11th Sunday after Pentecost

Proper 13

July 31, 2016

Church of the Good Shepherd, Pawtucket, RI

Eccl. 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-23

Psalm 49:1-11

Col. 3:1-11

Luke 12:13-21

“One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

“That’s the whole meaning of life, isn’t it? Trying to find a place for your stuff?” -George Carlin

It’s not often that one can quote the late great comic George Carlin in church, but one of my favorite routines of his is the one about stuff. Carlin quips, “That’s what a house is: a place to keep all your stuff. If you didn’t have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house. That’s all your house is: a pile of stuff with a cover on it. . . That’s the whole meaning of life. To find a place for your stuff.” Carlin goes on and on in this absurd routine about needing a car to move your stuff, and needing suitcases to take your stuff on trips and bring back more stuff. When you have so much stuff it doesn’t fit in your house, you get a bigger house and a storage unit, and then you notice that there’s empty space, so you go get more stuff. You can easily find the routine on YouTube, and you’ll hear the audience roaring with laughter, not because it’s absurd, but because we’ve all been there. We’re all captive to our stuff.

I’ve been asking myself a lot lately about why I need so much stuff. Unlike the rich man in the parable Jesus tells us today, I am unable to build a larger barn. As I prepare for my move to begin studies at the Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, TX next week, all I have is what will fit in my car. Once my little Nissan is full, I can’t add on a U-Haul or a magic Mary Poppins bag that holds all my lamps and mirrors and worldly possessions. With every item I need to get rid of, I find myself in a state of anxiety about how I might need it. Notice the key word there: I might need it. One of the items I spent a good half hour looking over was a spice rack. I’m not talking about a beautiful piece of furniture or a gift made for me by a cousin in shop class. I’m talking about a plastic thing I ordered online years ago to hold my spices that has been sitting in the basement of a friend’s house for the past year and a half. I clearly have lived without it for long enough that I have proven that I don’t need it. Yet I ask, what if I might need it.

It’s a model of scarcity. Of course I can always get another spice rack, or--big shocker--just put my spices in a cabinet without a rack. Yet we are told over and over by commercials and society that there is such scarcity. Buy now! Limited time only! Items are flying off the shelf! Run, don’t walk!

The scarcity model, however, is one built on fear. Fear of not having enough or being enough. Jesus, however, comes to tell us of a God that works not out of fear and scarcity, but out of love and abundance.

In today’s Parable, a rich man has such abundance of his crop that it will not fit in his barn. Realizing that it will not fit, the man pulls down his barn to build larger barns so that he can store up his wealth and live out his days without worry or toil. God, however, calls the man a fool because God knows that that very night the rich man will die and his stores will be in vain. “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.”

I have to admit that at a first read, I didn’t really see anything wrong with what the man in the parable did. He worked very hard to obtain his crops and decided to store them in order to have abundance in his life. Isn’t that the American dream? We work hard, earn money, invest it wisely in a retirement fund, and we all dream of retiring at 40 so we can lie on the beach and have a cabana boy bring us pina coladas. Sounds amazing, right? And why not? I mean, don’t those who work hard deserve their reward?

If you take a closer look at this story, however, one key detail stands out to me: The man in the story never consults or speaks about anyone but himself. He never asks God for guidance. He never talks to his spouse or friends. He never even thinks about anyone but himself. It’s a short enough parable that I want to actually read it to you again. Take note of all the reflexive verbs and all the self-referential language.

“The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17 And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 18 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. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20

My favorite line in there is when the man says, “And I will say to my soul, Soul. . .” It’s such a jarring phrase and so unnatural, and I think that Luke meant for it to read that way. “And I said to myself, self, you gotta write this sermon before Sunday!” It’s an absurd way to talk, and it’s completely inward looking.

Turning to our Old Testament lesson, the teacher in Ecclesiastes says that all of life is vanity, or to put it another way, all of life is meaningless. We work and we work and then we die. We store up our goods, and then, to quote the old adage, you can’t take it with you. Even when you die, all that you’ve toiled for is left to those who didn’t work to earn it.

Eek! That is a rather bleak look at life, but I don’t think the teacher is far from wrong. Notice, again, that the language is all about the individual.

• I hated my toil
• I had toiled under the sun
• For all [my] days are full of pain and [my] work is a vexation

Even though there is a communal sense that we all suffer these toils, the focus is on the outcome for individuals.

I find it troublesome concerning this passage from Ecclesiastes that the lectionary cuts the reading off before the very next line:

There is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God; 25 for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? 26 For to the one who pleases him God gives wisdom and knowledge and joy

But wait! Isn’t that exactly what Jesus tells us not to do in the parable of the foolish rich man? The rich man says he will eat, drink, and be merry, and God calls him a fool. The teacher says he will eat, drink, and be merry, and that is the best thing for mortals and a gift from god!

Both our Old Testament and Gospel texts tell a similar story of work and toil that cannot bring fulfillment to our lives. Both speak of storing up riches that we do not get to keep for ourselves once we die. There is a key difference, though, if we add in the text the lectionary leaves out: while the foolish rich man in Jesus’ parable works only for himself that he may eat, drink, and be merry, the teacher says that we should seek to eat, drink, and be merry in relationship with God. “Apart from [God] who can eat or have enjoyment?”

All of Christianity is founded upon relationship. Even the very triune nature of God as three in one is relational. When Jesus gives the summary of the law--the summary of everything we should do to please God--he says that we are to love God and to love one another. Love, the ultimate relationship, should define everything we do.

I think the parable of the Foolish Rich Man has two major messages for us. First, we are not to store up our wealth for ourselves, even if we earned it all ourselves. It’s a selfish mantra that I hear repeated over and over again--especially in this political season. Why should I have to give my hard-earned money to those that don’t deserve it. Why should I toil so others can prosper. Because Jesus said so. That’s why. Because the God of love calls us to love one another and care for one another. I pay my city taxes so that when your house catches on fire there is a fire department to put it out. I give ten percent of my earnings to the church in order that others may know the love of God I have come to know through this church. I feed the hungry because God has given me so much more than I need to survive.

The second message I think we hear from Jesus’ parable, as well as from Ecclesiastes, is that God does want us to be happy. God does want us to eat, drink, and be merry. That may not be clear on the first reading of the parable since God calls the man foolish for seeking a life of ease, but I think the foolishness of the man comes from his isolation in his merry making.

I happen to be an extreme extrovert, so I might be biased here, but I completely understand that good times only happen when they happen with others. Don’t get me wrong here, I can absolutely relish my alone time sitting by the lake with a good book, but that time grows so much sweeter when I have someone to share it with.

Many of you know that I work with youth at the Episcopal Conference Center as the chaplain for this summer’s camps. The teenagers I work alongside there are amazing human beings with so much love to offer this world. They also are teenagers, and like me when I was a teenager, they sometimes make stupid mistakes. I was talking with a group of them about what it means to have a good time. Going to a wild party with lots of drinking may seem fun at the time, but destructive behavior hurts those around us. An old hazing ritual may seem like fun at the time, but at another person’s expense. I am so proud to say that I see my teenage colleagues engaging in activities that, more often than not, enrich the lives of others. When they play games with children from broken homes and share a love those children may not know at home, they not only have a good time themselves, but they make sure others have a good time. When they sing and dance in a talent show alongside an adult with Down syndrome, they are having a blast singing and dancing and they are showing God’s love to that person who cannot completely care for themselves.

Our message today is a far cry from the false prophets of politics who proclaim from their podiums that hard-working Americans deserve to reap the benefits of their hard work while those lazy poor continue to mooch of our labors. Jesus says to us that we are all to work hard in order to share the abundance of our labors. We will find joy when we take the fruits of our labors and share them with those who are not as fortunate. Rather than foolishly trying to cling to that which is not ours, Jesus invites us to spread our wealth which, in turn, will spread our joy.

You see, nothing we posses actually belongs to us. All that we have is a gift from God and we are to use those gifts to further God’s kingdom. In many churches, as the offerings of our money, the bread, and the wine are placed on the table, the priest will quote the first book of Chronicles and say, “All good things come of thee, o Lord,” and the people respond, “and of thine own have we given thee.” It’s a nice reminder that everything we offer to God and to one another is actually not ours to give. It is God’s. God has called us to be stewards of this creation and of one another. Many of us have the gifts of business savvy and investment, and while I don’t think God wants us to give away our wealth to the point of our own detriment, God does want us to share our abundance.

I do not need the spice rack, so I took it to Goodwill. I do not need my piles and piles of clothes, so I donated them to Dorcas International to give to refugees who need business clothes for job interviews. Those are only surface level examples of living into God’s call. I admit that I often act like the foolish rich man. I fear that if I give my tithe I won’t have enough money for myself. I fear that if I volunteer my time to help the poor I won’t have enough time for myself. These fears, though, are unfounded. God has given us the time we have not just for ourselves, but for us. For the human family. The family of God.

Fear and scarcity exist all around us. I find myself crippled by it all the time, and I don’t want to make light of the fact that many of us here in this church has legitimate fears about how we will make ends meet. In the parable Jesus offers us today, I think the lesson that we take away is that we are not alone. God loves us and commands us to love others. If we only would take the things each of us have in abundance and share them with the world, the entire world would know abundance. The entire world would know the love of God. The entire world would know peace.

I charge you, and myself, to look for those places in our lives where we have abundance and to share those with others. Whether it is our money, our time, our gifts of hospitality or prayer or laughter. Where has God blessed you, and how can you bless others.

Every night at camp we end our day by giving thanks to God for our abundance in a service of Compline. It’s a sweet way to remind ourselves of the gifts God has so freely bestowed upon us, and to offer those gifts back to God. At the close of the service we sing a simple song that sticks with me throughout the year. I offer the words of that song as a closing prayer hope that they will convey to you the love I have felt:

Oh what a lovely thing

If the children of the earth

Would live together

In a world of peace.

Amen