I could feel my blood pressure rising
and my limbs growing cold with anxiety. I was standing with tall, dark mountains
on all sides of me—a tiny figure surrounded by mountains…mountains of bulging
black trash bags and boxes, that is! My stomach clenched as the heavy, tilting
mounds of stuff trapped me in a self-made prison of old toys, books, and
papers. “How am I ever going to get rid of all of this?” I thought, completely
overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task. I was preparing to move, you see, to
“downsize,” to leave my family’s big house for an apartment more fitting for
the “empty-nester” that I now am. But my possessions, like my waistline, had
somehow expanded over the last twenty years. All these things didn’t look so
overwhelming when tucked away in closets and cabinets, but now, brought out
into the open, they were more than I could handle.
Yet, deep down, I still wanted to keep
it all. “I can’t give away my grandmother’s good china,” I thought—“even if I
do have plenty of other sets. Or the boxes of antique family photos and
papers—even if they are crumbling and faded and almost impossible to read …? Or
the cute books and toys that my sweet babies loved so much? Maybe I could rent
a storage room or two?” I wondered…
I can certainly identify with the
rich fool in Jesus’ parable. How easy it is, when our lives are going well, to
accumulate more and more things, and how hard it is to let go of them. Jesus’
rich fool isn’t a bad guy (well, except for being a bit self-absorbed: he does
refer to himself about eleven times in the few sentences that he utters in our
passage!) The text doesn’t say that he gained his wealth dishonestly,
however. It doesn’t say that he refuses
to tithe to the Temple or to let widows and orphans glean from his fields. It
just says that he is blessed with an abundance of wealth and feels good about
hanging onto it. He even quotes a bit of wisdom found in Scripture itself, in
the book of Ecclesiastes: “There is nothing better for a man under the sun than
to eat and to drink and to be happy, and this will accompany him in his labor
all the days of his life.” What can be wrong with a little bit of hard-earned
happiness?
Like me, the “rich fool” is not a bad
guy, just a foolish one. He is counting on lasting happiness from the wrong
kind of treasure. He has forgotten, as we all like to forget, that neither our
fleshly bodies, nor the earthly treasures that we value so highly, nor the dreams
that we spin for ourselves, will last forever. Most of us know, in our rational
minds, that we “can’t take it with us.” The author of Psalm 49 puts it quite
plainly: “When [the rich] die they will carry nothing away; their wealth will
not go down [to the grave] after them.” Yet still, we drool over the latest
tech gadget, car, or piece of jewelry that we see advertised, even though we
know that we don’t really need it. You see, our gnawing desire for more and
more things is not really a rational decision, but a reaction born of anxiety.
The acquisition of things is a kind of drug for filling up the empty places in
our souls—a drug that numbs the quiet dread that our lives might be
meaningless, the dread that no one loves us, the dread that we are nothing.
It is therefore not surprising that
the parable of the rich fool in Luke is found right in the middle of Jesus’
words on anxiety. Right before today’s Gospel, Jesus preaches about the care
that God lavishes even on tiny, helpless sparrows. “Do not be afraid; you are
of more value than many sparrows,” he reassures us. Right after today’s
parable, Jesus again says, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your
life.” But we do worry: we worry about death, we worry about having enough
money, enough love. “If I just get a little more,” we reason, “then I can
relax, then I will have enough and won’t have to worry anymore.” But we never
have enough. When it comes to “things,”
there is never an end to the worry. “Things” only add to our worries: we worry
that our things will be stolen, that they will be destroyed in a tornado or a
fire. We worry that we need a bigger house—a bigger barn—a bigger church--to
store our things in, and then we worry about how to pay for it. Then perhaps we
worry that we are spending too much money on air-conditioning or heating for
that bigger house, then we worry about the global warming that the
air-conditioning or heating causes. Or
we can even worry about the dangers to the environment caused by the things
that we do decide throw away. You know how it goes—worry upon worry, guilt upon
guilt. Just as I stood among my mountains of boxes, almost paralyzed just
looking at them, we all shrug our shoulders over our anxiety-fueled
covetousness, wondering hopelessly what we are supposed to do about it, where
we can break the cycle.
But Jesus is not trying to load us
down with guilt and hopelessness in this parable. Jesus is offering to make us
free. He wants to give us treasure that leads to life, in place of the treasure
that is inevitably swallowed up by death. “Do not be afraid, little flock,” he
says to us tenderly in verse 32, “it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you
the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves
that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes
near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be
also.”
I once saw part of an Oprah episode
that talked about a new life philosophy for our difficult economic times: there
are people who call themselves “freegans,” (a take-off on the name “vegans,” I
suppose). They have renounced the materialistic, consumer mentality of modern
American life, often giving up six-figure salaries and the “things” that go
with those salaries, to live almost only on free things, on what others throw
away. They find almost all of their food, clothing, and household goods in the
garbage bins outside big grocery and department stores, going on group “trash
tours,” and proudly scavenging for and living off of society’s waste.
While the “freegans” that I saw on
Oprah do show an admirable detachment from “things,” a principled detachment
that Jesus would likely have approved, I couldn’t help but notice an air of
pride, a proud attitude of “look at the deal that I got!” even as they dug
through the trash. The treasure that Jesus offers us, on the other hand, is a
gift from God. It is not something that we have to scrounge for or to compete
for. And the treasure that Jesus offers us covers more than just self-restraint,
more than just detachment from the world of things. To be free of the anxiety
that traps us in covetousness and competition, we must put not just our
“things” but ourselves in God’s
hands. To be rich toward God, we must be not just frugal, but we must love. The
treasure that Jesus offers us is Love—God’s own out-pouring, self-giving Love.
The kind of Love that God shows us human beings in today’s beautiful lesson
from Hosea, the love that is more powerful than wrath, the never-ending love of
a Parent for her child. To enter into God’s Kingdom, we need to open our hearts
to God’s strange, vulnerable love, making ourselves vulnerable in return,
giving ourselves to God, giving freely to the needy, showing other people and
all of Creation the kind of care that God lavishes upon us. Writes Wendell
Berry: “So, friends, every day do something/ that won’t compute. Love the
Lord./ Love the world. Work for nothing…Love someone who does not deserve it./
… Say that your main crop is the forest/ that you did not plant,/ that you will
not live to harvest./ Laugh./ Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful/ though you
have considered all the facts./…Be like the fox/ who makes more tracks than
necessary,/ some in the wrong direction./ Practice resurrection.” [1]
Remembering the trouble that I had
giving away my possessions to move a few years ago, I couldn’t help but think
of these past few weeks at St. Thomas in the light of today’s parable. Those of
you who helped with the office move and preschool sale certainly saw the
anxiety-producing chaos of toys and files and art supplies that were piled deep
and high everywhere you looked. They could have crushed us. They certainly made
us anxious. They unsettled our generosity. But by the grace of God we were able
to let go. It was often heart-wrenching, but we were able to downsize. I watched
with awe the strength of Karen Strader Burnham, who presided over the sale of the
stuff of a school that she had loved and worked to build for many years. Piece by
piece, she let it go, knowing that St. Thomas Preschool was more than piles of stuff
in closets. I also admire you longtime members of St. Thomas who had created
new office space in the Community Building twenty-five years ago, as you now help
with what must seem like a paradoxical move back into the smaller church quarters
where you started out, freeing up a building for new mission.
We know that we have to let go of the
old before there is room for something new to be born.
May this new thing be a reflection of
God’s unbounded love and grace.
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