Sermon - August 4, 2019 - "Constant Craving"

Luke 12:13-21  - Intro

More so than any of the other gospels, the gospel of Luke contains stories of Jesus that focus on issues of wealth, poverty, and possessions.

In this passage, Jesus is speaking to a crowd of thousands, encouraging them to be strong in the face of persecution by their oppressors,

when he is interrupted by a man who has a family inheritance issue that he wants Jesus to settle.

In context, the request seems self-serving and hopelessly petty.

In Jesus time, religious authorities had the power to settle such disputes, so the request is not completely out of left field,

but Jesus' wants no part of this.

Instead he uses the request as an opportunity to address the underlying issue - greed.

As he does so often, Jesus tells a story,

which has come to be known as the “Parable of the Rich Fool.”

Now, any time a rich man asks Jesus a question or appears in one of his stories, we know it’s not going to end well for the rich guy.

But as you listen to the story note how many times the rich man says, “I” and “my” –

This gives us a hint that this is not a story that is meant to disparage the inherent evils of wealth as much as it is about the dark side of greed -

Because, as with many human failings, it serves as a distraction and takes up space in our lives and our hearts that should instead be filled by the things of God –  love, compassion, and grace.

In some ways this passage mirrors the Mary and Martha story we heard a few weeks ago.

Martha was distracted by her tasks in the kitchen – her busyness – and her concern that her sister wasn’t giving enough,

And our rich fool – and our inheritance seeker – are distracted by their greed – their desire to have more than they’d been given.

This constant craving for more is one that we all seem to have.

And as usual, Jesus offers us a solution for how to deal with it.

The Rev. Maureen R. Frescott

Congregational Church of Amherst, UCC

August 4, 2019 – Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 12:13-21

“Constant Craving”

Sixty-three-year-old Larry Yockey is a wheat farmer.

He lives in Ritzville, Washington, just south of Spokane,

with his wife and two daughters.

Larry Yockey’s father, and grandfather, and great-grandfather, all farmed the same 1,200 acres that Larry now tends.

Four generations of farmers, feeding their own families, and thousands of others, from the grain they planted, nurtured, and harvested from the land.

And just like his father, and his father’ father, and his grandfather’s father, Larry Yokey is a one-man operation.

100% of his income comes from the wheat that he grows and harvests himself, every year, all on his own.

But this year, for the first time in 50 years, the harvest almost didn’t happen.

Back in February, Larry Yockey was diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma.

The cancer that first appeared as a spot on his back, has spread to his bones, contributing to a broken hip and broken ribs, and leaving Larry unable to put in the long hours and do the heavy lifting needed to tend his farm.

A few months ago a neighbor asked Larry if he thought he’d be harvesting this year given his health, and Larry reluctantly responded, “No.”

For Larry, cutting and threshing the wheat is normally a three-week job, keeping him working from sunup to sundown,

and in his current condition he just didn’t see how he would be physically able to get his crop in on time before the heat, wind, and rain, laid it to waste.

The neighbor told Larry not to worry, he would speak to a few of the neighboring farmers and try and rally some help.

It’s not in Larry’s DNA to ask for help, but just knowing that some of his crops might still be harvested and sold, gave him some peace of mind.

When he stepped out on his porch last Saturday, on the day the harvest was set to begin, Larry expected to find 2 or 3 of his neighbors taking precious time away from their own farms to lend him a hand.

Instead, what he saw brought tears to his eyes.

Sixty farmers, from all over the region, had descended upon his fields.

Stretched from one end of his acreage to the other was a relative convoy of industrial combines, threshers, and 18-wheeler grain trucks.

Even the local fire department was there to lend a hand, along with a bevy of workers from the town – car mechanics, store clerks, and barbers.

Those not working in the fields brought food and drinks to those who were.

Working together, the neighbor brigade completed three weeks' worth of harvesting in less than eight hours.  The entire crop was saved.

Looking out at the flurry of activity in his fields, Yokey said,

"It's not describable the gratitude I have for what's going on…

'thank you' really doesn't even do justice here."

We might ask ourselves, what is it about this man, Larry Yocky, that caused so many to want to give up their time to help him….especially when he hadn’t directly asked any of them for help, and certainly wasn’t expecting it.

The short feature story that reported this ‘good news’ event doesn’t tell us much about what Larry did to cultivate such a neighborly response.

There was no mention of his kind heart or compassionate acts that would lead us to think this was a way for folks to pay him back for all that he’d done for them.

There was no mention of people clamoring to help because they’d experienced cancer in their own families, they knew the struggle,

and they wanted to help in some way – to feel empowered in the face of a disease that makes us feel powerless.

There was no mention of this being an intentional counter-reaction to the time we live in – where we’re more likely to be driven apart over ideological differences, rather than come together over a common and concrete goal.

Perhaps this was just small town neighbors helping neighbors.

Putting aside their own needs for the needs of another.

But you have to believe that the relationships that Larry built with his neighbors played a part in this somehow.

If no one knew him, if he kept to himself and was a one-man show claiming no outside influence, making no space in his life for anyone or anything other than his own need to acquire, achieve, and build –

no one would have known that Larry had cancer,

or would have thought to ask how his health was going to impact his harvest, and then taken the next step to say, “No need to worry, we’ll help.”

When we think about greed, we often think about it in terms of money, resources, or possessions.

This desire that we have to have bigger stores of money,

so we can buy bigger and better things,

and then build bigger and better barns to keep them in.

And when we think about greed in this way, we then think about the way it impacts others in terms of money, resources, and possessions.

Because the more we have, the less others may have.

And the more we desire to hold on to what we have out of fear,

the less likely we’ll be to share what we have with others out of love.

And the more imbalanced our society is in terms of money, resources, and possessions, the more likely we are to have problems that disproportionally impact those on the lesser side of the scale –

in terms of housing and food insecurity, limited access to quality health care and education, and increased incidents of violence and crime.

But greed is about much more than our desire to hold onto money, possessions, and resources, out of selfishness and fear.

Greed grows out of idolatry.

Our constant craving for something to fill us, complete us, satisfy us.

Something that gives our life meaning and purpose,

Something that gives us pleasure and contentment, happiness and joy.

We can make an idol out of anything.

Money, possessions, work, achievement, sex, drugs, sports, recreation, a desire for fame or affirmation, our need to feel safe and secure.

Even healthy things like gardening and yoga can become idols,

when we pour so much of our time, energy, and focus into it,

that we ignore nearly everything and everyone else,

in the belief that IT is our source of meaning and purpose and happiness –

rather than what we were actually created to crave –

which is to live in relationship – with others – and with God.

Augustine wrote:

“You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee.”

Or, to paraphrase 17^th century mathematician and theologian Blaise Pascal:

There is an infinite abyss – a  God-shaped hole in the heart of every human being - that only our infinite God can fill.

The rich man in Jesus’ parable speaks of “my grain” and “my goods” and “my barns” and God says to him, “You fool.” 

“When you pass from this world whose will they be then?”

Minus your possessions what will you have to show for a life long lived?

When we make space for others, and take the time to build relationships –

we just may find that they alone are standing, when every thing we own falls away.

And when we make space for God – by recognizing our abundance,

lifting prayers of gratitude, and responding with acts of compassion for others – we by default end up building a relationship with our Creator.

So when the bottom falls out of our lives, we have something - someone - to catch us. To comfort us. To sustain us. To resurrect us.

Greed is about much more than a desire to hold onto money, resources and possessions.

Greed is about holding onto fear.

Our fear of not having enough.    

Our fear of losing what we have.

Because in an odd way we find this fear to be comforting and familiar,

as it wraps us in a cocoon that we think protects us,

holding others at bay,

and shielding us from the God who demands more from us.

Fear driven greed is what compels young men to pick up a gun and fire it randomly, repeatedly, and recklessly into a crowd of strangers.

The fear that someone is taking what is rightfully theirs.

The fear that they will be left with nothing if it is taken.

Fear driven greed is also what compels us to throw up our hands claiming there are complex issues behind these acts of violence that are difficult to address – the lack of adequate mental health care, the rhetoric surrounding immigration and race relations, bullying in schools, the absence of love or faith in the home.

Fear driven greed has us searching through the weeds looking for a cause, while we ignore the smoking gun in the young man’s hand. 

Because we fear it will be taken away – along with the sense of security and freedom we believe it brings.

Jesus said, “Take care, be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

We’re all walking around with a God-shaped hole in our hearts.

Searching for something or someone to fill it.

But the only thing that can fill an infinite abyss, 

is an infinite God.

We don’t need to build bigger barns to hold our grain or our guns.

We need to build bigger relationships to hold our love and our fear.

The Good New is that God created us to do just that.

Thanks be to God, and Amen.