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The eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, 07/31/2016
Living the Good Life
Sermon on Luke 12:13-21, by Luke Bouman
Luke 12:13-21
13Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” 14But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15And 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.” 16Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 18Then 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. 19And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20But 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?’ 21So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
Living the Good Life
We hear an awful lot of "greed" being proclaimed as beneficial these days. There are different sources but the message is the same. Perhaps it is Michael Douglas' character in the movie "Wall Street" who boldly proclaims that "greed is good." Maybe it is any number of prosperity preachers who tell their congregations and television audiences that "God wants you to be prosperous and happy if you let Him (sic)." Most of us know that these bald faced trumpeters are lying. But it is harder to filter out the more subtle messages that come our way, some of them so deeply ingrained in our very culture that we buy into them, consciously or subconsciously every moment of every day of our lives. These messages simply define for us what "the good life" is. The idea of "the American dream" is built on the notion that with hard work and a bit of good fortune we can "move up" in the world. We can have that nicer car, we can live in a larger house or condo, we can take more luxurious and extravagant vacations, in short, we can have more stuff around us to make us happy.
Except that it doesn't... make us happy. The reality of wealth and its connection to happiness is tenuous at best. Tevye, that wizened dairyman from the musical "Fiddler on the Roof" listens to Perchik tell him that wealth is a curse and proclaims to the heavens that if this is true, "may God so curse me right now!" Tevye thinks only of the good things that wealth can buy. He doesn't think of the things that money cannot buy. More of a realist, the poet, Edwin Arlington Robinson, tell us the story of Richard Cory:
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
We face another such grim reality in our Gospel text for today, where Jesus warns, “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 tells us the cautionary tale of the man who has a bumper crop and decides to build bigger storehouses to keep his new wealth, only to die before he can enjoy it. Jesus seems to be telling us that there is a different way to happiness, should we dare to look for it and try it. But I'm not so sure there is good news there.
Idolatry of possessions comes in many forms, not just monetary. There are many people out there who would tell us to spend our time or energy pursuing any number of things, but each of them is liable to become just as addictive. Whatever we look to in our lives for our highest good becomes our god, and any false god will betray us in time. And even the most selfless among us, who dedicates his or her life to giving things away, even if they find great joy in this as a gift from God, will still find that one day their life will be required of them as well.
It is this that led the writer of Ecclesiastes to declare that every human pursuit was "vanity." It was not so that we would despair and pursue nothing, but rather so that our pursuits might always recognize that they happen in the midst of life "in the valley of the shadow of death." We are not our own masters. Our lives ultimately come from nothing and return to nothing. It is our reality. My German ancestors articulated it with the following proverb, roughly translated:
"Work! Work!, Save! Save!, Build yourself a little house! Croak!"
They understood the futility of existence. And it is a hard pill to swallow. So hard, in fact, that many people over the years, even people who have made the points I have made up until now, would at this very juncture begin to hedge with a "But." But, if we follow God's law... But, if we just have faith in God..., But, if we trust God's way of love... Perhaps I've been known to hedge a time or two myself. Our Gospel text does not hedge. It does not give the wealthy man an out, nor does it do so for us. It SEEMS to do that, alright. It seems to suggest that if we are rich toward God we can avoid this mess. But that depends on what you make of the idea that any of us can do anything but store up treasure on earth. Maybe the poorest of the poor, the child who dies of starvation, or those who literally have no possessions at all, maybe they are exempt. But they are lumped together in struggle between life and death. Ultimately death will claim us all.
No, the good news in this passage is not anything that we can do to avoid the fate of the rich man. It is a fate that seems more poignant for his wealth, but it is not for the wealthy alone. Jesus perhaps tells the story because the wealthy sometimes feel that they are exempt from the rules the rest of us must follow. Or perhaps it is simply to warn all of us that wealth is not the answer to life's problems. But the good news here is not in the story of death, but rather the story of new life. Jesus came to announce that death does not get the last word. Jesus came to announce new life. Jesus himself suffered death with and for humanity, and leads the way through death.
We look beyond the end of this particular story for the good news that in Jesus' own death and resurrection we see that life is not futile after all. While surely we will all die, also we are promised new life beyond the need for false god's with which to justify our lives. Though we die, we see death as freedom from the enslavement we experience to our possessions and being defined by them. In resurrection, we will all be remade in Christ's image, sharing in his gentle and peaceful rule beyond all things.
And our life lived today is not something we do in order to escape the inevitability of death, but rather something that allows us to live the promise of God's future in the here and now. We still will die. But we also experience a foretaste of God's future new life, and are called to share and proclaim it, as Jesus did. In some sense it means living as if that future is already here, even as that future has broken into the present in Jesus himself.
One of my favorite Children's books is "The Quiltmaker's Gift" by Jeff Brumbeau. In it we find a very selfish and rich king, who lusts after a quilt that the maker says he cannot have until he gives away all of his possessions. After first refusing, the king reluctantly begins to give things away. Each gift given brings a sense of death in his character. Slowly, daily, the old selfish king dies away. Slowly, daily a new selfless king is raised from the dead. In the end, the king has given it all away, even the quilt that tells the story of his transformation. And yet, it is not the king, but the quiltmaker who has brought about the joy and happiness that his life has become.
So it is with our lives with God. We do not bring about the transformation, nor is it spectacular and instantaneous in most cases. Instead it is God, who through our baptism begins to work in us daily death, and through that death, daily resurrection. Part of the daily death that God brings requires us, in faith, to let go of those things that we cling to instead of God. We do this reluctantly, if at all. In the end, each daily death is but a rehearsal for the real thing. But each day's new life in baptism allows us to live in the promises of God and give ourselves freely, just as God has given to us. Slowly our selfish old selves die away. Slowly, haltingly, our new selves rise up. It isn't a progression as much as it is a living reflection, sometimes clear, sometimes foggy of the life of Christ within us.
In the end, God, who is God after all, will have us. For some that begins in this life and continues in the life promised, yet to be fully realized. For others this will be something of a shock, losing everything held dear in an instant and rising to the realization that it was all vanity. But whatever the path, it is God at work in our world, leading and guiding us to something beyond ourselves, our dreams of bigger barns, and our insistence that we can produce our own happiness by having and keeping anything. God, the same God who gave himself for us all, instead leads us toward a future where happiness in giving is the only happiness worth having.