Hos 11:1-11, Lk 12:13-21

1 August 2004

“Reforming Our Faith, Part 4”

(“Money Money Money”)

I recently made a CD for Banu on which I put music I downloaded from the internet.  I hope it’s legal; the website I’ve been using doesn’t have any warnings like, “Use at your own risk”!  Anyway, I included a variety of musical styles, the one common denominator being—it’s all stuff I’ve heard her say she likes, or it’s music that’s part of our history together.

However, there was one song I felt compelled to include, since on more than one occasion, Banu has mentioned it as a song she liked as a girl in Turkey.  It is the piece of…music, “Money Money Money” by the dreaded Swedish pop group, Abba.  (It’s the inspiration for my sermon’s subtitle.)  It’s about a girl who dreams of finding a wealthy man.  The lyrics run like so:  “Money, money, money / Must be funny / In the rich man's world.  Money, money, money / Always sunny / In the rich man's world.”

My feeble attempt at humor aside, that song reveals the feeling of almost everyone, whether expressed overtly or covertly.  And that is:  “If I had just a little bit more, I’d be okay!”  Unfortunately—and I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know—when that becomes our life’s focus, it’s like that saying, “Tomorrow never comes.”  It’s never enough.  Once we get satisfied at a certain level, we start wanting more.  And we get possessive.

Brian Stoffregen tells the story about a social worker in poverty-stricken Appalachia.  It's called “We Ain't Poor!”[1]  It begins, “the Sheldons were a large family in severe financial distress after a series of misfortunes.  The help they received was not adequate, yet they managed their meager income with ingenuity—and without complaint.

“One fall day I visited the Sheldons in the ramshackle rented house they lived in at the edge of the woods.  Despite a painful physical handicap, Mr. Sheldon had shot and butchered a bear which strayed into their yard once too often.  The meat had been processed into all the big canning jars they could find or swap for.  There would be meat in their diet even during the worst of the winter when their fuel costs were high.

“Mr. Sheldon offered me a jar of bear meat.  I hesitated to accept it, but the giver met my unspoken resistance firmly.  ‘Now you just have to take this.  We want you to have it.  We don't have much, that's a fact; but we ain't poor!’

“I couldn't resist asking, ‘What's the difference?’  His answer proved unforgettable.

“’When you can give something away, even when you don't have much, then you ain't poor.  When you don't feel easy giving something away even if you got more'n you need, then you're poor, whether you know it or not.’

“I accepted and enjoyed their gift and treasured that lesson in living.  In time, I saw it as a spiritual lesson, too.  Knowing that all we have is provided by the Father, it seems ungracious to doubt that our needs will be met without our clinging to every morsel.”

He concludes, “When I feel myself resisting an urge to share what's mine—or when I see someone sharing freely from the little he [or she] has—I remember Mr. Sheldon saying, ‘We ain't poor!’”

That could be a lesson for all of us; I know it is for me.  When I think of my own pettiness when it comes to sharing, and I think of people who would love to have my problems, I feel ashamed.

The fourth, and last, in my series of emphases on the Reformed faith speaks to that very thing.  This is a long one:  The recognition of the human tendency to idolatry and tyranny, which calls the people of God to work for the transformation of society by seeking justice and living in obedience to the Word of God.  And that first part, about the human tendency to idolatry and tyranny, coincides with the moral of the story, “We Ain’t Poor!”

Maybe you’ll notice an example of those overlapping emphases I mentioned last week.  Ostentation, which figured prominently in last week’s sermon, rears its pompous, excessively displayed head this week, as we look at idolatry and tyranny.  Our love of money, and our reluctance to share, easily take on lives of their own.  They become idols; they become gods.  And they are gods whose power we use in our own little tyrannies, in our own efforts to impose our will on others.

Our Old Testament reading features a man who had something to say about all this.  The life of Hosea the prophet would make good material for a soap opera.  His ministry is dated just after that of Amos, during the reign of the corrupt King Jeroboam II, when the rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer.

The book opens with Hosea taking for his wife a prostitute.  She bears him three children and then returns to her old life.  Still, Hosea publicly takes her back.  The scripture says he paid fifteen shekels and included a consignment of barley and wine.  From whom he bought her, we don’t know.  Maybe it was the 8th century B.C. version of a pimp.

For the prophet, these are actions representing God’s love for Israel.  No matter how much they stray in their love of idols, God wants to redeem them—God wants them back.  That’s what we see in chapter 11.  “The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols” (v. 2).

God is in pain for his wayward children.  Verse 8 says, “My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.”  The experience of Hosea defies the stereotype of the harsh Old Testament God, and our gospel reading defies the stereotype of the gentle Jesus.

Luke 12 speaks of an anonymous man in the crowd, a crowd which verse 1 tells us had “gathered by the thousands, so that they trampled on one another.”  The unnamed man wants Jesus to mediate in a conflict with his brother over the family inheritance.  This isn’t an unusual request; rabbis commonly decide these kinds of matters.  After all, who else is a Jew going to go to?  The Romans?  Not likely!

But Jesus’ response is neither gentle nor expected.  In fact, he can be perceived as actually scolding the man.[2]  By asking, “who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” Jesus is basically saying, “You’re wasting my time; get out of my face!”  (Though, to his credit, he does soften the blow by calling him “friend”!)

Jesus gets to the heart of the matter by warning all those within earshot of the dangers of greed.  He follows that with the parable of the rich fool.  Here’s a guy whose credo, whose life motto, would be well expressed by the Abba song, “Money Money Money.”  The land he owns has brought him so much wealth that he’s running out of room to store all his stuff.

His solution is to build even bigger barns.  In giving that idea the thumbs down, Jesus is being so un-American!  What’s his deal?  Doesn’t he know that’s why new homes are being built larger than ever?  We need somewhere to put our stuff.  You know, if we took the advice of Jesus, all the self-storage companies would go out of business!

            Contrary to our American mode of thinking, Jesus insists that “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (v. 15).  The rich guy in the parable has a slightly different view.  He says to himself that he’s set up “for many years” (v. 19).  Even if that’s true, it’s still not enough.  We’re built for eternity.  Anything with a time limit on it isn’t worthy of our trust.

            He quotes to his soul, to his life, “relax, eat, drink, be merry” (v. 19).  That’s the first part of an idea from the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, who held that pleasure represents the greatest good in life.  When I was a young man, that sounded like a very profound philosophy, one worthy of serious study!  Of course, Epicurus ended that thought by saying, “for tomorrow we die.”

            Our boy in the parable isn’t thinking about his own mortality, thus the divine rebuke, “You fool!”  Maybe his philosophy is really hedonism, which advocates an even more aggressive pursuit of pleasure.  Basically, if it feels good and doesn’t cause a murder, go for it!  Now there’s a philosophy a young man can sink his teeth into!  Actually, we’re all encouraged to be hedonists, in one way or another.

            None of this is to say that pleasure or possessions are bad.  God created them both.  The problem comes when they take the place of God.  The problem comes when we “store up treasures for [ourselves] but are not rich toward God” (v. 21).

            In our epistle reading, Paul seems to be on the same page with Jesus.  Colossians 3:5 says that greed itself is idolatry.  In Ephesians 5, we read that “no fornicator or impure person, or one who is greedy (that is, an idolater), has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God” (v. 5).

            It’s very difficult to detect greed in ourselves.  It’s been said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”  We have all kinds of defense mechanisms that prevent us from doing so.  Someone has asked, “Will we as Americans interpret our actions as less greedy than the way a South American peasant farmer or a Somali would interpret our actions?”[3]  Do they see us as arrogant, spoiled, and ungrateful?  Then again, do we even care what those people think?

            All this stuff about today’s emphasis—our tendency to idolatry and tyranny, transforming society, seeking justice, obeying God’s word—can be seen as someone’s political agenda.  Not that that in itself is a bad thing—it’s just not the whole truth.  Greed, idolatry, tyranny…these are all profoundly spiritual matters.  As Jesus says, we must be “rich toward God” if we’re to find real life.

            Worldly wisdom would say that I’m wasting my time by even talking about this.  Things are the way they are, so I might as well learn to like it!  Worldly wisdom might have a similarly uncharitable view of what we call the Lord’s Supper.  A scrap of bread and a sip from a little cup?  Are you nuts?  That’s no way to eat, drink, and be merry!  Supersize me, baby!

            How do we find meaning in life?  How do we answer the question, “Is my life worthwhile?”  The fellow in today’s parable apparently thinks the answer is in heaping up stuff for himself that will one day rot.  And oh by the way, it looks like he won’t even live long enough to see that happen!

            I see in the church and in our church a similar tendency toward greed and the idolization of money.  After all, we are Americans!  Remember my July 4th sermon when I said I love being an American?  Well, the good and the bad go together, so I’m not excluding myself from this.

            We really shouldn’t expect God to just turn everything around if we sit comfortably in our pews, have faulty financial priorities, and do next to nothing to share the good news.  But that brings us back to today’s focus.  Each phrase of that thing is important.

            The recognition [we first have to be able to see it] of the human tendency to idolatry and tyranny [which I’ve addressed briefly], which calls the people of God [that means us] to work [it won’t happen all by itself] for the transformation of society [things are not cool the way they are] by seeking justice [which involves a hard look in the mirror] and living in obedience [obedience—what is this, Vacation Bible School?] to the Word of God [which is the key].

            I’d like for us to think about ol’ Mr. Sheldon, the unfortunate bear he shot, the meat that sustained his family during that cold winter, and his words of wisdom.  Whether we have a little or a lot, whether we have two cents or two million, may we be able to say with him, “We ain’t poor!”

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