Readings

FIRST LESSON

The first lesson is “Empty Me,” a prayer from Guerillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle by Ted

Gracious and Holy One, creator of all things and of emptiness, I came to you full of much that clutters and distracts, stifles and burdens me, and makes me a burden to others.

Empty me now of gnawing dissatisfactions, of anxious imaginings, of fretful
preoccupations, of nagging prejudices, of old scores to settle, and of the
arrogance of being right.

Empty me of the ways I unthinkingly envision myself as powerless, as a
victim, as determined by sex, age, race, as being less than I am, or as
other than yours.

Empty me of the disguises and lies in which I hide myself from other people
and from my responsibility for my neighbors and for the world.

Hollow out in me a space in which I will find myself, find peace and a whole
heart, a forgiving spirit and holiness, the springs of laughter, and the will
to reach boldly for abundant life for myself and the whole human family.

SECOND LESSON

The second lesson is from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 12 verses 13 through 21

Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But Jesus said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And Jesus 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.” Then Jesus told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then 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. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But 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?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’

This Week's Sermon

Date: August 1, 2010

Title:How Much Is Too Much ?

Message Delivered By: Rev. Dr. Joe McMurray

A new Pastor was assigned to an old parish that had been established in the community for a very long time. Everything in the church had run fairly smoothly for years, under the leadership of the long-serving Pastor who had retired. All things were established, and the programs and ministries of the church were very smart and well-planned—even down to the music that was played and sung on Sundays.

The Pastor did all he could to keep his hands off everything that was going well. But occasionally he would have run-ins with the Music Director. The Pastor wanted a few more upbeat hymns, some more contemporary music, but the Music Director refused to comply, saying that he knew best what the congregation wanted—“They like the old hymns, and the old hymns are what they’re going to get,” he said.

So for the longest time, the Pastor and the Music Director did not get along. This went on for many months. One Sunday, the pastor’s sermon focused on humanity’s commitment to the church—how necessary it was—and how all of us should dedicate ourselves to the service of God. And as he finished, the sermon response was sung. The Music Director had chosen the hymn, “I Shall Not Be Moved.” The pastor wasn’t certain, but he felt that this was a response to his plea for openness.

There were small incidents like this that began to build. And suddenly, it began to boil over into the congregation. The competition between the two became very public.

The following month, the Pastor was to begin a sermon series on tithing and how people should gladly give of their resources toward the beneficial work of the church. The sermon response chosen by the Music Director that morning was, “Jesus Paid It All.”

The Pastor now was certain that the Music Director was baiting him, and when he preached on the sin of convenience, particularly the sin of gossip—that everyone must be responsible for the words that come out of their mouths—the sermon response chosen for that Sunday was, “I Love to Tell the Story.”

After many more months of this, the Pastor became quite disgusted with the situation. The following Sunday, as he ended his sermon, he told the congregation that he was thinking of leaving their church. The sermon response hymn was, “Oh, Why Not Tonight?”

After he’d had enough, the Pastor spoke to his Bishop, and together they realized the position in which he found himself was untenable, so he planned to announce the following Sunday that he would, in fact, resign.

On that Sunday, the Pastor said, in his closing remarks, “It was Jesus that brought me to you. And it is Jesus that is taking me away.” The closing hymn that Sunday was, “Oh, What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

I am keeping my eye on you, Ed.
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Please pray with me: God of mercy, continue to bring healing to your people in need. Help those who are impacted by the weak economy; bring relief to those in the Gulf states who have been impacted by the oil disaster; console those who have lost loved ones and belongings in the summer storms across the Midwest, as well as those who continue to perish from the war. Give each of us the strength to persevere, and to be a comfort for all who suffer. And may my words and all of our thoughts be filled with honor and praise to you. Amen.
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For us to begin to have a conversation about who can be defined as wealthy or rich, or before we can truly understand how to define terms like abundance, we must understand what it is to be poor and destitute, to be without—and to go without, to comprehend what it means to live in poverty, in scarcity.

A common theme throughout the gospels is the issue of rich and poor. In translating, analyzing and attempting to understand the scriptural text, there is little unity among scholars to agree what these terms mean. Poor can be used to describe many facets of the scriptural passages—in anything from a weak spirit to those who make a conscious choice to renounce material goods to those who find themselves without enough to sustain their lives or their families’ lives.

We can think of richness with regard to personal qualities or characteristics. A common term for high intelligence about a specific thing is one having a “wealth of knowledge.” But in with regard to today’s scripture, we can assume that Jesus knew to whom he was talking.

Jesus knew that the distinctions between the classes were stark, the distance between rich and poor was a wide chasm. Jesus tried to teach not about how much a person possessed, as much as what they did with it, how they lived and contributed to the well-being of others, and how that reflected their faith and their faithfulness to God.

There are many valid points we can find in the scripture that would really become nothing more than distractions to the real point. We could argue about inheritance in the culture of the day as mentioned in the gospel, knowing that the eldest son would inherit his father’s wealth. But it was a person in the crowd Jesus spoke to that day who asked for personal intervention by asking Jesus to tell his brother to divide the family wealth.

Jesus, wisely, did not get embroiled in this family squabble. If one applies the most common practice of the day, there was no obligation for the eldest brother to divide anything, though he would be obligated, in most circumstances, to support the rest of his family, including his brother, as his father did. Jesus recognized the comments by this man to have their origin based on greed, and he warned the man against it.

Jesus then shared the parable about the man whose most prominently creative solution to his abundance was to build bigger storage barns. All throughout the Judeo-Christian tradition are stories based on these themes. If you recall when the Israelites wandered in the dessert, they received manna from heaven, and were told by God not to save it or hoard it, for it would be spoiled by the next day. Instead, they were told to have faith that God would provide for them the next day and every day.

And the story of the rich man in Mark, Chapter 10, who asked Jesus what, besides obeying God’s law, he must do to gain the realm of God. And Jesus said to him, “Sell all that you have and give it to the poor,” and the man went away distraught because he had many possessions. “It would be easier,” Jesus said, “for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich person to get into heaven.”

In contrast to the man from Luke’s gospel, whose only viable plan was a selfish one to fill himself up even more, Ted Loder’s prayer, “Empty Me,” calls to mind how often we fill ourselves to overflowing in selfish and unhealthy ways. He speaks of things that clutter and burden us, things that take our attention away from what is real and what is important.

He prays that we might empty ourselves of ill-will of all kinds, not only our penchant to hoard possessions, but the ways we also hoard our love. He calls us to examine our petty jealousies and unwillingness to share our friendships, while at the same time making demands of those we love so that they might give us more than our fair share of their attention.

He cautions us as we dwell in our own victimhood, just as the man in the parable whose only concern was building more room to store more for himself, not thinking for one moment of sharing from his abundance. Loder warns us to release and dismiss the false images of ourselves that we display to others—to empty ourselves of that which is not real—allowing the truth of who we are to surface; and to live in that truth and transform our weaknesses into qualities of which we can be proud.

What will we find if we examine our needs against our desires? And what will we find if we compare our desires against our own sense of what is really valuable to us?

What if we were to ask these questions: “How much do we really need in the world?” and “How much is too much?”

Material wealth is very tempting. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to fly first class, it is more than being pampered—it is a feeling. I will admit to you that the only times we’ve ever flown first class are when we have saved up enough air miles to upgrade, which is usually every 3-5 years.

And there is a feeling about it when you are invited to board the plane first. You walk in, find your cushy seat, the flight attendant asks you if you’d like a blanket and pillow, and what you’d like to drink from the bar while the others are boarding the plane.

The people in coach walk by, in envy, and you can’t help but feel a little special as they struggle down the narrow aisle with their children and their carry-on luggage.
They pull the curtain to divide you from the coach class passengers, so that you will not have to look at them during the flight or be stared at because you know they’re wondering the same thing you do when you fly coach and envy those sitting in first class: “What kind of job do I have to have in order to be able to do that?”

And then, as the coach class passengers are being forced to purchase cheese and crackers or a stale sandwich, in first class, you dine in luxury with the appropriate wine for dinner and dessert.

The point of all of this isn’t to ridicule those who can afford first class and fly it every time. The point is to point out and reflect on what is necessary, what is important, and to decide, even if we can afford it, if something is really too much?

Greed is not limited only to our possessions, for we have all experienced a greediness of spirit—either our own or someone else’s.

My dad was born in 1913. He achieved success the hard way, put himself through college, helped to provide for his mother and his brother who took care of her. He lied about his age when he applied for work at Caterpillar Tractor Company, so that he could get a good paying job sooner and support his family in a more substantive way.

He worked for that company for 45 years as a design engineer. Bypass surgery put him on the sidelines, and he was forced to retire at the age of 61. He was proud of his work, proud of the family of six he and my mother were able to raise—though I don’t know how they did it. His hard work paid off for my mother, who now, at age 93, is still receiving health benefits through his provisions for her. And when I said he was successful, I said nothing about wealth because they are two very different things.

This is a story from the past. People don’t work for businesses and corporations that long anymore. Now, individuals are paid millions of dollars to streamline corporations by laying off workers. Jobs by these multi-million dollar corporations are sent overseas so that overhead and employee costs are lessened, thus creating more profit for those at the top.

There is no loyalty to the job as there used to be. The mega-corporations are too big to recognize the revolving door of individuals that come and go. There is a coldness that has replaced fairness and caring. People hop from job to job out of fear that they will be left behind. Some are forced to work two and three jobs, without health care, just to make ends meet. And God help them if they have children to support or if they experience a catastrophic illness.

So then the meaning of today’s scripture is not just some simplistic parable about a wealthy man who wanted to build more storage barns for his abundance. It’s about how we treat other people. It’s about making a difference when we have the capacity to do so. It’s about thinking outside the safety of our own four walls to consider the security and happiness of others.

Just like that feeling we have on those rare times when we ride first class—a little twinge of guilt that tells us, this is nice, but we really don’t need it. It really is a bit too much.

This lesson Jesus taught is about the choices we make; the willingness we have to do the hard thing—the right thing—as if we’re staring God right in the face.

It’s about character; it’s about compassion; it’s about the realistic human condition and what we choose to do about it. This story is about salvation—not just our own, but the salvation of others who are so desperate for just a small portion of the abundance that exists in the world.

When we understand that and live into that, we have learned the lesson Jesus was trying to teach. May we continue to follow where God is leading. Amen.

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