“Treasure” – Sermon on Aug 4, 2013
August 4, 2013
Scripture:
Ecclesiastes, various from chapters 1 & 2, various – “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless. I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem. I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. What a heavy burden God has laid on humankind! I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. And who knows whether that person will be wise or foolish? Yet they will have control over all the fruit of my toil into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun? All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless.”
Luke 12: 13-21 – Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’
But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
Sermon: Treasure
by Rev. Doreen Oughton
There’s a term I came across in my sermon research this week that really intrigued me – “practical atheism.” This is where we say we believe it God, we might even go to church, worship, pledge, serve on committees, and pray, even do bible study, but in important ways, we act like there is no God, or that God is untrustworthy. This plays out so often in our behavior around money and security. Instead of turning our lives over to God, asking for God’s guidance, the listening for it and responding to it, we look outward at the world or inward to our own fears.
In the parable that Jesus tells about the rich man, we aren’t told if the man professes any religious faith outwardly, but we are told who he turns to for guidance – himself. He faces this wonderful problem – what to do with this tremendous abundance, so much bounty that his storehouses can’t handle it. He doesn’t consult with a relative or a friend. He doesn’t look to the community for suggestions or guidance, and he certainly doesn’t turn to God. He talks to himself, but I’m not sure he’s even very deep with that conversation. He seems to be on some automatic pilot – get it and protect it. Store it up for yourself. And once it is secured, you can relax and enjoy, your future is guaranteed.
A practical atheist, would you agree? He thinks he has it in his own power to secure his future, as if his wealth would protect him from striving or suffering. I don’t believe it, not for a minute. The wealthy are still vulnerable to illness, to loss, to family and emotional problems as severe as those of poor families. And would he ever really feel secure? Perhaps he finds that the stored crops start to rot, or that people can get in and steal from him. My guess is that he would be constantly worried about whether it is really secured, and will keep putting up more and more barriers between his wealth and his community.
Now though this man has not reached out to God, God responds to him – “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.” Remember that this is a parable Jesus is telling, not a report of an actual event. Jesus leaves his listeners to imagine what the rich man’s reaction might have been. I thought it would be pretty much what the Ecclesiastes teacher had to say – “meaningless, meaningless. It all has been meaningless. I have toiled wisely, I have studied and given all my best work and reaped my reward for it. But I can’t take it with me in the end. It will be left behind for others, others who may very well be fools, who may waste it, fools who won’t work like I did, fools who don’t deserve it.
Jesus tells this parable in response to a man who has asked him to intervene in a family dispute – tell my brother to share the inheritance with me. Ah, the inheritance. Such a source for family conflict, insecurity, and competition – in Jesus’ time and in our own. Jesus will not take on the role of arbiter, but goes on to caution against greed. I’m sure this man had no sense that he was asking out of greed. I’m sure he was hung up on the notion of fairness. Regardless of his need, he believed he ought to have his half or quarter or whatever the law allowed. So often people talk about what is fair, what is deserved, and we all have different perspectives. Does the child who was around the most, providing the most help deserve more of the inheritance than the others? Is it fair to leave more of the inheritance to the child who struggles most financially – especially if that one has been irresponsible at times? Who knows what has been going on that led up to this man seeking support from the wise teacher Jesus. And Jesus cautions him against greed.
“Be on your guard,” he says, “beware.” It is a strong caution. Jesus knew that the temptation for greed was great. I was reminded again of the words of Uncle Screwtape that there is nothing natural to humans that is of any use to Satan unless it is twisted. And there is a quality I think that is very natural to humans, very important even to our spirituality that is so vulnerable to being twisted into greed. The first reading I shared about yearning points to this quality. I think that deep within ourselves we know that there is more to us, more to life in the most eternal sense, than we can experience in this form. And so we feel incomplete, we feel restless, we have desires that are deeper than our desires. And I think this is a holy call, a source of hope in despair, a protection against the cry of the teacher that everything is meaningless. This sense of incompleteness is a reminder that our lives are not truly our own, that we are not independent beings, but rather are a part of a larger whole, interdependent on God and on others. These bodies, these lives we live, these possessions we accumulate actually belong to the God who encompasses everything. We are stewards of them in our time and place, but it is true what Ecclesiastes said, we have no control over what happens to them once we move on.
For Ecclesiastes this awareness led to despair, but it does not have to be so for us. This awareness can lead us back to Jesus, and his guidance on how to find our right place in this world, how to cope with the restlessness and the feelings of being incomplete. And it is not by being greedy. The worldly forces, you might even call them evil forces, will twist that God-given yearning and make us believe that it is a problem to be fixed – a flaw in how we look, in what we have, in how we feel, and that there is something we can buy that will solve the problem. But it never does. It might for a little while, but that feeling of having it all, of wanting to relax and be merry will fade, and we will be left yearning again. If we don’t understand that this is spiritual yearning, we will continue to pursue more and more material goods and sensual pleasures. We will continue to compare ourselves with others and compete with them. We will continue to worry about scarcity when we dwell in abundance.
Jesus says they are fools who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God. What an interesting phrase, rich toward God. What do you think it means? One commentator on this passage wondered if being rich toward God means trusting God enough to share what we have received. Others suggest it means to turn our focus from our possessions to the things that matter to God first, trusting in God’s plan and God’s good intention to provide what is needed. The risk in trusting God is that God’s blessings may not come in the form we want or expect. We pray to God for all kinds of help, and we don’t see it coming. Baby Caysen died, people lose their jobs and homes, hurricanes hit and the flood waters surge. People feel abandoned by God for all sorts of reasons. But that is a whole ‘nother sermon, and we can talk about that more downstairs.
But I am confident that God will and does provide blessings in every situation. We need to clear our minds sometimes of specific expectations and look instead with trust and thanksgiving. Trust, openness, thanksgiving, I believe these are the qualities behind being rich toward God. Let me close with a quote from St. Augustine who said, “God gave us people to love and things to use, and sin, in short, is the confusion of these two things.” Let us not be confused. Let us look to Jesus to learn how to love people. This matters not only for when we will die, but for how we will live. May it be so.
