Eat, Drink, and Be Merry?

Eat, Drink and Be Merry?

Lk. 12:13-21[1]

  Greed is one of those words that by definition simply has no positive meaning.  Only the most callous Wall Street capitalist could say with a straight face that “greed is healthy.”[2]  Most of us will agree with that on the surface of things, but once we walk out the doors of this church, our lives betray a different creed.  I’m afraid we’re all more products of a culture of “consumptive consumerism” than we’d like to admit.  One definition of this way of living is “The preoccupation of society with the acquisition of consumer goods.” I’d say that pretty much sums up the way we live these days--preoccupied with the acquisition of stuff.

  So when Jesus says, “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (Lk. 12:15)[3], I doubt that too many people in our world really believe that. We might nod our heads in assent.  And none of us would go so far as to say “greed is healthy.” But, as a people, we continue to occupy ourselves with acquiring more and more.[4]  It would seem that we really do believe that our lives consist in the abundance of our possessions.[5]  It would seem that we believe that’s what it takes to be able to “eat, drink, and be merry.”

  All of that is fairly obvious to anyone who has the eyes to see it.  I don’t think belaboring it helps anybody.  I think the real issue is where this obsession comes from, and how we free ourselves from it.  It seems to me that the source of our greed is a lack of satisfaction with life.  We just don’t seem to have it in us to look at where we are today, what we have, what we’re doing, and say to ourselves that it’s just fine the way it is.[6]  There’s always something we want to change.  Always another “golden calf” out there that we imagine will make our lives complete.[7]  But no matter how much stuff we manage to acquire, it’s never enough.  There’s still an empty place inside us that won’t be filled with newer, nicer, better things.

  Others among us think that we can fill the void with activities.  If we work hard enough and long enough, we can distract ourselves from the real question that haunts us--the question of what it will take for us to be truly happy with our lives.  It’s a painful question, and one that isn’t easily resolved.  So we really rather not have to face it at all.  Instead, we run from one activity to another, immersing ourselves in busy-ness so that we won’t have to think about that emptiness that gnaws at us when we’re too still and quiet. [8]

  But the solution to the compulsion to fill our lives with something, with anything, so that we don’t have to feel that emptiness, can only be found elsewhere.  Centuries ago, St. Augustine said it this way, “Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.”[9]  The ancient truth is that the only way to be free from the obsessions that fail to satisfy us is through the steadfast love of God.  It is a love that surrounds us constantly.[10]  It is a love that is in the very air we breathe, in the sunshine that drives the trees to produce the air we breathe, and in the chemical process in the leaves of the trees that gives off oxygen.  If God’s love can be found in something so basic to our very existence, surely it can be found in the other aspects of our lives as well, if we have the eyes to see it.[11]

  The Psalmist reminds us that it is the steadfast love of God that provides us with the very food we eat (Ps. 107:9).  And so he calls us to “give heed to these things” (Ps 107:43).  I think that means we’re supposed to catch a clue, get the hint, learn the lesson.  If God goes to such lengths to establish the very cycle of nature that supports our lives in ways we take for granted, we can surely trust God with the other aspects of our lives that we think we have to manage.  St. Paul took that one step further.  He reminded us that God also gave us what was most precious.  God gave his only Son for us all so that we might have new life.  And Paul draws the natural conclusion: “He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else?” (Rom. 8:32).[12]

  The real solution to seeking our lives in how much stuff we have, or in how much we can do to distract ourselves, or how well we can “eat, drink, and be merry,” is to find our lives in the new life that God offers us all.  It is a life that is truly fulfilling, a life of learning that becoming content with God’s love turns whatever we have into everything we could ever need.  It is a life of loving God in return and therefore serving those around us in love--especially by sharing what we have with them.  Jesus calls this “being rich toward God” (Lk 12:21).[13] When we find our lives in this way, then we can see the folly of thinking that anything else could possibly satisfy us.  Then we can see the truth that “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

---

[1] © 2013 Alan Brehm.  A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 8/4/2013 at First Presbyterian Church of Dickinson, TX.

[2] Ivan Boesky made this statement at his 1986 commencement speech at The University of California at Berkeley.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Boesky.

[3] Cf. R. Alan Culpepper, “The Gospel of Luke,” New Interpreters Bible IX:255, on the dangers of wealth in Luke’s Gospel.

[4] Cf. U. S. Department of Labor, “100 Years of U.S. Consumer Spending,” May 2006, accessed at http://www.bls.gov/opub/uscs/report991.pdf. In the introduction, the report says, “Mass consumption, spurred by advertising and consumer credit, has become a distinguishing characteristic of modern society. Today, consumer spending has become the largest component of U.S. gross domestic product.”

[5] Cf. Darrell Bock, Luke 9:51-24:53, 1146, 1150, 1155, where he points out that Luke’s intent in conveying this parable was to warn his Christian audience against the danger of placing one’s trust in wealth.  It would seem we still need that warning!

[6] Cf. Pema Chödrön, Taking the Leap, 61.  She describes getting to this place as a gradual process: “I find that it’s essential during the day to actually note when I feel happiness or when something positive happens, and begin to cherish those moments as precious. Gradually we can begin to cherish the preciousness of our whole life just as it is, with its ups and downs, its failures and successes, its roughness and smoothness.”

[7] Cf. St. Paul, Colossians 3:5, “Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: ... greed (which is idolatry).”  Cf. also Fred Craddock, Luke, 163, where he says that the problem with the rich man in the parable is that “He lives completely for himself.”  Cf. similarly, Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Luke X-XXIV, 972; and Culpepper, “The Gospel of Luke” NIB XI:257: “Until the voice of God interrupts the fool’s reverie, there is nothing in the story but the man and his possessions.”

[8] Cf. Chödrön, Taking the Leap, 15, where she uses the analogy of a young child with poison ivy who cannot resist the urge to scratch, which only makes things worse.  She says, “in the face of anything we don’t like, we automatically try to escape. In other words, scratching is our habitual way of trying to get away, trying to escape our fundamental discomfort, the fundamental itch of restlessness and insecurity.”

[9] Augustine, Confessions 1.1; accessed at http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf 101.vi.I_1.I.html . On this, cf. John Caputo, On Religion, 28, where he comments that when people “go off in search of other things, ... , they are really engaged in a ... search for God, except they do not realize that it is God for whom they search.” Cf. also Henri Nouwen, Here and Now, 21: “there is a space within us where God dwells and where we are invited to dwell with God.”  Cf. also G. C. Berkouwer, Man: The Image of God, 196: Man never appears as an isolated self-contained entity, or in the pure factuality of his weakness or strength or poverty or riches, but always and exclusively in that relationship which so decisively defines man in the full actuality of his existence (cf. Ps. 84:6, Luke 12:21).

[10] Cf. Nouwen, Here and Now, 20: “Jesus’ core message is that God is ... a lover, whose only desire is to give us what our hearts most desire.  To pray is to listen to that voice of love.”

[11] Cf. Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace is Every Step, 78: “Wherever we are, any time, we have the capacity to enjoy the sunshine, the presence of each other, the wonder of our breathing.”

[12] Cf. Nouwen, Here and Now, 136: “Wherever we are there are voices saying: ‘Go here, go there, buy this, buy that, ...,’ and so on.  These voices keep pulling us away from that soft gentle voice that speaks in the center of our being: ‘You are my beloved, on you my favor rests.’”

[13] Cf. Culpepper, “The Gospel of Luke,” NIB IX:257: “the rich man’s vision of the future sounds uncomfortably like one that most of us have for our retirement years. Are we really planning prudently? What gives our life meaning now, and what will give it meaning then?” Cf. similarly, John Nolland, Luke 9:21-18:34, 688.

Finding Life

Mark 15:16-32[1]

What would it take for you to be able to say that you’ve finally found what you’re looking for in life? It seems to me that we have all kinds of different answers to that question. For some, it’s achieving success—whatever that success looks like. For some, it’s about having wealth—whatever that looks like. For some, it’s finding the right person to make you happy in life. For some, it’s having a certain physical appearance that we think means we’re attractive. For some, it’s recognition. But when you look around you and notice how happy or unhappy we tend to be as a people, it would seem that all the things we spend our lives trying to obtain in order to make ourselves feel fulfilled in life aren’t really all that effective. In fact, they are not effective at all. The happiness they bring us lasts only a short time, at most. In many cases, what we strive so hard for doesn’t give us any happiness at all![2]

So what are we doing wrong? Why is it that we’re putting so much energy and effort into finding what we’re looking for in life and it seems that we’re only spinning our wheels? Jesus took a completely different approach to finding fulfillment in life. Instead of trying to get something, he taught that we should give ourselves away. Instead of trying to hold onto all the things we cling to so desperately in order to feel happy with life, he taught us to let it all go. He said it this way: “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (Mark 8:35). If you want to know what that means in practice, we can look at the way Jesus lived his life. He didn’t seek fame, or power, or recognition. Rather he sought out the wayward, the rejected, and the lost in order to help them find their way home to God. He didn’t seek his own “happiness” in life. Rather, he served those around him with compassion. And ultimately, his idea of saving the world meant that he gave up his life by dying on the cross.

In our gospel lesson for today, we find a particularly distasteful episode where those who were present at his death were ridiculing him for that choice. The soldiers mocked him by dressing him up like a king. The crowd made fun of him for claiming to be able to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. And the religious leaders scoffed at the idea that he could save anyone—hanging on that cross, in their minds he couldn’t even save himself! Even the bandits who were crucified with him taunted him.

And yet, it was the very act that they scorned that was in fact the deed that saved them all—and saved us all as well. It would seem that Jesus’ view of salvation was quite different from theirs. They believed that a “savior” would come as a military hero, leading them to throw off the yoke of their Roman oppressors. They believed that a “savior” would give them back the independence and freedom that they thought they deserved. They were looking for power and freedom to give them the life they wanted. And there Jesus was, dying on a cross. If he couldn’t even save himself from the Romans, how were they going to believe that he could save them?[3] In fact, it seems that the people of his day operated with many of the same mistaken notions about what it means to find fulfillment in life that we have.

But their notions of salvation had it all wrong. Jesus didn’t come to conquer nations, but to change hearts. Jesus didn’t come to set up the powerful, but to lift up the downtrodden with the mercy of God. He came to break the chains that keep us all locked up in the prisons of our own making.[4] And in order to do that, he gave up his life in the act of ultimate love. Jesus didn’t come to establish any religious or political order on earth. He came to make it clear to us that, despite all the religious condemnation that has been heaped on so many throughout the ages, God accepts us all.[5] And in order to do that, he gave his life in the act of ultimate compassion. Jesus didn’t come to give us confidence that we’re “going to heaven” when we die. He died and rose again to give us hope for living right here and right now. And in order to do that, he gave his life in the act of ultimate trust in God.[6]

We all run ourselves ragged trying to find the things that we think will give us the life that we’ve always wanted. Or we spend ourselves broke, or we work ourselves to death. But Jesus told us all those years ago that our efforts at “gaining” our lives are futile. The only way to find life is to give it away in love. And more than that, he not only told us, he showed us by giving his own life away for us all.[7] He obeyed the call to give his life for the sake of others, and in so doing, he made it possible for us to find life.[8] It is as we embrace his gift of love and trust that we find our own lives. It is as we follow his example and give ourselves away in love and compassion for others, trusting in God as he did, that we find life.

---

[1] © 2012 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 4/1/12 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX and at A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX.

[2] Cf. Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart, 53-54.

[3] Cf. Craig A. Evans, Mark 8:27-16:20, 505.

[4] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, 277: “There is no loneliness and no rejection which [God] has not taken to himself and assumed in the cross of Jesus.”

[5] Cf. Moltmann, Crucified God, 242: “Because God ‘does not spare’ his Son, all the godless are spared. Though they are godless, they are not godforsaken, precisely because God has abandoned his own Son and has delivered him up for them.” Cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, 174-75: “Anyone who has once perceived God’s presence and love in the God-forsakenness of the crucified Brother, sees God everywhere and in everything.”

[6] H. W. Attridge & A. Y Collins, Mark, 750.

[7] Cf. Joel B. Green, “The Death of Jesus and the Ways of God,” Interpretation 52 (Jan 1998):32.

[8] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.2:602, “Deliverance from death cannot be deliverance from before it but only deliverance from out of it.”

Changed

John 12:20-33[1]

Not many of us like change. That’s very likely an understatement. Change means adjusting to something different, and adjusting is not something we prefer doing. We’d much rather keep things the way they are. Routine, consistency, predictable outcomes—these are things we rely on for a sense of safety and stability in our lives. Even good change is difficult, if for no other reason than what it takes to get there. Becoming debt-free, or getting in shape, or starting a new job are all good changes to make, but to make those changes can take a lot of determination and effort on our part. In many cases, in order to change something about ourselves, we have to be willing to admit we’ve been doing it wrong and try to do something different.

Our Gospel lesson for today suggests that God has changed everything. Through Jesus, through his birth, his life, his teaching, and in this passage especially through his dying and rising to new life, God has changed everything. Everything. For everybody.[2] Jesus says it this way, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (Jn. 12:32). It’s a message of hope, that God is working in this world to make everything new. It’s a bold declaration about the power of God’s love changing everything and everyone.

It is a wonderful thing to believe and hope that through Jesus God is making everything new. It can be inspiring and reassuring to believe that God is not going to leave this world in its current condition, with all the pain and suffering and oppression and injustice that so many people suffer. It is encouraging to hope that through Jesus Christ God is changing everyone and everything for the better.

But in a very real sense, I think we have to realize that change begins with me—and that can be challenging. The changes of the new life we’ve been talking about during Lent don’t just happen automatically for all of us. Most of us have to work at it. We have to come to the point where we can acknowledge our flaws in order to avail ourselves of the love God offers us all so freely.[3] If we want to experience the healing life God offers, the only way to start the journey is to recognize that we can’t do this entirely for ourselves.[4] We have to take the risk of faith to entrust our lives to the care of a loving God in order to make the changes the new life calls us to make.

For some, those changes can take place quickly, almost overnight. For most of us, it can take a lifetime of reorienting our lives toward God’s peace and justice and freedom and compassion. That means we must be intentional about how we live. If the change that God is bringing about in this world is important to us, then we have to take definite steps in order to align ourselves with it. We have to find ways of consciously embracing the repentance and faith that Jesus invites us to practice. We have to seek out ways of incorporating the directions for living that are meant to make us more whole, more peaceful, and more joyful into the way we actually live our daily lives. We must make it our goal in life to become a person who is open to God’s loving presence and who allows that love to flow through us to others.

It can be painful to undergo these kinds of changes in our lives. In a very real sense, in order to experience the new life that God offers us all, we have to make ourselves vulnerable.[5] We’d much rather avoid any kind of difficulty or discomfort and just stay in the same old ruts we’ve been in all our lives. But in order to change, we have to refrain from all the ways we normally try to escape the difficulty and discomfort. We have to stay with it, even if it provokes a crisis in our lives, in order to experience real change. We have to refrain from all the ways we try to escape the pain we might feel, because it’s the pain that heals us and gives us the strength and courage to make the changes we need.[6]

That sounds hard and perhaps even burdensome. But in a very real sense, it can be as simple as embracing the change God is bringing into this world by loving God and loving others. The message of our Gospel lesson for today is that when we make changes in our lives in order to align ourselves with God’s peace and justice and freedom and compassion, we’re not engaged in a self-help project! We’re opening ourselves to the change that God has already made through Jesus, and that God continues to make in all our lives through the love that constantly surrounds us. At the end of the day, the changes of the new life we seek don’t depend solely on our efforts. They depend on the good news that through Jesus the Christ what God is doing in this world has left everything and everyone changed![7]

---

[1] © 2012 Alan Brehm. A sermon preached by Rev. Dr. Alan Brehm on 3/25/12 at First Presbyterian Church, Dickinson, TX and at A Community of the Servant-Savior Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX.

[2] Some would not take this passage in such a sweepingly inclusive sense. For statements that do, cf. The Study Catechism, Q. 132, “there is … a depth of love which is deeper than our despair, and that this love … will finally swallow up forever all that would now seem to defeat it.” Cf. also Jürgen Moltmann, In the End the Beginning, 48: The good news is that “the risen Christ … draws the whole of humanity out of the world of death” into the transformed world of new life.

[3] Without this, Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls what we seek “cheap grace”! Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 44-45; cf. also Otto Weber, Foundations of Dogmatics II:296-97, 301, 305, 339.

[4] See Paul Tillich, “Salvation” in The Eternal Now, 115, 117-18

[5] It is commonly noted that the most vulnerable people in our world seem to have a way of pointing us most clearly to faith and new life. Cf. Jon Sobrino, Where is God?, 7, where he says that the poor and the powerless possess a “primordial saintliness”; and Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 126-29.

[6] Cf. Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart, 2-5, 8, 17, 30; cf. also Pema Chödrön, The Places that Scare You, 28-29, 120-22.

[7] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.3.491, where he argues that even for one who has not embraced faith, what God has done in Jesus Christ “means de jure a complete alteration of his situation.” He also reminds us that “Jesus Christ always comes to him with His call, that He always encounters him, that He always stands at his door and knocks (Rev. 3:20).”