“Do
not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust
consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves
treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do
not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart
will be also. “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is
healthy, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is
unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you
is darkness, how great is the darkness!
This
four-week sermon series is brought to you today by the selfish and perhaps
misguided desire to somehow transplant the summers of my childhood into the
summers of adulthood. In the stories I tell myself as an adult, childhood
summers can be described using two word: Simple. Joy.
When
I was in elementary school, my mother did not work in the summer and so on weekdays
she would pack up a cooler, get out the wagon, and drag, what must have been her
weight in toys, up the long winding road to Greenwood Lake State Park. I swam,
played on the sandy beach, and anxiously awaited the moment my mother would
pull out of her pocket book three quarters and off I would go, sprinting
barefoot up the steaming tar path to the ice cream stand where I could buy one
treat before we headed back down the hill, sticky and sun-baked.
On
weekends my parents would load up the red Bronco and drive us to the Pennsylvania
cottage I was repeatedly told my grandpa had built with his own two hands. This
particular detail around the cottage’s
genesis was not only shared as a source of pride for my father but also functioned
as a useful explanation for why there was not a toilet in the cottage and why I
“really needed to use the outhouse.”
At
the cottage, my cousin and I would wrestle on our swimsuits, pretend to put on
sunscreen, slam the cottage door we had been instructed to close gently, and race
down the hill toward the dock where we would throw ourselves into the cool abyss
of a man-made lake- trusting that whatever was
in the water had already been fed sometime during the night and therefore no
longer held any interest in eating off the toes of little girls such as myself.
In the water, we would lift ourselves up onto the giant black inter-tube grandpa
gave us and rock that tube until one of us was thrown off and then start the
game all over. This game was always quite hilarious to my cousin and myself and
eventually resulted in an episode in which I found myself laughing so hard I
was unable to keep myself afloat and my dad had to jump in and pull me to the
shore. An episode my father would later
describe to my mother as “ridiculous.”
While
drowning due to uncontrollable laughter is most definitely a serious and life
threatening experience that I am sure many a mommy blogger will now be warning
against—do not try this at home—metaphorically, it embodies the outcome of what
I envision being the essence of a simple life. The surrender possible when joy
fills us and we find ourselves swallowed up by the beauty and depth of what
Mary Oliver coined as, our one wild and precious life. To live without reservation
or anxiety or fear. To live as a child before the plague of productivity and
the insecurity of others opinions began to function as our subconscious road map.
Two
weeks ago, I shared in worship that later that day my husband would be
officiating the memorial service for the brother of our good friends. Our friends
who had lost their brother were one of the first couple-friends John and I made
after we were married. For the first five years of our marriage, John and I did
everything with them. We worked together, we had dinner together, we traveled
together. They were at the hospital when our daughter was born and we present
at the birth of their son. We were the pastors at their wedding and they threw
me the party of a lifetime when I graduated seminary.
Two
weeks ago, at the memorial service for their brother, was the first time I had
seen them in five years. There wasn’t a dramatic reason for the distance
between contacts. Life just got busy. Schedules just seemed to conflict. And
one day I found myself sitting on the shore at the Cherry Creek Reservoir,
reflecting on the words of a friend saying his final goodbye to his brother,
watching our children offer silent introductions of little hands building sand towers
and water tunnels, and realized with great sorrow and regret that I had never
meant to get to this place of such distance.
I’m
finding for myself, it isn’t enough to dream of what a life of simplicity would
look like. If I want to experience this new way of being, a way of simple joy,
it requires pulling over to the side of the road and figuring out how the heck
I ever got to where I am.
My
hope is that today’s message will offer the opportunity to question that which
dictates the stops, speed limits, and the U-turns we make in our lives. To open
our eyes and realize where we are and to examine just how it was that we got
there.
Stay
just where you are. This is the advice we give to young children who we fear
will get lost in the shopping mall. Stay where you. We will come find you.
This
morning we begin the first week of four where we embark on the journey toward a
life of simplicity by trusting our own advice. Stay where you are. We might be
lost. But do not panic. Before we even realized we were lost, in Christ, we
have already been found.
So,
how the heck did we get here? Cluttered homes, competing to-do lists, 24/7
alarms reminding us to do that, go there, and answer now. In the context of
this morning’s scripture passage, choosing between wealth and God isn’t a
metaphor of where we are traveling
to but a critique of how we travel.
In
a 21st century translation, the Gospel writers are reminding us that
we cannot use two GPS Apps at the same time! You can use Google Maps or you can
use random the tool your iPhone comes with but they won’t both work at the same
time. AND even if they did, because I will not put anything past Apple, you
would still have to choose which one you were going to listen too because we
all know they would have different opinions on how to get to the exact same
place. Nothing is simple.
Yet,
I imagine most of us would like to travel to similar places, metaphorically
speaking. Places where we are loved and feel connected. Places with space to
create something that will live beyond our lives. Places that provide the
assurance that if we were lost, someone would search for us until we were
found.
“No one can serve two masters; for a
slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and
despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
I
believe I would enjoy being wealthy. I’m not sure at what point I would define
myself as being wealthy but I’d be open to finding out if a local case study
ever needs volunteers. Of course, wealth isn’t defined only in terms of money
but it seems the most concrete example for the world in which we live. And, like
my daughter’s taste in food and the weather in our lovely state of Colorado,
the net worth one must reach to qualify as wealthy seems to change a lot.
I
found it entertaining that, according
to a 2017 survey by Charles Schwab, which surveyed Americans aged 21 to 75, wealth
was commonly defined by participants as (quote) “simply having a lot of money.”
(unquote) I found it enlightening that
almost half of the persons surveyed also said that being wealthy was about
enjoying life’s experiences and being able to afford what you want.
Wealth:
The preferred GPS for getting you to the place in which you are able to enjoy
life’s experiences. Interested in travelling to the town of “happy family
memory?” Take a right turn at Beach Vacation Circle. Planning a stay at “future
lifelong security?” Prepare to make a left-hand turn at Investment Avenue.
Caution this destination may be closed before arrival.
Wealth.
The GPS that is set to repeat, “You have arrived at your destination” as you
circle the block surrounding what is obviously an abandoned parking lot.
In
his book, Freedom of Simplicity: Finding Harmony in a Complex World,
Richard Foster writes, “Jesus Christ and all the writers of the New Testament
call us to break free of mammon lust and live in joyous trust...They point us
toward a way of living in which
everything we have we receive as a gift, and everything we have is cared for by
God, and everything we have is available to others when it is right and good.
This reality frames the heart of Christian simplicity. It is the means of
liberation and power to do what is right and to overcome the forces of fear.”
A
way of living. A way of living in which we choose to take our directions from
wealth or from God; from the voice of fear or the promise of freedom.
Whatever
the survey says, Scripture reminds us that wealth is much more than “a lot of
money.” The power of wealth is not in what it is but in what it does; in what
it tells us about who we are. Wealth is a ruthless dictator, a clever shape
shifter, a powerful story teller, an experienced scam artist. Wealth takes the
gift Christ has freely given and puts it up for sale offering high interest
payment plans. Wealth searches out the small child in the shopping mall, eyes
filled with tears, straining to see above the towering bodies bumping around,
and whispers into their ear… “no one is coming to find you,” and one day we
realize we have been running from our lives for so long we have no recollection
of how we arrived to the place we now stand.
I
would love to live without fear. And wealth makes an excellent sales pitch. The
wealth marketing team creates fears and sells solutions in neatly packaged products
that have more side effects than an AstraZeneca commercial. If after using
Wealth you feel a sense of paranoia to keep what is yours, a relentless urge to
consume more products, and a sudden realization that you are not and will never
be enough without Wealth…. well, the product line is working just fine.
I
want to believe so much that there is a product I could buy that would ensure that
I never lose someone I love, that I never feel the sting of rejection, that I never
surrender to the weight of heavy eyelids and the evaporation of the world’s
noise as my life slowly fades. This is my shopping mall. This is what I run
from. I would buy a bike, learn to skateboard, crawl on my hands and knees to
find the door to escape these fears. And I want
to believe if I moved fast enough I could outsmart the rumor that I will be
lost in this space forever. That I am unworthy of being found... and most days
I convince myself I can outrun the walls closing in around me. That I can find
what I need all on my own. I’ll think I’ve been found in the face cream with
collagen, the purchase of the five hundredth Lego set for our daughter, the consideration
of spending money we really don’t have for a family trip I could easily convince
myself we really do need….to be happy, to feel whole, to be remembered.
And
I’ll remember that one day when the loss of one life offered me back my own. The
day I woke up on the reservoir shore to find that moths and rust had eroded my
priorities and thieves broke in and stole my time. And I will take a deep breath, and close my
eyes, and shut out the world and remind myself that everywhere I want wealth to
take me, Jesus has already delivered to my door.
It
takes so much courage to stay where you are. To trust that someone will show up
to find you.
I
was terrified of showing up to the memorial service that day at the reservoir.
I told my clergy friend I wasn’t sure they would want to see me. That I had let
so much time pass and so much distance form that maybe I wasn’t welcome. Maybe
I wasn’t wanted.
It
took so much trust and humility, so much courage, just to show up.
I
had just arrived and was standing under the park pavilion making small talk and
trying to make my presence discrete when from behind me I felt two arms wrap
around me and a man lifting me off the ground, holding me tight, shouting in my
ear, “I’m so glad you are here.” I didn’t even know I was drowning until the
moment those words pulled me to the shore.
If
we want a life of simplicity, maybe we need to stop running away from our fears,
and trust that whatever we have done, wherever we have gone, whatever we have
become… “we are worthy of being found.”
I
am so glad you are here.
