Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
August 1, 2004

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

One of my favorite movies is Field of Dreams. I imagine most of you know it. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. Look particularly for the scene in which the character Terence Mann, brilliantly played by the great James Earl Jones, gives eloquent, one-word expression to the frustration that can come from a commitment to nonviolence. It’s one of my favorite scenes from any movie. For those of you who don’t know the movie, it’s about one Ray Kinsella, an Iowa framer and ex-hippie who builds a magical baseball field on part of his corn field in response to a mysterious voice that only he can hear. As a result of the lost corn production, he nearly loses his farm. At the end of the movie the character Terence Mann--James Earl Jones--assures Ray (Kevin Costner) that he and his family will not lose the farm because, as Ray’s precocious daughter Karen has already assured him, people will come from all over to see the magical ball field and the glimpse of heaven it provides. They will come, James Earl Jones says in that incomparable voice of his. They will come, not really knowing why; and they will pay for admission to the field giving no thought to the money, "for it is money they have and peace they lack."

“They” are we. They are all of us Americans who have enough material wealth that our physical needs are met with relative ease. They are all of us Americans whose culture has told us throughout our lives that if we can just earn enough money, drive the right car, wear the right clothes, and look the right way that life will be good. We will be satisfied. We will be happy. We can live in peace.

Well, James Earl Jones’ character Terence Mann knew that all that is a lie. Perhaps many of you know that it is a lie too. I know from personal experience that it is a lie. Most of you know that I used to be a lawyer--well, the truth be known, I still am a lawyer. I used to work for some very large, very powerful, very wealthy law firms. The partners in those firms made tons of money; and the divorce, alcoholism, and burn out rates among them were astronomical. They had money; and although there were exceptions, as a group they did not have peace. Not even close.

I never made as much money as the partners in those firms, but I made a whole lot more than I do now. I had money, but I was so far from having peace that if I hadn’t gotten out of that life, I don’t think I’d be alive today. I had money then, but I am far wealthier today. When Terence Mann said "it is money they have but peace they lack," he was describing me ten years ago, and he gave a succinct analysis of the status of the American soul.

And not just the American soul. The human soul. Two thousand years ago, in a place and a culture very, very different from America today, Jesus said essentially the same thing that the movie Field of Dreams was saying back in the 1980s. The passage we heard this morning from Luke is known as the Parable of the Rich Fool. It begins with an unidentified speaker from those gathered to hear Jesus’ teach asking him to tell the speaker’s brother to "divide the family inheritance" with him. Apparently the speaker’s brother wasn’t following the law laid down in Deuteronomy concerning the division of a deceased father’s estate, and the person speaking wanted Jesus to enforce that law.

Jesus gave the man a two-fold response. First, he declined the request to act as a judge in the man’s case against his brother: "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" Jesus, it seems, saw himself as a teacher not a judge, at least not of earthly matters. However, Jesus was sufficiently concerned about the attitude the man’s request revealed that he thought he needed to say more. Jesus never was one to miss a teachable moment when one presented itself; so he reminded the man of a bit of proverbial truth, the truth we’re talking about here today: "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions."

Then, as he was wont to do, Jesus told a parable to drive the point home. He told the people that little story about the man who was so wealthy, whose land produced so abundantly, that his barns could not hold all his crops. The man decided to build bigger barns, even though he presumably had all the grain and produce he and his family could ever need, and then some. The rich man thought that if he could hold onto all that he had he would have security and peace.

In the story, God calls the man on his pride and pretension, on his misplaced priorities. Jesus’ story has God say to the man: "You fool!" God says, in effect: "What good does all your wealth do you in the face of your own mortality? You can’t take it with you now can you?" Jesus told the man: Don’t store up worldly treasure for yourself, but make yourself "rich toward God."

So, we have to ask: What does that mean? What does it mean to be rich toward God? Well, Jesus here is contrasting true and false wealth. The rich fool was heavily into false wealth. He thought all his possessions would enable his soul to be at peace, that he could then "eat, drink, and be merry." Jesus’ parable tells us that the man was wrong about that. I mean, if God calls you a fool, I suppose you might conclude that somewhere along the way you’ve gotten something pretty important pretty profoundly wrong. The rich fool thought worldly wealth would bring him peace, and God called him on it. That wealth, God says, is false wealth that cannot bring you peace.

OK, so putting your trust in false wealth, seeking peace through material wealth, makes you a fool. It would seem then that putting your trust in true wealth should make you wise, but what is true wealth? Being rich toward God, we’re told; but what is being rich toward God? Well, I think being rich toward God means being rich not in material things but in spiritual things. It means living the life of Spirit, of spirituality, of spiritual wholeness..

Life in the Spirit, or spirituality, sometimes seems to us something we can’t quite comprehend, something esoteric, abstract, difficult to attain, but it really isn’t. Spirituality is really just about relationships. Life in the Spirit, that is, in the words of this morning’s parable being rich toward God, is about cultivating and living in true relationships; and it starts with living in right relationship with God. We do that by tending, paying attention to that relationship, and we can do that in several ways. We do it first of all in regular worship in the community of faith. That, after all, is what our worship each week is really about--paying attention to our relationship with God. We come here to be intentional about being in the presence of God, about cultivating our relationship with God. We can do that alone to some extent too; but the Christian tradition, and the other enduring religious traditions, have long known that communal worship, worship in the company of other believers, is, for most people, the most effective way of tending our relationship with God. Here, among our fellow Christians, our faith is supported, challenged, and strengthened.

We tend our relationship with God in other ways as well, ways we can and should practice on our own or in smaller groups. For Christians, the central spiritual practices outside of communal worship are prayer and Bible study. They connect us with God. They strengthen our relationship with God. They make us rich toward God. In these Christian practices, in which if we will listen more than we talk we can discern God’s calling to each of us, we find true wealth. We find the peace the world and its material wealth cannot give us.

There’s one other way that we can tend our relationship with God. We can commit ourselves and our lives to that to which God is committed. But that of course begs the question: What is God committed to? As Christians, we claim to follow the God of the Bible, of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. Those Scriptures tell us one thing above all else about that God. That God cares about the earth, about earth’s people--all of them--and about the health and wellbeing of all of creation. That God is committed to justice, real substantive justice not just due process, for all of earth’s people. That God is committed to peace and to the nonviolent resolution of disputes. If we truly want our relationship with God to be the way God wants it to be, we will commit our lives to those same dreams.

True wealth, spiritual wealth, consists of our relationship with God, but it consists of other relationships as well. As many of you know, my wife Francie passed away from breast cancer. In fact, she died two years ago yesterday. For her, God was found in, indeed God essentially consisted of, the relationships among people. She believed, and she told me many times, that it was in our relationships, our interactions with friends and loved ones, that Spirit existed. It took me a long time to get that, but I have come to realize that she was on to a profound truth. God is in our relationships. Remember, for example, the Bible passage where Jesus says that wherever two or three of us are gathered in Christ’s name, He is there in the midst of us. Matthew 18:20 Christ is present in our relationships, in our friendships, and in our love for our families. Those are spiritual things. They bring true wealth just as our relationship with God does. Indeed, they are part of our relationship with God, for we find God within them, and within each other. If we tend those relationships well, the Spirit that lives in them will bring us peace.

We all have material needs of course, and there is nothing illegitimate or spiritually harmful in taking care that our genuine material needs and those of our families are met. The rich fool’s problem wasn’t that he cared about material things but that he cared about them too much. He though his abundance of goods, far more than he actually needed, would bring him peace. He was wrong. True wealth, true peace comes not from being rich in things but in being rich in the Spirit, rich in our relationships with God, our friends, our loved ones. That wealth can bring us peace. With that wealth, James Earl Jones’ statement in Field of Dreams that it is peace we lack will no longer be true of us. So let us cultivate that true wisdom. Let us find the peace of Christ that passes all understanding that only true wealth, being rich toward God, can bring. It’s not impossible. It isn’t even all that hard. Just pay attention to your relationships. Worship. Pray. Work for peace and justice. Care for one another. If we will do that, we can be truly wealthy indeed. We can find peace. Amen.