Material Values
The group of celebrities lived in the jungle for 16 days, surviving on very little food, doing horrible tasks and so on. Anyone who watched can’t have failed to notice how difficult many of the people found living in such difficult conditions – their complaints often bordered on the spoilt child mentality.
The sad thing is that I don’t think I would have found it any easier. Today we live in a very materialistic society, expecting reasonable food and living conditions, and I think this comfort has become very important to us. But in tonight’s reading from the gospel of Luke (12:13-34) Jesus brings us down to earth a little bit – he tells of a man who produced a rich crop and then built somewhere to store it – his plan was to take life easy; eat, drink and be merry. But God said to him, ‘You fool ! this night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself ?’
Jesus is highlighting the stupidity of relying on material things for happiness, and more than that he is calling on people to rely on him and him alone for real peace and comfort – and not to be worried about lack of time to do things – about money, about health, about a job and so on. He says, ‘do not worry about what you will eat or drink. For the pagan world runs after such things…’
And there we run into conflict with so much in the world today, and even in the Church. Tony Campolo tells of a Halloween night when he was young – it was also known as mischief night and one year he and a friend broke into a small shop – they didn’t steal anything, but instead changed all the prices around on things, so that the really cheap things had expensive price tags and all the expensive items were cheaply priced – and that may well be what we see happening in society today.
We have gone after the expensive things, the material things, but forgotten the most important things are really those which cost nothing – a relationship with God, friendship, love, helping people (even at a great cost to ourselves)… We have forgotten that actually a person is much more likely to be remembered for being good and kind rather than simply for being rich…
And that is the life that Jesus led – living sacrificially for others and trying to offer a better world for everyone. That is the life that his early followers adopted as they gave up money, their homes, security and often their lives to tell people that there was something and someone more to life.
Jesus and his followers offered an example not of a community breaking away from society and from people, but living right in the middle of where people were, trying to be involved in all aspects of society, with different people and different groups – he showed compassion without boundaries.
And today as his body, that is what he is calling us to do as well. Sadly the church is seen by many people as a closed society, irrelevant and out of touch with the real world. Mahatma Gandhi was influenced hugely in his life by the teaching and example of Jesus, but he refused to embrace Christianity because he didn’t believe he could see any real Christians… his life was clouded by mistreatment of himself and others because of their colour or their background – often the worst treatment came from people calling themselves Christians.
Our example is essential to the growth of the Christian Church today – there’s another story about Gandhi who was asked by a lady to come and speak to her son to tell him to stop eating sugar because it was bad for him. She had tried many times but she thought the boy would listen to Gandhi. He however told her to go away and come back in a week. When she came back with her son Gandhi told the boy to stop eating sugar, and the boy listened.
As they began to leave the mother stopped and asked Gandhi why he had waited a week before telling the boy, and he replied, ‘I had to, because a week ago, I was still eating sugar.’
If we are to be taken seriously in the world today, the Church and we who make up the Church must be an example, and like the example of Jesus, that example must be radical. As a Church we must consider what is really important, is it having money in the bank for a rainy day, is it supporting other Churches who have less than us, is it giving to charity, is it about mission in our community, speaking up for the needs of the poor in the world, fighting for those facing injustice, is it about prayer for those in need in our Parish, in our country, in our world, is it about study of the scriptures, is it about welcoming new people into our Churches and making them feel at home straight away, comfortable in the worship and sure of their place within this community of God’s people – the answer is that it is probably about all of these things.
We must seek God’s guidance, and be prepared to follow that guidance – looking always at the example of Jesus, and if we do that we will be a Church not concerned primarily about buildings, budgets and bureaucracy, but rather we will be a Church that casts aside material wealth and short term popularity, and offers hope and new life as a Church of mission, involved in society, offering real practical help to people and revealing a God who is very relevant to everyone.
It won’t always be an easy task – the life of Jesus wasn’t easy, but that is the life we have chosen to follow – it was one of self sacrifice, taking only what he needed, and offering himself completely. That is the model that the Church has so often failed to follow throughout it’s history, being more concerned with wealth and political power, offering benefits for those can best afford the benefits. It has often failed to accept the suffering upon which it was founded – suffering for right over wrong, for light over darkness, for good over evil…
Corrie Ten Boom wrote sometime after leaving the concentration camp in which her sister had died during the second world war, ‘When the train goes through a tunnel and the tunnel gets dark, do you jump out ? Of course not, you trust the engineer to get you through.’
Jesus said, ‘Be rich, don’t just store up things here….’ He spoke of a better world to come in eternity, but he didn’t ignore the here and now – that was equally important to him, and so may we seek from God the wisdom to know the things we should be doing, and the strength to do them…. AMEN
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