Dr. Frederick O. Lewis First Baptist Church of Indianapolis Sunday, August 8, 2010 Fatal Attractions: Greed Luke 12: 13-21 Some years ago, a men�"s church group was meeting for breakfast and Bible study in the church fellowship hall. They had been studying the parables of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke and had come to the story we heard today as our scripture, usually called the parable of the Rich Fool. After reading the story, there was silence in the room for what seemed like an eternity. No one sipped coffee, no one lifted a bagel from a plate. Most just stared at the table in front of them. Finally, one of the men began the discussion. “You know, “he said, “the teachings of Jesus are just so hard to understand. I mean these stories and parables that he told. How are we to understand what he meant?” Again, there was silence in the room until finally another man, the oldest in the group, raised his voice, “Bill, you know that is NOT true. The teachings of Jesus are NOT hard to understand. They ARE hard to follow.” The teachings of Jesus are not hard to understand, they are hard to follow. Our summer worship series has focused on the Seven Deadly Sins. We have looked at pride, envy, anger and sloth… we have called them fatal attractions. One of the ways we understand sin… is that sin is a distortion of the good… a good turned in upon itself. Nothing makes the point more clearly than the sins of greed, gluttony and lust. In each case, something that is good… God-given…is turned bad when it becomes the organizing principle around which we center our lives... in greed possessions become all important…. in gluttony it is food and drink… and in human sexuality something that is good becomes corrupted by lust. Jesus told us, “Take care, be on your guard against all kinds of greed.” The other night our Search Committee for a new Associate Minister met for the first time. And while, their work is by necessity generally a matter of confidentiality, I will tell you one thing we talked about. We went around the room and asked one another “What�"s your favorite movie?” I mentioned The Out of Towners starring Jack Lemon and Sandy Denis, but now that I have had time to think about it I should have said, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I like the old black and white ones best…but I really enjoyed Bill Murray�"s portrayal a few years back. Of course, Dickens originally wrote the story about a solitary and miserly old man living in 19th century London. What we have come to know of Ebenezer Scrooge depicts so well for us the self-centered nature of greed. “Dickens�" says of him, “Oh! But he was a tightfisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster!” When Dickens explores Scrooge�"s past, we see the complexity of his greed, a mixture of childhood cares and adult disappointments. Scrooge was a lonely old man. Ours is a culture that has seen the devastating effects of greed. We have seen the voracious appetite of greed consume mortgages and livelihoods and families. Greed has raised its ugly head and taken down Wall Street and terrorized Main Street. Greed has corrupted the hallways of government and polluted professional sports. And the church is not immune. How many preachers and congregations have gone from giving witness to the kingdom of God to building kingdoms of their own… with theme parks and massive campuses and broadcasting studios. But greed is a slippery thing…. because sin is a distortion (not of the bad) but of the GOOD. Isn�"t a roof over your head… a good thing? Isn�"t a nourishing meal three times a day… a good thing? Isn�"t a coat… a good thing to have in wintertime? We need those things. And what of art or music or a beautiful place to worship God? Desires are not necessarily bad. Desires can be very good. Have not our desires helped us move forward to create a better world? So when does a life that desires something more become jerked around by grubby and grabbing greed? Connie and I have a nice home. It has about 12 rooms. We live in about four of them. Some of the rooms I don�"t even go into for months at a time. It�"s not a situation with which I am entirely comfortable. I don�"t want to see myself as greedy, but I do know that I am caught up in a web of relationships and arrangements that drive a consumer culture, that constantly tell me that not only do I want more… but I need more…and in some cases I need some things I was not even aware of… in order to be happy and content. And so there we have it…life, liberty and the pursuit of just a little more. And along with it comes a compulsiveness … that if not satisfied, may not only becomes frustrated but cause us to fear and worry. Some call it the myth of scarcity… the belief that there is never enough to go around, and therefore we must work harder and harder in order to consume and accumulate more and more. We are often told… YOU ARE WHAT YOU OWN Or the myth of scarcity…can work in another direction. There can also be compulsiveness… in saving, in hording, in a miserly tight-fistedness because of the fear that there will not be enough. The myth of scarcity insists that there is never enough time, to get all the work done, let alone help someone else. The myth of scarcity says that there is not enough food for all in the world to be fed. The myth of scarcity insists that we must fight and destroy in order to protect what is ours. The myth of scarcity tells us that it not our job to care for others, because this is a dog-eat-dog kind of world and if you don�"t buy into that you will be left out. Whether it�"s compulsiveness for more and more… or a compulsiveness to hold on tighter and tighter… the result is the same …. we end up cut off from one another. No wonder the scriptures warn against greed: The Tenth Commandment reminds us that we are not to covet. The prophets, sobbing God�"s own tears, railed against the sin of greed which lured Israel and Judah. Jeremiah tied the fall of Jerusalem to greed, “From the least to the greatest,” he said, “everyone is greedy for unjust gain.” Yet Jesus never insisted that material things were bad. Jesus enjoyed homes and good food and the beauty of nature. The Christian faith does not insist that material things are bad. God gives us material things to enjoy. But if they become our gods… or if they cut us off from our neighbor… then the sin of greed has likely raised its ugly head. A man approached Jesus on the road and asked him to help with an argument over an inheritance. But behind the question, Jesus sensed that greed was at work. Interestingly enough, there are only two characters in the story: a man who had acquired great wealth and God, who appears in the middle of the story. The man in the story is a successful business person. He has not gained his wealth by anything illegal or immoral. His land has simply produced abundantly, and the man has worked to secure his future. He is by all accounts a man to be admired… a big shot, a high roller, a privileged person at the very top of his game. Yet Jesus calls him a fool because of the myth of scarcity. He believes he can never have enough material possessions and must build bigger and bigger barns … but at what point is enough, enough? And something else is interesting. While the man and God are introduced in this story, no other person besides the rich man is mentioned. The majority of the dialogue consists of the rich man talking to himself. He even addresses his own soul as if it is a conversation partner. In all, the conversation contains sixty words, and twelve of them are “I” and “my”. It�"s as if he has lost the capacity to see other human beings at all. And yet, certainly his land does not produce abundantly without the help of others. Certainly he can never tear down and build bigger barns without the assistance of others. And yet this rich man�"s focus is entirely on himself. He talks as though he could plow the field s and build the barns alone. He believes he is self-sufficient. Yet the foolishness of the man goes even deeper than a disregard for others. There is little thought about God on the part of this rich person who goes on aimlessly talking to himself. It�"s as if he believes that God is not at work in the world. Only himself. Psalm 53 begins with this interesting little verse, “The fool says in his heart, "There isn�"t a God.” Jesus knew the Psalms, and a fool in Psalm 53 is anybody who lives as if God were not. And Jesus calls this person a fool. Somehow there just seems to be a connection here… between greed and materialism and self-centeredness and godlessness. The rich man says, “Soul, take ease.” But ease is precisely what he cannot take in his situation. His life is condemned to a ceaseless striving, a treadmill of desire. The rich man worships his wealth… something less than God...and that‘s what makes him a fool. Jesus tells this story in response to a question about an inheritance. It�"s as if he is telling his disciples …don�"t live this way. But this sobering story is followed, by these words, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, or what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing,. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse or barn, and yet God feeds them. It�"s as if Jesus is telling his followers, they have a choice. There is the myth of scarcity … and then there is the truth of abundance. The truth that the world is full of the abundance of God. The truth that God has given all humankind the resources necessary for abundant life. But God has not distributed these resources, instead that task has been left up to us. Maybe you heard the story of the man who had a dream where he went first to hell and then to heaven. When he passed through hell he saw that everyone had their arms fastened straight in splints from shoulders to fingertips. The tables all around were filled with the most delicious food, but they were all starving because they could not get their hands to their mouths. Then the man traveled to heaven where he saw everyone in the same condition. Arms straightened in splints and a delicious banquet set in front of them However in heaven everyone was joyous and filled…because they were feeding each other. The way of greed keeps us in isolation…cut off from God and one another. The way of generosity makes us rich in the kingdom of God…because it gives us relationship and community. We learn this best from Jesus. There was not a trace of greed in him. No grain of compulsiveness, nothing grasping or coveting. In his life and in his death, he shows us the supreme example of love. Jesus yearned for the kingdom of God…. and his work was to do God�"s will. The whole purpose of his life...the reason for his coming into the world… was to redeem the world from its self-seeking ways…. And as the Risen Lord… Christ is able to kindle in us a flame for God�"s love and God�"s grace. The most amazing thing is this… The cure for greed is not in desiring less…but actually in desiring more…. In desiring what truly matters…the love of God…and the love of neighbor. There is a story from the Native American tradition about a Cherokee grandfather telling his grandson about a fight that was going on inside him. He said this to his grandson, “The fight that is inside me is a struggle between two wolves. One wolf is my envy, my greed, my self-pity, my false pride, my worry about myself. The other wolf is joy, peace, generosity, kindness and love. The grandson thought for a moment and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf wins, Grandfather?” The grandfather answered, “The wolf I feed.”