(Preached on Sunday, August 1, 2010)
“…Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot. … That’s what happens when you fill your barn with Self and not with God.”
-Luke 12:15b, 21
Once upon a time, there was a certain rich nation. The ground of this nation produced a good crop and was very rich in natural resources. The land was covered with timber, and under the land were vast deposits of coal, shale oil, copper and silver, asbestos, lead, beryllium, molybdenum, phosphate and potash. And the nation thought to itself, “What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops and all the riches of my land? I have enough coal mined to last 20 years, enough oil drilled to last for 5 years, and enough timber cut to last 3 years.” Then the nation said, “This is what I’ll do. To help the sagging economy and to keep production going, I will tear down my storehouses and build bigger ones. There I will store all of my timber and coal and oil and the other resources. And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Let OPEC have their oil boycotts and try to control the price and flow of oil. Let the rest of the world play their silly politics. Take life easy; Eat, drink and be merry.’”
Now I realize that I have just allegorized the parable from our scripture lesson. And allegories are always dangerous. I don’t intend to build my entire sermon off of an allegory. Even so, this allegory seems a good place to begin. The story Jesus told, read this way, describes much of the attitude of our nation toward our natural resources and wilderness. For far too long we have viewed this land as a vast storehouse of wealth waiting for us to pull out of it what we need and desire to enhance and enrich our lives. But in the process of obsessing over the material riches of this land we have lost touch with another form of wealth which it holds. That wealth is the spiritual values stored in the wilderness, the original heart of God’s good creation. We are experiencing more and more frequently and clearly the result of this disconnect from those spiritual values. The crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, the rupture of the oil pipeline in the river in Michigan, threatening Lake Michigan with the same pollution the Gulf has experienced, these are just tips of the iceberg. More oil spills into the Niger delta of the coast of Nigeria, Africa every year than has been released so far into the Gulf of Mexico. The result is a total dead zone. What had once been a thriving fishing economy in the area has totally disappeared and the life expectancy of the people in the rural communities surrounding the region has fallen to 40 years.
While the resultant destruction of our environment is not an act of God but rather a result of our own short sightedness and our own greed, can you not hear it as the voice of God saying to that great nation, “You foolish people. Now your lives are being required of you. And whose will be all this wealth you have mined and drilled and stored up for yourselves?”
That is why connecting with the spiritual values of the wilderness is so important. They help us remember our vital connection with all of creation. The original peoples of North America understand that we are all connected, and that harm to one part of the sacred circle of life harms the whole. Scientists, both the ecological and physical sorts, know the same reality, expressed in different terms. And all three faiths which sprang from the tradition of Abraham – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – also charge human beings with care for the creation, because it is God’s good gift to humanity.
But we have obviously lost our sense of that web of connections between ourselves and the created world. One author identifies this problem as “nature-deficit disorder.” His name if Kurt Hoelting, an ordained UCC clergyman who leads spiritual wilderness retreats in Alaska and he writes: “How else can we remember why it matters to care for Creation in the first place? Close encounters with humpback whales from the perspective of tiny kayaks on an immense sea, the sight of free-roaming bears plucking wild salmon from streams choked with spawning fish, the call of wolves in the night forest, all echo back to a time when humans were less mesmerized by their own reflection in the primordial pond, a time when we actually belonged to this terrifying and rapturous world,….’”
That is why we have become like the man in the story. It is important to note that Jesus did not call the man evil, or selfish, or greedy. He called him a “fool.” In the Hebrew tradition “fool” is a loaded word. It refers to those who live as if there is no God. The man in the story is a fool because he lives oblivious to God by being oblivious to those around him. With all his property and all his big plans, he had missed the real point of life. He lost the plot. He threw all his energies into physical prosperity and planned for future physical self indulgences. He did not stop to ask: “Is this all there is to life?” He left unexplored the personal-spiritual dimension, the better business of loving God and loving others. He had ceased to be alert to the precious nature of life, the wonder of the gift of each new day, the miracle of love, and the exceptional potential of his own soul.
The man had lost touch with all that because he had, as Jesus stated at the end of the story, “filled his barns with Self and not with God.” One of the striking features of this parable is the voice of God. This is the only time in the Gospels when God actually speaks in a parable. Perhaps that is because the rich fool has shown blatant disregard for God’s role in his life, so a direct word from God is most timely. In a sense, the rich fool has used his wealth to set himself up as a kind of “god” who can ensure his own welfare. When we lose touch with the true wealth of the wilderness we also fill our barns with Self and not with God.
What are those spiritual values the wilderness offers? Silence is one. There is a “great primeval hush” which acts as an aesthetic balm. In our tradition, from the Hebrew prophets to the Desert Mystics, the silence of wilderness has been an invaluable catalyst for prayer and contemplation. Silence is so often missing in our world today as our lives are filled with constant noise – radios and ipods, televisions and all the background white noise.
Solitude is another wilderness value. Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness, and the gospels depict him going off to a remote place numerous times to pray. The isolation and seclusion found in the wild country has long kindled a sense of reverence and connection with God. Again, today many of us only find time to pray on Sunday morning in church. It is often the only time we sit down long enough to think. Our lives are busy and harried, full of commitments and responsibilities, crowded and surrounded by family and friends. We never have time for ourselves, let alone God.
The wilderness also inspires awe. It is not a place tamed and well-manicured. It reminds us constantly of God’s handiwork. And the power and beauty tend to strip us of false pride and bring us to our limits. It serves to remind us we are creatures, not gods. The beauty also reminds us of the love and grace of our God. As beautiful as this sanctuary is, it is rather homey more than awe-inspiring as the cathedrals once were.
Debra Lou Fleck went to Alaska in 1980, an unhappy young woman. At the time of her death in May of 1982, however, she had fallen in love with life. A sensitive person, she went to Alaska searching for answers to questions with which she had long wrestled. Her diaries reveal that she was apparently finding answers in the wilderness. “Can I really be this happy and healthy? I am and appreciate every moment or at least try to. Would like to share these moments with friends but sometimes I feel selfish. So many good times are happening often for me. … I took a short hike: it is like taking medicine for me, hiking the woods, enjoying the birds and all the sounds and smells. What can it be, to make me feel and absorb so much freshness? … No matter where I am, I feel the bond between nature and myself. I like to stretch and mingle with the outdoors. Feeling the sunshine, hearing the wind swoop down on the trees, to breathe the fresh, delicious Fortymile air and to smell the intoxicating sweet, sweet earth.” Debra Fleck discovered the true wealth of the wilderness and her rightful place in that great web of life.
For the sake of the wilderness, for the sake of God’s creation which we are more and more despoiling instead of carefully nurturing, for the sake of our own souls and the future of our children’s children, we need to reconnect with the true wealth of the wilderness. We need to rediscover those spiritual values in our own lives. And the truth is, the wilderness really is still all around us. We don’t have to go off into the Everglades, or up to the Boundary Waters of Minnesota or the wilds of Alaska. This same wealth is here for us, in the glories of a sunrise over the Bay, or a sunset among the palm trees. It is here in a flock of peacocks or ibis stalking our yards and in the glory of Poinciana blossoms. It is here in the sweet juicy taste of our mango trees and the ripe, rich flesh of the avocadoes. We are all part of God’s creation and that creation is part of us. When we remember to connect with that creation and the spiritual values it offers, then we will fill our barns with God and not with self and we will find ourselves truly rich and our lives filled with meaning and purpose.