Good Matters

Text: Luke 12:13-21
Other texts: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-23

On the one hand: what is this guy’s problem? He has so much stuff that his barn is bursting. His garage is full of junk, power tools, and yard furniture. His house is full of art, books, and electronic gear. His barn is full of food from years of fortunate harvests. Rather than sending some to Goodwill, or putting it out on the street like good Cambridge people would do, or selling it on Craigslist or posting it on Freecycle, or sending it to the Food Bank, he thinks he’ll tear down his barn and build a bigger one. That way he can keep all that is his, safe and ready.

On the other hand: what is the problem with this guy? It is prudent to save for the future. It is always good to have a nest egg, something to fall back on. In the Bible, Joseph saved the Egyptians from starvation by storing excess grain, just as the man is doing, for years. You can’t depend on Social Security. Save what you make and put it into a retirement account. Don’t be a burden to your children.

There is no question that there is a problem here. There is no question that the man is supposed to be an example of something bad and wrong-headed. Even to Lutherans, who value planning and prudence, who are save-for-a-rainy day kind of people, the man seems a glutton and cold-hearted. Jesus uses him as an example of greediness, not thriftiness. Is it just a question of balance? If he had been a little more generous, would it have been okay? If seemed less gleeful, more humble, more thankful, would it have been okay? Is there no room, as someone asked, in God’s economy for building bigger barns? Or are these even the right questions to ask of this passage?

The narrator in the first reading from Ecclesiastes and the man with barns have some things in common. For one thing, they spend a lot of time talking to themselves. And for another, as a consequence, they spend a lot of time thinking about themselves.

And what they are thinking about and talking about is this: how should a person live in the face of certain death? How should a person live knowing that we are mortal and that our years are numbered (we just do not know what the number is)?

For the Teacher (the narrator) in Ecclesiastes, the answer is: why bother? Nothing we do lives beyond us, so in the end our work is trivial and meaningless. “It is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with,” he says. It is a lot of chasing the wind. And whatever you gather, it is not yours to keep; it goes to fools and villains to squander or ruin. Or even to wise persons, who might still do the same. Or to anyone, who will enjoy the fruits that you so labored for. For the Teacher, mortality invalidates the days of our lives.

For the rich man with barns, the answer is: why not? The hour of our death is in the unknown future. We will not live forever, but we might live a long time more. We must be cautious that we will have enough to last. Though mortal, what matters is the life we are now living and that we are able to live it well.

Eat, drink, and be merry, says the rich man with barns. Celebrate life while you have it. But the Teacher says: you quoted that verse from Isaiah wrongly. It goes: eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. All we do is in vain.

We do not live forever. In almost every scheme of things, by almost every measure, our time is short. In the two millennia between us and Jesus, there have been about 100 generations. In that time, cities and nations and peoples have risen and fallen. All of human history spans an amount of time equal to 100th of 1 percent of the age of the dinosaurs. The universe is vast and old. In its lifetime planets, suns, and galaxies have come and gone. We are not much more than nothing at all.

And yet our actions matter. We are not alone. We are entwined with others in a way that Luke could never have guessed possible. Not only do we share language, culture, dreams with other people; not only do we share creaturely behaviors and desires and stories with other people; we share parts.We are beginning to realize that we are made up just as much—if not more—of other organisms, bacteria and virus, as we are of human cells. Our DNA contains pieces of ancient viruses. Our lives are part of the lives of the history, present, and future of this world.

On the larger scale of spirit and thought, what we do makes a difference. When Jesus tells the story of the man with barns, his audience knows that the man’s riches come at the expense of others who are poorer than he is. Our modern notion that a rising sea raises all boats—that wealth is elastic and indefinitely expandable—would have been thought ludicrous in the time of Jesus. Wealth was fixed and limited. Among the followers of Jesus, being rich was a form—even if culturally okay—being rich was a form of stealing.

The man with barns and the Teacher and we all share a vain myth. The myth is that our good legacy lives on and benefits the world and that our bad legacy dies with us, without fault to the world. The Teacher whines that the good he does is enjoyed by others. But he does not mourn—or even acknowledge—the evil he might do and the effects it might have after him. And the man with barns has not a clue.

For whatever reason—the economic doldrums, environmental disasters, the creation of nuclear waste that lasts longer than history, rafts of trash in the oceans, the destruction of species—whatever, we have begun to wonder about what we are leaving to our children. Not the riches of the Teacher and the man with barns, but with the stuff we have denied. Is progress real? We are suddenly not so sure. And if it is, can we control and sustain it? For the first time in a long time in this country, people say their children will have a harder time of it than they have had.

There is a symbiosis in Christianity—some call it a tension—between the individual and the community. For some, the point of Christianity is personal piety. A relationship one on one with God. For others, the point is sanctification, living a holy life. And for still others, the point is to guide the community of the world into being more like the kingdom of God. Thus we have monasteries and missions and churches and soup kitchens. Thus: spirit, joy, reverence, and service—the motto of this congregation. Christians have always known that reverence leads to service. And the other way around, too. Individual lives of faith are nurtured in and nurture the community of humans.

Christians are not like the Teacher or the man with barns. We do not embrace any kind of notion that we are alone in the world. Or that we can act as if we were, leaving it to some other persons or some other force, some invisible hand, to correct imbalances or inequities. Or to some future technologies to make up for our dispassion.

We as Christians do not embrace any kind of notion that what we do does not matter. It is true that we are all saints and sinners both. And it is true that we depend on the grace of God to smooth the rough edges of our sins. But these two theological foundations of our faith do not let us off the hook. We cannot say that God will fix things all up, so why should we. Nor can we say that God knows all things, so what difference does it make.

We follow Jesus, who spent a lot of time telling people how to live. Telling us how to be good. It matters that we be good.