Good morning. With the start of the new financial year, pensions are in the news. In 1883 German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck found a way to head off the growing appeal of socialism. He gave everyone a pension from age 65. It was a safe offer: few people lived that long. In those days it was possible to be old, but not yet receiving a pension. These days it’s the other way round: you can receive a pension, but not yet be old. We’ve created a season between working age and old age. It’s called retirement.
It seems to me we don’t know how to talk about retirement. Some speak of a fitting reward after 45 largely thankless years of hard labour. Rather more, perhaps, are terrified of the prospect of what looks like idleness or isolation, impoverishment or a sense of impotence. Our society idolises the independent individual with consumer power and endless choices. Retirement looks like an ebbing tide withdrawing such freedom from reach.
Jesus told a parable about a master whose steward was sent to deal with his creditors. The steward marked down each creditor’s debt, so that, when he was fired, those creditors would welcome him into their homes. To the steward’s surprise, he wasn’t fired. Instead, the master praised his dishonest actions, saying ‘You’ve ensured you’ll have friends when the unknown and hazardous future comes upon you.’
None of us can plan accurately for retirement because none of us knows what the future will hold. Our health, our families, our employment are all more fragile than we care to admit. The parable encourages us not to trust in things that will guarantee us independence and security: for there are no such things. Instead we do better to invest in the associations and friendships that will abide even when our lives take an unexpected course.
As I looked out on my congregation on Easter Sunday, I wondered, ‘Where else in society do you see elderly and infant, wealthy and disadvantaged, those with dementia, disability or debilitating illness, refugee and civil servant, all talking and connecting together with no contractual or professional structures involved?’ Here are people whose retirement plans are about ensuring, when they’re fired or fall sick or get in trouble, there’ll be a myriad of friends who’ll step forward to welcome them into their homes.
Retirement names the time when work doesn’t want us but we’re not yet dependent on others for care. Of course it’s wise to make financial plans. But our best investment may be to ensure we’re part of a community where people know us and love us – and realise our age is the least interesting thing about us.