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August 5, 2007 Rev. Steve Gehlert You know those MasterCard commercials that end with the word priceless? They go something like this: "Two tickets to Paris - $2,000; Dinner with a view of the Eiffel Tower - $300; That diamond ring she always wanted - $5,000; Showing your wife how much all the years have really meant - priceless." Or how about: "Two tickets to the home opener - $150; Two hot dogs, a big pretzel, and a baseball signed by his favorite player - $85; Sharing a whole afternoon with your kid - priceless." The attractive quality of these commercials is that they seem to place our spending in perspective. Life's about relationships, about love, about raising our kids. Purchasing provides the means to those ends. Money doesn't buy happiness, but it sure can facilitate it, right? But Jesus takes another view. Now, Jesus obviously never had a MasterCard. But it's always a shock when we realize that he looks at things so differently than we do. Earlier in Luke's Gospel he says, "What does it profit you to gain the whole world and lose your soul?" Most of us honor those who "gain the whole world," or at least a big slice of it. We honor those people in our yearly roundup of "the most successful" and "the most famous" in our celebrity magazines. Yet Jesus calls these people "losers," which brings us to this week's Gospel, where he says, "One's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." Living as we do, in a society where the abundance of possessions is so obviously the object of life, and as I do a quick inventory of all the stuff that I possess, there's a bit of a disconnect. I guess that's how it was for the man who approaches Jesus at the beginning of today's Gospel. He comes with a complaint against his brother. Dad is apparently dead and all the holdings have most likely gone to the older brother. That's how it worked in Jesus' day. This doesn't sit well with the younger brother. He wants a way to get something, even if it means dissolving his relationship with the family. If he was creating one of those ads, it might go like this: "Making a life for yourself - half the estate; sticking it to your older brother - priceless." But Jesus refused to get involved, in effect a rebuke of the man's request. Instead, he turns to the crowd and tells them a parable about a rich farmer, a prudent, productive man whom we'd surely call a success. The man is not only a success at farming but also a wise manager of his success. He builds great, secure barns to hold all of his grand harvest. Today, we might give him the "Farmer of the Year" award. But in Jesus' parable God's word to the man is "You fool!" What makes him a fool? To us he seems perfectly reasonable. Perusing the magazine racks at the airport on vacation, I saw lots of articles, where this kind of guy was held us as a model. He's an already prosperous, even rich man, who sees the abundance of this year's crop. What should he do with it? According to prevailing wisdom, there's no question. He planted the seeds, he saw them come up. Now, as he calculates a bumper crop, he realizes that his only problem is that he has too little storage. His grain bins won't hold it all. The only thing he can imagine is building bigger ones, because this windfall is going to fund his retirement, enable him to eat, drink, and be happy. Foolish? Haven't we all hoped not? Isn't this what we all are working for at some level? Isn't this the path to security and happiness we'are focused on for most of a lifetime? This guy could be one of the MasterCard ads: "Seed for a good crop - 3,000 denarii or something like that; Storage for a bumper crop - a bunch more denarii; Being able to eat, drink, and be merry - priceless." But then, just as this man is poised to live the life he's been chasing, God speaks: "This very night your life is being demanded of you." Death speaks and the abundance is washed away. Death comes and the prosperity is destroyed. Who's gonna have this abundance now? Not the man who wanted to hold on to it all. But that's all he's thought about. The parable gives no hint of a family - words like "I," "mine," and "me" suggest he sees life only in terms of himself. The tragedy is that he sees all God's given him as his own possession, with no sense of gratitude or responsibility. The tragedy is that he could've given the excess to the poor, made the world a bit more like the kingdom of God, and in the process, robbed death of its power to rob him. That's why he's a fool in Jesus' eyes. None of our wealth goes with us. This man lived as if his abundance was eternal. It was a fool's game. The farmer was a fool because he thought he could secure his life with stuff. Get the stuff piled high enough, deep enough, and you've got a barrier, a protection, against death and misfortune. That's why Jesus calls him a fool. He's rich only toward himself, not toward God. He talks only to himself. He lives for himself, thinking that he is securing his life through his possessions, impoverishing his soul, and the world around him in the process. It is a fool's game to believe that we're so in control of the future that we can purchase it for ourselves. It is a fool's game to believe that we can demonstrate our love for others through what we buy and possess. It is a fool's game to believe that what we possess can stand against death. How much better if would have been for the man who approached Jesus to go home and make peace with his brother, because brotherhood lasts into the reign of God and inheritances do not. We live in a world that has forgotten that. We know, at some level, that we can't buy happiness, health, or love, yet we collect money and possessions as if they can truly secure these things. The every increasing size of our houses, garages, and closets, and the growth of the rental storage business, are all signs of it. Yet all of that spaced, and what we put in it, dies with us. Only what Christ gives us - and calls us to - is lasting. Knowing that is wisdom. One reason we come to church, listen to sermons, read scripture, is to "wise up." The church loves us enough to tell us the truth, to set before us the difference between God's ways and the ways of the world. A big part of that truth is in this parable. Being rich toward God isn't the same as being rich toward the world. That's why there's friction between the ways of the church and the ways of the world. Many of the world's values are foolish in the eyes of faith. That's why the faithful church will always be at odds with the world. That's why it's members will know that they don't fit in with the world around them, and will try to give each other the strength to live that difference. They'll do it because they know that Christ offers us the only way to transcend death, and that is truly priceless. In today's Gospel Jesus says to us: "Take care! Be on your guard . . . for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." Today, his word to us might go like this: Living a life free of the need to always produce a good crop in a world where bad crops happen all the time - priceless; Living a life free of worrying about yourself so you can tend to others in a way that expresses how the reign of God really works - priceless; Living a life that is rooted in the eternal nature of God so deeply that death cannot undo all you've worked for - priceless; Living life in a way that robs death of the power to have the last word - priceless. May God help us to stop mortgaging our lives for what has no ultimate worth, and accept the priceless gift, life in God's kingdom, that Jesus offers free to all. |
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