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Sermon from The Rev. Bill Payton
Proper 13C
August 5, 2007
8:45 and 11:15
The Cathedral of St. Philip
by The Rev. William R. Payton.
Ecclesiastes 1:12-14; 2:18-23 and Luke 12:13-21
I’ve been watching a lot of political speeches lately and I think those speeches are a lot like sermons. Almost all politician use there hands when they make speeches, and I certainly do. I hope that’s not a distraction to you. I remember once in Baltimore, I was greeting folks at the end of the service and a person said you know you are the first preacher I have ever known who signed his sermons. For a moment, I thought she was kidding, but she was genuinely complimenting me and if you’re in this business long you know that positive feedback is a fairly illusive thing. Rather than correcting her, I thanked her graciously and then I thought wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could actually sign and preach at the same time. I’m also reminded that it is said that sermons are a lot like dirty jokes — it’s hard to remember even the best of them.
So, to the task at hand, I’d like to comment on our first lesson and then let that lead us into the story Jesus tells us in the Gospel for today. The first lesson is written by an unknown preacher by the simple pseudonym, “Teacher (Qoheleth) who wrote a remarkable piece titled Ecclesiastes some 300 years before Jesus. His writing sounds like a kind of dreary harangue with an inexhaustible list of what he called vanities: ... all, all things, all human experience is van and meaningless. The Teacher’s whole point which he relentlessly pounds home like the jabbing forefinger of a political speech is that any human activity, any human undertaking not somehow related to God is vanity.
In the Gospel for today, a younger brother comes to Jesus and asks him to help him get his inheritance from his older brother. Jesus connects with the tremendous practical importance of the inheritance and tells the story of the ingenious farmer to set us straight about our use of material possessions. As I prepared for this sermon last week, I was impressed to read again Jesus concern to teach us about our relationship to material possessions and how we can get lost in them. The extent of Jesus concern is clear from these brief, impressive statistics: 16 of Jesus’ 38 parables are concerned with how to handle money and possessions. One out of every ten verse in the Gospel deal directly with the subject of earthly treasure. The Bible offers 500 verses on prayer, less than 500 verses on faith and more than 2,000 verses on the focus of money and possessions. To someone who has a moral aversion to wealth, the disdain for it can be as obsessive and controlling as the desire for it.
So in this story, Jesus tells of a farmer who was a pretty screwed guy. He has made a good living from his farm, the crops are thriving, and he even decided to ration his crops so as not to flood the market and cause the price to go down. He withholds his crops and very carefully keeps up a balance between supply and demand, first century market timing. Then his problem is that he never had it so well, and he begins to build barns to house his accumulated grain. He outgrows those barns and builds others. A screwed entrepreneur. But, the ultimate problem is that his management, good as it is, does not have eternal survivability. There’s a story about an American tourist who traveled out of her way to interview a very famous rabbi living in the heart of Jerusalem. When she arrived she was astounded to find the world renowned holy man in a one room house filled with books and him sitting at a small table. “Where”, asked the woman, is your furniture?” “And, where is your furniture?” replied the rabbi. “But, I’m just passing through Jerusalem,” responded the woman. “Me, too,” said the rabbi.
You see the issue Jesus wants us to notice about the farmer is not that he’s screwed. It's no sin to be an entrepreneur; it’s not even a sin to be a died-in-the-wool, successful, all-American capitalist. The issue is what was going on at the center of the farmer’s life. It was building barns, providing for that rainy day we all grew up hearing about. Jesus didn’t say you shouldn’t buy IRA’s and contribute to your 401K, and make needed plans for the future. What Jesus said was do not be anxious about them. Don’t hold on so tenaciously to the stuff, whatever the stuff is. Martin Luther remarked that the reason God made hands with fingers was to let money easily slip through our hands. There is nothing quite as seductive as money and the things money can buy, and all the world’s religions make great effort to point that out. But, of course, its not money that is the root of evil, it’s the love of money and all that is required to maintain it, and protect it and keep it in ever greater supply. It’s when the barns and the salary, the mutual funds, and the stuff of life move from the peripherals to the center of our concern.
I am reminded of Augustine; that articulate voice from the 4th century who uses some very interesting metaphors to teach us about what it means to be human. Augustine said that we all carry around within us what he called a “God shaped whole”. It’s a kind of space deep within us which is so unique only God and God alone can fill in that space. August said the every day problem in the fourth century was that people tried every thing they could think of to fill in the God shaped whole except the only thing that really works and that’s God’s presence. A spiritual friend of mine calls Augustine’s God shaped whole that “goading little it”. My friends says that we all have a kind of sense that there’s something not quite right deep within us. We carry around a pervasive sense of dis-ease. We never really know what the goading it is. It seems insatiable and never satisfied. We use work, change jobs.... maybe that’ll satisfy us, some of us change marriages and life partners. We collect how to do it books, we buy how-to-get-better-at it programs, how to overcome it, how to medicate it. I wonder if you are making connections here. We use sex, alcohol and other drugs, hobbies, religion. We try to discover more ways of making money or compulsively rail against money in self denial. Augustine would want us to understand that, that goading little it which keeps on trying to attract our attention is the voice and presence of God. And, before we try to do anything to satisfy it, we need to know that it is God and God alone who can satisfy it. That God shaped whole can only be filled in by God and God alone.
Jesus says you can have anything you want, money, plans for the future...Jesus says look at the cup, fill it, press the contents down add more till its running over... you can enjoy all this and there’s no limit...but, but, first things first. If you’re trying to fix it and satisfy that goading little it, if your trying to fill in the God shaped whole with anything no matter how wholesome to fill in the God shaped whole with anything but God, it just want work out. The Teacher of Ecclesiastes says it’s all meaningless and a vain attempt. Jesus says pay attention to God’s presence and let God and only God be God. Augustine says let God fill in the space God has purposefully provided for God’s presence in your life.
And so I’ll leave the Spirit to finish preaching this in your heart. Notice be aware of that sense of being unsatisfied, that sense of being unfulfilled that sense of dis-ease and longing. Could it be that this is an opportunity for you to be attentive to the God who so longs for your companionship? It’s so important that God is willing to wait on our awareness and our response for as long as it takes. If this is a time of renewed awareness, perhaps God is trying to get your attention in a new way, how exciting! I wonder how you and I might be more responsive to this irresistible presence.
Comments? Contact The Rev. Bill Payton at: bpayton@stphilipscathedral.org