Have You Ever Wondered? What Do We Lack?
October 5, 2003
Year A
When Mona started dividing up the Sundays that the pastors were going
to preach on this series, and I got slated for today, I thought, “You know,
God clearly has smiled upon me! This is going to be an easy sermon to
preach, because unlike a lot of the topics we’re exploring during this
series on Imagining the Ethics of Jesus, we do have some sense of what
he thought about possessions, what kind of ethics he had around the
stuff we own and what we should do with it. I mean, this whole series has
been built on trying to tease out what Christ might have thought about
the hard, difficult ethical issues of our time—and we’ve tackled a lot of
them already—abortion, the death penalty, even the dilemma of other
religions. So, you know, doing a sermon on materialism seemed like
easy work…until you realize that its probably one of the hardest topics to
actually tackle, because unlike a lot of those other ethical issues, this
one pretty much touches all of us, not just a few of us—and, if you’ve
been here at the Cathedral, you know that we’ve certainly heard plenty
of sermons about the dangers of materialism and consumerism, and we’
ve looked at how our culture almost continually nurtures us to believe
that more is better, consumption is our birthright and all of that stuff. A
lot of us have already heard it—which, I want to remind you, is something
many of us would have probably not heard in the churches we grew up
in.
And to be honest, I know I’ve got a personal problem with materialism
and consumerism—a friend of mine recently bought a beautiful new
home and we were checking it out, and I was struck by how much envy I
had for what he had, what he owned—it was not one of my prettiest
moments, to be honest. But I was reminded again how much I have
bought into the values of our culture—that what I own defines me, or
what I don’t own defines me, and what I drive marks me somehow, all of
it, I’ve certainly bought into it. And I think most of us already know that,
to be honest, that we place a higher value on stuff, on things, then we’d
like to or we ever should.
I mean, we all know the stats about how many people are living this world
in complete poverty, about the number of people who are going to die in
this world this very day from hunger or from some preventable disease,
and knowing all this, we are also pretty self-aware that our big concern at
this moment is how we’re going to make our payments on that new car
we just brought, especially in this horrible economy. We know the pull of
stuff, of things, in our lives, we know the power of buying and buying and
buying until our houses are full to the brim with more stuff, and so we
have to get a bigger house so that we can store yet more of our stuff. It’
s not a revelation to most of us that we got a problem here, in this
country, with materialism, this belief that what I own is who I am, and that
to be more who I am, I must own more and more. We get it already, we
get it. And I just didn’t want to feel guilty again, about it, and I certainly
don’t want to be the person who preaches a sermon where we all feel
half-guilty about owning the stuff we own, and half-realizing that we really
don’t care all that much about people on the other side of the world—
leaving from a worship service with that kind of feeling is not my idea of
having a good time.
And yet, of course, Jesus never was all that worried about our feelings,
but I also don’t think that the reason he told us to beware of the pull of
stuff, the dangers of building your life and your personhood based on
what you own, had anything to do with trying to make us feel bad. But
yet this topic keeps coming up for a reason, it keeps coming up in the
Scriptures, especially in the Gospels, because Jesus knew what we know
in the deepest places in our heart, that our attitude toward stuff, toward
the things we own in our lives, it is important, perhaps more we can ever
know. In the story that we heard earlier from the Gospel of Mark, we
have his version of story that is told in both Matthew and Luke, but the
way Mark tells the story is different, it is more tender, more
understanding, more gentle than the way Luke and Matthew give us the
story. The story goes that Jesus is asked by a young man what he
needed to do to inherit eternal life, what did he need to receive
salvation? And Jesus replies simply with a shortened version of the 10
commandments, sorta of hitting highpoints, so to speak. And this young
man replies that he has done all of these things, that he has followed the
law of Israel. And Jesus seems to understand, that indeed, he really is a
good man, that its he’s not lying or blowing his own horn. I think Jesus
saw before him a man that was genuinely good, he really did do right by
God and other people. But its at this pivotal point in the story, that Mark
veers from Matthew and Luke—the tenderness of Jesus comes out in the
story. “Jesus looked at the person with love and said, ‘You lack one
thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will
have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’” It’s that look of love
that is so stunning here, so tender, and which is different from the other
two Gospels that tell this story. It’s almost as if Jesus looked into this
man’s soul, and saw what he was really asking for, what was missing in
his life, and that what he was asking about was not about getting to
heaven or being a good man—he was asking Christ to tell him what it will
take for him to be the man he really wants to be, to be the disciple that
deep in his heart he wants to be. I mean, he knew the rules, he followed
the rules, and he was a good man, he obeyed the rules, he played the
game—and yet he lacked something, something that was stopping him
from being wholeheartedly a disciple of this Jesus that he wanted to
follow, that he believed in. And Jesus could see it, could see what was
stopping him—and it was the stuff around him, given to him, perhaps, or
maybe he worked hard for it all his life for it. Either way, it was in the
way, this stuff, and Jesus asked him to give it away so that he could get
to what really mattered, something he could carry with him into eternity.
And to be honest, his reaction to what Jesus asks of him, shows how
much of good man he really is—he was shocked, he was stunned,
because Jesus had nailed him, he saw him for who he was—a good man,
a man so loved by Jesus that Mark himself records it, records this love,
and yet a man who would not and could not give up what he loved the
most. What he lacked, oddly enough, in his case, was a lack of stuff, of
things, of possessions. And yet he couldn’t do it—don’t ask this of me,
not this—everything else is fine, my time, my effort, my morality, my
goodness, whatever, but I can’t give this up, he seems to be saying to
Jesus. Jesus struck at the core, and he knew he couldn’t do it, he couldn’
t follow this Jesus, not on those terms. I mean, Jesus is not making a
statement about things, or possessions—possessions in and of
themselves mean nothing, if they mean nothing to us, but, like this young
man, we know that our possessions situate us, they define us, they mark
us, they give us prestige and power and attention and security—if we
allow them to, and I have met very few people in which that wasn’t the
case—that’s why Jesus keeps bringing up this issue over and over
again, he knows what we humans ultimately struggle with. Things are
not bad in and of themselves—the Christian tradition declares all of
creation to be good, but we humans have the awful habit of confusing
the creation with the Creator, making what God has created as good into
Goodness itself, which is God alone.
And I must admit that I can imagine Jesus watching this man leave his
presence, this man’s heart a little shattered, a little stunned, that
someone got him, that someone saw what really held him back from
completely being the man God wanted him to be. It had come down to
the stuff he owned, because someone, perhaps for the first time, saw
that his stuff, his things, really owned him, they possessed him. In this
scene from THE FIGHT CLUB, one character speaks to the other about
an explosion that destroyed all of his belongings. Now, I know that a few
of you are probably surprised that there is a plot in the midst of this
movie—most of the gay men thought it was just an excuse to have Brad
Pitt running around with his shirt on. But there is a real story there! Let’
s take a look (INSERT VIDEO CLIP here). What you possess end up
possessing you, Brad Pitt’s character reminds us. And the thing about it
is that God does not compete, and will not compete with anything,
especially that which is not even alive. The Jewish tradition reminds us
that God is a jealous God, and that God demands from us the whole of
us, our complete attention, because that is what God has given us. How
incredible to be loved, how incredible to be the attention of the God of
the universe! And yet is so hard to respond to that love and attention
and grace with our own attention to the God who has loved us and made
us and has never stopped believing in us.
So, have I made everyone feel guilty about having stuff and loving the
stuff you have? I actually hope not, because that is not what Jesus ask
of us—he doesn’t ask us for our guilt, that has never gotten him or us
anywhere. But he does clearly ask for all of us, the whole of us, if we are
going to be his disciples. And that means always thinking about what I
am to do to follow this Jesus with my whole heart. You know, the only
thing that makes sense for me in this passage is something I finally
learned about a year ago, though I’ve had some trouble actually putting
into practice. And I think it captures what Jesus was getting to in this
point about giving it all away, because in the end, Jesus knows that for a
few of us, though not the vast majority of us, possessions, or things, are
not what hinder us from giving God our complete attention—it can be a
lot of different things: our relationship, our families, our need for
approval, whatever. But most of us, myself included, get tripped up on
the material things, because of what they mean to us, and what we think
they mean to other people—the acknowledgement we think others give
us because we own and possess more than they do. Now, having said
that, I know that I am not ready to sell everything I have to give to the
poor—and a lot of us have obviously have chosen not to do that, to
ignore what Jesus seems to saying here in this passage. Now, the
church has spent a lot of energy explaining away this passage about
selling everything we have, and giving it to the poor, but the problem is
that this Jesus we worship and follow, he keeps telling us to do this
thing—in all four Gospels, and even in the book of Acts—the early
members of the church in Jerusalem right after Jesus died and rose
again sold all their possessions, pooled the resources and lived
together, essentially, as socialists, much to the embarrassment of all of
us capitalists. It’s a problem, this obsession most of us have with things,
and its problem because Jesus thought we had a problem with it, and the
early church tried to do something about it, though we know eventually
that the solution they tried, this solution of selling everything they had
and pooling their resources together, in their radical commitment to
Christ, it eventually failed. So, what are we to do about it? I mean, how
do I stay faithful and not try to pretend that if Jesus thought humans had
a problem with materialism in first century Palestine, he would probably
think we would have the same problem with it now, in this, the richest
country the world has ever known, in any era, in any time?
Well, the only way I have found to even vaguely put Jesus’ words in this
passage into action, to reconcile my problem with stuff, with things, is to
begin to personally give away what I love most in this world, the
possessions I love the most in this world, the ones I think I can’t live
without. I don’t have a lot of things, but there a couple of things I love a
lot, probably too much maybe, and maybe its time to give away the
things that I love the most, to finally share with others what God has first
shared with me. And I’m not talking about giving it away in a will at the
end of my life, but giving it away NOW—because you know that you love
this thing, this stuff, maybe TOO MUCH. I’m not saying be stupid, but
maybe I am—I mean, how else would you characterize what Jesus asks
of this man—talk about a stupid financial decision Jesus is asking him to
make—clearly, Jesus should have consulted with his financial advisor
before giving this kind of advice away! I mean, I know I can’t sell
everything I have, even if I know it competes for my attention with God,
but I know I can slowly start thinking about those things in my life that I
think I can’t live without—and I can start giving them away, before they
possess, before what I own ends up owning me. Whatever possesses
you, whatever thing, whatever sense of security you get from it, or the
high you get from owning it, if it hinders you from being the person God
wants you to be, a disciple fully committed to following Christ, then
maybe, maybe its time to give it away. Is it possible? I don’t know, I don’t
know if I can do it, and I certainly don’t know whether you can do it, but I
think God can certainly do it through us--“for God, all things are
possible!” so says Jesus, the one who makes the impossible so very
possible. St. Francis did that, finally, because for him, nothing mattered
more than God. I’m not sure I’m ready to give away everything like he
did, or to share everything, and I suspect most of us are not there yet,
but we mustn’t forget that everything is what is asked of us—because
God has given us everything—it is the only response worth giving to the
God who has given everything. How odd, to be given something,
everything, and then to be asked to give it all away; how incredible of
God to expect so much of us, we who often just struggle with admitting
that everything was a gift in the first place. But it is possible for us, you
know, in the end, because of who God is—this God who loves us so
much as to give everything to us, in this world and in the next, and who
asks of us to be like the Giver of it all. We can do this because of the
One who asks us to do it—with this God, all things, everything is
possible, even this thing. Amen.
