Stuff!
Sermon
Sermons on the Gospel Readings
Series III, Cycle C
It's everywhere you look.
Stuff! From garage sales, to trunk sales and flea markets, to dumpsters, to folks riffling through your trash to find something of value ... and if they're lucky, something with your social security number on it. Stuff is everywhere.
Don't get me wrong. I love stuff. By most measures I have too much of it. When Nancy and I were first married the only reason she could drag me to garage sales was the fact that I wanted to be with her all of the time. But standing there, looking at other people's stuff that, by the pure fact of it lying there on a dew-soaked blanket in someone's front yard showed that it was stuff they didn't want anymore, just wasn't my idea of a fun way to spend a Saturday morning.
In the interest of full disclosure, there were times when Nancy dragged me along and I wound up enjoying myself and almost always bought some stuff that I just couldn't live without.
Honestly, there is no way around it ... I've got too much stuff.
I'd love to de-clutter my house, garage, and basement, but that would mean getting rid of stuff. Wouldn't it be simpler to build a barn in the backyard and move some of it there? I thought of that but barns cost more than I imagined. Still, it might be worth it. I would just have to prioritize what stuff needed to be close by in case I needed it and what other things I could put in the barn marked with the name of one of my children so they won't fight over it when I'm gone.
Or how about renting one of those storage garages that dot the boundaries of our communities? Obviously I'm not the only one with too much stuff. Using one of these would have the added benefit of allowing me visitation rights 24 hours a day without having the stuff underfoot every day.
That feels better. Just fessing up to my hoarding feels better. And you know what else it does? It makes me go just a little bit easier on the rich man who finds himself with a bountiful harvest and wants to keep every last kernel of grain. But let's be clear ... just because I can identify with him doesn't mean that I think he and I have the right idea. As you can probably tell, I feel guilty about keeping all my stuff and not sharing it with those in need.
There is an old story about two brothers who inherited the family farm. They also inherited the core value that, within the family, everyone must be treated with absolute equality. One brother was single and the other was married with three children.
As the story goes, there were two houses on the farm, so each brother got one. There were two large barns and two smaller barns and the brothers got one of each. The animals were divided equally and when there was an odd number they had a cookout in which they, of course, equally shared down to the last bratwurst. The land was divided equally as well, acre by acre, pasture by pasture.
Some thought these brothers were taking this fairness thing to extremes because every evening they would make certain that the animals were back to whichever brother they belonged and any grain left over was divided into sacks and taken to each one's granary. Absolutely everything was divided equally, just as their father had wanted it.
This worked just fine until one day when the younger brother began to think about this arrangement. "This is not fair ... not fair at all. We must change this arrangement. My brother has a wife and three children while I am single. He has more mouths to feed than I. Ah! I know what I will do." And that evening, under cover of darkness, the younger brother took a sack of grain from his own granary and took it to his brother's granary and left it there. He continued to do this every night thereafter.
That same day the older brother thought to himself, "This is not fair ... not fair at all. We must change this arrangement. My brother is single while I have a wife and three children. They will take care of me when I am old and can no longer work on the farm while my brother will have no one to care for him. Ah! I know what I will do." And that evening, under cover of darkness, the older brother took a sack of grain from his granary and took it to his brother's. He continued to do this night after night.
One very, very dark night, as the story goes, when each of them was moving grain from their granary to the other's they smacked into each other. When they recovered and realized what the other had been doing, they embraced in a brotherly embrace and, I'm told, they continued their practice until the day when they were too old to carry the sacks of grain anymore. To this day, their children and their children's children, and even their children carry sacks of grain each day to help them remember and honor the unselfishness of their ancestors.
As the legend goes, the spot where they met, where they collided with each other that dark, dark night, was the very spot that God declared that his temple would be built. For nowhere, on the entire earth was there a place where a better example of unselfish, brotherly love could be found than there.1
How different from the parable of Jesus! It is so different that, at first, it is tough to get our minds around it. We've all known unselfish people, but the degree to which these two brothers loved each other and only wanted what was best for each other goes far beyond simple unselfishness. It's much easier to imagine the rich man stuffing his new barns full of excess grain than someone freely giving it away to another.
Greed, on the other hand, is something we understand pretty well. All one has to do is turn on the television when the Power Ball jackpot reaches some obscene amount of money and listen to the interviews of people saying what they will do if they hit the big one. We've heard plenty of these and I won't say that it's never happened, but I don't remember anyone saying that they were going to tithe their winnings to their church or some charity. You can almost hear them thinking, I want it all and I want it now. Now that ... greed of that magnitude, I understand.
Of course it doesn't always happen, but I've heard enough stories about people who win the lottery and end up within a few years in what my parents would have called the "poor house." Most, it seems, take trips, buy motor homes or motorcycles, quit their jobs, build bigger barns for their stuff, and hide from long-lost distant relatives scheming for a slice of the pie until there are no more slices for anyone.
There are the stories about groups of factory workers who together buy a number of tickets each week and one day hit the big one. I've never seen it fail that there was at least one person who bought into the pool every single week except that one. Friends who once dreamed their water cooler dreams become, the day of the big drawing, bitter enemies as one of their own threatens to sue because the group should have known that they would have paid their share of the ticket. Those fights aren't pretty. Yes, greed like that I understand, sadly, because I've seen more examples of it than ones like the two brothers in the first story.
Those who want it all and want it now are like the rich man in Jesus' parable who receives a more abundant crop than normal and instead of finding a way to give a portion of it away, pulls down his barns, builds larger ones, and stores the grain and everything he owns there. Then he sits back to relax, eat, drink, and be merry not knowing that tomorrow he will die. If I were the person making the billboards from God that dot the highways these days I would put one up that said, "What part of you can't take it with you don't you understand? -- God."
Before we get too high and mighty and smug about how we would behave if we received a more than abundant crop, let's be honest with ourselves. Would you or I, regardless of what we might say to a television reporter while in the line at the 7-Eleven, really, in our heart of hearts, give our abundant harvest away?
Take the so-called economic stimulus package some of us received a couple of years ago. Despite cries from the Hunger Network to consider tithing our windfall, how many of us actually did that? The most often used excuse I heard was that the government told us that we were to spend the money, not save it or invest it. How convenient that our government didn't tell us that we ought use this money to lend a helping hand to the most needy in our world so that they might also benefit from the program!
Sarcasm aside, and that was sarcastic I'll have to admit, are we really so different from the rich man in today's parable? Is more ever enough? Are we ever satisfied with what we have, or do we constantly strive for more and more? It doesn't help that a recent news item told us that we would need at least a quarter of a million dollars if we want to retire comfortably. I wonder what message that sends to the poorest of the poor in our country.
It reminds me of a folktale from England about a poor woodcutter who went out to cut some wood so that he could make enough money to feed himself and his wife for the day. He found a tree that would bring an adequate price but as he raised his ax a forest fairy stopped him. The tree was much older than he and so he was asked to spare its life. The man countered that without the money that the tree would bring him, he and his wife would starve. "Then," the fairy said, "if you spare the tree I'll give you three wishes." Three wishes! He thought, dreaming of the wealth he could acquire with those wishes. The man agreed and promised to never cut down the old trees in the forest and the three wishes were granted.
The poor woodcutter ran to his wife screaming that they were now rich. His wife, as you can guess, was skeptical. But the woodcutter explained about the forest fairy and how he promised never to cut down old trees and was then granted the three wishes.
The woodcutter and his wife began to argue about what to wish for. "A house," he said.
"No, a palace," she replied.
"A bag of gold then, to pay for the servants we'll need," he said.
"Why wish for only a bag when we could have a wagon full of gold?" she countered. On and on through the evening they argued.
Finally, worn out from arguing, they stopped and the woodcutter said, "I'm hungry. I wish we had some sausage." You know what happened. His wife began to tear into him since he so foolishly wasted a wish. "Oh," the woodcutter said, "I wish those sausages were attached to your nose." And so they were!
Sobbing, the wife sat on the floor and her husband said, "I suppose there's only one thing to do now." And so he wished that the sausages were off of his wife's nose. And they sat down for dinner and a fine dinner it was!2
Our parable today asks us to think about our stuff in two ways: How much stuff do we really need and when we have excess stuff why not give it away? I ask you, after asking myself first, how much stuff do you really need and what do you intend to do with the stuff you don't? When you have a more abundant "crop" than you expected; a good year, a bonus, do you first rearrange your portfolio and build new barns with CDs, mutual funds, and stocks, or do you thank God from whom all good things come and give, if even just a little bit, to those whose crops have failed while yours flourished? Amen.
___________________
1. A version of a story by Anthony de Mello, S.J., Taking Flight (New York: Image Books, 1990), pp. 60-61.
2. There are many versions of this English folktale. A more complete version can be found in: Heather Forest, Wisdom Tales (Little Rock, Arkansas: August House, 1996), pp. 111-113.
Stuff! From garage sales, to trunk sales and flea markets, to dumpsters, to folks riffling through your trash to find something of value ... and if they're lucky, something with your social security number on it. Stuff is everywhere.
Don't get me wrong. I love stuff. By most measures I have too much of it. When Nancy and I were first married the only reason she could drag me to garage sales was the fact that I wanted to be with her all of the time. But standing there, looking at other people's stuff that, by the pure fact of it lying there on a dew-soaked blanket in someone's front yard showed that it was stuff they didn't want anymore, just wasn't my idea of a fun way to spend a Saturday morning.
In the interest of full disclosure, there were times when Nancy dragged me along and I wound up enjoying myself and almost always bought some stuff that I just couldn't live without.
Honestly, there is no way around it ... I've got too much stuff.
I'd love to de-clutter my house, garage, and basement, but that would mean getting rid of stuff. Wouldn't it be simpler to build a barn in the backyard and move some of it there? I thought of that but barns cost more than I imagined. Still, it might be worth it. I would just have to prioritize what stuff needed to be close by in case I needed it and what other things I could put in the barn marked with the name of one of my children so they won't fight over it when I'm gone.
Or how about renting one of those storage garages that dot the boundaries of our communities? Obviously I'm not the only one with too much stuff. Using one of these would have the added benefit of allowing me visitation rights 24 hours a day without having the stuff underfoot every day.
That feels better. Just fessing up to my hoarding feels better. And you know what else it does? It makes me go just a little bit easier on the rich man who finds himself with a bountiful harvest and wants to keep every last kernel of grain. But let's be clear ... just because I can identify with him doesn't mean that I think he and I have the right idea. As you can probably tell, I feel guilty about keeping all my stuff and not sharing it with those in need.
There is an old story about two brothers who inherited the family farm. They also inherited the core value that, within the family, everyone must be treated with absolute equality. One brother was single and the other was married with three children.
As the story goes, there were two houses on the farm, so each brother got one. There were two large barns and two smaller barns and the brothers got one of each. The animals were divided equally and when there was an odd number they had a cookout in which they, of course, equally shared down to the last bratwurst. The land was divided equally as well, acre by acre, pasture by pasture.
Some thought these brothers were taking this fairness thing to extremes because every evening they would make certain that the animals were back to whichever brother they belonged and any grain left over was divided into sacks and taken to each one's granary. Absolutely everything was divided equally, just as their father had wanted it.
This worked just fine until one day when the younger brother began to think about this arrangement. "This is not fair ... not fair at all. We must change this arrangement. My brother has a wife and three children while I am single. He has more mouths to feed than I. Ah! I know what I will do." And that evening, under cover of darkness, the younger brother took a sack of grain from his own granary and took it to his brother's granary and left it there. He continued to do this every night thereafter.
That same day the older brother thought to himself, "This is not fair ... not fair at all. We must change this arrangement. My brother is single while I have a wife and three children. They will take care of me when I am old and can no longer work on the farm while my brother will have no one to care for him. Ah! I know what I will do." And that evening, under cover of darkness, the older brother took a sack of grain from his granary and took it to his brother's. He continued to do this night after night.
One very, very dark night, as the story goes, when each of them was moving grain from their granary to the other's they smacked into each other. When they recovered and realized what the other had been doing, they embraced in a brotherly embrace and, I'm told, they continued their practice until the day when they were too old to carry the sacks of grain anymore. To this day, their children and their children's children, and even their children carry sacks of grain each day to help them remember and honor the unselfishness of their ancestors.
As the legend goes, the spot where they met, where they collided with each other that dark, dark night, was the very spot that God declared that his temple would be built. For nowhere, on the entire earth was there a place where a better example of unselfish, brotherly love could be found than there.1
How different from the parable of Jesus! It is so different that, at first, it is tough to get our minds around it. We've all known unselfish people, but the degree to which these two brothers loved each other and only wanted what was best for each other goes far beyond simple unselfishness. It's much easier to imagine the rich man stuffing his new barns full of excess grain than someone freely giving it away to another.
Greed, on the other hand, is something we understand pretty well. All one has to do is turn on the television when the Power Ball jackpot reaches some obscene amount of money and listen to the interviews of people saying what they will do if they hit the big one. We've heard plenty of these and I won't say that it's never happened, but I don't remember anyone saying that they were going to tithe their winnings to their church or some charity. You can almost hear them thinking, I want it all and I want it now. Now that ... greed of that magnitude, I understand.
Of course it doesn't always happen, but I've heard enough stories about people who win the lottery and end up within a few years in what my parents would have called the "poor house." Most, it seems, take trips, buy motor homes or motorcycles, quit their jobs, build bigger barns for their stuff, and hide from long-lost distant relatives scheming for a slice of the pie until there are no more slices for anyone.
There are the stories about groups of factory workers who together buy a number of tickets each week and one day hit the big one. I've never seen it fail that there was at least one person who bought into the pool every single week except that one. Friends who once dreamed their water cooler dreams become, the day of the big drawing, bitter enemies as one of their own threatens to sue because the group should have known that they would have paid their share of the ticket. Those fights aren't pretty. Yes, greed like that I understand, sadly, because I've seen more examples of it than ones like the two brothers in the first story.
Those who want it all and want it now are like the rich man in Jesus' parable who receives a more abundant crop than normal and instead of finding a way to give a portion of it away, pulls down his barns, builds larger ones, and stores the grain and everything he owns there. Then he sits back to relax, eat, drink, and be merry not knowing that tomorrow he will die. If I were the person making the billboards from God that dot the highways these days I would put one up that said, "What part of you can't take it with you don't you understand? -- God."
Before we get too high and mighty and smug about how we would behave if we received a more than abundant crop, let's be honest with ourselves. Would you or I, regardless of what we might say to a television reporter while in the line at the 7-Eleven, really, in our heart of hearts, give our abundant harvest away?
Take the so-called economic stimulus package some of us received a couple of years ago. Despite cries from the Hunger Network to consider tithing our windfall, how many of us actually did that? The most often used excuse I heard was that the government told us that we were to spend the money, not save it or invest it. How convenient that our government didn't tell us that we ought use this money to lend a helping hand to the most needy in our world so that they might also benefit from the program!
Sarcasm aside, and that was sarcastic I'll have to admit, are we really so different from the rich man in today's parable? Is more ever enough? Are we ever satisfied with what we have, or do we constantly strive for more and more? It doesn't help that a recent news item told us that we would need at least a quarter of a million dollars if we want to retire comfortably. I wonder what message that sends to the poorest of the poor in our country.
It reminds me of a folktale from England about a poor woodcutter who went out to cut some wood so that he could make enough money to feed himself and his wife for the day. He found a tree that would bring an adequate price but as he raised his ax a forest fairy stopped him. The tree was much older than he and so he was asked to spare its life. The man countered that without the money that the tree would bring him, he and his wife would starve. "Then," the fairy said, "if you spare the tree I'll give you three wishes." Three wishes! He thought, dreaming of the wealth he could acquire with those wishes. The man agreed and promised to never cut down the old trees in the forest and the three wishes were granted.
The poor woodcutter ran to his wife screaming that they were now rich. His wife, as you can guess, was skeptical. But the woodcutter explained about the forest fairy and how he promised never to cut down old trees and was then granted the three wishes.
The woodcutter and his wife began to argue about what to wish for. "A house," he said.
"No, a palace," she replied.
"A bag of gold then, to pay for the servants we'll need," he said.
"Why wish for only a bag when we could have a wagon full of gold?" she countered. On and on through the evening they argued.
Finally, worn out from arguing, they stopped and the woodcutter said, "I'm hungry. I wish we had some sausage." You know what happened. His wife began to tear into him since he so foolishly wasted a wish. "Oh," the woodcutter said, "I wish those sausages were attached to your nose." And so they were!
Sobbing, the wife sat on the floor and her husband said, "I suppose there's only one thing to do now." And so he wished that the sausages were off of his wife's nose. And they sat down for dinner and a fine dinner it was!2
Our parable today asks us to think about our stuff in two ways: How much stuff do we really need and when we have excess stuff why not give it away? I ask you, after asking myself first, how much stuff do you really need and what do you intend to do with the stuff you don't? When you have a more abundant "crop" than you expected; a good year, a bonus, do you first rearrange your portfolio and build new barns with CDs, mutual funds, and stocks, or do you thank God from whom all good things come and give, if even just a little bit, to those whose crops have failed while yours flourished? Amen.
___________________
1. A version of a story by Anthony de Mello, S.J., Taking Flight (New York: Image Books, 1990), pp. 60-61.
2. There are many versions of this English folktale. A more complete version can be found in: Heather Forest, Wisdom Tales (Little Rock, Arkansas: August House, 1996), pp. 111-113.
