Said a rich man, graced by God with an abundant harvest – aka The Kingdom: “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.” And this, he adds, will be his security – his security. Ah, the best laid plans … the best laid plans …
So it goes when we focus on security over our lives, versus security in our lives -- the good, internal kind, being “rich toward God” as
Jesus puts it today. But the kind the rich fool was seeking: the external. The
kind that makes out of God’s gifts our entitlement. The kind that makes out of God’s
abundance our possessions.
Possessions that the late
comedian George Carlin called “our stuff.” “That’s the whole meaning of
life, isn’t it?” Carlin asks. “Trying to find a place for your stuff?
“That’s what your house is. A
house is just a place for your stuff. If you didn’t have so much stuff, you
wouldn’t need a house. You could just walk around all the time. ... (Your house is) a pile of stuff with a cover on it … And when you leave your
stuff, you gotta lock it up. Wouldn’t want somebody to come by and take some of
your stuff. They always take the good stuff! They don’t bother with what you’re
saving. (Ain’t nobody interested in your fourth grade arithmetic papers.)
They’re looking for the good stuff. That’s all your house is: a place to keep
your stuff while you go out and get more stuff!
… Now sometimes you have to move. You have to get a bigger house. Why?
Too much stuff! You’ve gotta move all your stuff! And maybe put some of your stuff
in storage. Imagine that, there’s a whole industry based on keeping an eye on
your stuff!”
Think Carlin is exaggerating?
I recall an enlightening PBS series in the 1990s, “Affluenza.” One
revelation from it: The average American house built in the ’90 is 40 percent larger in
space than the average house built in the ‘50s. And now with McMansions ..
We can all see how much of our life revolves around
our stuff. Our possessions. Protecting our possessions. Becoming possessive
about our possessions. Becoming, if you will … well: possessed!
Being possessive – if not possessed. The breeding
ground of our search for security. The place we seek for ourselves externally
when we fear so much that takes place internally.
Our household has acquired
two cats over two years. Some of our number met the first cat of our house. We
brought our tortoise-shell Founder with us from Ann Arbor – so named because an
earlier owner had found her. She was already long in the tooth when we moved
here, and so we knew she was not long for this world.
Not having a house pet
since childhood, I had not encountered a phenomenon I experienced with Founder
as she began to fade into that good night. An outdoor cat, she had her usual
roosts. But toward the end, whenever we let her out the door, Founder would just
continue walking. She was making a beeline for parts unknown – there was
apparently no destination, she seemed to be running from something.
When Founder died, I asked
the veterinarian what that was all about. The vet replied, “That’s what animals
often do when they become very sick. They cannot distinguish threats internal
from threats external. And so, feeling they are being pursued, they flee to the
safety of some new shelter.”
When possessed by fear, animals often flee for a new
shelter. When possessed by fear, we humans often build a new shelter.
Build it, for more possessions – possessions that only further possess us. Failing
to differentiate threats internal from external, we secure new shelters and
flee to new shelters for the sake of our stuff, if not the sake of our safety.
Security, we cry; we need more security! Not the sense
of peace that comes from within. But ever-expanding self-contained bunkers,
providing us space in our need to possess. The place we humans prepare for externally
to numb our possession of our fear internally.
A few presidential election
cycles past, the successful candidate ran on three promises, repeated ad
nauseam lest the candidate roam off-message. The three promises were: National Security
… Homeland Security … Economic Security.
With many others, I have
found that the political success of the theme of security has turned a true
good into a false god. Security in our country became a word applied to describe
to that we think we are entitled … versus practicing good stewardship of what God
can only give. Security in our country became based on the fear of losing what
we have or not getting what we want. As with the rich man in Jesus’
parable today, security in our country came no longer via the public good: faith
that we shared abundance among us, providing for all from the common
store. (The Obamacare now officially in force or no, can anyone claim to follow
Jesus and say at the same time that all should not have quality health care in
our land of medical abundance? What’s the use of building larger medical barns
at Walter Reed and NIH if the common good is not being served? As Jesus asks
today of us: “Whose will (all this) be?” For Luke’s Jesus, it’s always about
God’s kingdom; it’s always about the “whose”!)
The trumpets continue to
resound from within our Jerusalem, our D.C. gates: Security, security, and more
security. National, homeland, economic security. Send forth the word, prepare
ye the way: Security is an external good for the some who "deserve" it. Security for our exceptional
nation – God Bless America! – over all the other, less exceptional ones. For the
economically one percent within our nation, those who own forty percent – if
not that, then certainly the twelve percent: those who own the ninety percent.
While national and homeland security is the price we pay as a nation among nations, economic security is the price we pay as a
nation among ourselves: becoming possessed by all our "stuff", our possessions.
Which is, after all, why we call them our possessions!
So what is God’s kingdom antidote? What is
it specifically that Jesus prescribes?
What does Jesus mean today by being “rich toward God,”
so that we do not become possessed by our “stuff” – our possessions?
I close with two stories. One is a story of personal
dispossession – a story someone told me of becoming free from. The other is a
story of God’s possession of us: What becomes for us our freedom for, the fulfillment of all the freedom we seek.
The story of personal
dispossession first. Sometimes it takes letting go of possessions rightly due
us in order to restore God’s possession of our lives. Such was the dilemma with
the one in the crowd whose cry sets the stage was set for Jesus’ parable of
possession today: “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance
with me.”
Returning from my vacation
recently, I was driving a friend back to the D.C. area, where he could catch
the Amtrak to his home in New York. In the course of our journey, he told me of
his estrangement from his two older siblings.
It seems they cheated him of
an equal share of the family inheritance. And so my friend carefully wrote his
older siblings a letter, expressing his sorrow over this matter and his need to
distance himself from their greed.
“I let them go at that
time,” he said. And then he said – and he would repeat this twice: “I didn’t
want to get cancer.”
My friend did not get the possessions he expected and deserved. And yet more importantly, he did not become possessed by his loss.
And when like my friend we seek freedom from the possession of possessions in our
lives, more often than not we find more than we ever bargained for. Somewhere –
somehow – at some time we experience being possessed by something remarkably
holy.
Some of you may recall a
generation ago when the American poet Robert Bly led wildly popular gatherings
of men across our country. It was a time when male baby boomers were coming of
age. As thirty-somethings, they were discovering they had to learn to let go,
to dispossess themselves of their youthful illusions, in order to live a
fuller, richer, spiritually satisfying life.
At one of these gatherings, a
man came up to Bly afterward and told him of a time he was a young adolescent growing
up on the coast. A self-described beach bum at that time, this he rebelled by
growing his hair long. Very long – much longer than his father approved.
After refusing repeatedly to
get his hair cut, he was tied down by his father, who shaved it off of him – leaving him alone,
beating the floor with his fists.
It was at that moment that
the boy’s grandfather stepped into the room. He took in what had happened; he
remained very quiet. Grandpa then said to the upset boy, “Come … I have
something important to show you.”
When the boy had finally
collected himself, they wandered together to the ocean nearby. The old man
swept his arms out before him and said, “Here, my son: This is for you!”
Twenty years passed, and with
them illusions countless. That once-adolescent boy returned to his original
home on the coast, and – bam! There was the gift that his grandfather had given
him.
“Here, my son: This is for
you!” A possession for him to have? No – not at all. A poetic compensation
received for his haircut? Umm … not really.
The boy’s grandfather had
given him something far more important: the gift of an unaffected awareness of
God. “Here, my son: This is for you!”
Given the use and misuse of
the term before us, we may chafe at saying we are possessed by God.
To which I would respond:
“Here it is – our horizon: God’s kingdom -- God's commonwealth -- for us all!”
