The long and the short of our Gospel lesson for today is found
in the declaration by Jesus that "one's life does not consist
in the abundance of possessions" --most of us find no argument
with that statement--most of us would like to agree with that
statement even if we might prefer not to live it too fully. It
was one of my first birthdays after we were married--Chris has
always tried to make them special. In those days we were graduate
students and money was very tight, but somehow she had set aside
money to buy me something that she had to consider truly
frivolous. It was a flying model rocket replica of the old Star
Trek space ship USS Enterprise. I remember spending hours using
the construction of the model as a welcomed break from my studies--and
finally the craft was done and ready for launch. At the time I
was in my final year of seminary in Minnesota. We made a special
trip down to my parent's farm on a fall afternoon just for the
inaugural launch of my rocket. This launch was a private affair--just
the two of us to witness the first launch. I remember test flying
it by hand a couple times to make sure it would glide back to
earth after its rocket launch. The sky was clear--a slight fall
breeze rustled the leaves on the trees by the house. I launched
the rocket out over the fields that had just been cleared of corn
and soybeans. It streaked skyward. I was amazed at its velocity.
I caught sight of the puff of smoke that signaled the rocket engine
had been ejected and the model began to glide in a great circle
across the sky, caught in the lifting thermals of warm air rising
off the fields,gliding out and around and around and out across
the fields. I began to jog out into the field a short way in the
preparation for its recovery--and then I stopped and just watched--watched
as the model continued to glide, lifting often on the gentle breeze
rather than descending. I had indeed crafted a superb model. I
watched it circle out over one field and then on over the next.
It crossed the tree line that separated our farm from the Hendrickson
farm. It looked to me like it glided out past the train tracks
over a mile and a half away. The last I saw it was still gliding,
circling into nothingness on a beautiful fall day. "Aren't
you going after it?" I remember she asked. But we both knew
that the craft was long gone. The most expensive and beautiful
rocket I had ever built and it had one flight--one glorious flight
and then it was gone.
"Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity." Our lessons for today seem at first to be designed to offend most Americans--those of us who make up the 5% of the world's population consuming and using well over 50% of the world's resources. A nation of consumers. The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes reminds us of the impermanence of all things--even the structures and designs that we might make. Jesus seems to echo this thinking as he is confronted on his travels by a family conflict regarding an inheritance. His first response is to say that he really has no place adjudicating questions of wealth--further he cautions against greed--accentuating his teachings against the accumulation of material things. He then tells a parable to further our understanding. Pastor Barbara Lundblad suggests that we may not fully understand Jesus' parable about the man who built bigger barns since most of us have never worried about where to store our grain? Perhaps today, Jesus would present a slightly different parable like: "The mind of a brilliant man produced abundantly. He entered pages and pages of data into his 486 computer until the system flashed INSUFFICIENT MEMORY. 'What should I do?" he said to himself, "for I have no place to store my knowledge?"' It is clear that Jesus honored the stuff of daily living--he found his parables in fishing nets and mustard seeds, bread dough and lost sheep. Jesus was not unfamiliar with the stuff of daily life--but that is part of the problem. All the stuff in our lives. The comedian George Karlan used to perform a routine entitled, "Stuff." He would go on and on about all the stuff we have and how we buy bigger houses to keep all the stuff we have collected. We go on trips and have to take several suitcases full of stuff and an empty one to fill with the stuff we will have to bring back with us. We bang into people on airplanes with all the stuff we stuff into the overhead compartments. I know the old rule of thumb, "If you haven't used an item in six month, you should get rid of it." But what am I supposed to do with the stuff I've had for twenty years and can't seem to part with? Obviously it is not the stuff I have but how the stuff of my life has me.
Jesus reminds us that "one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." Over the years I have been at the bedside of a number of people in the final hours and minutes of their lives. In those final moments we have shared many things. But I have never had someone who was dying want to talk about how their investments were doing or what they were going to buy next. The conversation most often turned instead to matters of faith and family. To invest one's self into that which endures. No one really remembers investment strategies--but they do remember what someone did with their life--where and when they gave of themselves and their resources. I actually know very little about Andrew Carnegie except that he was very wealthy and most important to me, he provided the funds to build a public library in my home town. A Carnegie library they were called--hundreds all across America. A library where I first discovered the richness of the world revealed in words. I have no idea what the Lillie Foundation is but I am eternally grateful that decades ago the Lillie Foundation provided significant gifts to guarantee the financial viability of private liberal arts colleges like the one where I attended college. And I know I would probably not be here today had it not been for my home congregation in Minnesota providing the tuition payments and books that enabled me to go to seminary. The measure is not in what is preserved but what is given away-set free.
Every parent knows that after all they have given their children the ultimate goal of parenting is not to keep the child in the home but to send them forth into the world as responsible and independent adults. But it is so easy to focus on our things--to want to gather up our things--to have all the stuff that we can. And we really don't need to be taught this--it seems to almost come naturally. At the conclusion of our Vacation Bible School this week one group of children participated in breaking a piñata that had been stuffed with candy. One little girl came into our teacher's meeting quite upset--her mother--one of the teachers--was quick to recognize that her distress did not come so much from the pushing and shoving of the children as the fact that in the scramble for the candy she had come up empty handed. In 79 AD, the volcanic explosion of Mt.Vesuvius buried the city of Pompeii. Many people were entombed in the ash that covered the city. When their bodies decayed, voids were left in the hard ash. Archeologists were able to fill the voids with plaster and get a cast of the final moments of the people who died. What they found was a real life parable of the rich man. One woman's feet were turned toward the city gate. But her face was turned back toward something that lay just beyond her outstretched hand. The prize for which she was reaching was a bag of pearls. Though death was closing in on her, she could not shake the spell of the bag of pearls. She turned to pick them up and death overtook her. In one of his sermons, The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King noticed that is was not wealth--but the misuse of wealth--that comes under scrutiny in this story. The rich man confused the means by which he lived with the ends for which he lived. There is a distinction between the material means and the spiritual ends.
Material necessities are important. Jesus encouraged us to pray for our daily bread. But disappointment awaits when those necessities swallow up the spiritual ends they are designed to serve. As the rich man's material wealth increased--his spiritual wealth decreased. When God cashed in the rich man's chips, he was materially wealthy but spiritually broke. One day a young man in his twenties was sitting behind his desk when the treasurer of his company walked in and said, "Congratulations! You're a millionaire." Instead of rejoicing, or asking what he was going to do with it, he realized his life was not what he intended. He had trouble breathing because of the stress of his work. His home life left a lot to be desired. He started to wonder if he was devoting himself to the things God wanted him to be doing. He and his wife made the decision to sell the business and give away the proceeds. That's how Millard Fuller and his wife started Habitat for Humanity. Jesus told a parable of a man so obsessed with himself and his things that he only talked to himself and focused a third of his vocabulary in the story into the words me, mine, my and I. And in the end the judgment was, "Fool this very night your life is being demanded."
The confirmation students each year are introduced to the latest condition to threaten our lives--"affluenza"--the excessive consumerism of our 21st century world. To most of the world, we are the rich man. The famous 18th century Methodist preacher John Wesley delivered several sermons on wealth warning that people should neither desire to be rich--endeavor to be rich--store up treasures--possess more goods than God wills (i.e. more than is needed for food and shelter)--nor love money. In the same sermon he repeated one of his dominant themes: gain all you can--save all you can--and give all you can. In later life Wesley worried that people had heeded his earlier teachings about earning and saving, but not his teachings about giving.
The media is beginning to fill with proposals for what a select segment of the American population can do with their tax rebate. Most are encouraging that the money be spent--but a few are recognizing that all that we have is a gift--and a special gift might merit a special response. The tax rebates to this congregation alone could establish endowments for mission for at least the next two decades if they were all committed to the Endowment Fund--But most surveys indicate that those fortunate to have incomes high enough to receive a rebate will also be the least likely to use such funds beyond themselves. When my model rocket drifted into oblivion I was at first a little distressed--not because I had lost the rocket but because I had lost the most expensive birthday present Chris had ever given me up to that time. I do remember she asked me later that night if I was upset about losing the rocket--I still remember my answer. "No," I said, "I built it to fly and I don't think I've ever seen anything fly so well, so far, so gloriously. It did what it was intended to do--fly." We also are to do what we were intended to do--blessed by God to be a blessing to others--lifted by grace that we might lift others--to let our faith fly free knowing that we are rich toward God.
Amen.