Preacher: The Very Rev Dr Valori Mulvey Sherer, Rector
En el nombre del Dios: Padre, Hijo, y Espiritu Santo. Amen.
There are two kinds of people in the world: salt-eaters and sweet-eaters. I’m a sweet-eater. As a sweet-eater, I have found that when I crave something sweet, if I don’t eat it, I will eat, and eat, and eat all kinds of other things seeking satisfaction which will elude me until I eat that sweet treat. As C.S. Lewis once said: “What does not satisfy when we find it was not the thing we were desiring.”
I credit my Poppa, who came here from Ireland, for this practice in my life. My Poppa lived most of his 99 ½ years in amazingly good health. He wasn’t overweight, smoked a pipe and a cigar (infrequently, but regularly), and took a daily walk – with his Shillelagh stick in hand, of course.
I often heard people ask Poppa what he thought was the secret to his long life and good health. I don’t remember his exact words, but I remember understing his answer to be: balance. It was an answer that always made sense to me.
As I have grown in age and spiritual maturity, I have come to appreciate how truly important balance is. But to achieve balance in our lives, we have to know our true selves, and without judging ourselves, establish disciplines that help us keep balance.
For example, I’m a sweet-eater, and an introvert, and a bookworm. Part of me thinks I could be happy eating Deacon Pam’s dark chocolate fudge, alone, with a good book – till I die. Another part of me knows I can’t. That’s why, in order to live and to fulfill God’s purpose for me on this earth, I have to have disciplines that keep me looking to God instead of at my own desires.
In his letter to the Colossians, St. Paul says, “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” because as baptized believers, we have new life in Jesus Christ. Our purpose on this earth is to continually reveal Christ to the world so that all can be reconciled to God in Christ. The behaviors we display (those ones that Paul listed)as we live our lives point to our faithfulness to that purpose. Are we being faithful?
When we lose sight of what God desires for us, and for the world through us, it’s because we have looked away (our behaviors will show us that). Something has diverted our attention and become the object of our desire; and we are devoting our time, energy, and gifts to that instead of to God. That thing that has diverted our attention is an idol.
We have many idols – and they can be tricky. We may not recognize that something has become an idol for us until someone else points it out to us, or until we realize things have gotten out of control – out of balance. Addictions to food, substances, or gambling come to mind.
Idols can be our emotions. Rightly sinned against or hurt, we feel that we are right to attend to this anger or pain, above and before all else.
We can also make idols of ideals and apply those ideals to people. The ideal is our own creation and our devotion to that ideal instead of to the person disrupts our relationship with that person. In fact, it makes relationship with that person impossible.
The same can be said of religion. Yes, Virginia, even religion can be an idol. If we create an ideal about God and focus on that, then what we have is a relationship with our ideal, not with God.
In her book Amazing Grace, A Vocabulary of Faith, author and theologian, Kathleen Norris, says: “Idolatry makes love impossible.” (88) That’s because we can’t love an idol – it isn’t real.
We create these ideals, these idols because, as Norris says, it’s “…safer to love an idol rather than a real person [or God] who is capable of surprising you, loving you and demanding love in return…” (89-90)
We can also make an idol of the very gifts God has given us. That’s what the reading from Ecclesiastes illustrates.
The author, who is in search of wisdom, looks at everything done by anyone “under the sun” (that is, on the earth) and finds it all to be nothing but “vanity.” Such pride in our accomplishments is worthless, he says, as worthless and futile as is his own search for wisdom.
Why? Because it leads us to a dead end. We are misled into believing that we deserve the gifts we have. We are misled into believing that we can put our trust in ourselves, our hard work, or our things, rather than in God. And that is just what the rich man in Jesus’ parable has done.
The Parable of the rich man describes a landowner who has many possessions and is being given even more – a windfall crop. In the theology of that time, such a gift would be seen as a coming from God, a blessing for the man’s righteousness. But Jesus shows the fallacy of that idea revealing it to be nothing more than vanity.
In the parable, Jesus shows that the rich man first sinned when he asked himself, ‘What should I do?’ You’ll notice that the first part of the parable is a soliloquy, not a conversation. The man wasn’t asking God, “What should I do?” he was asking himself. In fact, the number of times the rich man considers anyone besides himself in this parable is: none, naught, nada.
Jesus started the parable with a warning that reflected what the author of Ecclesiates was saying: “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”
The end of the parable illustrates the vanity: “But God said to him, ‘You fool!’” After all the time and work you devoted to securing your future (and only your future), you have none, for tonight you die.
The rich man had devoted his time, energy, and attention to himself and he never fulfilled his purpose. His riches were nothing more than vanity. He was truly poor in the only thing worth having – a relationship with God.
In his book, God Hunger, John Kirvan reminds us that being made in the image of God means that it isn’t just God who is mystery. Kirvan says, “We, too, have at the heart of our beings a core of reality that will forever escape definition or confinement… Our spiritual quest is an exploration of our likeness to God – a case of mystery courting mystery. We are in search of the only reality worthy of our efforts, the only truth large enough to satisfy our deepest needs.” (129)
Let us pray.
“It is because
you have made me, Lord,
in your image and likeness
that my soul seeks you
and will not rest until it rests in you.
Even as you are not
the sum of your words and images
neither am I.
Help me, Lord, not to settle
for anything less
than the divine mystery
you have made of me. (Kirvan, 129)
Amen.
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