August 9, 1998
Rev. Eugene Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
Acts 16:11-24
The Jesus we meet in the Gospel of Luke is concerned about the poor, is kind to women, champions the oppressed, and is a memorable teacher. The parable of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son are found only in Luke. "Blessed are the poor," he says, "let the children come to me." The compassionate Jesus; the caring Jesus...we find him in Luke. That is, until he starts talking about the wealthy, particularly the wealthy and their possessions. Then his tone changes markedly.
Only in Luke do we have the story of the rich man and Lazarus. Poor, oppressed Lazarus dies and goes to heaven to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man dies and goes...well, let's just say he doesn't go to heaven. He isn't treated by Luke with much sympathy. And, only in Luke, do we have the parable of the rich fool who builds bigger and better barns for all his wealth, only to be told one fateful night, "You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves, but are not rich toward God." Pretty harsh - unrelenting. The Jesus of Luke sees wealth and possessions as significant roadblocks in the path of faith.
I suspect that's something we need to hear. For, although we might not describe ourselves as wealthy, in the eyes of much of the world, we in the United States, and certainly in Sebastopol, California, are wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. Look at all that we have! Could the harsh words of Jesus be directed toward us?
Hold that question for a moment and move from the Gospel of Luke into the book of Acts. In Acts, Luke tells the story of the growth of the early church beyond Jerusalem and Israel into other lands, other cultures. Beverly Gaventa, New Testament scholar at Princeton Theological Seminary, suggests that as Luke tells this story, his view of wealth and possessions seems to change. The sharp edge of Jesus' teaching is modified. As Luke paints his portrait of the emerging church, what moves to center stage is not so much wealth but how that wealth is being used. Wealth can still be a great danger, but it might also present opportunities within the life of faith. Nowhere is that dichotomy, the danger and opportunity of wealth, any better sketched out than in our text today.
Paul and Silas are in Philippi. And their experiences present us with two contrasting uses and views of wealth. We are introduced to Lydia - a worshiper of God and a dealer in purple cloth. First, for a woman to actually be mentioned by name would man that she was important - a person of influence and power. Secondly, as a dealer in purple cloth - a merchant - she was a woman of wealth. That is confirmed in v. 15 when we learn that she is the head of her household - highly unusual at that time and in that culture. Lydia must truly have been an extraordinary woman. She is strong, powerful, wealthy and she is a believer. I think she is treated with great respect and fondness in our text.
By way of contrast, we meet other people of wealth - the owners of the slave girl. They use her for profit, caring nothing about her welfare. In fact, they are outraged when she is healed and can no longer be used to line their pockets with riches. They are so outraged that they have Paul and Silas arrested and beaten. Clearly wealth is all that matters to these guys - issues of justice, fairness, compassion are meaningless if they cut in to profits. (probably would be great successes as CEO's of many multinational corporations today) Lydia is wealthy. The slave owners are wealthy. Yet, our text treats them very differently. Again, wealth is not the issue as much as the use of wealth. The important question is not what wealth has done for them, but what has wealth done to them. The slave owners' love of money not only leads them to use and exploit another human being, but also blinds them to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They don't care about the preaching of Paul and Silas. All they are interested in is the fact that they can no longer make money using the slave girl. Words of Benjamin Franklin come to mind, "Money is a good servant, but a dangerous master." Also, when one considers the terrible treatment of the slave girl, the words of George McCauley, Jesuit priest, strike close to home: "When one person makes a killing, others are usually getting hurt."
Lets go back to Lydia, also very wealthy. But somehow her wealth does not get in the way. She is a righteous believer. She listens to the Word, listens eagerly, makes her decision and is baptized, along with all her household. She then opens her home to Paul and Silas, places her home, and perhaps even a measure of her wealth, at the service of the Gospel. Lydia does not allow her wealth to get between her and God. She is somehow able to "sit loose" in the saddle of her possessions.
I once read the true story of a man who was ordered by the local fire department to clean out his house or else be fined and sent to jail. It seemed that every day this man would go out with a shopping bag and pick up junk out of trashcans. He would bring it home at night, put the bag down, then the next day take a new bag and go out and do the same thing all over again. He had done this for years, so you can imagine what his house looked like - actually kind of like my teenager's room at home!
There was just a narrow corridor snaking through the house and on each side were bags filled with who knows what stacked from floor to ceiling. Finally his minister was able to talk him into allowing volunteers from the church to come and clean out the house. It was not something the man agreed to willingly, but the threats from the police and fire departments did make an impression. So one day, a crew from the church came and hauled three truckloads of junk to the dump.
The next day, the man picked up a bag and started all over again.
Now it is easy to dismiss this story saying the man was sick and needed some professinal intervention. And yet...I wonder...if Luke was to look around America today and take a look at us, would he say - these people are sick and in need of some professional intervention. They have so much stuff, and keep accumulating more stuff. Do they possess it or does it possess them? The rich fool needed bigger barns. I confess that the Nelson family could use bigger closets! I like the words of Martha Sterne, an Episcopalian priest, who holds a mirror up to herself when she says, "In the magazines they have perfect closets. I flip through pages in the closet sections and my heart sings. Ah, to be the queen of closets the size of small countries! To be the mistress of ample storage with order and room for everything, like stuff I need but just not right this minute or maybe not this decade."
We are in a struggle here, maybe a struggle for our very souls. The magazines - each a book in the bible of popular culture - really encourage us to be like the man with his bags. They teach us that the accumulation and protection of wealth is a deadly serious business worth the efforts of a lifetime, as if abundant life is something that can be measured in terms of stuff and stored in a closet. And we are good and willing learners. Do we not tend to measure our security in terms of things? Success by things? Fulfillment of goals by things? "The one who dies with the most toys wins!"
And, I confess that I like my stuff! Lately I have been worshipping at the altar of a new red truck. Betty has noted how I speak of it, not as our truck, but my truck. I always wanted a truck and I'm enjoying it. And occasionally I gently hold a new fly reel given to me by a generous church, almost as if it is a communion chalice. I like my things - and I pay out significant amounts of insurance to keep them safe.
And yet...the Biblical word seems to suggest that there is something more to life - something deeper - than just filling life with things.
Over the last year, the Titanic was in the news. You've probably heard more Titanic stories than you ever wanted to. Well, I'm going to share one more Titanic story, told by the great old preacher, W.E. Sangster. A certain woman had been allotted a precious place in one of the lifeboats. But just as she was about to step in the boat, she asked if she might run back to the ship's library. She was told she had three minutes. She hurried along the corridors, already tilting at dangerous angles. Golden jewelry and costly gems literally littered the floor. They had been spilled as people had hurriedly cleaned out their safes. But the woman paid no heed. When she got to the library, she picked up a copy of the Bible, which she had earlier seen there, then hurried back to the waiting boat.
Now an hour earlier, I'm sure it would have seemed inconceivable to this woman that she would have preferred a copy of the Bible over thousands of dollars of glittering jewels literally there for the taking. Amazing how her vision was clarified, how her values were changed, when she found herself in a life-threatening situation. Said Sangster, "Precious things became worthless: worthless things became precious that night on the Titanic."
No, Luke does not automatically condemn the wealthy. But he does issue a word of caution: do not let the things of the world and your desire to possess them blind you to what really matters. In the words of Toyohiko Kagawa, a modern day saint who gave his life to serving those who dwelled in the slums of Tokyo, "To be alive is to love another person; to be able to give yourself to that person. It is not to gather up the goods of the world, but to gather in her people."
Certainly this last painful week in the life of our community of faith - and in the lives of families in our community - has starkly reminded us of this fact. What value can the stuff with which we fill our lives possibly have in comparison to the value of the precious people with whom we share this all too brief moment of time? Many families, who are by no means poor, continue to report that their worst arguments are about money. What a waste! What a shame. Spending the time we have together fighting over the stuff we don't have or wish we did have.
When you think about it, we and our filled closets are all sailing on the Titanic, and deep down we know how the story always ends. None of our closets can store life; none of them can store love. So the question becomes, how do we want to sail?