Sermon

AUGUST 4, 2007

Sermon August 4, 2007

Luke 12.13-21

Beyond the Reflection

            This is a story that is so broad in the telling that it asks more questions than it provides clarity into an issue.  Questions like, why did the man in the crowd want Jesus to tell his brother to give him his inheritance?  Why did one brother have the inheritance and not the other? And why does Jesus respond to his request by warning him about greed?  I mean the inheritance was his, right, and it doesn’t matter what he was going to do with it, right?  Oh, maybe that’s why Jesus warned him about greed, it isn’t the inheritance, it’s what you do with the inheritance……yeah…….

            So, Jesus, who recognized a teaching moment, tells a parable about a farmer who has a great year, bumper crops, obviously no insect problems, a good harvest; so good that he doesn’t have room for all his harvest.  He has to make a decision about what to do…..so he says to himself, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones and there I will store my grain and all my goods.”  And the result of this project will be that the farmer is going to relax, eat, drink, and be merry for “many years.”

            And what happens, God calls him a fool!  I mean, doesn’t the guy deserve a rest?  He worked hard to bring in his crop.  He’s got new barns to build!  What exactly did this guy do to be called a fool?  It is difficult for us in the 21^st century to understand this as readily as perhaps 2^nd Century Christians because we live in an instant gratification world.  Due to scientific and technological advances, we can achieve many matters quite quickly.  We have gotten used to quick returns on email, and convenient access to material goods, we even live in a time when conversations have been greatly reduced to “information only.”  We want rewards, bonuses, points!  There is a commercial that stars snowboard star, Shaun White using his American Express Points to travel around the world chasing a big storm that is dumping snow.  He doesn’t have to wait until his vacation, or he saves enough money, nope, he uses his points and gets to where there is big snow.  For Shaun White the commercial is partially true, his job is snowboarding wherever the big snow happens to be.  But the commercial implies that we too can have that instant gratification with our points!  Much of our advertising suggests that what they have to sell is to our best advantage to have.  Our nature is to always want whatever we don’t have!

            And this begs the question, why?  Why do we need this stuff and need it now?  Why do we think that what we don’t have will make us happier, or smarter, or more successful?  In response to that question, it is easy to just shrug our shoulders and say, “We are only human!  That’s just the way we are.” Some would even say that since God created us, that’s the way we are supposed to be.   But before we pass this trait off as reality, let’s remember Adam and Eve and what they did to be more like God?  Did Eve really need that particular piece of fruit?  Did she really believed that the fruit would make her as knowledgeable as God and that would be a good thing.  Oh, so maybe it isn’t the piece of fruit, or the things we want, it’s the desire…….yeah….

            So you see, this story isn’t just about being greedy or selfish or self-centered, but it is about something deeper, something we all share and we all struggle to suppress, it is our tendency to love ourselves before others.  That was the farmer’s greatest sin and what caused him to be a fool.  The farmer saw his abundance as only something for him to possess.  What if the farmer had kept the grain and the next year planted his fields for others to glean?  What will happen to his fields, the soil if he leaves them fallow?  His decision to sit back and enjoy his harvest draws many and far-reaching consequences for the world around him.  The farmer didn’t even throw a banquet and share his good fortune with those around him.  He shut it all away for himself.  He was a fool because all that he saw in his harvest, his good fortune, was he.

            Our tendency to think of ourselves first is the greatest single ingredient of a great tragedy.  Ovid, a roman poet who died in 17 or 18 ad---that’s when Jesus was about that same age, 17 or 18, wrote a mythological tale of a young man, named Narcissus.  He was so fine, that when he looked into a pool of water, Narcissus fell in love with his own image.  He loved it so much that it caused him to die, some stories say by loneliness others by his own hand, because of  unrequited love.  Now that’s a really short version of the myth, but suffice it to say, he loved his own reflection more than those who loved him.  His mother had been warned by a prophet, that he would live a long life as long as he didn’t get to know himself…..his love of self, our folly, was already in play.  It is the 16^th century painter, Caravaggio’s rendering of Narcissus looking into the pool that is on the front of your bulletin.

            In Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book 4, he relates a story about Eve before she was introduced to Adam, looking into a pool and seeing an image of one who looked back at her with “answering looks of sympathy and love.”  She is called away by God, but later recounts the experience to Adam and tells of how she would have “pin’d with vain desire” if God hadn’t broken her reverie.  Milton was clearly borrowing from Ovid’s tale of Narcissus and reminding his readers of the willful desire to put ourselves first. 

            And, like I’ve already said, we don’t have to go far into the Bible to find another tale of self-love in the story of Eve and the Serpent who convinces her that a bite of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil will make her, and Adam, “like God.”

            There is a story I read as a child, I’ve tried to find it thinking it was an Aesop’s fable, but I do know that there is an Aesop’s fable similar to this one about a dog and a bone.  Bear with me, it is a good story to illustrate the parable farmer’s folly.

            One day a crow came upon a patch of berries and filled his stomach.  He decided to take a big berry back with him to his nest and to return the next day to fill his stomach again.  He was careful on leaving the patch so that no other crows would see his new found patch of berries.  He didn’t want to share them with the greedy crows.  On his way back he became thirsty and decided to stop at the stream for a drink of water.  When the crow landed on the bank, he noticed that another crow was also there with a big berry in his mouth.  The crow struck out in anger and fear that the other crow had found his berry patch.  Besides, he wanted that crow’s berry too!  When he struck his beak hit the water and it rippled and he discovered that the other crow was his own reflection.  He not only felt the fool for mistaking himself for another, but when he struck, he lost his berry in the stream and went home with nothing!  The moral of this story is that greed can lose you as much as you’ve gained.  The farmer in our parable would have been well to heed the message of this fable!  In the stories, the crow and the farmer didn’t see beyond themselves.

            It is not difficult to comprehend that love of one’s self is a continuous problem for humanity.  It is what makes the kingdom of God so distant in our minds.  What God wants for us is simple, love God and love others.

            In Stephen Mitchell’s reimagining of the Narcissus myth, we find our hope spoken, he writes:

“kneeling there, gazing into the so-taken-for-granted form he grew more and more poignantly aware that it was mere surface….When the water rippled at the touch of a leaf or fish; it too rippled; or broke apart when he churned the water with his hand.  More and more fascinated, he kept staring through the image of his face into the depths beneath, filled with a multitude of other, moving, shadowy forms.”

            In this tale, Narcissus found that past his reflection, which was mere surface, he found the multitude of other more fascinating, more interesting than himself.  Farther along in Mitchell’s retelling of Narcissus he says that, Narcissus comes to believe that “….if he stayed there long and patiently enough he would be able to see straight through to the bottom….he knew his image would disappear.”  His image would become a reflection only through the eyes of the other around him.  He would, like all of us, be what he is through the eyes of those who love him.  It is a much better place to be than merely pining away for your own self; and it’s the place of God’s intent for humanity. 

            The hope of our redemption glimpsed through Mitchell’s reimagining of Narcissus is good news.  But how do we educate ourselves to be open to the redeeming hope?  Robert Cording is a professor of English and creative writing at the College of the Holy Cross.  In his essay entitled “The Revolt Against Narcissus” which was my inspiration and resource for this sermon, he answers that question of how to become more loving to others with an appeal for reading.  He believes that we begin to experience the other, looking through our own image, in literature, including the Bible.  Now that’s easy to say, but a different thing to do.  The Bible has been a difficult read for many.  But Cording points out that much of that is due to our current tendencies in reading.  You see, this way of relating is the time in which we live.  It is how we describe our world in terms of literature, movies, politics, and philosophy and how we interpret our history and that influence our reading.  There are traits that run against how we find the other and lose ourselves.  As I said at the beginning, we want everything and we want it now. 

            Let me give you a simple example of this influence on your language that applies to literature.  I was told the essence of this joke at Wednesday morning’s Bible study. 

            A man died and went to hell.  He was very upset when he got there and demanded to talk to someone in charge.  The devil came to him and asked him what the problem was and the man said, “I don’t belong down here!  I was a good person and did a lot of good things and I don’t think this is where I’m supposed to be.  I was careful and prudent and followed what God told me to do.”  He wouldn’t go into hell so the devil called God to come down and talk to the guy.  God asked him what was the problem, and the man retold his story.  God shook his head and sighed, he told the man that his sin was greed and that he was indeed supposed to be in hell.  The man couldn’t believe it.  He asked God what he had done wrong.  God said, “I know that you listened when I spoke and took to heart what I said, but I told you to save up for a rainy day, not the flood!”

            Now although funny as it is, it is more ironic, because we can see the folly and the truth.  It’s a parody because it speaks of hell and hell is not a funny place or a situation to find humorous, but yet in the joke we’ve reduced the gravity of the man’s foolish mistake and obviously selfish way of living to humor.  We’ve distanced ourselves because parody is a way of hiding the anxiety of our feelings.  One of the traits of today’s thinking is that there is a sense that all emotions and ideals must be undercut…..hell and the situations that may lead us there are undercut and made unreal.  It is a reflection of our weary proclamation that we’ve seen it all and done it all and it holds no real story.  It becomes theoretical and not experiential.  Now that’s harsh treatment for a joke but does the trick for now.  My point is that we have to use discernment when we read the Bible.  It is not just for interpretation as information. 

            Martin Luther, the originator of the Reformation, had a great idea about how to read the Bible; he thought that we should not try to understand Scripture by our own spirit or others’ but solely by its spirit.  He thought we must encounter the Bible in the spirit in which it was written, and not be concerned about deciphering its meanings as much as experiencing the interpretation (Bible) itself.  In this spirit we would disengage our personal reflection on the Scripture, and look through our reflection to the other, the words of the Bible themselves.  In other, simpler words, the Bible isn’t just about you.

            In the other Lectionary readings for today, one from Hosea 11 and the other from Colossians 3, we find two stories about our life with God as the focus.  In Hosea, God has to let the Israelites suffer the consequences of their rejection of God although he is there to redeem and forgive them for their self-love.  In Colossians 3, we see that humanity is still struggling with these same issues, but it is different, because Christ has come and the Christians are “hidden in Christ” and their lives in this struggle are being clothed with a new self that is being renewed in knowledge from God.  In Colossians everyone is the same, sharing the same, and in Christ and loved by God.  It is again our hope that we can live one day in the kingdom of God, a kingdom of peace and justice.

            So to sum up our Good News we can see several things we can work on to not be the fool.  We can read the Bible and grow in Christ.  That means making the time and attitude for reading.  Think of it as an investment that is already and not yet, just as the kingdom of God.  For you will benefit in the short term with wisdom and peace and the long term with great faith and everlasting life.

            We can engage with others.  To truly engage we have to be vulnerable.  That means we have to reject what society tells us about being guarded, feigning the weariness of been there, done that, while censoring what is new as unreal and protecting ourselves from experiencing the joy and pain of a true existence with the greatest commandment, to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and being.  Open your heart and your mind to the possibilities.

            We can act with others.  Not react, but act out of our own knowledge in Christ that others need us.  Whether that is to come to their defense in body or soul, or whether that means to find ourselves in the reflection of their love for us.  In community we find the greatness that God created for us to be.  It is in community that we see our true reflection.

            Don’t be fools; bind yourself to your faith.  I use the word bind intentionally because I want you to have a visual image of your faith attached to you, always with you.  Don’t let your faith only reflect you.  Look through your image to what lies beyond in experience of Christian faith with and through others and the written Word.  It is a richness that God intended. It is the richness that the triune God gives.  It is the abundance that Jesus spoke about when he said, “I came that they might have life and have it abundantly.”