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Sunday, March 13, 2011

THE SIN OF NEVER HAVING ENOUGH

A sermon based on Luke 12: 13-21
Dr. Charles J. Tomlin,
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
March 13, 2011,  Lent 1st  Sunday

Right after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the death of Communism in Eastern Europe, then Chancellor of West Germany Helmut Kohl’s public words made headlines: “Marx is dead; Jesus is Alive!”    In a moment of great euphoria Europe shared the Chancellor’s enthusiasm about the death of Karl Marx’s communism, but I’m not sure they shared his enthusiasm about Jesus.   

I’ll never forget the question put to me by a young German who worked for Emergency Medical Services and was a member and deacon of the German Baptist Church where I was pastor.  He came to me, his new American Pastor and asked: “How is it possible to be a rich American and still be a Christian?” 

His question floored me.  I didn’t see it coming.  The only people he had known that owned their own homes and drove their own cars were communist bosses who enjoyed luxury while they oppressed the masses, keeping them nearly impoverished.  Now, this young man was wondering: with all the new opportunities of freedom, democracy and the coming growth of free markets and capital, he wondered: how will people who are getting rich keep from losing their faith? 

This brave new, free world seemed threatening and frightening.  The increasing excesses of western style capitalism seemed more challenging to the Christian faith than communism had been.   At least under communism, the lines of faith and unfaith were clear, firm, and obvious.  Faith even seemed stronger, at least among the faithful.  But under capitalism faith was being threatened in a whole, new, and even more dangerous way.  Now people had an unlimited chance to make money.   Under communism, most all the people had basically the same economic status and were politically equal, and were good neighbors to each other out of necessity, but now under democratic capitalism, people no longer felt the need to know or care for their neighbors, and equality was the new myth, because now, most people were trying to outsmart and get ahead of each other in a dog-eat-dog world.
  
WHAT’S BAD ABOUT WANTING MONEY
A very similar perspective on money and wealth was heard on lips of Jesus by his disciples, when he said: That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 19:23).

Why does Jesus say such a negative thing about people who have or want money?  Our text today gives us a clue.  In this story, Jesus tells about a man who starts out like most of us.  He’s a hard working man, working for his daily living and he’s a farmer, living off of the crops he raises.  Then something happens.  Evidently, he has a made a bumper crop.  He suddenly finds himself without enough space to store the harvest that keeps coming in.  So, what does he do?  Instead of sharing his good fortune, which is far beyond his needs with the poor around him, he decides to build storage barns.   We are told that he “tears down barns and builds bigger ones.”  He is not doing this for an investment for his old age, but he’s doing this so he can retire early, “take life easy” and enjoy the good life of eating, drinking and being merry.”   But just as soon as this guy makes it on easy street, something happens.  God comes calling and says to him in very uncomfortable language: “You fool?  Tonight you are going to die and so what do you think is going to happen to all that wealth you’ve stored up for yourself?” 

There are challenging images in this text.  What this guy is doing is what any good, red-blooded, business person would do on Wall Street or any other Street in America.   This guy has made some good returns on his investments.  He has invested his profits to grow capital, to protect his assets.   He looks like a “smart” guy, doesn’t he?  He made his money honestly.  He was hard working.  He invested, expanded and protected his assets.  He is planning for the future.  He is storing up an Annuity so he can relax, retire, kick back and enjoy the rest of his life.  What’s wrong with this?  Isn’t this what most people try to do?  Doesn’t this make him look “smart”?  

One of my teachers once said that “you’d better be careful when you decide in your own mind who the smart folks are.  Your decision about who you think is “smart” may say more about who you are, than who they are.”  (From “Luke: A Kingdom of Surprises; by Cecil Sherman, Broadman Press, 1985).   It is rather interesting, isn’t it, that this guy of whom most of us would call smart, God calls a “fool”!   Most Bibles qualify this by labeling him “The Rich Fool”.  I guess if you’re going to be called a fool, it sounds better to at least be called “rich”.   

It is said that Jesus had more to about money than about heaven or hell.   We all know that money is a necessity in our culture for us to buy the goods and services we need to sustain our life and living.   We should know that neither Jesus nor the Bible is against “earning” or “having”; nor is it technically against being or becoming rich.  The problem is not with money itself, but the problem is with “the love of money” which said to be “the root of all kinds of evil“ (1 Tim. 6:10, NRSV).    We can see a good example of how the “love of money” can work against human relationship just before this parable of the Rich Fool.  This parable was prompted by a real-life situation, where someone in the crowd listening to Jesus makes a very legitimate complaint against their brother, saying: “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.”   This poor fellow is attempting to gain some “leverage” over his older brother’s legal right to double the amount of inheritance he is getting, according to the Law in Deuteronomy 21:17.  But Jesus doesn’t fall for this trap.  He doesn’t want to get into this family’s internal affairs.  “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?”   Instead of challenging the Law’s legitimacy or settling this man’s claim, Jesus makes a claim on this man’s heart:  "Take care!   Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions" (Luk 12:15 NRS).     What set off Jesus’ telling this parable, was not “who had the money”, or whether the older brother had a right to it, but the issue was what was going on in this younger brother’s heart.

The sin of “greed”, also called “Avarice” (Latin), has been officially declared one of the top 7 deadliest and most destructive sins.   What is so deadly about this sin of greed is not the money we have or hold in our hands, but the sin of greed is about money or wealth we inordinately desire and what it can do to our soul and our heart.    In other words, the most foolish thing about money, wealth and possessions is not that we every really possess them, but that the desire for money, wealth and possession can possess us.   This is why Jesus’ warning to the brother was “life does not consist in the abundance of possessions (Luke 12:15).  This is why Jesus warned in this story of barn builder, than the danger was that  he had “stored treasure up for himself, but he was not rich toward God”   (12:21).  The problem with Greed in the New Testament vision of morality is not really about what we have.  It’s about what we often don’t have when we become greedy for more and more wealth.    All the many spiritual blessings the Bible says a greedy person will not have, all starts with this one thing the greedy person never has:  When you are greedy you have become the kind of person who, no matter how much you have, you never, ever, have enough.  

WHEN ALL YOU WANTED ISN’T ENOUGH
Today, in this time of great economic recession, we know more than we want to know about the dangers of greed.   One thing that should be made clear is that the source of our economic downfall and recession was not because people wanted to get rich, but it came about primarily because rich people, both on Wall Street and in many large Banks and Mortgage Firms, who were already dominating the market, where already rich and wanted to get even richer. 
Even when this was done on backs of the poor who could not afford what was being sold to them and even when it was putting the entire free-market system at risk, the slogan became enshrined and echoed on the street and in the movies that “Greed is Good!---good for the market, good for America, and of course, good for their pocket books.

The tragic story of Pozi-schemer Bernie Madoff and how he stole billions of dollars from client investors is a case in point that the primary motivation of his greed was not to get rich, but to get richer, and richer and richer.  Bernie Madoff was already a very wealthy millionaire investment broker making over 100 million a year before he started his fraudulent practices that robbed people of 20 Billion dollars in cash and over 50 Billion on paper.   In a recent interview with the New York Magazine, the interviewer put the question to Madoff that everyone was a mystery no one could answer: Why did he do it?  

The New York Magazine article opens in a very interesting manner.  You are in the cell with Madoff overhearing a private discussion.    The article begins: 
            “Bernard L. Madoff is in therapy. Each week, he waits for the signal that prisoners are allowed to leave their housing units, then he walks the five minutes from his “room,” as he calls it, to the psychiatric unit at the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, North Carolina, where he can unburden himself. The sessions are often teary.
            “How could I have done this?” he asks. “I was making a lot of money. I didn’t need the money. [Am I] a flawed character?”….
            Madoff has not tried to evade blame.  He has made a full confession, telling me again and again that nothing justifies what he did.  And yet, for Madoff, that doesn’t settle the matter.  He feels misunderstood. He can’t bear the thought that people think he’s evil. “I’m not the kind of person I’m being portrayed as...”
….Sitting alone in his prison khakis with his therapist, Madoff seeks reassurance.
            “Everybody on the outside kept claiming I was a sociopath,” Madoff told her one day.
            “I asked her, ‘Am I a sociopath?’
He waited expectantly, his eyelids squeezing open and shut, that famous tic.
            “She said, ‘You’re absolutely not a sociopath. You have morals. You have remorse.’” Madoff paused as he related this to his interviewer.  His voice settled. He said, “I am a good person.”
            Few would agree that Bernie Madoff is a good person.   It is much easier to say that Berine Madoff is a monster, who is unlike most of us.   He betrayed thousands of investors, bankrupted charities and hedge funds.  The effects of his Ponzi scheme spread across five continents. And he brought down his own family with him, which is a more intimate kind of betrayal, causing him to lose his wife and depressing one of his sons enough to commit suicide.”  I guess you could still say that Bernie Madoff was a good person in that he had “a great work ethic” but “he had no ethic in his work.”
           
But I’ve not yet answered the one question that is still a mystery:  Why did he do?  Listen to what Madoff said in his own words:
            It feeds your ego. All of a sudden, these banks which wouldn’t give you the time of day, they’re willing to give you a billion dollars.” “It wasn’t like I needed the money. It was just that I thought it was a temporary thing, and all of a sudden, everybody is throwing billions of dollars at you, saying, ‘Listen, if you can do this stuff for us, we’ll be your clients forever.”  (http://nymag.com/news/features/berniemadoff-2011-3/index2.html.)

There you have it for what it really is: GREED!  “Watch out!”  Jesus said: “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed!” (NIV).  Bernie Madoff was, in his own words, a good man, a family man, and a very rich man who in one single moment, “let down his guard” and got caught up in giving in to the sin of Greed.  What will you do when the opportunity for greed arises?  

The story is told that a Mafia Godfather finds out that his bookkeeper has stolen 10 million bucks from him. The bookkeeper is deaf. It was the reason he got the job in the first place, since it was assumed that a deaf bookkeeper would not be able to hear anything that he’d ever have to testify about in court. When the Godfather goes to shake down the bookkeeper about his missing 10 million bucks, he brings along his attorney, who knows sign language.

The Godfather asks the bookkeeper, “Where is the 10 million bucks you embezzled from me?”
The attorney, using sign language, asks the bookkeeper where the 10 million bucks is hidden.
The bookkeeper signs back, “I don’t know what you are talking about.”
The attorney tells the Godfather: “He says he doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”
That’s when the Godfather pulls out a 9 mm pistol, puts it to the bookkeeper’s temple, cocks it, and says, “Ask him again!”
The attorney signs to the underling, “He’ll kill you for sure if you don’t tell him!”
The bookkeeper signs back, “Okay! You win! The money is in a brown briefcase, buried behind the shed in my cousin Enzo’s back yard in Queens!”
The Godfather asks the attorney, “Well, what’d he say?”
The attorney replies, “He says you don’t have the guts to pull the trigger”  (As told in Homiletics.com).
In his lesser known book, “When All You’ve Wanted Isn’t Enough,” Rabbi Harold Kushner said: "Money and power do not satisfy that unnamable hunger of the soul. Even the rich and the powerful find themselves yearning for something more. They know something the rest of us have yet to discover. Even if we have it all, we still won't be happy." (As quoted in  a sermon by Howard Olds, “From Greed to Generosity,” in Faith Breaks, ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc., 3/12/2006). 

WHAT MONEY COULD NEVER BUY
But the message that Jesus leaves us in this parable of the “Rich Fool” is an even greater warning than “money can’t buy happiness!”  

 A reporter recently asked a young Wall Street broker on the fast track what his chief goal was in life. "To make my first million dollars by the time I am 28," was the answer.
"Then what?" the reporter continued.
"Well, I suppose I would like to become a multi-millionaire." The news man pressed on.
"Then what?" 
Beginning to get a bit irritated, the broker said, "I want to have a family and enough money to retire at 40 and travel around the world."   
Do you see the next question coming?  "Then what?"  
Exasperated, the would be multi-millionaire said, "Well, like everyone else, I guess someday I will die!"
Of course, now the question comes still again: "Then What?"

Again, the greatest problem Jesus had with the rich fool who built bigger and bigger barns is not he had possessions – but it was that his possession had him so much that he had no time for that which was most important---the needs of his own soul.   One thing that wealth, riches and money can never do save your soul.    Greed became his sin because he had used all this time for making and keeping his wealth.  He had done nothing that made him “rich toward God!”
"No one can serve two masters.”  Jesus said.  “Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. (Mat 6:24 NIV, cp. Luke 16: 13). 

Again, the greatest problem with Greed is not what you do with money, wealth and prosperity, but the greatest problem with money is what you can’t do with it.  You can’t serve God and money.  You can’t save your soul with money.   You can’t even buy one second of time with all the money in world.  You can’t make somebody love you for who you are.  When it comes to time and eternity, when money is only used to make more and more of it, it has no real value at all.  This is why Jesus has a different command for his disciples.   Rather than build bigger and bigger just to make more and more, “Instead, strive for the kingdom and these things will be given to you as well.”  "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions, and give alms (to the poor).  Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12:32-34 NRS).  The whole point he is making is that giving your heart to God rather than to money and to greed, is not settling for less, but it is waiting for and working for more---more than money could ever buy.  

Do you know the name of Orville Kelly, founder of the organization “Make Today Count?”   Orville was faced with the tragic news that had terminal cancer.  After struggling with anger, denial and depression, one single thought dominated his being until the day he died. "Make Today Count"   As Orville Kelley struggled with this verdict on his own life, he finally came to affirm that the news he had received became a “life sentence” rather than a "death sentence".  After his terminal diagnosis he came to lived, love and to make his days count like never before and he helped many others do the same.

Learning how to “count” differently is how we learn to overcome the temptation of greed in our lives. The Rich Fool got the shock of his life when Almighty God said to him, "You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you..."   Just then, when his end was announced, he realized he’d been counting the wrong things---things that didn’t count nor matter at all.   He was a called a fool because he should have known. He should have known what mattered and what counted most to God as well. 

What does it profit, if a person gains the whole world and loses or forfeits themselves?”  (Luke 9:25).  This is the one question from Jesus that the greedy person forgets to ask and to answer.   And the answer can’t be made with the riches in our hands, but it can only be answered with the riches in our hearts.  The price on your soul is a “cost” the currency all the world’s wealth can’t pay.  It can’t be paid because your soul belongs to the God, who requires nothing less than your whole heart.   God will not give you back what you haven’t given him.   Amen.

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