Tenth Sunday After Pentecost

August 5, 2007

Jesus told a parable that strikes at the soul of our age. A parable so close to our culture that we cringe just a bit upon hearing it. A man gains so much in the way of material goods that he begins to worry about it. He wonders, "How shall I protect my investments? How can I get a better return on my goods. Where shall I put the abundance and the extra that I have?"

Upon making plans to keep all that he has and store even more, the man in Jesus' story breathes a sigh of relief only to hear a final summons;"This very night your life will be required of you...then whose will all this be?"

"So it is," Jesus says, "With those who store things up for themselves, but are not rich toward God."

You probably recall the old routine from a Jack Benny program (at least some of us will recall this) - where Benny is confronted by a robber who pokes a gun in his ribs and says, "Your money or your life!" Jack Benny does not answer right away and the thief angrily says again, "I said... your money or your life!" There is a longer silence and the thief becomes really angry as he shouts, "Why don't you answer me. I said your money or your life!" Benny finally answers, "I'm thinking, I'm thinking.

Sometimes, we are all a bit like Jack Benny, aren’’t we? We are so hungry, so full of indiscriminate desire. And we are so worried that there will not be enough, so we store our treasures, like the man in Jesus parable.

And sometimes, if you are like me, I get so caught up in worrying about the future, that I forget to really live in this present moment.

As the poet William Wordsworth put it;

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

Is there more to this life than just getting and spending? Do worldly treasures really satisfy our deepest desires?

What do we really want?

Sometimes, it seems as if we know that something is not quite right in our lives; and so we try to fix it; we try to fill that hunger for the illusive “something more.” What often happens is we end up living for some future destination. We are just one more promotion, one more new car, one more dream home, away from nirvana. When some of these dreams become concrete realities, we are surprised to find they don’t satisfy our deep, unnamed longing. Something seems missing, or maybe broken inside, and we just can’t fix it.

In some religions, like Buddhism, the teaching is that the purpose of religion is to get you over your wants, to help you to get rid of your desires, that longing for the elusive something more. Complete detachment is their goal. Open to everything, but attached to nothing.

Christianity is different. We don’t try to quench all desire. Passion is a good thing, if directed properly.

The Confessions of St. Augustine begins with this line: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rest in you.” Augustine did not eliminate his passion. He redirected it. Only God’s love can satisfy us, because it is for that relationship of love we are created. Nothing else can ever satisfy the depth of our longing for God.

The Psalmist, in Psalm 42, expresses our deepest longing this way:

As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
2My soul thirsts for God,
for the living God.

What do we really want? We want to love, and be loved. And we learn what love is through our relationship with God. That relationship is our heart’s desire. All other love flows from it.

May we recognize that the love of the living God is our heart’s desire. And then may we allow the gift of God’s love to flow out from us into the world.