miracle of Change
The rich man learned too late to care about his five brothers. He was also brought up short by the rebuke, “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead. vs. 27). This is a clear reference to Christ and his resurrection. People who are completely materialistic will not be inclined to believe miracles, even when they see them with their own eyes. This is why I believe that the change of the human heart is the greatest miracle of all.

We should be about the business of trying to help our materialistic friends and neighbors realize that this world is not all there is; that there is a relationship with God available through Jesus Christ and that to ignore this mandate to divine relatedness is to court eternal separation from God.

Justice for the Poor

Following Francis’ example, it’s also important to call for justice for the poor because the plight of the poor is an indication of the overall quality of life in a society. If the poor get justice, then so do the middle class.
Righteousness exalts a nation and a society, while injustice tears it down.

Brothers and sisters, I pray that we may be a people who have a true sense of ourselves as people created in the image of God, who live to enjoy our relationship with him and with other people. I pray that we might serve Christ in every person we meet. I pray that we might be wise in our attempts to help those we meet, and I pray that we might be a people who are known as generous givers, who delight in trying to outgive God. You needn’t walk off naked into the forest as Francis did, but this week, make an effort to notice the poor around you. Do something personally to relieve their plight at any of those four levels we talked about. Look beyond the stuff that makes your life comfortable and think how you may lead others to the eternal comfort that comes from knowing Christ as Savior and Lord.

I close with the prayer that we use in the Company of Jesus rosary:

Almighty God, who by the example of blessed St. Francis…moves your people to love of simple things, grant that after his pattern we may hold lightly to the things of this world and lay up for ourselves treasure in heaven. Amen.