Luke 12.13-21

what your possession can’t provide

The other day I received a brochure about my credit card Rewards program. MORE FOR YOU, it screamed in capital letters. And you, and you and you in said in the inner fold underneath photos of people from all over the world, mostly with bright teeth and happy smiles in relaxed poses. More what?

•more travel to wonderful places

•more iTunes songs

•more home improvements

•more cruises anywhere and everywhere

•more of this and more of that

•In a word – MORE STUFF.

MORE. MORE. MORE. All I needed to do to be rewarded with more – notice the language – is ... BUY MORE STUFF. Of course, with all this and more, soon I’ll need a new home to put all my stuff that I’ve accumulated. Viola! That’s it. Super size it!

Do I need it all? What about greed? Huh? What’s that? Don’t bother. That was then, this is now. Just buy more and be reward with more. It’s only a click away.

My friend says this way of life resembles his daughter’s pet hamster. The hamster, whose name is Wade, is sometimes turning a plastic wheel, other times gnawing on whatever’s available. “Like hamsters we are hooked by whatever is presented to us. And in our culture, the vision is of the good life. ‘You will be happy if you are wealthy, if you are beautiful, if you express you sexuality in certain ways, if you are young, if you are secure, if you are ...” And so on and so on.

The hamster wheels keep turning, but, have you noticed happiness is not increasing. We live in sea of lies that tell us a story about the good life.

How is that I can be so easily duped into consuming more and more while needing less and less to be truly happy – happy in the ways that make the heart sing for joy before God?

Yet, the lies of a consumer-driven culture just keep coming – more, more, and more. It takes a village to resist this way.

Actually it takes a faithful community of resistance that lives by a wholly different story and offers an alternative way toward true happiness. Listen to this story of Jesus told in the twelfth chapter of Luke’s gospel.

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Someone in the crowd shouted out to Jesus, “Teacher, order my brother to give me a fair share of the family inheritance.” Jesus said, “Mister, what makes you think it’s any of my business to be a judge or mediator for you. But I will say this to you, and everyone listening: Watch that monster ‘Greed.’ Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.

Then Jesus told this story.

“The farm of a certain rich man produced a terrific crop. He said to himself: ‘What can I do? My barn isn’t big enough for this harvest.’ Then he said, ‘Here is what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll gather in all my grain and goods and I’ll say to myself, “Self, you’ve done well! You’ve got it made and can now retire. Take it easy and have the time of your life.

Just then God showed up and said, ‘Fool! Tonight you will die. And your barnful of goods–who gets it?

That’s what happens when you fill your barn with SELF and not with God.”

Jesus goes on to say more about this subject. It’s worth reading. But this is the end of story today. (Luke 12.13-21)

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This story disturbs me. It’s not disturbing because I don’t understand it. It’s not that I need to do more historical research or exegetical study. Trust me, I understand the text perfectly. The man worked hard – or at least the farm hands (were they illegal immigrants?) worked hard and the land prospered. The more prosperous he became the more he stored up his abundance so that he could finally kick back and live the good life. I know that story, don’t you? Only the good life never came; all his prosperity couldn’t keep him from death, and an untimely one at that. That disturbs me.

Any text that contains BEWARE makes me nervous. And this one says it right there: Beware of that monster greed.

When millions of people are living with nearly nothing, and children are dying because there are not sufficient funds or political structures to provide the medicines and food they need, while we are living in never-ending cascade of STUFF, there is good reason to hear another story. Beware of greed. The gospel says your life depends upon heeding the warning. As one of the early church father’s mentioned, There was plenty of room for the man's extra grain in the mouths of the poor.

Don’t be fooled by the foolish notion that you and I are above something as crass as greed. Please. Give me a break. It’s an illusion – or delusion - that on my own I can resist the relentless onslaught encouraging me to have more stuff. Everywhere you go, you here it – and our teenagers hear it even more because they go to the mall and the movies more often than the rest of us.

Jesus says beware of Greed because he knows the power of the illusion to fill our lives with the stuff that will not bring true joy and the deepest satisfaction.

So don’t be a fool. I believe it takes a church – a faithful community of cultural resistance – to guide us away from what destroys us toward that which brings deep satisfaction. It is into this community that we will baptize Julia Renee this morning and make promises to support her and her parents along the way of Jesus.

If the gospel disturbs, it also liberates. It disturbs because it points honestly toward the source of the deep dissatisfaction in our culture. Hamsters on a treadmill to nowhere, hauling lots of stuff.

The gospel liberates because it points to the source of our deepest satisfaction, a life in God oriented toward the things that matter most – relationships – and depending upon God’s provisions.

Saint Augustine once said, “God is always trying to give us good gifts but our hands are too full to receive them.”

In this faithful community of cultural resistance the baptized learn to open our hands and depend upon God’s provisions. We learn that by practicing simplicity and sharing generously we discover the deepest kind of satisfaction. It is this deep joy that the abundance of our possessions can never provide.

As the baptized become a community of cultural resistance following Jesus we might just be a credible alternative to a culture that rewards us for consuming until we are entirely consumed ourselves.

As Jean Vanier says,

“Rich countries themselves have to be awakened to the fact that happiness is not found in a frantic search for material goods, but in simple, loving relationships lived and celebrated in communities that have renounced that search.”

We are not hamsters. We are the people of God – a faithful community of resistance following Jesus. We are good stewards of God’s good gifts. We do not find happiness in bigger barns. We find joy in sharing, happiness in giving and satisfaction in the things that matter most.

Alleluia. May it be so.