From 1963 to 1967, structural engineers and construction workers collaborated in building a new bridge in Minneapolis.  This portion of I-35 W would provide quick and unfettered access between downtown and the north side of the river, by crossing the Mississippi River higher and wider than ever before.  The newspapers in Minneapolis were of one mind, that this was a sign of true progress and advancement for the area, believing that it would improve people’s lives, only unimpressed that it would take four years to complete.  On Wednesday evening, as rush hour took its toll on commuters, there was a greater toll to be paid.  It would take only a few seconds to destroy the bridge that took years to build, to end lives, to disconnect loved ones from their families, and to disconnect the people on opposite sides of the bridge.

During the time period that this bridge was built, half way around the world, Pope John XXIII was opening the second Vatican Council.  He was different than most popes who had preceded him.  He grew up as a peasant in northern Italy and began as an outsider in Vatican life.  He spent many years supporting popular causes like equal rights, livable wages for workers, and working against prejudice.  When elected pope, he opted not to choose a name like Leo or Pius—something that most of the recent popes had chosen to do.  Instead he chose the name John.  John was an apostle and an evangelist.  John was his father’s name, and was the name of the small parish church where he had grown up, been baptized, and been confirmed.  In 1962, Pope John XXIII did something that no pope in modern memory had done: he opened the second Vatican council seeking reformation in the church, inviting protestants and other heretics to attend.  During the four years while the council was in session, sweeping measures were attained that allowed for the mass to be conducted in the language of the people, and also recognized the legitimacy of other churches that did not belong to Rome.  The newspapers produced mixed reactions, some lamenting it as the end of the true Roman church, while others hailed it as a marvelous step of progress.

It is amazing to me that both the progress of this now infamous bridge over the Mississippi River and the bridge of progress from the second Vatican council seem to have come crashing down within a few days of each other.  I don’t mean to place them on the same level; they are not.  One was a tragedy for humanity; and the other, to me, a tragedy for Christ’ holy, catholic, and apostolic church.  If bridges can collapse and kill innocent people, and tear lives and cities apart, and if popes can decide that our mutual love of God and obedience to Jesus Christ are not enough to make us one, thereby tearing us apart as well, we are left only to wonder if all of our work and progress is really worth it.  We work so hard just to see it all taken away.   Vanity of vanities… says the ancient sage… so I turned and gave my heart up to despair.

That is one of the dangerous side effects of tragedy, that it often makes us wonder if life is worth all the hassle.  If we follow the logic of this observation of life from Ecclesiastes, we are left with a rather bleak outlook.  Life has, ultimately, no real goal.  We work, we die, we pass it on to someone else to work and die.  It almost sounds like a line from The Communist Manifesto.  It is sad and bleak and depressing, but let us be honest—it is an emotion that we have all experienced, and it is one of the most real human experiences we know and share.  It is what life engenders when bridges collapse.

Yet Jesus’ observation in St. Luke’s gospel puts a different spin on these words from Ecclesiastes.  “One’s life does not consist of the abundance of possessions.”  Yes—he might agree—life can be meaningless, if it is only about amassing wealth, about storing up as much as one can.  Misfortune strikes, bridges collapse, and everything that we have stored up for ourselves may be nothing more than meaningless and wasted in the end.  But there is a way to escape this matrix of the futile and inconsequential.

It is the evil of greed, of selfishness, that we must escape in order not to fall victims of this indifferent spiral.  Consider how the rich fool, in this strange monologue within Jesus’ parable, considers only what he himself will need to be happy.  “Soul, what should I do so that you will be taken care of?”  I am afraid that the temptation exists, as it did for St. Luke, to view this parable as a warning against wealth.  Greed may be the calling card of some wealthy people, but it is also true that one need not be wealthy to think first, foremost, and always only about oneself, just as the rich fool exhibited for us.  The sad truth is that I have seen and experienced greed across all levels of society, even among the poorest among us.  I watched at First Presbyterian Church in Atlanta as homeless men I wanted to help would scratch out each others’ names on our registration pad so that they might be helped first, and I heard stories of the theft and violence that goes on inside the homeless shelters.  It is what Richard Dawkins called in 1976 “the selfish gene,” and it is a trait common to us all. 

He argued from a scientific viewpoint that our greed and selfishness are simply a natural result of this evolutionary trajectory on which we find ourselves.  While that may be true, speaking scientifically, there are also natural side effects that come as a result of this selfishness, speaking theologically.  One of the greatest diseases that greed causes is blindness, not a physical blindness, but a spiritual blindness: we no longer see what is going on around us.  We cannot see others and the world around us because we are too busy worrying only about ourselves.  It is so much easier to turn a blind eye to the suffering and problems of others when we don’t even know that they are going on around us—not because they are hidden from us or because we pretend that they are hidden from us, but because we are too busy with our own lives to care.  If we heed the warning of this parable, we are reminded that the danger lies not only in that we are simply indifferent toward others, but we soon lose sight of our own lives.  And if all we have done is worked and gathered for ourselves, when bridges collapse, we may indeed be left with nothing.

If you will allow me to take this a step further, this selfishness is not just a problem in regards to money and society; it affects every aspect of our lives and can even affect our own spiritual beings.  Salvation seems often to be something to which each religion and denomination holds the key.  I am discomfited to say that when I was growing up, I also held this belief.  I don’t think it was ever told to me specifically, so I cannot blame anyone for it, but it was something I was able to infer from other aspects of life.  We were right, and if we were right, then everyone else who didn’t believe exactly as we did must have been wrong, at least partially wrong.  There were some who were probably 90% right, and others who fell closer to the fiftieth percentile in my mind.  The closer their views fell in line with mine, they higher their score; the reverse was also true.  It was, at its core, a natural reaction to the Bible-belt South where I grew up.  I know now, however, that one must not be from that Bible-belt to have experienced the same phenomenon.  It exists in the New England white-washed towers of post-Christian agnosticism that calls all faith futile and meaningless.  We have learned in recent years that this exists at an extreme in the hearts and minds of some who would even wish us harm because we do not believe as they do.  It is the same spirit that exists in the most recent papal encyclical that calls us and others second class, and it is the absurdity that I experienced as a teenager when my Sunday School teacher told me I may not be a real Christian because I had not prayed the same prayer that he had prayed at his conversion.  I would like to pretend that it doesn’t exist today within our Episcopal Church and Communion, but there are those who would rather be correct than show Christ’ love.  And I can only imagine that they would feel the same way about me because I am more than ready to fling open the doors of the church wide to everyone without ceiling or limit or restriction, and maybe they would be correct in their assessment of my convictions.  We all risk the blindness that Jesus says comes when we think only about storing up for ourselves, and we do not see the beauty and validity and need in those around us.

Bernie Taupin was born on May 22, 1950, in Lincolnshire, England.  He grew up in a conservative family of farmers in Middle England and served as an altar boy in the Roman Catholic church.  At the age of 17, tired of this life, he ran away from home, and ended up answering an ad in the New Musical Express looking for a lyricist.  He was paired up with a young singer named Elton John, considered very talented with music but not with the poetry that should accompany.  In 1972, while staying at a hotel in New York City, he heard a gunshot go off and was overcome and overwhelmed by the city.  He felt like New York was a place of pure greed and selfishness.  He would soon sit down and pen the words to Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters in which he would describe the way that this selfishness and greed caused blindness among the people.  By his account, in their foolishness, they would say “good morning” to the night.  They couldn’t even see the sky, engrossed only in themselves, and so they didn’t even know if it was morning or night.  As a result of these beauty stars’ and superstars’ self-obsession, these Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters, people were run over and hobos were left to die.  “The rich man can ride,” he penned, “and the hobo he can drown.”

The only hope that he found was in knowing that there were people out there, people who lived differently.  I cannot know, but I wonder if he remembered that small Catholic church in Lincolnshire, that there were people who weren’t so self-centered that they rode by as hobos drowned.  Perhaps he remembered the faith and hope and love of those people back at the church where he grew up, and I suspect that is what helped him to make it through.  In many cases, hope is all we have to bring us through the darkest days.  If the words of Ecclesiastes represent the despair that we may feel in life, I know that we have also known that feeling of resuscitation and respite in seeing that there are those who care.  I have seen it again this week in the rescue workers and divers who have gone into a dangerous situation with the hope that one less person would drown.  I have seen it in the brazen audacity of those who still to this day work against inequality, prejudice, and hate.  We saw it embodied in Mother Theresa who chose to serve the poorest of the earth in Calcutta.  We see it in public servants.  I will never forget the feeling of the days after September the eleventh, when we looked at each other, still with the dust wanting to settle, and decided that we would give of ourselves so that we could make it through.  But I have seen it most in simple people who have chosen to build bridges instead of tearing them down; to allow the peace of Christ to dwell richly within us; to follow the words of St. Paul that remind us that there is no slave or free, no man versus woman, no race or prejudice or theology or denomination that can ever divides us, because we are one in Jesus Christ.

And so, as Paul tells me to do, I thank the Lord for people like you, that when bridges crash and people and lives are torn apart, and selfishness and greed run rampant, that there are people out there like you.  Sometimes, that unwarranted yet chosen thanksgiving is the only thing that keeps us going.  I thank the Lord that there are people like you who would have caused this parable to end differently.  “Lord, I have what I have.  In my despair I had thought about keeping it to myself, feeling like there was no meaning to life, but I’ve changed my mind.  I’ve seen how you lived and died, and I have seen how your followers live and die as well.  And even though I don’t own the market share on wisdom or salvation, I have decided use what I do have to live generously and freely and passionately and without despair, loving others as myself, being loving and forgiving just as you have loved and forgiven me.  And I am thankful, Lord, that your Son has shown me a better way, and that there are people out there who remind me every day that I can still find the hope to make it through to the other side of this bridge.  Amen”