“Over Our Heads”
Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21
August 5, 2007

Dr. Catherine Taylor

In the summer of 1997 an earthquake severely damaged an historic Italian church dedicated to the memory of Saint Francis of Assisi, the wandering 12^th century monk who devoted his life to the poor.  The church was a masterpiece of Gothic architecture and painting and an important magnet for the local economy which benefited from the tourists who came to see the church.  When the building and all its art was virtually destroyed, a local cab driver who was interviewed on the news said perhaps God had had a hand in the destruction of the church building.  Whatever the church’s artistic merit or its value to the local tourist trade, it was hardly a fitting tribute to the memory of a saint who had given up all his earthly treasures and dedicated his life to the poor.

I broke one of my earthly treasures this week, my food processor.  I had asked for it for Christmas and Robert, who is ever generous, got it for me.  He’d been using it happily for months, but because I am slow to approach mechanical things, I had yet to use it.  But this week I was ready.  We had kept that fabulous list of 101 ten-minute recipes for summer suppers from The New York Times, and there was a meal that required lots of chopped fresh vegetables. 

So I lined up the vegetables and got ready and pushed the button on the food processor which started and then promptly stopped, not to respond to the on button again.  It turned out that it wasn’t broken, it had just popped the reset button on the electrical outlet, but I didn’t know that and was not looking forward to announcing that with one touch I had done in an expensive and useful gift.  We won’t be buying a new food processor after all, so for a little while at least the U.S. economy will have to hum along without me.

The U.S. economy depends on constant consumption.  Saving, thrift, making do or doing without used to be valued character traits in the U.S., especially in the decades after the Great Depression.  But as the economy has expanded it has become ever more dependent on the constant spending habits of you, me, our children, and our neighbors.  Saving and making do are no longer held in much esteem.  To have lots of things is admired.  Having the right brand names is even more admirable in some circles.

Did you see the story in the Times about the fifteen dollar designer reusable grocery bags that were so coveted they sold out almost at once, and then sold on eBay that night for two, and even three hundred dollars?  That’s three hundred dollars for a bag to tote your groceries in.  Having the in thing and having what you want when you want it are a given for some people, and there is almost no cultural criticism of people for having too much.  Or even much conversation about what “enough” means.

Fortunately our story from Luke is not about the foolishness of having things in general.  This is not a story that says wealth is bad or that consumption in itself is bad or that getting a good return on one’s investments is foolhardy.  Wealth or even how we use it is not the issue.

The story begins with a situation that is not at all uncommon.  The division of inheritance in a family is causing pain.  It is not necessary to go into a mini-lecture here on how property was divided in ancient Palestine.  There are people in this room who know the pain of unequally divided inheritance that causes family strife and sometimes permanent rifts. 

The man who has called out for help thinks that he’s found an ally in Jesus, but Jesus has no interest in judging such things.  Instead he warns the man not to care too much about the outcome.  Amassing possessions, Jesus says, is not the way to live.

Then he tells a story about someone who benefited from owning productive land.  No wrong was done; there’s no conniving or exploitation going on.  The land has done what land, and sun, and rain will do in the best circumstances.  The man has such a large harvest he has no place to put it.  All is not only well, it’s splendid. 

But look at what happens next and how we find out about it.  The man talks to himself.  He plans for himself.  He congratulates himself.  Not another person is mentioned.  In this weird self-conversation we realize that here is a man who is completely self-absorbed.  He is not foolish because he dies without heirs.  He is foolish because he dies without having really lived.

Rembrandt did a painting of the rich fool that hangs today in Berlin Museum.  It is nighttime and an old man in lush clothing is seated at a table with a candle.  His hat is velvet, his robe is rich wool held on the shoulders by golden epaulets.  A ruff collar stands out around his wrinkled neck and spectacles perch on his nose.  The single candle is the only source of light, but we cannot see the flame because the man is blocking it with a raised coin which he is closely inspecting.

The man is surrounded by stacks and stacks of stuff – thick leather-bound books, heaps of papers, a bulging bag of gold.  The pile is so high on one side it looks as though it might fall on him at any moment.  By the look of his possessions he must have an enviable quality of life, but at the edges of the painting where the light recedes into his mounds of stuff, all is darkness.

Our other reading for the day is also concerned with the quality of life.  In the letter to the Colossians, Paul, or a direct disciple, instructs church members on how to lead an entirely new life.  They have died to their old selves, he says, and can now set their minds on things that are above.  The language about this new life centers on the risen Lord.  It is powerful but it is also somewhat off-putting.  Rich and mysterious phrases tumble over each other as the writer tells church members that they have been raised with Christ, that they are hidden with Christ in God, that Christ is their life, and Christ is all in all.

Coupled with this is a long list of earthly things they can discard.  “Put to death” is how the writer says it.  Various kinds of immorality, greed, anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive language, and lying can all go.  They belong to an old self that like worn-out clothes can be stripped off and thrown away in favor of a state of freedom and grace.  The writer describes this new state, this different life, as so different it is as if races and religions and social barriers simply are no more.  Things that have always been are not. 

If you’re like me you may be having a tough time listening at this point.  My daughter, who has been listening to sermons all her life, calls such texts guilt-trip stories.  And it is very easy to take both these stories to mean that we now have to renovate ourselves.  That if we just give up self-absorption, bad language, and less than savory behavior, if we just stop being mad, ever, at anyone, and give more of what we have away, then we will get the Christian life right.  Maybe we can’t be like St. Francis but we can certainly be a little better than we were before.

That is a common way to preach and hear these stories and it is not wrong necessarily.  But some of what happened in the world this week suggests that if we treat these readings like religious to-do lists, we will miss the point.

A group of supposedly Christian hate-mongers came to Cornell last Thursday to protest the university’s acceptance of gay and lesbian students and faculty.  The group uses extreme and violent rhetoric that guarantees them publicity wherever they go.  While they were here in Ithaca the bridge fell in Minneapolis, so they took the opportunity to announce that the bridge collapse was God’s punishment on the nation for its tolerance of homosexuals.  A quick counter protest was organized at Cornell that consisted of students, faculty, and administrators, local clergy including myself and David, and others who wanted to counter such blatant hatred. 

I bring this up because to me this group is an extreme example of how distorted check-list Christianity can become.  It really isn’t a very long journey from “it’s all up to me” to “it’s whatever I say it is.”  I bring it up because at their core neither one of our texts is about doing things to make ourselves better followers of Christ.  Indeed both our texts today are about freedom, freedom from things or from constant fear about scarcity, freedom from check-list ways of living that make life dead and small. 

Yes, one has to take this freedom by the hand, but it’s more about undoing the golden clasps and letting some old and heavy ways of life slip from sight, than taking on new burdens in order to meet some righteous criteria.  There will always be people who miss the offered freedom, who take the same book we read, and misuse it to make life smaller and uglier and even more deadly.

On Friday morning the paper reported that there had been four extremists protesting on the side of hate, all of whom happened to be members of the immediate family of the group’s founder.  There were 270 people at the counter protest.  Hatred 4, Tolerance 270, was a pretty good score for the day I thought.  But I did not have much time to think further about the protest because the news about the bridge falling in Minneapolis soon dominated the papers and the airwaves.

God is never the author of tragedy despite what the Italian taxi driver might have wondered, but Thursday was a day when some may have wondered again.  The number of confirmed deaths still seems miraculously small to me; the number of missing is also low.  The moment in the Luke story when the rich man suddenly dies is not fiction.  Heartbreakingly sudden death is all too real.

Live now, says Jesus to a man who thinks his future is all caught up with how the battle for his inheritance turns out.  Live now, says Jesus, without waiting for what you think is coming to you, for death comes unexpectedly to some and oh, by the way, real life is not about possessions and it is not about self.  Live now, says the writer of Colossians to people who were wearing faith too heavily or not wearing it at all.  Live now, and oh, by the way, real life is something completely other than the way things usually are in the world.

Here is a hint.  In Zambia the only source of protein for a typical family is one egg a day for a whole household.  Because the father is the bread winner he usually gets the egg three times a week.  The other days the children get whatever small part of the egg is found in a cornmeal mush shared by them and their mother.  Meanwhile, here in the U.S., some people spend $300 on a designer grocery bag.  That’s how things are.

Live into Christ now, says Paul, and things as they are will suddenly cease to be.  If that’s over our heads, so be it.  I am convinced that if we try too hard to nail down the stories for today we run the risk of making them too small, or too handy, so let’s not try anymore.  Let’s eat and drink together as people who want to live now and who don’t have to have all the answers on the way.  AMEN.