SunAug12010
Soul Conversation
Dan DeWeese
Luke 12:13-21 - The Parable of the Rich Man
13Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” 14But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15And 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.”
16Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 18Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’
20But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
Illustration: King of the Jungle
A lion awoke in his jungle one morning feeling rather cocky and self-confident. He said to himself, “You know, I am pretty important around here. I am the king of this jungle.” He went out and cornered a small monkey and roared, "Who is mightiest of all the jungle animals?"
The trembling monkey answered, "You are, mighty lion!
Later, the lion confronted an ox and fiercely bellowed, "Who is the mightiest of all jungle animals?"
The terrified ox stammered, "Oh great lion, you are the mightiest animal in the jungle!"
On a roll now, the lion swaggered up to an elephant and roared, "Who is mightiest of all jungle animals?"
Fast as lightning, the elephant snatched up the lion with his trunk and slammed him against a tree half a dozen times, leaving the lion feeling as if it had been run over by a safari wagon. The elephant then stomped on the lion until it looked like a corn tortilla and ambled away.
The lion let out a painful moan, lifted his head weakly, and hollered after the elephant, "Just because you don't know the answer, you don't have to get all bent out of shape about it!"
The lion in our story, feeling overly self-important, had one of those soul conversations: “You know, I am pretty important around here. I am the king of this jungle.” And the rich man in Jesus’ parable, feeling overly successful in life, had another: “I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’”
All of us have conversations with ourselves, sometimes helpful, other times hurtful, sometimes constructive, other times destructive. Many times these conversations deal with who we are at the core of our being and what is most important to us in life. They deal with our deepest hopes and fears, with our dreams and our disappointments. They deal with our need for security, our desire for comfort, our longing for luxury, our hunger for happiness, our search for success.
In our society it is commonly accepted that our success or worth in life is closely tied to the size of our bank account or the amount of property we have–cars, clothes, homes, etc. That is not true in the new realm that Jesus came to establish, the one he represents and invites us to be a part of. In that realm, the realm of God, the person whose primary concern is accumulating more for himself or herself will never experience the riches of God. Rather, he or she will end up empty-handed. While piling up material wealth, that one will sink into spiritual poverty according to Jesus. A life cluttered with things, enslaved to the temporal, will simply have no room for God.
Star Trek Illustration. Back in the early 1990's, the science fiction television series Star Trek: The Next Generation aired an episode entitled "The Most Toys." The episode involved Lieutenant Commander Data being kidnaped by an obsessive collector, who leads the Enterprise crew to believe that Data was killed in a shuttle craft accident. Part of the first season of The Next Generation to air during the 1990s, it was intended as a satire of the consumerism that had defined the United States in the 1980s; the episode's title comes from a popular 1980s bumper sticker which read, "The one who dies with the most toys wins."
When you think about it, it’s a rather dumb saying. Whether I am building more barns to hold my surplus grain or hiring more brokers to handle my growing investments, there is nothing I can do to forestall the day when all of my worldly possessions will become worthless to me.
In the next few moments I would like to look more closely at Jesus’ story and where the downfall of the rich man lay. In telling the story, I don’t think Jesus is saying that being wealthy or having an abundance of material possessions is bad in itself. A careful reading of the gospels reveals that numerous of Jesus’ followers were people of substantial means.
I. So I think the downfall of the rich man lay not in the abundance of his possessions, but rather in his being possessed by them.
B Movie.
When I was a child growing up, I remember seeing one of those B Movies, a small-budget film that never amounted to much at the box office. It was the 1950's and I was watching it on the Zenith black and white television set in the corner of the living room in our Castle Rock, Washington farmhouse.
To this day I cannot tell you the name of the film or the persons who starred in it. One scene, however, remains fixed in my mind. Two characters in the story are in a huge mountain cavern. They are trying to drag a large box filled with gold out of the cavern. It is heavy and they are not making much progress. An enormous earthquake is shaking the place and huge boulders are falling all around them from the walls and ceiling.
One of the men, sensing the grave danger, yells to the other, “We’ve got to get out of here! We’re gonna get killed.” The other, reluctant to leave, yells back “No, we’ve worked too long and hard to find this gold and I’m not leaving without it.”
The first man, unable to convince the second to leave, finally scrambles to the cavern’s exit and stumbles out into the open, just as the walls and ceiling come crashing down, burying the man who refused to leave along with his treasure.
Is fire good or bad? We can’t live without it, yet it can kill and injure and destroy. Is water good or bad? We can’t live without it, yet it can kill and injure and destroy. Is air good or bad? We can’t live without it, yet it can kill and injure and destroy.
Are cars good or bad? Last year in the United States 34,000 people were killed in automobile accidents. At the same time cars transported people to work, to the grocery store, to the medical clinic, to visit family and friends and, oh, I almost forgot...most of you probably got to this worship service this morning in a car. So the answer to the question, “Are cars good or bad?” is, it depends on the situation and how we use them.
The same is true for all of our material possessions. They are neither good nor bad in themselves. They are one or the other depending on how we use them, on the way we relate to them. The German philosopher Goethe was on the mark when he noted, “We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”
Taylor Mali is a man who loves teachers and teaching. The other night I saw this 45-year-old American poet and teacher interviewed on CNN. Mali spent nine years teaching English, history, and math at schools on the Upper East Side of New York City and on Cape Cod. He now lectures and conducts workshops for teachers and students all over the world. In 2001 Taylor Mali used a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts to develop the one-man show "Teacher! Teacher!" about poetry, teaching, and math. He is a strong advocate for the nobility of teaching and in 2000 through poetry, persuasion, perseverance and passion, he set out to inspire 1,000 new persons to become teachers. As of July 30, 2010, he had 499.
His poem entitled "What Teachers Make," describes a conversation around a dinner table one evening. A successful business man asks Susan, one of the dinner guests who happens to be a teacher, what she makes. Susan responds to his question asked in a demeaning manner:
"You want to know what I make?
I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional Medal of Honor
and an A- feel like a slap in the face
if the student did not do his or her very best."
"I make kids wonder."
"I make them question."
"I make them criticize."
"I make them apologize and mean it."
"I make them write."
"I make them read, read, read."
"You want to know what I make?"
"I make a difference."
"And you? What do you make?"
It’s not what we have, whether they be material possessions or personal talents that matters most in life, but what we do with what we have and what we become as a result. The downfall of the rich man in Jesus’ story lay not in the abundance of his possessions, but rather in what they turned him into.
II. A second point I would like to draw from Jesus’ story of the rich man is that His downfall lay in his failure to recognize the source of his blessing.
In reading our gospel text this morning, I am struck by how many times the rich man in his soul conversation refers to himself. “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 18Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’
Over and over he talks about what he has: “My crops...my barns...my grain...my goods.” Six times in his brief talk to himself he uses the personal pronoun “I.” The little speech focuses on who he is and his “ dilemma” and what he will do to resolve it. Woody Allen once said, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”
Not once do the plans of the rich man include anyone other than himself.
Nate Henn. Twenty-five-year-old Nate Henn was a native of Wilmington, Delaware. A recent college graduate, Nate worked for Invisible Children, a San Diego, California-based aid group dedicated to ending the use of child soldiers in the war in Northern Uganda. On July 11, while watching the world cup finals with others at a rugby field in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, a suicide attack killed him and more than 50 others.
In a tribute to him on their website, Invisible Children described Nate as one who "worked with us at Invisible Children for a year and a half and leaves behind a legacy of honor, integrity, and service. From traveling the United States without pay advocating for the freedom of abducted child soldiers in Joseph Kony’s war, to raising thousands of dollars to put war-affected Ugandan students in school, Nate lived a life that demanded explanation. He sacrificed his comfort to live in the humble service of God and of a better world, and his is a life to be emulated."
Nate Henn was not a glory-seeker. He never sought the spotlight. He asked not to be made a hero. But the life he lived inspires reflection and imitation. In a facebook update made just before his trip to Uganda, he wrote, “thank you for helping me achieve my dream of getting to Uganda” and while there he wrote home about being in the best days of his life and loving his time with his Ugandan friends. Nate’s life ended while living out this dream, a selfless dream of putting others first, seeking peace, and living a life of integrity.
The downfall of the rich man in our story this morning lay in his failure to see the blessing in simple service. The song Simple Gifts, (which Amanda played just before the sermon) was written by Elder Joseph, a member of the Shaker community in Alfred, Maine in 1848. The lyrics to his one-verse song say:
'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.
The rich man never learned the truth of that simple song. He never learned the truth about which St. Francis of Assisi prayed: It is in giving that we receive....It is in dying that we are born to eternal life. The rich man never learned.
May we never forget.