Foothills Congregational Church The Rev. Michelle Webber

United Church of Christ 8^th Sunday in Ordinary Tim

461 Orange Ave., Los Altos, CA 94022 August 5^th, 2007

A Comfortable Place to Sit

Luke 12:13-21

This is probably not the most comfortable text for us. Last week during the children’s sermon I talked about the definition of success, as compiled by the youth on the mission trip. Their first pass at such a definition included the financial ability to handle any emergencies that come up. The peace of mind of knowing that not only are you not in debt, but that you have saved enough for 6 months of expenses should you need to live that long without an income.

As we get older, I’m sure our focus changes from not just having that financial buffer, but also to having enough to keep us financially comfortable for a long and carefree retirement. We would find comfort in having exactly the type of prosperity as the man in this story.

We can assume that he has worked hard for the abundance of grain that he has. And he is planning on taking good care of his assets by building a bigger barn to hold them so that he can enjoy a long and carefree retirement. He will say to his soul, “relax, eat, drink, be merry.” Most of us strive for no less than the same.

And yet Jesus seems to be teaching against striving for such financial security. Notice that the only two characters in this Parable are the man and his possessions. An argument can be made that what Jesus actually cautions against in this story is not amassing wealth, but in amassing wealth to the exclusion of other things. Obviously the man had no children, or there would have been no question about what would happen to his wealth. He could have spent energy building relationships, living in community, practicing his faith, helping others. It seems as if this man has done nothing, except amass wealth. So when he dies, what happens to his wealth?

The passage immediately following this one, in which Jesus is speaking to his disciples, says do not worry about what you will eat, what you will wear or what you will say on God’s behalf. These things will be provided for you in the moment. “Do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink,

and do not keep worrying…instead strive for God’s kingdom, and these things will be given you.”

In essence the man in our story was doing what Jesus described, he said to his soul, “eat, drink, be merry,” in short, stop worrying. The only thing he wasn’t doing was striving for God’s kingdom.

In God’s kingdom we have enough and we are enough just being who we are. If we are to enact this on earth, we will work towards a world in which all have enough to thrive. Jesus does not say not to create a financially secure future for yourself. He encourages us to offer the same to others. In other parts of the gospel Jesus says to love our neighbors as ourselves. He does not say to love our neighbors instead of ourselves.

The challenge is to define the minimum amount of wealth necessary to thrive and to be generous with whatever extra we have so that others may experience the minimum as well. The Mormons are quite good at this. As long as you are a tithing member of a Mormon church, you need not lack for food, shelter, clothing or employment. They make quite a commitment to each other.

But who is to say what the minimum is? In his book, Provoking the Gospel of Luke: A Storyteller’s Commentary, Richard W Swanson, says that this passage calls us to a balancing act between capitalism and socialism. “Both earning and sharing,” he says, “are essential to the fabric of God’s world,” and it is God’s world we are called by Jesus to amass. We live in an interconnected system of give and take and when we fail to participate in half of that equation the system suffers.

When I was at the Heifer Farm in Ceres, CA I read a story that was posted on the outside of the kitchen. I don’t remember the name of the farmer, or where he was from, but it appeared to be a true story. This particular farmer won awards for his grain year after year. And every year he shared his seed with his farming neighbors. A man came to interview him about his award winning grain and asked him why he shared his seed with his neighbors, wondering why he would help his competition possibly beat him the next year. But the farmer corrected the interviewer. Their pollen blows into my fields, he said, if I do not share my good seed with them, my crop would suffer.

In our children’s message today we got a glimpse of the intense disparity of material wealth in our world. Standing in one of the wealthiest countries in the world places us in a place of intense privilege and makes our balancing act difficult. How can we balance the wealth that is available to us with our need to share our seed?

A couple of years ago I went to a workshop at the NCNC annual meeting at Asilomar about Jubilee, a movement to end 3^rd world debt. In that workshop I learned that when the World Bank makes a repayment agreement with a country who owes them money, they often require that compulsory education ends at 8^th grade in order to increase the pool of available low-wage workers, thus enabling the country to attract foreign industry and pay the World Bank the interest payments the country owes. The World Bank has become a fairly lucrative investment, partly due to the high interest rates that are charged to such countries.

In fact, many American college funds are invested in the World Bank, making it a really good example of a system that is out of balance. Our children’s college educations might be funded by the requirement that children in less prosperous countries remain uneducated.

And yet doing anything about these systemic imbalances can seem overwhelming. So I will end my sermon with some concrete suggestions of things that we can do to live a more balanced life. First and foremost, live in gratitude. Accept the commandment to love yourself. Know that right now you are enough. God loves you just as you are in this moment. We call this love grace, and it is freely available to everyone, regardless of any shortcoming you might think you have, regardless of where you fall in the balancing act of the world economy. Be grateful for God’s grace. When we live lives of gratitude it is a lot harder to idolize our possessions, to amass wealth simply for wealth’s sake.

My best friend has been a single mother for over 10 years. During that time she has had only 1 significant romantic relationship. She fully expected that she would not have another significant romantic relationship until her daughter was grown and out of the house, if ever. She believed that the type of romantic love she saw others achieve was really a fairy tale, play acting at what love should be, but never actually was. Then she fell in love. She says she never thought such feelings and commitment were possible and she is living a life of gratitude. She and her daughter have just moved in with her new love and she has given away almost all of her possessions. She is so full of this unexpected joy that things mean nothing to her. Sure she has kept a few valued possessions, mostly ones attached to fond memories, but most things she simply gave away. She is living in gratitude.

She has enough. More is not necessary. This is the place of “do not worry”

that Jesus calls his disciples to live in.

Second, understand the system. Know where the imbalances are. This is the greatest thing that we learned during the Heifer Project trip. We experienced what it was like to live near the other end of the wealth imbalance. It definitely made us grateful for what we have, for the comfort and abundance of our lives. After our second day of farm labor, I was exhausted. I do not do much physical activity in my normal daily life and farm work in hot weather was almost more than I could take. I had a ridiculously intense headache from my lack of caffeine. I was somewhat dizzy, possibly from physical exertion, possibly from mild sun stroke, which I am prone to. And there was no place to sit down in the shade, except in the barn that was off limits to farm workers. The only place where I could find that had a little bit of shade was on a pile of manure and straw. So I sat down right on a pile of dried dung, possibly from the Water Buffalo, or maybe from the calf. I didn’t know and quite frankly I didn’t care. I was grateful for the little bit of shade I had found, and the wall of the barn behind my back. And I thought about other people I have seen in my life who were completely exhausted and hungry sitting where they could find a little bit of comfort. I know I didn’t smell any better than your average person living on the streets. I was sitting in feces and clothes that I had sweated in for two days straight. I was suddenly struck by the commonality of humanity, all from something as simple as a comfortable place to sit.

We are no different from the clients at CSA, or the people who come here on occasion to ask for a little extra money to get them through the day. The biggest difference is in how comfortable of a place we have to sit. I was never so glad to see my couch as when I got home from the Heifer trip. KC McCoy called me the next morning and I told her that the first thought that went through my mind when I woke up in my bed that morning was “I’m comfortable,” and boy was I grateful.

Ghandi says, “There are people so hungry that God can not appear to them except in the form of bread.” Substitute comfort for hunger and that’s exactly where I was. I was so uncomfortable that I could not see past my own comfort. Enacting the kingdom of God in my life at that moment, meant sitting in manure in a small sliver of shade. Perhaps this is what Jesus wanted from the man in the parable, to help meet the basic needs of those around him so that they could see far enough beyond themselves to find God.

Third, pass it on. This is a phrase that we heard a lot on the farm. It is one of the guiding principles of Heifer Project International. Every HPI recipient is asked to pass on the gift. If you receive a milk cow, you are to give her first born female calf to a neighbor, who in turn gives away her first born female calf, etc. They enact the very principle that Swanson finds in our parable from Luke. The original gift, that is made possible by people like you and me giving of our wealth, is shared. It enriches not just one family, but an entire community. We heard the story of a man who received a heifer which produced more milk than his family could use. He felt guilty that he had a lot of milk, but there were children in his village who suffered from illnesses caused by a lack of protein so everyday he invites the village kids to his house, with their buckets, to share in his milk and he has single handedly wiped out protein deficiency illnesses in his village. This could very well be happening with the cow that this congregation donated last year thanks to the children’s offering. This was a small, concrete thing they kids could do.

This fall we will have Matt’s friend Don Eaton at our Fall Retreat. He has started a international charity called “Small Change,” focused on just this type of thing, small acts that can actually change someone’s world. At the retreat we will learn more about small ways we can Pass it On. Passing on the gift does not have to mean emptying our storehouse, but it does mean sharing from our abundance. And not just from our wealth, though that is a necessary component. Amass other types of wealth and share those, too. Give of your time, of your faith, of your love. Love yourself, but pass it on. Amen.