Freedom From Greed

Proper 13   July 31, 2016    Community Christian Church

Roger Ray, pastor     “Freedom from Greed” 

Luke 12:13-15     Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me."
 But he said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?"  And he said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions."

There is a dance we do when someone dies. Ministers learn the steps to this dance pretty early on in our careers. Whether the death is sudden or long expected, there is the meeting with the immediate family, the trip to the funeral home to plan the visitation and memorial. Then things shift into high gear for me as I plan the music for the service, write a eulogy and a liturgy and then ride the current of events from visitation to the service. There is most often a processional to the graveyard. A graveside service and then the awkward lingering around the grave as people talk and have to find a way to politely leave.

What comes next in almost every event is a meal. Now, I’m clearly a man who has never been afraid to eat but if ever there was a time that I could skip a meal… it is this one. Sadness, grief, the rituals of death just don’t gin up much of an appetite for me but the preacher is expected to be there, to say the blessing, and to be available to those who might want to talk about something religious which, in my experience is usually precisely no one.

The conversation that does seem to happen fairly often is one that I wish that I could miss.  It is the “who gets what?” conversation.

An old gentleman in my student parish passed away without any children of his own so his estate was to be divided among his several nieces and nephews. The financial part he had dealt with in his will but his large house full of valuable antiques and art were left to the family to divide equitably.

With a glass of ice tea on the floor between my feet and a paper plate perched precariously on my knees, the niece sitting next to me produced several copies of a list of things she wanted from Uncle’s house and passed them around to her several blood kin competitors. The list, evidently, named virtually every valuable thing that Uncle John owned.

My masters and doctorate in pastoral counseling did not prepare me for the conversation that ensued. Which, lucky for me did not take the turn of the conversation Linda just read to us from Luke chapter 12 when a man turned to Jesus and asked him to arbitrate the division of an estate.

That incident was about 30 years ago and I’m guessing that it remains the only time when I surrendered a plate full of fried chicken and headed for the back door to slip away quietly. 

We don’t know much about the actual historical Jesus with any level of confidence but among the passages of the canonical gospels that most scholars seem to give an approving nod, are these verses that have Jesus showing either disdain or indifference towards money and possessions.

The most famous of these sayings, found in all three of the synoptics, is the one where Jesus says that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God…. Simultaneously dissing rich people and making generations of large church pastors spin like tops trying to explain that Jesus didn’t actually mean what he very plainly said in emphatic exaggeration.

But there are also interesting and more subtle examples in the gospels, such as the fact that Judas was said to be the one who carried the common purse, making him suspect of both stealing from the kitty and simply being guilty by association, compounded by the 30 pieces of silver he was paid for betraying Jesus in the end.

I also like the fact that when Jesus was asked about paying taxes to Rome, he not only told them to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s but it is also clear that he had to ask someone to show him a piece of money because he didn’t carry any money. Suggesting that it just never touched his hands.

And in an account that is surely apocryphal, in the 17^th Chapter of Matthew, Jesus is asked about paying the temple tax and he tells Peter to go cast a fishing line in the lake and the first fish he catches will have a 4 drachma coin in its mouth which he tells Peter to use to pay the temple tax for the two of them.  You virtually never hear a sermon about that text and I wouldn’t be surprised if most of you have never heard of it because it is embarrassingly obvious that it is fictional but the more important point is to wonder why the gospel writers would create this almost silly fictional miracle story.

Matthew wanted to drive home the point that Jesus’ indifference towards money was so profound that he didn’t have any, didn’t need any, and didn’t want any and would even pull off a miracle to avoid the whole scene of buying and selling, taxing and paying taxes, of ownership and conflict over ownership.

The gospels’ portrayal of Jesus as being totally free of possessions, even to the point of telling a prospective disciple that he literally was more poor than a fox who had a den or a bird who had a nest because he literally didn’t own a place to lay his head at night, inspired the whole ascetic monastic tradition of taking a vow of poverty.

I have known a lot of monks. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on monastic spirituality. I have lived in monastic houses for retreats quite often and will be a guest at Gethsemani in Kentucky in just another week. I admire the life of the brothers who have pledged themselves to this simple life but it deserves to be said that they live in a big house with their own room where they are assured food in their refectory every day and even medical care in their in their infirmary and a place to retire in the community.

I assure you, you would not find the monk’s cell all that inviting, nor would you relish the vegetarian diet they maintain, not to mention their habit of rising for corporate prayer every day at 3:15 a.m. and coming back for mass at 6. Trappists observe a general rule of silence, not as a vow anymore but more as an awareness that anything you would say about being awakened at that hour every day would not bear being repeated in a religious house.

But the brothers have neither a spouse nor children. They do not worry about passing along family heirlooms to another generation or about making sure that their grandchildren get an education. Even Jesus, as he is portrayed in scripture, did not have a spouse or children and could count on the generosity of others who did give him a place to lay his head and food to eat.

The extremity of the moral rejection of money and possessions in the gospels, and the remarkable example set by monks who embrace a life of poverty and chastity, stand as the other end of the spectrum from the messages with which we are bombarded every day.

This is the Sunday paper for today. We call it a newspaper but by sheer volume, there is at least ten times as much print trying to make you want to buy something as there is news. Even in ancient times people had a natural appetite for nice things, for jewelry, fine pottery, comfortable furniture, and a larger and safer house. Modernity has taken that natural appetite and basically covered it in cocaine, addicting our culture to bigger, more, nicer, more attractive, more comfortable, more ego enhancing, more senses pleasing cars, homes, clothes, shoes, jewelry, vacations, and foods.

The mere presence of the lottery in nearly every convenience store and gas station in our country speaks to our fantasy of being unimaginably rich, and our greed for possessions has spawned an entire reality TV universe about hoarding, storage lockers, and treasure hunts. We can easily say that the cases of hoarding we see on TV and which many of us have seen in our family or in neighbors, is certainly sick.

When we see someone who is much worse than we are, we breathe a sigh of relief. But I can tell you that most of us while we may not have the flu, we have a little bit of fever.

During my brief stint as a Hospice Chaplain, when I was going into several homes of patients in their last months of life, I was often just blown away by how much stuff was stacked up in their homes. At the end of the day, I regularly would decompress by going through my own home, opening every closet door, every cabinet and drawer, looking for things that I could throw away.

I suspect that everyone here could go home today and fill their trash dumpster with things that you have stored that you have not used for years and never will use again….there is just something difficult about giving away or throwing away something that you paid for, or that you are used to seeing, or that you inherited. Things start to literally own you.

I spend so little time at my home that I could easily downsize into a house half the size of my current home but where would I put all of my stuff?

An honest read of the gospels asks us all to make a conscious decision to take control of our appetites, to not give into the constant drum beat of TV commercials, magazine ads, internet pop ups, and product placement in movies. We need to, for both economic and environmental reasons, be aware that how we live and consume can either create poverty or alleviate suffering.

We need to be even smarter than those first century Palestinians who could hardly have hurt the earth if they wanted to. We can destroy our environment simply through consumption, and not just by burning fossil fuels and exhausting limited resources, simply choosing to eat beef so often is creating more environmental hazards than our decision to drive gas guzzling SUVs. Methane from cows is doing more damage than the exhaust from all of the cars on the road.

Learning to consume less, to conserve energy, to eat with greater awareness of how our choices affect the planet and can create hunger in other places, is a part of what it means to lead a meaningful spiritual life.

I am not suggesting that you try to live like Jesus, or like a Trappist monk, I’m just saying that we need to be aware of their example and why you would think that their choices are extreme, you know that the other end of the spectrum is sick and you would not hesitate for a moment to call it that. So it is up to each of us to decide how sick or how healthy that we really want to be… how deep into the consumer culture do we want to bury ourselves, and how simply can we learn to live in freedom from being owned by the things that we have bought.

It isn’t about guilt, it is about health. It isn’t about a religious obligation, it is about find a sane balance that allows you to have a decent life while leaving enough of the world’s goods for everyone else to have a decent life.

The coat in your closet that you will never wear belongs to someone who doesn’t have one. The shoes you have stored that you do not need, belong to someone who has no shoes. And the air you foul, the grain and water you waste, to make your next hamburger very well may belong to someone who is waiting for bread and a drink of water. All I am asking you to do is to consciously take charge of your choices and stop letting advertising do it for you.