Real-Estate, Relationships and Beetles

I’m writing this in a grand old mansion surrounded by rolling lawns and mature trees in a beautiful part of Sydney. This house has been given by successive generations of Christians at St Bede’s to the incumbent minister and his family – currently the Macbeth clan! There is not a day when we fail to thank God for this home and remember that many will never taste such space and beauty here on earth.

I’m also conscious of the danger such a home presents – the danger of isolation from other family members and our neighbours. The more rooms we have, the greater the opportunity we have to withdraw into private space, even as a family of five. Paul D, a friend and heritage architect, has observed that the move towards homes with multiple rooms instead of largely common space is a distinctly  modern Western trend. The bigger the lawns and private back-yard, the less likely we are to run into our neighbours.

 The basic link between increased wealth and expanded living space is, of course, an ancient phenomena. I have walked through huge castles and estate homes in Europe with rooms that were never occupied. Last Wednesday we drove past a building site where one of Sydney’s wealthiest men is either demolishing or incorporating neighbouring properties he has bought in order to make them all into one home.

My question is this: Does the desire for more money and a bigger home carry within it a subtle or open desire to withdraw from the the uneven, challenging and costly reality of relationships with others – even others within our own family?

In The Great Divorce, C.S.Lewis’ portrait of Hell is a grey, bland endlessly expanding city  where everone moves further and further away from each other. One of the searing criticisms God made of the wealthy class in Jerusalem was their tendency to create massive private estates at the cost of other’s land and homes. Isaiah 5:8,9 says this:

Woe to you who add house to house, and join field to field, till no space is left and you live alone in the land. The Lord Almighty has declared in my hearing: “Surely the great houses will become desolate, the fine mansions left without occupants….”

This refers to a particular moment in history and God’s particular judgement on their empty religiosity, but John Oswalt makes the brilliant observation on this passage that ‘covetousness is always self-defeating in the final analysis. To acquire is to lose, to give is to get…So the great houses that were built after all the smaller ones were bought and razed will themselves be abandoned and desolate. Nor does there need to be some historical or political upheaval to cause this. How many of the world’s great castles and mansions have been lived in for any appreciable time? They are simply too pretentious to be borne. By their very immensity they reduce their owners to beetles scuttling about inside them. So they shortly become museums, monuments to human acquisitiveness, and thus under the ban of God’. (John N. Oswalt – The Book Of Isaiah, Chapters 1-39, TNICOT, p159)

The larger our context becomes, the more we need to be deliberate about relationships. The more we have, the greater the opportunity for generous, sacrificial engagement with others, not merely private and too often selfish acquisition.  This home is at its best when the people of St Bede’s are all over the front lawn on a Sunday (with a jumping castle!). We love this house most when our lounge room is full and our kitchen table surrounded by friends sharing the Word of God and praying. Then we have a taste of that great home prepared for us, our Father’s house with many rooms, alive with people and rich beyond imagining with Christ centered relationships. John 14:1-4