Introduction: We are on a journey with Jesus. As we journey together, we are trying to pay attention to the signs of life, the places to which Jesus points along the way that will enable us to live the life that is truly life. To put it another way, Jesus is showing us how we are to think and to live as citizens of the kingdom of God. So far we have seen him call us to patience with those who are not yet on the journey, and to make sure that our journey with him is a priority, not just a hobby or part-time job. We then saw him point out to us that real life can be found as we show mercy, as we listen to his word, and as we sit at the Father’s feet in prayer.

 

This morning, at our next stop, Jesus shows us a place where we will not find life. It is a place where we are often tempted to go, a place that initially seems to bring us well being, a place that many voices around us encourage us to use as a measuring stick for life. It’s a place that says, “the more I have the better I’ll live.” But this place, Jesus wants us to know, is a dead end road, a road in which we will find our souls not filled, but sucked dry. Jesus puts it simply:  “. . . life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

 

I. Confessions of a Shopaholic  

A. As I was gathering my thoughts around this text last week, Iela happened to bring home the movie, “Confessions of a Shopaholic.” It opens with the main character, Rebecca Bloomwood, remembering what it was like to go shopping as a little girl with her mother. She recalls, “When I looked into shop windows, I saw a world where grown-ups got what they wanted. They didn’t even need any money; they had magic cards. I wanted one. Little did I know I’d end up with twelve!” Then, the movie moves to real time and Rebecca is a young woman. As she reflects on her love of purchasing things, she muses, “A man will never love you or treat you as well as a store. A store can awaken in you a lust for things you never even knew you needed.” Toward the end of the movie, despite having closets full of clothes and accessories, Rebecca has lost her job, her friends, and the man she loves. Being honest for the first time she says, “You buy stuff; it makes you happy for awhile. Then the happiness fades and so you buy some more.” It’s an endless, empty cycle.

 

Tempted to believe that to have is to live, we can find ourselves spinning on that cycle. Every day we buy more clothes, appliances, cars, books, televisions, computers and so forth simply because we can, and often even when we can’t! Some sociologists have named this propensity to continually purchase and consume more, “affluenza.” In the crowd that had begun to follow Jesus on the way, we meet a man who seems to be struggling with this disease. Call him a first century shopaholic. Jesus uses his request to warn us about the dangers of affluenza, of greed

 

II. A Brother in Need

A. His request, at first, seems far from greed. It is this: “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” We’re not told any of the details, but it’s clear that this man does not really want a mediator but an advocate.  There is at least a hint that this brother, probably a younger brother, has suffered some injustice, some inequity. Surprisingly, Jesus refuses to help him. It’s not that Jesus is against justice. Justice is a foundational principle in the kingdom of God. But Jesus, being Jesus, has discerned in this man’s petition for justice something worrisome. Jesus has diagnosed the sin of greed, fueled by the virus of covetousness. It’s not really justice this brother wants, it’s more stuff.

 

B. That’s a critical observation because often, I think, our sin can be disguised or hidden by the pursuit of something good, in this case, justice. I was working my way through a spiritual health assessment a couple of weeks ago and one of the statements that the assessment asked me to respond to was this: “I am aware of my blind spots. . . .I recognize my addictions and compulsions.” How would you answer that?! Eugene Peterson points out that virtually every temptation that we as followers of Jesus face comes in the form of something good. The devil, he observes, doesn’t waste his time tempting us to do something that we know is evil. Instead, he goes after our blind spots; he hides the evil behind the curtain of good. This man in the crowd had a blind spot. He was looking for justice; Jesus saw greed. “Watch out!” Jesus warns the crowd. “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”   

 

III. A Fool Indeed

            A. To flesh this out, Jesus tells a parable, those teasingly simple stories that, if we are courageous enough to enter them, end up clobbering us with their truth! It’s about a farmer who keeps accumulating so much that he needs to build bigger and bigger barns to hold it all. It’s not that successive bumper crops are a bad thing. Jesus, in fact, calls this man’s crop “good.” So we need to recognize that it’s not a bad thing to have a good year. It’s not a bad thing to exceed your sales quota. It’s not a bad thing to get a large bonus, or an unexpected inheritance, or a new job that pays you more. Jesus never condemns wealth. He condemns its selfish use. He condemns the ways in which we can let it drive our lives and direct our hearts.  

 

B. So the picture Jesus paints for us in this man is one who uses his good thing to serve only himself. Notice that the words “I” or “my” are found a dozen times in vv. 17-19. There is no hint of stewardship here, or thought of responsibility to others, or consideration that God is behind this goodness; there is only self-interest. The pursuit of, the storage of, and the enjoyment of his wealth is all that is on this man’s mind. His possessions are self-absorbing. They direct all of his activities and even his plans for the future.  

 

C. When God shows up, and he always will, he calls this man a fool. A fool is a term used to describe someone who is blind to what is real in life, blind to the ways of God. It describes one who has acted without God and his wisdom. This man thought he had found life. He thought he would soon be on the list of the rich and the famous. He thought he was all set for his future. But he found out instead that he was soon to be on the list of the dearly departed. What good then, would all his stuff be? He hadn’t, it turns out, really found life at all.

 

IV. The Problem with Greed 

            A. You see, what the sin of greed does is flip the created order on its head. It takes what God has given us, and puts it in God’s place. When that happens, we quickly lose our way. We lost our sense of neediness, our sense of who God is, and our sense of who we are.

 

At the conference I attended at Duke Divinity School last week, one of the speakers, Kenda Creasey Dean (professor of youth, church, and culture at Princeton), addressed the religious beliefs of our next generation – American teenagers. She used a phrase, first coined a few years ago by a researcher named Christian Smith, called “Moralistic, Therapeutic, Deism.” As described by Smith and his team, this consists of beliefs like these: 1. A god exists who created the world. 2. This god wants people to be good to each other. 3. The central goal of life is to be happy. 4. God does not need to be involved in one’s life except when needed to solve a problem. 5. Good people go to heaven when they die. This is the creed to which most adolescent faith in American can be reduced. It of course leaves out all sorts of essential things, like sin, the cross, the resurrection, a sacrificial lifestyle, etc. But the really scary part, according to Dean’s study, is that our kids subscribe to moralistic, therapeutic, deism because that’s what they’ve been taught. And that’s what they’ve been taught because that’s what most adults in the American church believe. It’s the new, American religion.

 

Why do I bring this up? Well, if we lay this kind of thinking against the parable Jesus told, I think we’ll find that this kind of belief system arises in places of abundance. Where life seems full, where closets and refrigerators and garages are all packed with stuff, we feel happy and we feel little if no need for the kind of God who has revealed himself in the pages of the Bible. As a result, it should not come as a surprise that the church in the Western world is in serious decline. Who needs it? Who needs God? If our barns are full, it’s time to “take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” Maybe we’ll stop to give God thanks, but only to ensure that he keeps the good stuff flowing our way.

 

Contrast that with, for example, the church in Sudan. A conference breakout session on the church in that impoverished and war torn country (led by Ellen Davis, professor of OT at Duke and heavily involved in the Sudanese Episcopal Church) revealed that since foreign missionaries were kicked out in 1962, the Episcopal Church in Sudan has grown to 5 million people, double the size of the Episcopal Church USA! In Sudan, where no one can take life easy, where eating and drinking and making merry are rare occurrences at best, the Christian faith is thriving, growing, and vibrant.

 

Where will we not find life? In the accumulation of stuff. “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed,” Jesus warns; “a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

 

V. The Perspective We Need

            A. So, after showing us where real life cannot be found, Jesus points us back in the right direction. He gives us the perspective we need. Do not store up wealth for yourself, he concludes, but be rich toward God (v. 21). To explore this phrase for a moment, let me make two concluding observations, based upon Paul’s words in his first letter to the church leader, Timothy (6:17-19). It’s as if Paul has just read this parable!

 

1. First, he says, don’t put your hope in wealth but in God, for wealth is so uncertain. Haven’t we discovered that in the recent decade? I heard a talk recently entitled “The Certainty of Economic Uncertainty.” The speaker wasn’t just looking at this past decade in America; he was going back many decades, through a long list of various recessions, stock market declines, budget and trade deficits, periods of high interest rates and double digit inflation, numerous oil crises, etc. His main point was that economic uncertainty always has been, and always will be, with us, and the certainty of such economic uncertainty should remind us of where our faith truly belongs. Being rich toward God means putting our trust in him, not in our possessions.

 

2. Second, being rich toward God means being rich in good deeds, that is, being generous and willing to share. The best way to combat greed is to cultivate the habit of giving. It is recognizing that all we have is a gift from the hand of God, and that we are to be good stewards of it. In a great and wonderful irony, the more we use what we have to meet the needs of others, the more our true treasure increases, for we will then begin to take hold of the life that is truly life.

 

I don’t want to spoil the end of the movie for you, but simply know that our shopaholic friend, Rebecca Bloomwood, eventually found life. What she found is not, to have is to live, but that to give is to live. May we find the same.