In the last few months my wife Meg
has been working about three days a week in her psychotherapy career. She put it on hold when our daughter was
born, and just about the time that she got it going again down in Monterey, we
moved here to Petaluma. But now it’s
going again, which has been a good thing for her and our family, but has also
involved some stretches and strains. And
one result that is both a blessing and a challenge is that for the first time
in eleven years of marriage we have some disposable income. In our capitalist-consumer culture this is
the Holy Grail, the very thing our whole lives are supposed to be directed
toward getting. But when you’ve been accustomed
for year to spend everything you earn on basic necessities, the sudden surplus
can be a little overwhelming.
First of all there is what economists
call pent-up consumer demand. A couple
of weeks ago I did the unthinkable—I bought a six-pack of brand-new white
athletic socks and I went home and took all of the shapeless, grayish,
threadbare things that used to be white socks out of my drawer and put them in
the rag bag. We’re fantasizing about a
gas grill for the back yard, or one of those thin TVs that hangs on the wall to replace the old
cathode-ray tube that squats in its coffin in the living room. But then there’s that forty-year old furnace in
the hall closet, and the crumbling brick walkway leading up to the house and the
peeling exterior trim and the breathtaking possibility that instead of spending
the next year’s worth of my days off scraping and washing and priming and
painting we could just hire someone to do the job. We’ve already increased our giving to
charities we’ve guiltily denied or short-changed over the years. And finally there is the voice of prudence
reminding of us of all the reasons why we need to save—to pay the higher taxes
we will now be privileged enjoy, to build up a cash reserve for unforeseen
emergencies, to provide for our daughter’s college education, and our own not-so-terribly
distant old age.
So figuring out how to prioritize
all these different wants and needs is nerve-wracking, and when you start to
divide the extra income all those different ways, it isn’t very much, and that
little voice starts to whisper in the back of your mind that says, “if only it
was a little more.” Now, I’m not
complaining—I’m well aware that there are millions of people in our country and
billions more around the world who would give their eye teeth to have my money
problems. But the frustrating aspects of
the situation do help me to remember the point that Jesus makes in the Gospel of
Luke when he says to some brothers who are quarreling over their inheritance,
"Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life
does not consist in the abundance of possessions."
And he goes on to tell a story, a
parable about a rich man, a landowner who had what every one of us who’s ever
bought a lottery ticket thought we wanted, what every subsistence farmer in
Palestine has always thought would be the answer to his fondest prayer. He had a surplus, so much grain and other
goods that he had to tear down his barns and build bigger ones to hold it
all. And the best thing, the man
thought, about all that wealth was that now he could purchase his soul. He could get it out of debt, out of hock to
anxiety, and uncertainty about the future, and the endless toil be secure. He could just kick back and relax and enjoy
his life, because finally it was his alone.
But here is where God comes into
the story, and, as in all the parables of Jesus, God flips the script. Because God tells the rich man that his life
is the one thing that he can never own. And the goods that he thinks will buy him his
soul come at the cost of it. They don’t
give him his life, they consume it, until his goods are all that remains, an
inheritance for his children to quarrel over.
“So it is,” says Jesus, “with those who store up treasures for
themselves but are not rich toward God.”
It is hard for us, as it was for
people in Jesus’ time, to hear this story as good news. That is because we only hear the negative
message it contains. But there is a
positive message in the story as well, as in all the teachings of Jesus about
material wealth, which can sound so stern and cold and unlovely to our
ears. And the positive message is that
there is an alternative to the anxious and never-ending struggle to get so much
stuff that we can finally be in firm possession of our lives. There is a way to live that understands that
we are already rich, even if we have nothing in this world but the clothes on
our backs. It is possible to see the
world, not as an economy of competition for limited goods and scarce
commodities, but as an abundant economy of unlimited and multiplying
gifts. There is a way to pursue
fulfillment and joy and peace by flipping the script, and learning to be “rich
toward God.”
Last Wednesday, July 31st,
was the anniversary of a meeting that took place in 1856 in a parlor at the
Washington Hotel near the corner of Main and Washington in a booming little settlement
on the Petaluma River. At that meeting a
small group of pioneers met with Bishop William Kip of California and decided
to establish St. John’s Church. It’s
worth remembering that at the beginning St. John’s was nothing, nothing but a
name, and those people and their bishop, and the Book of Common Prayer. And our founders may have had their dreams of
building something substantial and lasting, but I don’t think they foresaw what
their little project would become, any more than they foresaw the unbelievable
prosperity that timber, and ranching, and the river would bring to their town. But they did have the sense to know that whatever
they did here would be worthless if they weren’t rich toward God.
One hundred and fifty years later,
their children would have a quarrel over their legacy. But I like to think that what was really at
stake in that fight was not the property of the parish, or the name St. John’s,
or the rightful inheritance of the Anglican tradition. The real issue in question was the nature of
the church—is it our exclusive possession?
Is it the right of any person, or one generation, to decide who belongs
to it, and who does not, and to do with it as they will? Or is the church a gift that we hold in trust
for others we don’t even know, something that simply passes through our hands,
on its way to a destination that we cannot imagine, that is hidden with Christ
in God?
Last Thursday, August 1st
was also an anniversary, the 3rd anniversary of my coming here to be
the Priest-in-Charge. And a lot of our
time and energy in these past three years has been consumed with trying to get
a handle on our inheritance—assessing the deferred maintenance needs of the
property, making repairs and improvements, raising money to make the repairs,
setting up financial systems, and endowment policies, and facility-use policies
and the administrative and governance structures to do all these things in an
efficient and transparent and accountable way.
And I admit there have been times when I’ve wished for the simplicity of
nothing but people and bishop and the Book of Common Prayer.
And there also the times when I’m
alone in this place and I walk around and I wonder who our neighbors are and
what they might say if they knew there was this incredible asset just sitting
here, holding all of its potential like a hidden treasure, and that it is here
for them. Here for them to use to create
community, to celebrate life, to offer thanksgiving, and mourn the dead; here
for them to use to enjoy beauty, and practice kindness, and share truth, and love
wisdom, and study peace. I think about
them and I wonder what I can say or do that will let them know that this is
their place to come and be rich, rich toward God.
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