Your Place

 

Luke 14:1,7-14  

There is a book called The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois, a remarkable story about slavery and race in America through the centuries. Near the end of the story, an elderly man, Uncle Root, explains to his young niece why he took his wife’s name when they were married in the mid-20^th century, instead of asking her to take his name.

Born at the beginning of the 20^th century, Uncle Root lived for most of his life on the plantation where his ancestors had been enslaved. And during that long period of slavery, it was not uncommon for the master of the house, and other white men, to take advantage of the powerlessness of the enslaved. It was known that many enslaved children were fathered by the master of the house, although they would never be able to call him father. And often these individuals were given the family name of the master, although they were never recognized by the law or by the community as members of the family. Everyone knew their place was among the enslaved.

In fact, this is why we so often find that there are both black families and white families in the south who have the same name. Yes, they are related.

Even after legal slavery was abolished, this sort of behavior continued, and Uncle Root’s father was a white man. But Root always knew that if he ever claimed that name in the community where he was born and raised, he would be scorned and ridiculed. Root was fully aware he did not have a place at the table in the white man’s house.

The table where you are invited to sit tells something about you and the people around you. The table where you choose to take a seat says even more about you.

Jesus seemed to go wherever he was invited. He ate with Pharisees as well as tax collectors. He did not flinch if a prostitute approached him while sitting at the table. He belonged everywhere.

He was fully aware that the tendency of humans is to segregate ourselves at the table. We invite people we want to be with, people whom we aspire to be like, people who might be able to do us some favor. When we invite others to our table, we usually reach up, not down. The ability to invite others to your table is often used as a power play.

And It was a kind of power play on the part of the Pharisees that day when they invited Jesus over for dinner. But not the kind you might expect. It appears the Pharisees wanted to put Jesus in the hot seat. They wanted to watch him. Closely.

But Luke tells us, Jesus was also watching them. Closely. As he usually did, he paid attention to their actions, and then he told a parable that was especially fitting. Unlike many of his parables, this one was very straightforward. It is right on point, such that it would be hard for them to miss the message.

When you are invited to someone’s home – or wedding banquet – do not go directly for the seat of honor, presuming it is yours. Because what if it turns out the host wanted someone else, someone of a higher rank, to have that seat? How awkward this would be for your host. How humiliating this would be for you.

Jesus tells them, it would be so much wiser for them to choose the seat of least honor. And then maybe the host will call to you and say, “come sit closer to me!” Then you would have the utter delight of being called by name and getting up and moving to a seat of honor as all the other guests looked on. How fabulous that would be.

Such advice would have sounded pretty savvy to these guests. Practical. Yes, they would have said, quite right. But his next lesson probably sounded downright wacky.

He said to his host: When you give a dinner do not invite your friends. Do not invite the people who will invite you back, or the ones whom you might want a favor from. Instead, invite the poor, the lame, the blind, the crippled – all the misfits. Invite the people who don’t even have a table to ask you to sit at. Do this, and my, how blessed you will be.

Of course, they didn’t want to do that. And there are so many reasons we, like the Pharisees, don’t want to do that. I don’t have to tell you we are the most comfortable with other people who are like us. We choose our friends among people who are of similar social and economic stations, even political persuasions. We feel the most comfortable with people who understand us and agree with us – and vice versa.

So, when we serve a meal at the shelter or the soup kitchen, we might believe that these people are not at all like us. and we keep a barrier between us and them. We decline any invitation to sit at table with them and enjoy the meal and conversation, because we are too different, we believe.

Jesus’ advice to invite the ones at the lowest rungs of society into our homes and to a seat at our table makes us feel uneasy. There is too much distance between us and them. We make choices to keep it that way.

We want to ensure that our place is as far away as possible from their place. But this is a problem, if we take to heart what Jesus says to the people around this table. It is a problem.

I think the problem stems from our forgetting that we are all, and always, the guests.

We are guests of others who are, or have been in the past, generous with their time and their possessions. And more significantly, we are guests of God from whom we receive all things. We are guests in life, invited each day to participate and enjoy this marvelous gift – along with all of God’s other guests.

We make a serious mistake when we forget our place as guests, assuming instead that we are ever and always the host. When we assume that we have a place of honor because our station in life allows us to play host as well, no matter what table we are at. We make a mistake when we assume that we are the ones who give, forgetting that everything we have is a gift from our creator, our host.

Then we hear Jesus’ advice, his parable, saying we should take the lowest seat – assume humility – lest we be humiliated by our grasping nature. Assume the lowest place, he says, and you will always know where that place is: it is among the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.

Jesus says to us: this is where you belong, because this is who you are: You are poor, needing God’s provision in everything. You are crippled, you are lame, so dependent on God’s mercy to take you where you need to go. You are blind, too often unable to see what you need to see, but with the help of the Holy Spirit, you will see.

On the plantations of the old south, there is no place at the master’s table for the slave, for the man, woman, or child, with dark skin. A belief so fixed in the culture that it persists to this day in some homes.

In the story I mentioned earlier, the master of the house became very fond of one of his illegitimate sons, although his place was, of course, in slavery on the plantation. Still, because of his love, the master wanted to make the boy’s life as easy as he could and so he directed that the boy should be given fine clothes and easy work in the master’s house, rather than to work in the fields.

But the boy, for his own reasons, begged to be sent out to the fields. He did not want there to be so much distance between himself and all the others who were enslaved. He chose the lower place, which was something his father could not understand. But this boy knew that to sit at the table among the enslaved, this was the welcoming table. And that welcome gave him more comfort than easy work and fine clothes.

May you hear the words of Jesus that turn our understanding of the world upside down.

May your love overcome your human pride.

May you know your place among God’s beloved and welcome all your kindred – the poor, the lame, the crippled, the blind – to sit there too.

 

Some Kind of Order

 

Luke 13:10-17

One day years ago, over coffee, a friend and I came up with a youth ministry program that we thought might be great. It would use music as a means of gathering kids together, but the method would be to let them self-organize. We were thinking about all the kids we knew who were in bands, or who aspired to be in a band, and would love to have a place where they could gather together and play around with their music. These kids were at a vulnerable stage, trying to figure out who they were. A safe, stable, and caring community that encouraged and affirmed them in their creative endeavors was what they needed, we firmly believed. Neither my friend nor I was a musician, but we were hoping we could just provide the safe place to gather and the freedom to play and learn from each other.

My friend was the Christian Education Director at the church where we both worshiped, so we put the proposal out on the congregation’s newsletter, and just waited to see if we would get a reaction. We got a reaction.

The Church Music Director hit the ceiling. She was furious that we had done this without even consulting her – which we should have done. She was, after all the Director of Music. This was her domain, and she felt deeply wounded that we had done things completely out of order.

So a meeting was called with the pastor, the music director, the organist, my friend, and me. We apologized for what we had done. We had been blinded by our enthusiasm and felt terrible about the mistake we made. The music director wanted to handle any new program that might come about, and she had some ideas about how it should be done. My friend and I said, yes, please do. We want to do things in an orderly fashion. We never meant to break the rules. We would be so grateful if you would take this on.

So that’s where we left it. And that was the last we ever heard of it. Nothing. Ever. Happened. But at least we can say that nothing was done out of order, right?

Honestly, I have no idea if we would have had any success with that plan. I don’t know if it would have brought kids together in any kind of meaningful ministry. But it always did bother me that things were handled the way they were. It seemed to me like excuses were made in place of actually doing anything, and in the end, nothing was done.

And that is how I feel, too, about this synagogue leader. 

“There are six days on which this type of work can be done,” said the leader of the synagogue.  There are six right ways to do this, and some people insist on choosing the wrong one. 

He directs his disapproval to the crowds, in case any of them came expecting Jesus to heal them on this day when healing is, evidently, prohibited. 

There are a lot of things we don’t know about this incident.  We don’t know if this bent over woman was a regular at the synagogue – if she came every day or if she just happened to come this day.  We don’t know if there was a crowd of people who were there specifically for the intent of asking Jesus to heal them of their sickness and brokenness.  We don’t know what town they are in or how long Jesus and his disciples have been there.  All we know is they are in a synagogue, it is the Sabbath, and there is at least one person there in need of healing. 

The gospel tells us that she was afflicted with an evil spirit that kept her bent over.  What could that possibly mean?  It might have been arthritis; someone who suffers from arthritis might agree that the term “evil spirit” is a fair description.  Her affliction might have been osteoporosis; it might have been the result of a bad accident years ago that never healed properly.  It could have been many things.  But no matter what the precise diagnosis, one thing we can be sure about: she was suffering. 

They are in God’s house, there is a clear need, and there is someone who has the ability to help.  What is to stop him from this act of mercy?  The rules.

The basis of this particular rule is the 4^th commandment: remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.  But the interpretation of the commandment was built on layer upon layer of secondary law, spelling out every one of the possible activities that might be classified as work and therefore prohibited on the Sabbath.

Healing certainly can be classified as work, a vocation for many people. But healing is also an act of mercy, and the healing Jesus practiced was a means of showing the glory of God – something which is kind of the point of synagogue worship. So where does one draw the line between work and glorifying God?

The synagogue leader erred on the side of the rules, perhaps because that felt safer to him. But in doing so he may have broken another commandment, the one about idols. Because I want to say he turned the rules into an idol.

We all have to deal with these questions at times, figuring out the best solution when we are faced with two competing values. We don’t know what the fallout might be if we bend or break the rules. We don’t know what opportunities will be missed, what sins of omission might be made if we choose to stick by the rules.

This is not only a problem that faced first-century Judaism, it is a problem that plagues the organized church because we all have rules. Presbyterians, particularly, are quite fond of rules. We wave the banner of decency and order. We spend tremendous amounts of resources of time, energy, and money tending to our rules – debating them, refining them, updating them, testing them.

The rules are good. You’ll not hear me trashing Presbyterian Church polity because I believe that our rules go a long way in helping us be the best we can be. We need to have order, certainly. But don’t we also need to also make sure our order is always accountable to the gospel?

For example, when we are presented with an opportunity to do some kind of ministry, something new, something that might take us beyond our comfort zone, we might say, “Well, what about the liability? If something happens we could be sued.” And then we drop the whole thing, as though the question of liability were the trump card. When we do that, are we holding our order accountable to the gospel? or are we making the gospel accountable to our order?

Have you ever been in a situation when someone argued that we cannot do some potential ministry because of concern about the rules? Something that would serve the ones in need – feeding, healing, sheltering them – but would not happen because of the rules?

Can we hold our rules lightly enough to allow the Holy Spirit to break through?

At the General Assembly that took place earlier this summer, there was an instance of this. At the General Assembly there are Young Adult Advisory Delegates. They are affectionately called YAADs. The YAADs are elected to participate with voice but not vote. They are there to learn how participatory church governance works, and also to help the church hear the voices of their generation.

There was a story I read from one of the participants that involved a question of the rules. It was about 10:00 pm one evening, about halfway through the 9^th plenary session, and the assembly was debating a motion regarding the church’s response to gun violence in our nation.

One of the YAADs was acknowledged to speak. But when he stood to speak, he asked the moderators to recognize another person – another YAAD whom he felt had something to say that should be heard.

The moderators explained to him that the rules did not allow for him to yield his time to someone else. To do so was out of order. Why? I have no idea. That could have been the end of it, and for a lot of people I think that would have been fine. It was late, they were tired, they wanted to go to bed. Let’s let the rules save the day. But the moderators decided in the moment to ignore the rules and allow the young woman to speak.

She spoke from her personal experience, from her heart. She spoke to the hearts of all who were gathered, and when she sat down the assembly was shaken. The moderator, sensing the Spirit in the room, led the group in prayer.

And this, I believe, was just the kind of order that was needed in that moment.

I’m no anarchist. I like rules. But God help us if we allow our rules to shut the door on the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps we should conduct our activities in such a way that we say these are the rules we will follow, unless God has a different plan.

When Jesus was asked what is the most important rule, of all the hundreds of rules God had given them, we know what he said. There are two. The first is to love God. The second is to love your neighbor as yourself. In fact, he said, you really cannot separate these two rules from one another. They are really one and the same.

Love God. Love your neighbor. Care for the ones in need in whatever ways you are able to care for them. Let this be the foundation of our order.

Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/alphabet-board-game-box-bundle-278890/

Stress Fractures

 

Luke 12:49-56   

Some years ago, I was at a meeting for a national church committee on which I was serving, and during a break in our work I asked one of the other pastors what he was preaching on the next Sunday. That’s how pastors make small talk.

He told me he was preaching on Luke 12:49-56, and he was none too happy about it. He told me that he had been avoiding this passage for 30 years. Whenever it came around in the lectionary, he would look for something else to preach on, because this one made him too uncomfortable. But he had reached the point where his avoidance of it was making him even more uncomfortable, so he was going in. He would gird his loins and dive in.

It’s a good thing he finally did that, because this is one the church needs to hear, frequently. There are no people in the world more conflict-averse than church people. We firmly believe in the commandment Moses brought down from the mountain: Thou shalt be nice.

And so we really don’t understand why Jesus is being so mean here.

He says that he will bring division within households – father against son, mother against daughter, and so on.  And that really hurts, because we know all about conflict amongst our loved ones.  Mothers who won’t speak to their daughters because of some argument from years ago.  No one quite remembers what it was about or why it was so important yet, nonetheless, the anger and hurt are as fresh as ever.  Sons who cut off contact with their fathers for reasons that remain unspoken and, therefore, unable to be reconciled.  Brothers who divide over business disputes and only speak to one another through their lawyers.  We know about conflict amongst loved ones. 

We know about conflict among church members. The ones who just stop coming and we wonder why, if it was something that we did or said, but are afraid to ask. We know about the pastors who get pushed out – maybe it was their own fault, maybe not. In any case, it left wounds on the body that are hard to heal.  We know about conflict. But how it hurts to hear Jesus say that this conflict comes from him, and that he meant to inflict it.

It is a dangerous thing for him to say. Because as much as we hate it, it’s true: We always have conflict.

And often it is about the most unimportant things. 

Many a congregation has been brought to the brink of civil war over the matter of carpeting. Or paint color.  These are classic church conflicts – things that seem so small.  It is always surprising when they turn out to be so big.

Horror stories abound. Someone once told me that if their church ever started clapping, they would leave. Someone else told me that their congregation split apart because they disagreed about the music. One church I knew split apart because the senior pastor and the assistant pastor couldn’t get along, everyone had to choose a side – or so they thought.

Sometimes you listen to these stories and think, “Really? This is the thing you are willing to break the body of Christ for?” You think Jesus died on the cross for this?

And the answer is almost always no. Because rarely can you point to one thing. The presenting problem, whatever it is, is not usually the real problem. The real problem is the stress fractures.

A stress fracture is a tiny hidden fracture. It’s when a bone gets a very small crack in it – so small you might not even know it’s there. Maybe your foot swells up a bit, maybe it’s painful to walk on, even painful to touch. But you can’t really see anything wrong with it, so you just keep going, ignoring it until you can’t.

So it is with the body of Christ. I knew a congregation where they liked to say, with a mix of humility and pride, that they never have conflict. They just don’t. But what that meant was that they always have conflict.

It’s true. Because if you don’t acknowledge the little conflicts, the stress fractures, they don’t go away. They only multiply. Before you know it, you have a hundred stress fractures zigzagging through the body.

And then something happens – big or small, it can be anything. Maybe it starts as a trivial thing. But to the surprise of everyone, it grows and grows. The conflict can’t be hidden, can’t be smoothed over, it demands change. 

A pastor who does interim work was describing an interview he had with the elders of a congregation who were considering hiring him. Oddly enough, they weren’t asking him many questions; they were telling him everything they didn’t want.

They said, “Don’t tell us we need to change.” They said, “Don’t get into politics.” They said, “Don’t talk to us about healing. We’ve heard it all before.”

They had heard it all before. All of it, apparently, they had heard before and they didn’t like it. This was a church that was still hanging together. But it was as though they were a bowl that had been shattered in a hundred pieces and scotch-taped back together again. It was nominally intact, but it wasn’t going to be very useful.

They might do better to just hang it up. Turn out the lights, lock the door. Take down the sign and call it done, because in their pain they have decided not to be the body of Christ anymore in any meaningful way.

There does come a time, tragically, when conflict is just too hard to tolerate and there is nothing left to do but split.  Divide. Fracture the body.

The story of a church that breaks apart might not be that different from the story of a marriage that ends, I think. If you sit them down and ask them, when did it start? How did it happen? It would be hard to say.

This stuff happens, we know.  But it hurts to think of it as something that God intends.  Where do we look to understand this immensely troublesome notion?

Perhaps we need to look at the cross.  That is definitely what Jesus was looking at.

Listen to him. “What stress I am under until it is completed!” And we know that, as Luke would say, Jesus has turned his face toward Jerusalem, and everything that means for him:  confrontation with the priests at the temple, clashes with religious and civil authorities, tensions among his followers, betrayal, denial, arrest, torture, rebuke by his own people, and finally death on a cross.

Conflict of the most intense and painful and powerful kind.  And would we dare suggest that this is not necessary?

William Penn, good Quaker, founding father of the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and champion of freedom, said this: “No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.”  He wrote these words while he was a prisoner in the Tower of London because of his religious convictions, which were in conflict with the Church of England.  I remember these words every single Holy Week; words that speak to the truth that there is no peace without conflict; no salvation without rejection; no glory without struggle. 

Crisis is actually a part of God’s plan.  The word comes from the word crux, a word we use to talk about the essence of something, the nub of truth therein.  When we refer to the crux of the matter, we are saying here is the glimmer of truth in this particular problem. 

But did you know that crux is also the Latin word for cross, from which we might understand that the cross is not just an unfortunate thing that happened – it is the essence of God’s plan of salvation. 

Conflict cannot be swept under a rug and forgotten.  Brokenness cannot be patched up with tape and ignored.  True reconciliation with God requires a willingness to face the brokenness in ourselves and others, to confess and to forgive, to speak our truth and listen to another’s truth.  None of these are easy.  It is sorely tempting to opt for the easier path, but the easier path will not take us where we want to go.

To be the church of Jesus Christ demands that we follow his path and that means we will walk into conflict at times.  That we will be confronted with changes that are not to our liking. That we will need to forgive, and probably, ask for forgiveness.

We probably won’t want to.

We will probably look for that easier way.  We will fall back on the old knee-jerk reactions to problems: resist; get angry; find multiple things to get upset about and pick fights with one another; or walk away.  But these reactions will not be helpful and they will never get us to reconciliation.

So what can we do?  What should we do? I offer you three words:

Be realistic. Life is change and change brings conflict.  In fact, the presence of conflict is the sign that change is happening.  Simply understanding this is helpful. 

Be hopeful. In some families, some communities, where things have been pretty stable for a good while, they are ripe for change.  There are bound to be negative reactions to the change.  However, change is necessary for life to exist, so take it as a good sign if people are unhappy. It could be a sign of life.

Be kind.  Not necessarily nice, just kind. We know there will be disputes.  We know there will be divisions.  We know that when there are changes there will be the possibility of some people being wounded by it.  But we can make a choice to respond with kindness and love to whatever comes our way.

We really do know how to read the signs, this is what Jesus is telling us.  And with God’s help, we will.

Picture: ChurchArt.Com

Wedding Banquet People

Luke 12:32-40

Last week I told you a story about a family that was so caught up in the consumer culture that it just about destroyed them – until, mercifully, they realized they could intentionally back away from it. Disentangle themselves from the consumer treadmill. And one of the first things they did was to sell or give away some of their possessions.

In last week’s gospel reading, Jesus told his listeners, “Your life does not consist in the abundance of your possessions.” And sometimes we need to get out from under the mountain of our possessions to begin to know that. 

He told them a parable about a man who was living his life, trying to take care of his stuff, and then out of the blue was told he was a fool for doing that. That his time was up. “Your life is being demanded of you this very night.”

And then, maybe, Jesus looked into the faces of the people who were listening to him and he saw fear. Because they recognized themselves in that man – the “rich” man. Maybe they, themselves, were not rich, but it is what they were striving for: to have enough. Always it is about having enough. 

Maybe Jesus saw the fear in their eyes and he felt compassion for them. I say this because his next words are, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.” He appeals to their common sense: did worrying ever do a bit of good for you? Can worry add a single hour to your lifespan? 

He asks them, can you not see how much God values you? But perhaps they could not see that. Perhaps their expressions still held uncertainty. Confusion. Fear.

Fear is our natural reaction, whether we like to admit it or not. Because every day of our lives we know that we might lose what we have. This world holds a constant threat of scarcity, in so many ways.

If we are employed, we could lose our job. And if we lose our job we probably lose our health insurance. So we could also lose our health. 

If we are self-employed, so many things could happen: an accident, a lawsuit, a downturn in business, a supply chain problem. There are so many hazards.

Inflation causes us to worry about making our dollars stretch far enough and worry about how much worse it might get. Bad days on the stock market cause us to worry about the size of our savings and whether we have enough. 

We can lose anything and everything, including our life, and so we take measures to protect ourselves, like the man who built bigger barns to store all his grain. But, still, we know nothing is guaranteed, don’t we? And so we worry. We worry about being caught short, just as the ones who stood listening to Jesus that day worried.

So he softened his tone a bit more. “Do not be afraid, little flock. For it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” He wants them to really believe this, to shed their fear and know how much God cares, and so he does the thing Jesus does best: he tells them a parable.

“Be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks.” 

As is so often the case, we can better grasp the meaning of the parable if we have an understanding of the first century culture in which he lived. The scholar Kenneth Bailey is helpful in this way.

Bailey suggests we should understand the banquet as taking place within the master’s house (because of the language that is used in the Greek manuscripts.) He hasn’t gone to a banquet somewhere else; he is actually hosting the wedding banquet in his home. And so he most certainly has servants serving in the banquet hall, and servants serving in the kitchen. But he also has servants waiting in his bedroom. Bailey says we should assume these last servants are at the lowest rung in the household servant hierarchy. These ones are, as Jesus might say, the least of these.

These who are the least know their job as well as the other servants do, and they do it. Just like little Daisy at Downton Abbey whose job it is to get up before everyone else to light the fires throughout the huge mansion, they know their job and they do it.

And so these servants wait. All throughout the banquet, they wait, ready to perform their duties when they are needed, when the master comes in from the wedding banquet. They are dressed for action with their lamps lit, ready. No matter how late the hour, they are ready.

Is this a burden for them? Is it an unpleasant chore? We might think so – until the master returns and we see what he is like.

He leaves the banquet that he is hosting because he is thinking about the servants upstairs, waiting to serve him, no matter how late the hour. He has compassion for them, so he brings the banquet up to them.

Were the servants surprised to see him? In a sense, no, because of course they knew he was coming. In another sense, yes, because they had no idea when to expect him.

Were they surprised by the sudden appearance? They could hear the banquet still going on down below. Guests were still celebrating, the party wasn’t finished, but here stood their master before them. And he was carrying bits of the banquet in with him.

He walks in. He cinches his belt, hoisting up his tunic, just like a servant, so it will not get in the way of the work. He invites his servants to sit and he begins to serve them. The master serves the servants.

And if these servants knew him to be the kind of master who would do this? then, no, this work is not a burden at all. Their job is not an unpleasant task because they have the most loving, most generous master one could imagine. They have a master who will be sure, no matter how far from the action, to bring the wedding banquet to them. to make them, also, a part if the banquet.

These servants are not just lowly slaves. They are not just the lowest peons in the kingdom. These men and women are wedding banquet people. Because they know their master for who he is, they know that they are wedding banquet people.

Isn’t that a lovely phrase? I have another preacher, Chelsey Harmon, to thank for it. We need not be afraid, as Jesus tells us in so many ways. There is no need to be afraid because we, too, should know ourselves to be wedding banquet people. And as wedding banquet people we share in the celebration, and also in the sharing of the gifts, the joys, of the banquet with everyone else.

Joy is a gift of the Spirit. And, as another talented spiritual writer put it, joy is our first line of defense. Against weakness, against failure, and I would add, against fear. Our master is one who wants us to know and embody joy and so we are also invited to participate in the banquet.

Every time we celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper that is just what we are doing. I am sometimes bothered that we tend to do it so somberly, with all our attention on the death of Jesus, the sacrifice that gives us the bread and the cup. After all, this is not a funeral feast. This is a wedding banquet.

This is the joyful celebration of the victory of life. We are all invited guests. 

 Do not be afraid, little flock. For it is our Master’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom.

All thanks and glory and love and joy be to him. Amen.

Photo: Lana Foley Photography

The Good Life

Luke 12:13-21   

Let me tell you a story. It’s a familiar story. Maybe you know it.  A man and a woman fall in love.  They realize they want to spend the rest of their lives with each other.  They begin to talk about a possible future together and what that could look like. So the man begins to make a plan.  Searching on Google, he finds “7 Tips for Planning the Perfect Proposal,” and he’s off. He enlists her best friend as his co-conspirator and he scouts out the perfect location to pop the question. He hires a professional photographer who will lurk just out of sight and be ready to capture the big moment. Everything will be shared on their social media accounts – Facebook, Instagram – with tons of “likes” and “Congratulations!”

Once they are engaged, the couple begins planning their wedding.  They know that the planning phase will take about two years, because they have friends who have gone through this.  So they begin with the first step:  visit the potential wedding venues so they can compare them on size, attractiveness, availability, price, and other variables.  Once they make this decision, they can set a date and proceed through the following steps, which include finding a wedding photographer and videographer, caterer, baker, band, florist, dressmaker, and so on. 

The big day arrives, or should I say “days” – because along with the wedding itself there are the pre-wedding parties (bachelor party, bachelorette party, rehearsal dinner; then there’s the wedding and the reception; and the post-reception brunch.  Then a honeymoon trip, after which the husband and wife settle in to begin their life together. 

They want to buy a home, but the truth is they are financially tapped out from the wedding event and all the accompanying events.  This would be a problem, except that there are mortgages available for first-time homebuyers who don’t have the standard down payment.  If they play their cards right, they can start the home buying process with only a few thousand dollars – and that much they are hoping they can get from a cash advance on their credit cards.   

Now they are homeowners … sort of.  I mean, they don’t actually own anything; the fact of the matter is the banks own them.  But they have their dream house, and they tweet about it to all their friends, post a picture of the happy couple standing in front of the “Sold” sign on all the social media sites, so it’s official.  And now they can start their family.

One happy morning she takes the home pregnancy test and it’s positive!  She doesn’t tweet this, though they do share it with a few family members and close friends.  She’s pregnant.  We all know what this means: let the baby-shopping season begin!  Because, of course, babies need so many things:  diapers, diaper bags, diaper genie, onesies, snugglies, blankies, spit cloths, bottles, pacifiers, rattles, Baby Einstein toys so baby’s genius potential can be realized, cribs, pack & plays, swings, bouncy seats, high chairs, portable high chairs, strollers, baby monitors, sound machines … I think there are many more things that I don’t even know about, but whatever they are, they are things that babies need, things that mothers and fathers need, things that will be an important part of their happy home.

Finally the baby arrives – and the event is recorded. And shared. Now they are three. 

They want the best they can possibly offer their beloved child – the best toys to stimulate this developing mind, the best and safest car to travel to baby gym class.  The best neighborhood…the best schools…they’ve been thinking.  This house of theirs may not be suitable anymore.  The schools are not great – they’re ok, but not great – and the parks are a little sketchy, and besides that it’s starting to feel kind of small, what with all this baby gear that takes up so much space.  They have been thinking…and they think it’s time to start looking for a bigger and better home.  The problem is they don’t really have any equity yet.  But they think that they can sell the house and break even; then if they use what they’ve saved up in a retirement account they can get the house they need.

Are we getting tired of this story yet?  I know I certainly am. 

This modern American lifestyle is just the latest incarnation of the problem that’s plagued humankind since the beginning, since humans discovered stuff.  This adorable couple is just the latest version of the rich fool who had to build bigger barns to store his grain.  So it would have a nice place to sit and rot.

We shouldn’t judge this man too harshly.  The farmer Jesus tells us about in the parable is not a bad man.  Clearly, he has worked hard and been a good steward of the land.  It has produced well for him and that is good from any perspective.  That is something with which he can be satisfied – even proud.  But what happens next is not.

He sees that he has an abundance of food.  He has a lot of food.  He has too much food…more than he can consume.  But all of a sudden, his perception changes and this abundance is not too much at all.  It is just what he needs!  He absolutely must have all this food, so the problem becomes how to manage it.  His storehouses are full and there is still much more food waiting to be stored.  He’s on the verge of panic.  The only possibly solution is to build more storage.  Only then can he feel secure and be at peace.

Maybe you already know this, but peace won’t come from full storage barns.  Security will not be the reward for hoarding food.  True contentment does not arise from having enough of the right stuff.

Maybe you know what really happens.  As soon as you have acquired as much stuff as you thought you needed, you realize there is something else; you realize that there is more stuff out there that you don’t have.  Until now, you had no idea you needed that stuff; but now that you know about it, you can’t rest until you have that stuff too.  You need it.

Or so we think.  This is a story about some of the less attractive qualities of being human: envy, greed, anxiety.  “Tell my brother to share our father’s inheritance with me, Jesus.  It’s not fair.  Jesus, help me; I should have as much as he has.”  And the anxiety is an inevitable byproduct of living in the material world.  From the moment we discover there are things we don’t have that we must acquire, to the moment we acquire it and have to figure out how to manage it, to the moment we discover that there is yet something else we don’t have, and so on.

Our lives are spent chasing after things to acquire– and experiences to check off our bucket lists – but we are so occupied with the chase that we barely enjoy the experience.  We are barely present to experience them. We are too busy orchestrating photo ops to organize in scrapbooks or upload to social media sites. 

We buy products that have built in obsolescence, so we’ve no sooner gotten used to it that we have to replace it with a new and better product which we will try to figure out how to use.  We order, we buy, we service, we fiddle with our stuff.  We marvel at these amazing new things.  We nearly go cross-eyed trying to read the instructions and we give up and hand it over to our grandkids in the hope that they can intuitively work it out.  This is normal in the modern American life.

The young couple in my story are on the upward side of the trajectory, of achieving the American dream. Many of us are on the other side, but we are not immune to the lure of acquisition. We still watch TV and see the ads for everything we must have which we didn’t know until this moment. We still use shopping as a form of therapy and entertainment. And now we have grown kids who come to our house and tell us, “it’s time to replace that ugly fluorescent fixture in the kitchen, no one has those things anymore, for heaven’s sake, get some pendant lights.”

But now we watch our retirement accounts fearfully. When the stock market goes up, we breathe relief. When it goes down, we toss and turn at night wondering if we will be okay, if we will have enough.

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The story of the young couple isn’t over.  They get their bigger house in the better neighborhood and empty their little retirement account in the process.  Over the next few years there are two more children, more stuff, and all the camps and lessons and activities that you would expect.  They keep thinking they’ll get ahead next year; that they’ll get their situation under control; get a little breathing room soon.  But every year is the same as the one before – only worse. 

One morning they wake up.  They realize they can’t live this way anymore because they aren’t really living.  They have to find another way, and the only way will be to rid themselves of some of their possessions.  They sell the house and buy something much smaller and simpler.  They sell one of their four cars (well, it’s a start).  They give some of their furniture and books and other things to the church rummage sale, to the homeless shelter, to the Goodwill – knowing that they will not replace these things with newer versions, like they normally would do.  They learn how to unsubscribe from email lists that scream at them to buy more stuff.  They learn to cook and eat at home.  And they discover some of the simple joys in life they had always been too busy for.

They are learning how to disengage from the consumer treadmill, where the fundamental creed is the more you have, the happier you are, because they’ve finally realized it’s a lie.  They are learning that if they value their lives by the quality and quantity of the stuff they have, they will never really believe their lives have value at all.

They are learning the secret of having plenty and of being in need, as the apostle Paul wrote.  They are learning to be content. 

They are learning to be content. Which is a journey itself.  

Photo by Ruchindra Gunasekara on Unsplash