"The Illusion of Individualism", August 4, 2013

Hosea 11: 1-11 Luke 12: 13-31 There is an irony to Preaching. Ministers do not simply read or perform a prescribed speech. The craft of writing a sermon is in taking archaic texts, from different languages for different cultures, and developing a thesis elaborating upon their themes as application for our time and our concerns, developing meaningful ideas, pearls of wisdom, that will be worth the time of diverse people, different every week. Yet, week after week, at social engagements, on the street and at home, the Preacher is asked in One Word, or in Sound Bytes: What is the Sermon about? Last evening when I was asked, I quoted the title: “The Illusion of Individualism”. No one is an island! But part of the power of this morning's Scriptures is that each goes somewhere, there is a change a “Therefore!” In Amos and Hosea, we have read how frustrated God was with Israel, with humanity, God wants to destroy creation, God sees just how out of plumb we are and resolves Never Again to Pass-By, to Forgive, to Passover Israel. But Hosea having put away Gomer, God having resolved “Enough! No More” to forgive, ultimately recognizes that God cannot be alone. The Luke passage is about Money, Inheritance, Consumerism: Barns that are filled with surplus so the owner resolves to build bigger barns, The American Dream, yet this is the only Parable in all the Gospels where God speaks, and what God says is “YOU FOOL!” This is a sermon about The Beatles' Song “Can't Buy Me Love.” The problem is not that money is evil, not that the American Dream of Success is Corruption, but underlying both the Old Testament and the Gospel is the sin of Covetousness, of Greed, of Want not because of Need, but only because I Want. David Noel Freedman was a genius of Biblical Scholarship. Quite literally, he graduated from High School at age 13, College at 17, and had earned his first PhD before age 20. Freedman was the Editor of the Anchor Bible and an Old Testament Scholar at the University of Michigan, later at Princeton Seminary. After decades of research, Freedman came to the conclusion that the first 10 Books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel and Kings, all were demonstration of Israel's violation of the first NINE of the Ten Commandments. Honoring God, Idolatry, Reverence, The Sabbath, Honoring Parents, Adultery, Murder, Stealing. Evidence of the first Nine, because for Murder there has to be a Body. For Adultery there has to be a liaison. For Theft, some thing has to be stolen. But according to Freedman, to Covet is internal, and therefore has no outward manifestation. Underneath everything else, the hardest sin of all is Desire, Covetousness, Greed. Adam and Eve was not about knowledge, not about Apples, but that when they could have anything and everything, this couple coveted what they could not taste. David and Bathsheba, was not about only about adultery, and about murder, but what prompted both was coveting the spouse of another. Not because we need, but because we want. Oddly enough, Greed is not born out of Drought and Economic Collapse. Greed is created out of success and prosperity. Having our needs met, we want to consume more. It is a human condition, our wants translate into desire for satisfaction. But when our our wants are filled, we still want, not because we are hungry, not because we need, but because we are not satisfied. Prosperity creates a sense of fear of scarcity. If my needs are currently met, but still I want more, will more stuff be there when I want? Coveting is not about Money, not about the possessions themselves, but Coveting is the insatiable desire to satisfy what can never be satisfied, to accumulate in a culture that can never have enough, to possess a monopoly in a world of scarcity. I have a couple of scandalous suggestions for you this morning. Scandalous because we live in a Village that sells a lot of stuff, stuff that we may not actually need... Can you go a month without buying stuff? Not that we halt the economy by not making any purchases, but all the excess stuff that we buy just for the sake of buying, that at the moment we had to have, to consume, to possess, we might go without. I heard about a grandmother, who decided that this year, her son had enough ties, her daughter had enough scarves, and sending a check to the grandchildren did not seem at all satisfying. So for her own birthday, she sent each family $1,000 with direction that they should use this to make a difference in the life of someone other than themselves. The sum was large enough, they could not forget to send a thank you, they could not ignore what the gift had been used for. The $1,000 was unexpected and had not been needed, so how would each choose to use it? The difficulty of the Bible is that the parables have become so familiar to us, life is so familiar, as to have lost the shock value of having been heard the first time. We think we own the passage, we know the meaning before we listen. The parable of the Rich Man and his Barns must be told within the context of the question posed. One in the crowd cried out to Jesus “Make my brother divide the inheritance fairly.” Growing up, I had three brothers and there was always a question of fairness. Our mother created a game, that whoever was in charge of division, of sharing, of cutting the desert or pouring the juice, could not be the one who was able to chose first. Knowing that yours was the leftover, the last chosen, ensured that every portion was exactly the same. But I have come to realize something, from all the years of memorials and funerals, what is important is not that we sung their favorite hymn, not the flowers, not that the worship service was beautiful, not that they were eulogized with all their accomplishments, not even that Aunt Jeanne did not make a scene. Funerals, Memorials, Death is about Closure, and as human beings as much as we covet reconciliation and resolution, we do not like the finality of closure. Throughout life there are all these unresolved threads, which dangle after death. Our desire for closure is to resolve what had been unresolved, to weave in and end what had been spurious living things. Related to this, inheritance is not about that lamp, or the Trust fund or portfolio, or the house on Skaneateles. The division of inheritance is about our parents' love. Whether Mom and Dad rewarded me the same or more than everybody else, whether I got more of their love and attention than anyone else? Painfully, we have each already made our lot in life, we have found careers and employment that have allowed us to meet our actual needs. Inheritance is about possession and control of the stuff beyond what we need. The reality is, that life is not about us in isolation. Our identity is composed of all the relationships we have, the accumulated worth of being our parents' children, our siblings' sibling, our neighbor's neighbor. Like God in the Book of the Prophet Hosea, there do come times when we want to cry out “Enough, No More!” But also like God, we look through our memories like a photo album. Instead of the baby coming home, we see the home we made for them. Instead of seeing the child taking their first steps, we see our finger holding them up. Instead of seeing their first birthday, we see the fuss we made over them, the cake, the party, our desire to love. I have come to realize that the prophecy of Hosea is not about taking a Prostitute as a spouse. None of us is so filled with self-hatred as to do so, or to name our children: Valley of Death, or Not my Child, or Unloved. While there may come times, when we want to send our children or our spouse away forever. I have come to believe that Hosea is the story of having to take responsibility for your Mom or Dad over their wishes, taking charge of your Husband or Wife, of your own Child. At Weddings we emotionally commit to “For Better and Worse and Richer and Poorer and Sickness and Health” which with the little we have experienced at 23 or 43 years is a monumental vow. But the heartache of Hosea, is if and when because of Worse and Poorer and Sickness, you take responsibility and take control for the other, how can you ever approach one another again as partners, as equals, with trust and the freedom to love? According to Hosea what God came to realize, is that God is not a human being. Faith is not ordinary or rational. God is God and as Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer of Life, God must find a way to love anew. We so often imagine Jesus as having been betrayed by Judas, abandoned by the Disciples, Arrested by the Sanhedrin, put to death by Pontius Pilate and the Roman Empire. But also, presiding at the Table, giving the disciples bread and wine as his giving his body and blood, his life, was Jesus' gift that instead of closure offered the possibility of redemption and life different, never again alone or isolated by living our lives as part of the body of Christ, sharing the riches of God.