Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

The Rev. Rob Fisher

St. Dunstan’s, Carmel Valley

 

Readings: Hosea 11:1-11; Psalm 107:1-9, 43; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

The Dalai Lama wrote a book some years ago that got a lot of attention.  The book was titled: The Art of Happiness”.

After the book came out, a reporter who apparently had not read the book came up to him and said:

“Tell me, what was the happiest moment of your life?”

The Dalai Lama paused, smiled at the man, and answered:

“Right now.”

***

Sometimes we get the values of Christianity confused with the values of those who have embraced it.  The Puritans, for instance, embraced Christianity with a strangle hold.  They infused their approach to the faith with prudence, caution, and austerity.  Any sense of joy was banished.

For many others the Catholic Church is the face of Christianity, and it is a face that many claim to be dominated by feelings of guilt.  (And there is the joke that we Episcopalians are “Catholic Lite” because we have all of the ritual but less of the guilt.)

Joyless and guilt-ridden seem to be traits that people think of when they think of Christians, but one of the most important teachings of Jesus and Paul has been left aside, and it happens to be one thing we share with Buddhists like the Dalai Lama.

It is the art of being detached.

In the Buddhist sense, our attachment to this world, which is fleeting, leads only to suffering.

Likewise, in Jesus’ teaching, our attachment to things, and the need for more things, put our hearts into the wrong place.  When we love the things of this world, it is hard to love God.

Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The Christian writer Henri Nouwen speaks of the importance of open hands.  If we hold onto everything with clenched fists, we will have no openness with which to receive God.

***

The Gospel passage today finds Jesus being asked to settle a dispute between a man and his brother.  The man tells Jesus that his brother will not divide the family inheritance, and that it is unfair.

Jesus rejects this request, saying instead.

“Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

He goes on to give a parable about a man who worked the land and grew very wealthy.  But this man hoarded his possessions, and built greater storehouses for containing his great wealth only to find that without warning his life was going to end before he could do anything with all his wealth.

Unlike the Dalai Lama, he was busy saving for the future and he missed his chance to be present to his own life.

The man was so attached to his pursuit for more wealth—for more success in life—that he forgot to live while he had the chance.

He was rich toward himself, but he failed to be rich toward God.

The urge to store up comes out of fear.

But generosity comes out of love.

***

As always, Jesus comes to us from a perspective that the world does not share.  Jesus is filled with the awareness of God’s realm, the realm that goes beyond our limited sight.

I think about the image of life in a tidepool.

Tidepools are formed when the tide recedes, and leaves a pool of water defined by a rim of rocks, which hold in a finite amount of water, nutrients, little fishes, anemones, urchins, sea snails and crabs.

The little pools are quite limited, but they would not exist in the first place if not for the great, boundless ocean that has originally filled them with life, and that will ultimately reclaim them when the tide rises once again.

If we were living in a little tidepool, our line of sight would be very limited.  But what we can see in the tidepool is not all that there is.

There is a great, unfathomable ocean just beyond the edge of the rock that holds us in our little pools of life.

Jesus wants us to be aware that there is an ocean, and that it is both vaster and closer than we can imagine.  And the day when we will rejoin it is coming soon.

***

Paul’s letter to the Colossians has a simple point, which Paul makes emphatically.  His point is that we should turn from things earthly and toward things heavenly.  Toward the things of God.

This is hard for us, though, because we are for the most part earthly creatures ourselves.  We have a touch of the divine, or else we would not be able to apprehend the holy at all, but mostly we are of the earth.

And so we have to transcend ourselves to see the heavenly beyond the earthly, to see the ocean beyond the tidepool.

Clinging to the world does not lead to God, but only to suffering and loss.  Because unlike God, all of these things will fade away.

What Jesus and Paul are teaching here is not so much the denial of material things, but the liberation from needing them.

They are not asking us to be miserable.

They are asking us to be free!

My impression of the Puritans is that they were fairly miserable.

But the disciples who walked in the way of Christ were free.

***

This week I received an email from a parishioner with a prayer attributed to Sir Francis Drake.  Here is how it goes:

Disturb us, Lord,

When
 with the abundance of things we possess

We have lost our thirst
 for the waters of life;

Having fallen in love with life,

We have ceased to dream of eternity

And in our efforts to build a new earth,

We have allowed our vision

Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,

To venture on wilder seas

Where storms will show

Your mastery;

Where losing sight of land,

We shall find the stars.

We ask you to push back

The horizons of our hopes;

And to push back the future

In strength, courage, hope, and love.

—Amen.

***

(final blessing at the end of the service)

Life is short,

and we do not have too much time to gladden the hearts
of those who travel the way with us.

So be swift to love, make haste to be kind.

And may God’s blessing, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,be with you and remain with you always.