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Sermon - October 18th, 2009
Are You Able?
Rev. Gwen Drake
Scripture: Mark 10:35-46
Prayer of Preparation: We give thanks, O God of sacred stories, for the witness of your word today. Through Scripture you challenge our assumptions, increase our awareness, nurture our imaginations, and touch our feelings. Bless the hearing of the word today. Speak to us and grant that by the power of your Spirit we may be hearers and doers of your word. Amen.
When I was a kid growing up I never dreamed or came close to imagining I would be standing in front of people talking, let alone preaching with people actually listening to me. That kind of dream, I would have thought was a nightmare. I was an invisible child. When I was teased or noticed, my face would go beet red in embarrassment and I hated that. I was extremely shy. I was careful not to get noticed, not to get in trouble, not to get singled out in class. However, growing up in a small town and being part of a small church, I discovered that there was no way I could be invisible—I was needed. I had to participate in the annual piano recital and the annual Christmas pageant.
I had a dream. My dream was to own my own horse ranch. It was an elaborate dream of barns and fences and pure bred quarter horses, somewhere in Colorado because I fell in love with Colorado one summer when we drove there to visit relatives. I held on to that dream for a long time. Even into college…a part of me longed to find a rich cowboy to marry so all my dreams could come true. It was my American Dream. It was what I thought would bring me true happiness. Being shy, I kept my dreams to myself, so slowly, I let the doors close. I wondered what would really bring me the happiness like the happiness I felt as a child when I imagined and dreamed of owning a horse ranch. It wasn’t until I was 30 years old when I realized and accepted that God had other plans for my life.
I have also realized that my measurement of success in my life is still related to that dream—the dream of owning land and property and a barn and a horse. I’ll get this faraway look in my eyes and long to be able to look out the window and see my horse grazing in a pasture that is mine. That’s my American dream--to acquire property, so that I can have what my heart desires. It’s a compelling dream. However, it doesn’t seem to be God’s dream for me.
I also grew up in a family and a time when we paid for everything with a check or cash. I don’t remember my parents ever pulling a credit card out to pay for something. It was a different time. I remember one year when my Dad told us that the wheat crop was so bad, he didn’t know if we would be able to afford new school shoes. That got my attention. We did manage to get new shoes but I never forgot the feeling of insecurity, the possibility of not having enough money to get what we needed. To this day, my least favorite thing to shop for is new shoes. I usually wear my shoes into the ground, before I get new ones—except for running shoes, because I know that running my running shoes into the ground will end my running days fast. In my family of origin, I learned to live without everything I wanted because we weren’t one of those rich wheat farming families.
I raised my family differently. We bought everything on credit. We lived beyond our means. I hardly ever said “no” to acquiring more stuff. And pursuing the American Dream in my marriage became a nightmare of consuming, acquiring, and buying our way to happiness. It didn’t work. The more unhappy we were, the more we shopped. We had so much stuff that we had to rent a storage unit, until we bought our own house and built a three car, two-story garage. We were looking for happiness in the wrong place, in the wrong way.
In our country, pursuing the American dream has become an economic nightmare this last year. We bought into the belief that we needed more, bigger, and better stuff to be happy. Tony Campola calls this need, a sickness called “affluenza.” It is the desire to acquire, and most of us have caught it to some degree. We also have an illness that Adam Hamilton calls “credit-itis.” It wasn’t until after my divorce that I have realized how afflicted I was with both affluenza and credit-itis. It was a constant stress and a spiritual dilemma. It was also in conflict with my core values. All in pursuit of the American Dream of a happy home, I thought.
Easy credit, living beyond our means, acquiring more is not what makes a happy home or a happy marriage. Wanting more is never satisfying. Wanting more is an addiction. Wanting more is an obsession. Wanting more means there is never enough. The American Dream of pursuing more has become a nightmare and a spiritual issue. Even the economists have said we have lost faith in our economy, in our government, in the almighty dollar.
Now, I am not an economist, but I do know something about the spiritual part of this crisis. I can point to the Bible because most of the Bible was written out of some kind of crisis. In the beginning, we were created in the image of God, created to desire harmony and union with God. We turned that desire toward possessions. We were created to love one another. Instead we compete with one another. We were created to enjoy the simple beauty of the earth. We have busied ourselves with the pursuit of money and things. We were created to be generous and to share with one another. We have built larger and larger houses, many storage units, bigger garages, and big barns to keep all our stuff.
It was the third time Jesus had told the disciples he was going to suffer and die. The first time, Peter rebuked him. Jesus then rebuked Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!” The second time, they started fighting about who was the greatest among them. Jesus sat a helpless and dependent child among them and said, “Whoever welcomes this child, welcomes God.” And they all knew God was great! The third time, James and John had come to Jesus with desire. “We want you to give us what we want,” they said. “What is that?” Jesus asked “We want the best seats in the house of glory.” They said. “Are you able?” Jesus asked. “We are able.” they said.
The other ten became angry with James and John. Then Jesus said, “You are acting like little lords and tyrants, just like some Gentiles you know. If you want to be great and first, if that is your desire and your dream, you must be last, you must be a servant. I didn’t come to be served, I came to serve. You must be willing to give your life.” It was a hard concept for them because what Jesus was telling them was upside-down, counter-cultural, against the status quo. It was not what they had dreamed or imagined.
God’s dream for us is far from the American dream we have bought into. God’s dream for us is not that we indulge ourselves in more stuff or keep up with the latest and greatest or to buy more than we can afford. God’s dream for us is to enjoy the simple pleasures of life—like a child does. I still remember the day that my first born saw a bird for the first time. It was like I saw a bird again for the first time. Her whole being was excited and amazed. God created us to be excited and amazed and generous and to share with those in need and to serve one another, not to hoard our resources for ourselves. And there is a lot out there in the world that tempts us away from God’s dream for us, that tempts us into believing that if we just had more, then we will be happy.
We believe that the pursuit of happiness is one of our God-given inalienable rights—it is part of the Declaration of Independence. God yearns for us to be happy, not happy-go-lucky or not living in denial. God calls us to rejoice always, as the Apostle Paul said in his letter to the Thessalonians. It is not easy to rejoice always in today’s world. We live in the midst of bad news, personal difficulties and disappointment. Edward Hays, in his book titled, Chasing Joy wrote: “To live a joyful life is not a merely human achievement, and it is not a superhuman one either. Rather, it requires being divinely human—being faithful to your birthing blueprint in which you were designed to be God-like.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, “Earth is crammed with heaven, and every common bush alive with God.” God’s presence confronts us everywhere in life. Perception is everything. It is a matter of how we see things. And we are called to see our lives and our world with a changed heart, a heart that needs adjustment everyday.
Each morning when we wake up, we can ask God to help us to be the person that God wants us to be. Each day, we can ask God to work in us, to give us a content and joy-filled heart. God will answer that prayer. God will work in us and through us. God will help us see a world crammed with heaven rather than hell, God will give us a servant’s heart. And as Edward Hays says, we will be challenged to embrace the reality that everything, everything is saturated with the Divine.
You see, God gives us a higher calling from wherever we are. I know that there are people here who are struggling with these issues more than others. Some of you have your finances in order; some of you don’t. All of us can do better. None of us are perfect. We all can seek the life God yearns for us—a life of simplicity and faithfulness and generosity.
When we feel that higher calling, we will start looking for ways that we can make a difference with our time and talents and resources. For those of you who need to pursue good financial practices and free ourselves from debt, you will find by doing that you will be free to be in mission in the community and world.
The key part of finding financial and spiritual freedom is in simplicity and in exercising restraint. With the help of God, we are able! With the help of God, we can simplify our lives and silence the voices that tell us we need more. With the help of God, we can live counter-culturally by living below, not above, our means. With the help of God, we can build into our budgets the money to buy with cash instead of credit. With the help of God, we can build into our budgets what we need to be able to live generously and faithfully.
Amen.
Pastoral Prayer:
Gracious and Holy God, we know you are generous and call us to live a generous life. We know that you have blessed us. We know we have a lot to learn about life and what we can give in response to our blessings. We are humbled by the task before us, to live simply and with integrity. We often find ourselves fearful and anxious. Help us to live with a changed heart. Clean us out inside. Make us new. Heal our desires. Help us to hold our possessions lightly. Help us to love you. Teach us simplicity. Teach us generosity. Help us have joy. We offer our lives to you.
We pray for those who are outside our walls—those we know and those we don’t know. We pray for those whose needs are as basic as food and shelter. May we find a way to help not only with what people need, let us find a way to change the causes of hunger and homelessness. We pray constantly for peace in the world. We pray for justice. We pray for the elimination of diseases that we have the means to control, but often lack the will. We pray for the elimination of prejudice and racism. Help us to know that we all breathe the same air in the same way. We are all your children. We also pray for the earth, our home. Remind us to care for it tenderly. All of creation is connected, and when one part rejoices, we all rejoice; when one part suffers, we all suffer. In the name of the one who suffered for us all, to show us a better way, we pray…Our Father….