There is a cute AT&T commercial where a man in a suit is
sitting around some little kids. “Who thinks more is better than
less?” All four children throw their hands up. A little girl
responds. “More is better than less because if you have less you might
want some more stuff and your parents won’t let you because there is only a
little bit. We want more, we want more, you really like it. We want
more. We want more.” The commercial ends, “More is
better than less – AT&T.”
AT&T has a brilliant marketing team. And I
guess it is somewhat comforting that for at least 2000 years, people have
struggled with this concept. The man we encounter today in Luke is a rich
farmer. He has been a good steward of his land and has been so successful
that he suggests that he needs to tear down his barns, build larger barns so
that he can retire… Eat drink and be merry. Life will be well.
Certainly Jesus wants us to enjoy life. The Jesus who celebrated at
Cana, who sat with Mary, who broke bread with the disciples. Certainly
this Jesus understands. More is better than less.
There is a book by George Orwell written in the early 20th
century about Burma called Burmese Days. It is about the ills of
British Colonialism. A few years ago, I was fortunate to be able to
travel to Burma. Burma or as we know call it Myanmar, is a small country
nestled between India, China, and Thailand. It is also one of the most
corrupt places in the world, and only recently has the people’s voice and
political dissident in Aung San Suu Kyi been released from house arrest.
The country is overwhelmingly Buddhist and on any one day you can see many
Buddhist monks walking around collecting alms in the distinct crimson robes
which are unique to the Burmese monks.
At the end of my trip, we visited Bagan, the ancient city
where over 10,000 temples which are called pagodas were built. Over 2200
still exists which paint the landscape with shimmers of gold. It is
absolutely breathtaking to climb a Buddhist temple and watch the sunset and see
thousands of other temples emerging from the ground. These temples have an
interesting purpose. In Bagan, many where built as a way of doing
something good as a form of atonement in life. Similar to
indulgences of the earlier Catholic Church, you could build a pagoda as a way
of giving back.
In Orwell’s novel, there is a despicable and corrupt Burmese
police officer named U Po Kyin. He is disgusting in every conceivable
way, consistently oppressing his people, attacking, destroying, and even
killing the people who get in his way and he does all of this so that one day
he can join the British Country Club, feeling like he has finally made it in
life. If he can join the club, he will have status. He wife
is frightened by him and is always asking him to changes his evil ways. U
Po Kyin insists that all will be well, and promises that before he dies he will
repent and spend all of his money to construct glorious pagodas in order to
prepare for the next world. Orwell says, “But unfortunately, this
was the very point at which his plans went wrong. Only three days after
the Governor’s durbar, before so much as a brick of those atoning pagodas had
been laid, U Po Kyin was stricken with apoplexy and died without speaking again.
There is no armour against fate.”[1]
In our Gospel today, we hear quite the critique. Luke,
says, “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being
demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, who will they be?’ So
it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward
God.” Life is being demanded from the rich farmer. He has lived his
life acquiring, building wealth, preparing for the next chapter of his life,
for retirement, and he has failed to be rich toward God. This
person has saved and saved, but he has not been rich to God.
The editorials of most major news sources indicate America
is currently engaging in a much needed conversation about privilege, who is
privileged in society and who is not. We know that although God creates
all people equal, because of location in society, not all people are given
equal opportunity. In the parable of the rich farmer, there is an
understood privilege of the farmer. First, he is a farmer. The story
already assumes he is a male by his occupation. He is a landowner.
We can conclude that he has been given this land, probably the inheritance from
his ancestors. It is also almost certain that this farmer has help, hired
hands or slaves that care for his farm. And nowhere does the parable
acknowledge the climate, the favorable conditions, or this history of the land
that would make it more fertile than other land. Instead, we hear, “I
have worked hard, and I have reaped what I deserve.” Really? Could
there be another side of the story. Was it really his hard work alone and
nothing else that resulted in his profits this year? ? Could
the farmer have exploited the land, the plentiful returns stripping the land of
its nutrients and making it unfarmable for years? Or could his harvest
have come at the cost of exploited labor?
It all comes down to stewardship. The scary S
word. Don’t worry; we are not going to have that stewardship conversation
quite yet… Whether the farmer full exploited the land, as we understand
exploitation to be now, I don’t know. But I would like to suggest that
the farmer failed to recognize his privilege, and therefore he failed to
recognize the interconnectedness of human life. The farmer saw the
land as something to use, a view opposed to seeing his own life as the real
gift. The farmer placed more value in his crop than the people
around him and ways they could work together.
Privilege is not inherently wrong. It is just
something that exists, albeit sometimes unfairly. However, it must be
acknowledged because it does have the power to obstruct our view of the
world. If we fail to acknowledge our privilege, we can think that it is
our hard work and our hard work alone that results in all that we achieve.
It gets in the way of what is most important. If we acknowledge it, we
can begin to see our lives as gifts which transform how we function as humans
in the world. This is scary stuff because we can feel powerless.
Which brings me to what I think our text can teach us.
Life is not about what we can receive from it. It is not about what we
can accomplish, what we can harvest, or what we can reap. And I think
this can be great news. In our lives, it does not matter the value of our
home, the amount we have saved for retirement, the kind of cars we drive, the
vacations we have had, or the stock pile of material goods that flood our
attics and garages. And death can have a way of clarifying this. I heard
a minister say once, “I have heard many different regrets expressed by people
nearing the end of life, but there is one regret I have never heard expressed.
I have never heard anyone say, ‘I wish I hadn't given so much away. I
wish I had kept more for myself.’” [2]
Life is not about what we can acquire. It is not about
how much we can produce. We believe in a God that gave his life for each
of us, not based on our success, not based on our riches, but on our
poverty. We believe in a God who says that one human life, broken, full
of sin, is worth dying for. This means just being is the greatest gift we
have been given in the world. And the biggest mistake we can make is when
we fail to see our life as a gift, and we think the gifts in the world are all
the things we can produce because of our merit alone. If we can find
ultimate value in our personhood, we will be less likely to need to acquire
goods, and more likely to be advocates for reconciliation and
transformation. If we see our lives as a gift we will be more likely to
see the lives of others we encounter as gifts. And imagine the difference
we could make in the world, if we had enough time to sit down with each person,
and tell them, your life matters, you are a precious gift from God.
Life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. But it does in the
abundance of life we see in each other. Amen.
[1] George Orwell, Burmese
Days, (New York: Penguin Books, 1944), 299.
[2] Elisabeth Johnson, Commentary
on Luke 12:13-21, http://www.workingpreacher.org
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