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My heart beats for love. I want to be different. I want to be who I am called to be. WORTHY and LOVED!

Sunday, February 7, 2016

“Enough: Cultivating Contentment” Luke 12:15, Ecc 2:10-11

We are now in our third and final week of our sermon series on finances, specifically when to recognize that we have enough. 
We live in this tricky relationship with material things - we know that we need things like food, water, and shelter to live. And we are blessed to have resources to purchase other things that we enjoy. But we need to be ever mindful of the thin line that we could possibly cross that where we go from enjoying things to being held captive by them. The thin line between owning something and letting it own us. Before you think I am speaking a bit too harshly about things owning us, pause and think back over some of the thoughts you have had over the last few days. Were there any about how you needed a new thing? Or you wish you had something that someone else owned? Or how you couldn’t possibly give money away because you don’t have enough?
We need to pause and examine our relationship to material things, truly examine it. Do we have more than we need? What do we do with what we have? Americans are generally very poor at recognizing what we consume, and that includes Christians. While Americans only represent 5 percent of the world’s population, we produce 40 percent of its garbage. We mis-use the resources God has called us to be stewards of. We throw things away that someone else could use. We think it is our right to make money to buy and waste things. We don't recognize the wisdom of Solomon, who notes that whoever his eye desires he did not keep from. We see things we want and we feel that we have to have them. We have a damaged relationship with material things, where they control our hearts.
Solomon goes on to state that he considered all that his hand has done, all that he had toiled for in order to have the things that he now has, and realizes that it is all vanity and chasing after the wind. The truth is, all too often we look to things to make us happy, when at the end of the day everything is temporary. There is an old saying that you can’t take things with you, but we don’t live our lives like that. One of two things happen. The first is what I see the most often as a pastor. You spend your entire life accumulating things that you think that your family will want when you pass away. And then either the family fights over those things, either as an act of grief or greed, or more often then not, those things end up getting thrown away. Dumpster bins full of material things that were once important to us, but don’t hold the same value to our family and friends, most of whom have their own material items.
The second situation is a bit more rare but was portrayed in an episode of The Gilmore Girls on TV. One of the main character’s uncles died. When he went to purchase the casket to bury him in however, the lid could not close, because the uncle had such a long list of his material possessions that he wanted to be buried with. He was going to take everything with him in the grave so that no one else could take them.
We spend most of our lives accumulating things, perhaps giving away a bag to charity here and there, instead of examining the very heart of the matter around material things, asking ourselves why we really want something. When we pause and answer that deeper question, we find that we want things because we have the false belief that that the thing itself will make us happy, instead of seeking to be content with what we have - which is exactly what Jesus warns against in today’s Gospel passage.
We also have a damaged relationship with the concept of contentment. We all too often can find ourselves being content, or satisfied with our relationships, how much we love others and love God, and satisfied with our faith journey, how much time we put into serving God and other’s or praying or reading the scripture, but not content with the material things we have. It’s like we get it backwards, being content with the areas of our life we should be seeking to grow in while striving to accumulate more things than we could ever use.
At my first church there was a lovely family that did something I had never heard of for Christmas. Their celebration lasted for days. Each of the four children were only allowed to open one gift at a time and then they took the toy or gift out of the box, played with it for a period of time, before they opened the next gift - hence the longer celebration. When I asked the mother about it, she said they adopted this way of celebrating Christmas so that the kids learned to be content with what they have. To fully appreciate each gift for what it is worth, instead of simply moving from one box to the next, resulting in a feeling of discontentment. 
That mother was teaching her children not only about contentment about how to have a grateful heart.  Jesus is today’s gospel lesson proclaims that one’s life does not consist in an abundance of possessions. I would further add that one’s life does not necessarily consist of possessions at all. Yes, we need certain things to live, but our life - that’s another story. Our life for all that it’s worth is full when it contains not material possessions, but those attributes that you cannot place a price tag on, love, gratitude, joy, peace, wisdom, honor, and mercy. The list that cannot be bought. These things can only come from cultivating time where your heart and soul are truly filled - relationships with others and with God. 
At the end of the day things are mostly just things. We find that every day when we hear of natural disasters, when people have to leave behind almost everything to seek safety. The question that is often asked is “what would you take with you if you were facing a fire?” but you could say flood, tornado, hurricane. What would you take with you? Most people don’t answer with the newest things they just acquired, but instead with treasured memories - photo albums, letters, things with deep meaning. Folks, most of the things we acquire each day don't have deep meaning. They can’t make us happy. So lets stop looking for freedom and contentmenr in material things, and instead look towards what matters most - deep relationships with others and with God. 

Brothers and sisters, it is time to embrace the counter-cultural stance of contentment, not to be different, but in order to free ourselves for God’s purposes. What a better time to do this then the season of Lent which stats this week. Its time to be freed to be generous. To be freed to de-accumulate. Freed to reject that which breeds the oppression of others. Freed to shun that which distracts from seeking after the Kingdom of God first and foremost. Amen. 

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