Sermon Recording

This year, Americans will spend nearly 10 hours a day watching television, surfing the Internet, reading, and listening to music. Yes, that’s right: 10 hours a day.

This number comes from the Census Bureau’s “Statistical Abstract of the United States” for 2007. It also says that we drink about a gallon of soda a week, along with a half gallon each of milk, coffee, and beer.

All of which may help explain another figure in the book: About two-thirds of Americans are overweight, and one-third are obese.

So we’re sedentary and well-fed. We’re also quite rich.

The Census Bureau reports that:

- A little more than half of our households owned stocks and mutual funds in 2005.
- Americans had 278 million debit cards in 2004, and used them to spend more than 1 trillion dollars.
- In that same year, we bought 2.1 billion pairs of imported shoes.

I know that some of you like shoes, but 2.1 billion pairs?

We may not feel rich — I know I don’t, especially when I pay my mortgage on the 5th of each month. But according to the Census Bureau, we are rich. So the question for us today, in light of our Scripture passage from Luke, is this: Are we rich fools?

Jesus tells the parable of the rich fool because he wants us to “be on guard against all kinds of greed.” (Luke 12:15). He reminds us that our life does not consist in the abundance of possessions, in “ample goods laid up for many years” (v. 19). Jesus knows that our well-fed, sedentary, affluent lifestyle can cause real problems for us — it can lead us away from being “rich toward God” (v. 21).

So, what are we doing with the treasures we have? Are we pulling down our existing barns and building larger ones? Are we filling up the rental cubicles that have popped up all around Fairfax? Are we storing up treasures for ourselves?

Or, are we being rich toward God?

To be rich toward God is realize that we are blessed — blessed so that we might be a blessing. God gives to us, so that we might give to others. We are loved, so that we might love. We are forgiven, so that we might forgive.

God gives us many wonderful gifts, some material and some purely spiritual. But these gifts are not supposed to remain with us — they are supposed to pass through us.

The Marquis de Lafayette understood this, back in the 1700s. Lafayette, as you may know, was a French general who joined the American Revolution and became a friend of George Washington. After the war he returned to France, and found that his workers had done well, filling his barns with wheat. The harvest of 1783 was a poor one for the region, and one of his assistants said, “The bad harvest has raised the price of wheat. This is the time to sell.”

Lafayette thought about the hungry peasants around him and came to a different conclusion. “No,” he replied, “this is the time to give.”

Lafayette was rich, but he was not a rich fool. Instead, he was rich toward God. He knew that quality of life did not consist in the abundance of possessions — it consisted in using personal resources to meet the needs of others. Lafayette was not like the rich fool in today’s Scripture lesson, a man who looked only at himself and thought about what would make him happy. Instead, Lafayette looked at his neighbors and thought about what he could do to ease their hunger.

God gives us wonderful gifts, but they are not supposed to remain with us — they are supposed to pass through us. When we discover this, we become rich toward God.

The rich fool didn’t make this discovery until God said to him, “This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (v. 20). By then, it was too late. He couldn’t change his ways, and develop a more generous style of life. In the few hours he had left, he couldn’t open his barns and share his crops with the hungry people around him.

It was too late for him. But it’s not too late for us.

When my father died a couple of years ago, I discovered how important it is to answer God’s question, “And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” My father was a generous man, and he did a good job of sharing with my mother and our family, and with a number of charitable causes. But watching him die, I saw the truth of the old saying, “You can’t take it with you.” As a friend of mine has joked, “There are no luggage racks on hearses.”

You better give it away. Because it is not going with you.

As my father’s life ended, I saw how important it is to let go of the things of this world, and give away everything you have. If you don’t do it yourself, someone else will do it for you. So why not give to the people and the causes that are important to you? You don’t want to end your life storing up treasures, and not being rich towards God.

Jesus showed this more clearly than anyone else, when he “emptied himself … and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7-8). He gave up his one and only life, so that we might receive forgiveness and new life. We’ll be celebrating this gift in just a few minutes, when we receive communion and remember that Jesus gave his body and his blood as an incredibly generous gift for each one of us.

He wasn’t rich in terms of abundance of possessions. But he was rich toward God.

Now I certainly don’t expect each of us to lay down our lives as a gift to each other. But short of sacrificing our lives, there is a lot we can do to share our gifts with others. My colleague Brian Gray makes the following very practical suggestions about how we can be rich toward God, and a blessing to others:

- Go through your closets and drawers once a year.. If you didn’t wear a piece of clothing that year, give it away.

- Consider shared ownership of possessions with your neighbors. There are tons of things we own which we don’t need to keep all to ourselves. Do two homes need two lawn mowers? Shared ownership builds community, which is something we desperately need.

- Create a list of all the things you need to live, and another list of things you want for your life. Commit to purchasing only from the needs list for the rest of 2007.

- Make a list of your monthly budget categories in order of amounts spent on each. Look at how your charitable giving compares with your accumulation line items — clothing, eating out, entertainment, grooming, hobbies, etc. Does the order need to change?

- For the next month, every time you envy something that somebody else has, stop to pray for your own contentment. Remember how you have been blessed..

- Finally, don’t rent a storage unit. If you have one, start giving things away until you get to the point where you can fit your possessions in your house again.

Our well-fed, sedentary, affluent lifestyle can lead us away from being “rich toward God” (v. 21). But the message of Jesus is that we are blessed so that we can be a blessing. Leave the bigger barns to the rich fools, and commit yourself to a life of sharing … instead of a life of storing. Amen.


Sources:
David Alexander, “Americans use TV, other media 10 hours a day,” Reuters, December 15, 2006, http://news.yahoo.com
Clifton Fadiman, General Editor, The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1985), 339.