SERMONS

Proper 13C
August 5, 2007

By The Rev. Sylvia Czarnetzky

Ecclesiastes 1:12-14, 18-23
Psalm 49:1-11
Col. 3: 12-17
Luke 12:13-21

There’s a new Visa commercial on television -- maybe you’ve seen it -- it opens with a shot of a city early in the morning, slowly coming to life;  people are starting to head to work, and they’re buying their morning coffees or doughnuts or whatever on their way to work. 

People are waving their Visa cards at the little pay-gizmo on the counter or they’re sliding their cards through the machine -- they can get their morning lattes on the run, without even really slowing down!

What’s fun about the commercial is that the movements of the people are choreographed in time with music, which is, if I’m not mistaken, the “Blue Danube” waltz! Ta da da da da -- beep beep!  beep beep! And you get kind of caught up in the music and the rhythm of all the action, until, suddenly, everything stops the music stops, and this little ballet of spending klunks to a halt, all because one poor guy tried to buy his doughnuts with cash!        

This commercial cleverly poses questions to the viewer: Do you want to be a cash-paying loser in the fast lane of life? Do you want to be the one holding up the line, while the rest of us wait for you to get your change, when you can zip through the process thanks to your credit card? I don’t know about you, but this commercial plays on my fear of being left behind in technology, and makes me feel like some kind of Luddite because I still occasionally use cash! But the more I ponder the commercial, the more I think it’s not really about fast payment at the check-out counter. Fundamentally, this is a commercial about spending money -- about making it even easier than it already is to whip out that credit card and go home with more stuff. I don’t mean to single out this commercial, but it’s just another invitation to spend, spend, spend -- we get them all the time. We are bombarded with ads from the tv, radio, magazines, newspapers, and billboards, even our computer screens, and they’re all sweetly singing the same Siren song:  Spend more money!!  Spend more money!!

Competing with all those seductive voices calling us to buy for ourselves the things that will make us happy, comes a lone voice in the wilderness: Jesus’s words on wealth. Jesus’s words get very little airtime, relatively speaking, compared with consumer advertising.  (Carter 20) But still, the voice of Jesus calls to us through the centuries, and beckons us to dance to a different tune.

For Jesus has some strong things to say to us about wealth and how to use it.  
                       
Our gospel passage opens with a voice from the crowd calling to Jesus, saying, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” Although to our ears, it sounds like a strange request for our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, in fact, in Jesus’s day, rabbis were sometimes approached to settle disputes within a family over an estate. (Johnson 198) And while Jesus refuses (wisely, I’d say) to get in the middle of a family squabble over an inheritance, he does use the man’s question as a jumping off point for talking about money.  (Culpepper 255) And Jesus has a warning for the crowd and a parable.  (Cousar 457)

First the warning: Jesus says, “ Take care!  Be on your guard against all kinds of greed;…” (Lk. 12:15) Keep your eyes peeled, Jesus says, for the many and varied ways that greed can operate in your life.  (457) The Greek word we translate greed means, literally, “the yearning to have more,”  (458) and more and more – it’s an endless cycle.  And what feeds that desire to acquire more and more and better and better things?  Advertising! But, Jesus says plainly that “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”  (Lk. 12:15)
                                               
Then on the heels of his words about wealth, Jesus tells the people a story.  Once upon a time, there was a rich farmer, and he had a very good year. And his bountiful harvest was a good thing, except for one problem:  his barns weren’t big enough to store his crops! So the man ponders what to do. (Weathers 151)

“What should I do,” he asked himself, about this problem? His answer?  Build bigger barns! That’s his solution. “I will…build” bigger barns to make room for “all my grain and my goods. “ And then the rich farmer begins to contemplate the comfortable future he is setting up for himself, a future of plenty and abundance for himself, so that he can have many years to “eat, drink, [and] be merry.” (Lk. 12:18-19)

Then God interrupts the rich man’s private musings with these words, “You fool!”  “You fool!  This very night your life is being demanded of you.” and what good will all your crops do you then?   (Lk. 12:21)  It’s probably as close as Jesus ever comes to saying directly, You can’t take it with you! Then he says,  “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves, but are not rich toward God.”  (13:21) Jesus is speaking pretty plainly here, and when God calls the rich man a fool, it’s not simply because he’s rich or because he had a good harvest; God calls him a fool because of what he chooses to do with the bounty in his life over and above what he himself needs. It isn’t the wealth that gets the rich man into trouble -- It is the fact that, when he had more than he needed, all he thought about was hanging on to it. (Weathers 152, Culpepper 257)

It never crossed his mind to share the bounty with his neighbors, or people who didn’t have enough to eat.  (Culpepper 256)  It never crossed his mind to give away the grain he didn’t need, and that’s what I think gets him into trouble. (Culpepper 256)

Listen again to words of the rich man -- “What should I do…? I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, …I will store” my stuff there, I won’t have to worry. Do you hear the chorus of “Me, Me, Me”? It is his single-minded focus on himself and his own security that gets him in trouble.  (Culpepper 256) The rich man’s wealth made him think only about his own future, and not about his neighbors’ futures. (Culpepper 257) His neighbors are not even on his radar screen!  (Cousar 457)

But there’s another dimension to the rich man’s foolishness, I think.  His wealth -- the fact that he can provide for himself -- gives him the illusion of self-sufficiency. He believes that  “[h]e can provide for himself, and that his provisions will take care of him for many years.” (457)    He doesn’t need God.

He doesn’t need anybody else. His wealth gives him a sense of security, but ultimately, it turns out to be a false sense of security. He is under the illusion that his material prosperity has secured his future. (Cousar 458)  But Jesus suggests that “life cannot be secured by possessions, that existence is a gift outside human control.” (Johnson 201) And this parable gives Luke the opportunity to zero in on his point: “The man was rich because he had many crops. He was a fool because he thought they secured his life...”  (201)

So much for the rich fool’s plans!   And so much for all our efforts to control our own futures. This parable hits us where we live. Many of us in this church are blessed with material goods, and we struggle to know how to be faithful to our call as believers in the ways we use the wealth that we are blessed with. We want to know where the line is that is “enough.” We want to know where “sufficient” ends and “greed” begins.  (Cousar 458)

We don’t want to fall into the trap the rich man falls into by relying too much on material possessions. We want to be good stewards of the material blessings we have, and we want to “live faithfully” into our “calling as believers.” (Cousar 457)

“I know, I know.  The children, the mortgage, the aging parents, the doctor’s bills, the economy, the future.  I know.” (Taylor 126) It’s hard.  But Jesus poses hard questions to us this Sunday and next Sunday about possessions and discipleship: Will we put our trust in our goods, our possessions, our riches? (Psalm 49:4)
Or will we put our trust in God? 

I think one of the best things I ever heard on this subject is this statement by Barbara Brown Taylor: “As far as Jesus is concerned, money is like nuclear power.  It may be able to do a lot of good in the world, but only within strongly built and carefully regulated corridors.  Most of us do not know how to handle it.

We get contaminated by its power, and we contaminate others by wielding it carelessly ourselves -- by wanting it too desperately or using it too manipulatively 
or believing in it too fiercely....”  (Taylor 124)

For at some point, each of us, will, like the rich man, wake up one morning, thinking it’s just another day, when, in fact, it will be our day of reckoning.

And it will be our turn to answer to God for how we have lived and how we have loved and how we have shared the blessings of our lives.  Amen. 

Works Cited

Boyce, James L.  Proclamation:  Interpreting the Lessons of the Church Year (Pentecost 2, Year C).  Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 1997.  15-20.

Carter, Kenneth H., Jr. “Off the treadmill.” “Living by the Word.” Christian Century July 24, 2007. 20.

Cousar, Charles B., et al. Texts for Preaching:  A Lectionary Commentary Basedon the NRSV-Year C.  Louisville:  John Knox Press, 1994. 449-58.    

Culpepper, R. Alan. “The Gospel of Luke.”  The New Interpreters’ Bible. IX. Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 1995.

Johnson, Luke Timothy. Luke. Sacra Pagina 3. Ed. Daniel J. Harrington. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991. 

Peluso-Verdend, Gary E. “The Season after Pentecost.”  New Proclamation Year C.  Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007. 151-6.

Ringe, Sharon H.  Luke. Westminster Bible Companion.  Eds. Patrick D. Miller and David L. Bartlett. Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 1995.

Taylor, Barbara Brown. “The Opposite of Rich.” The Preaching Life. Cambridge:Cowley Press, 1993. 121-6.

Weathers, Janet L. “The Season of Pentecost.” New Proclamation 2001.  Ed. Marshall D. Johnson. Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2001.