A Fourth Church Sermon by Calum I. MacLeod

August 1, 2004 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Full(ish)ness

Calum I. MacLeod
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 107:1–9
Luke 12:13–21

“But God said to him, ‘You fool!’”

Luke 12:20 (NRSV)

The Romans had a proverb which said that money was like sea-water;
the more a person drank, the thirstier they became.
And so long as one’s attitude is that of the rich fool,
the desire will always be to get more—
and that is the reverse of the Christian way.

William Barclay

A quick word to those of you who may be visiting us this morning. It’s certainly common at this time of year to have out-of-town guests, and we’re delighted when you join us for worship. I just want to make sure you understand something that may have surprised you: to come and see what looks like the Bears’ defensive line singing, because there are no women in the choir. I can assure you that our choir does have an Equal Opportunity Policy. It’s just that the women of the Morning Choir sang during July, and now it’s the men’s turn during August and we’re very grateful for that and for being blessed by such a strong ministry of music. And thanks to John Sherer and his team for that. (If it’s the Bears’ defensive line, maybe that makes John Sherer Brian Urlacher—I’m not sure.)

A story to frame our thoughts and reflections this morning. A story from a collection, a favorite of mine, a collection of wisdom stories from different faith traditions collected by Anthony de Mello, an Indian Jesuit priest who died some years ago and an amazing collector of stories.

An old woman died and was taken to the judgment seat by the angels. While examining her records, however, the judge could not find a single act of charity performed by her except for a carrot she had once given to a starving beggar. Such, however, is the power of a single deed of love that it was decreed that she be taken up to heaven on the strength of that single carrot. The carrot was brought to court and given to her. The moment she caught hold of it, it began to rise as if pulled by some invisible string lifting her up toward the sky. A beggar appeared. He clutched the hem of her garment and was lifted along with her. A third person caught hold of the beggar’s foot and was lifted too. Soon there was a long line of persons being lifted up to heaven by that carrot. And strange as it may seem, the woman did not feel the weight of all those people who held on to her. In fact, since she was looking heavenward, she did not see them. Higher and higher they rose until they were almost near the heavenly gates. That’s when the woman looked back to catch a last glimpse of the earth and saw this whole train of people behind her. She was indignant. She gave an imperious wave of her hand and shouted, “Off! Off all of you! This carrot is mine!” In making her imperious gesture, she let go of the carrot for a moment, and down she fell with the entire train.

It’s a story I offer as a kind of a commentary or a parallel to the story that we heard earlier from Luke’s Gospel. That story recalled the parable of the rich fool. The protagonists in both of these stories are people who want to keep everything for themselves to the exclusion of anything else, people who understand fullness as being grounded in the gathering of possessions.

Stories are important to us, I believe. From our earliest days we hear fairy tales, stories that help us to understand the world, perhaps to first come across concepts like good and evil. Stories are important in our families—you know, the stories that keep being retold reunion after reunion and yet somehow help to define us and who we are. And, of course, there are community stories. There’s a story of this church. There’s a story of the nation. Again, all of which help us to find our place in community, in society, or in the world.

Jesus understood this. That’s part of the reason Jesus used stories so much in his ministry, his stories that we often call parables—meaning to set something beside another thing. For much of the twentieth century, scholarship that looked at parables believed that essentially the story—the parable that Jesus told—had one single, central meaning and that the task of the hearer—of us—was to discern what that single meaning was. Then towards the end of the twentieth century, however, the understanding of parables changed, particularly as literary critics looked at the Bible and used some of the tools of literary criticism to explore the stories and the parables. Frank Kermode, a professor of English at Cambridge did this in his book The Genesis of Secrecy, looking at the parables in Mark. And then John Drury, another English literary critic and biblical scholar, did this with Luke’s Gospel. In his short commentary on Luke’s Gospel, Drury says that “parables lead us into morality and stay with us while we think about it.” You see the movement there from searching for a single meaning to a sense that we’re almost in dialogue with the parable and it with us as it sits with us and we think about the meaning.

There’s a paradox at the center of our parable. Paradox is very important and comes up often in the stories and in the parables. Jesus uses paradox as a device, as a way of getting people’s attention, of putting forward a point. We have a great bunch of young people with us this weekend, staying at the church, here from New Covenant Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, Georgia. I can see them down with Teri Peterson, their leader. Teri’s a member of this congregation but is training for ministry in Atlanta. These guys have been up here doing mission in Chicago for the last week. I saw them yesterday. A bunch of the young folks had T-shirts on, black T-shirts that said in big white letters “Loser.” And I thought, “That’s bizarre to be walking around Chicago with a big T-shirt that says ‘Loser’ on it.” And they all turned around, and on the back in quotation marks it says, “Those who lose their life will save it. Jesus.” That’s a paradox that Jesus uses to get across a message.

In this text we’re led into the parable by a bizarre exchange that Jesus has when he’s asked to arbitrate in a family discussion. Jesus’ scripture stays pretty well away from families, so unsurprisingly he says he’s going to have nothing to do with it. But he does use the opportunity to segue into a teaching moment and into this parable. And in this Jesus lifts up an example of one who, because of his reliance on possessions to the exclusion of anything else, is termed by God a fool.

Fools have a long history. In scripture, the psalmist says, “The fool says there is no God.” And in the Hebrew wisdom that echoes down through the centuries from the Book of Proverbs: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” This was a man who had no fear of God. John Drury in his commentary says, “The rich man in the parable is a fool because he fails to take account of the whirligig of time, bringing its revenges. He thinks that his accumulation of goods is stable, for look, this is tantamount to atheism.”

The fool says there is no God. This rich fool doesn’t come across as being inherently evil or particularly bad, just someone who’s got it wrong in the eyes of God because he has no place for God. It’s all focused on self. William Barclay, whose daily study Bible commentaries have been meat and drink for thousands and thousands of people over the last thirty years has a lovely reflection in his commentary on this parable. He says, “The rich fool’s whole attitude was the very reverse of Christianity. That instead of denying himself, he aggressively affirmed himself. Instead of finding his happiness in giving, he failed to conserve it by keeping.”

There is a danger at this point in our meditation this morning. There’s a danger that when we get to this point we decide to look for who the rich fools are, to look outside in the city or to look outside our denomination, to look outside ourselves for the rich fools. And perhaps it’s easy to characterize the Wall Street fat cats or the Enron executives as rich fools, but as one of my own professors wrote in a book on scripture, “The Bible is like a mirror. We do not read the Bible; the Bible reads us.” And that’s why as we sit with this story, it turns and asks us to look at who we are—“You fool,” says God. “You were only focused on yourself”—that we recognize the propensity that we have to be foolish because we seek fullness not in God but in self.

I came across an extraordinary piece of writing that was written by Thomas Merton. Thomas Merton is one of the great spiritual leaders and mystics of the twentieth century. And he wrote this in his journal one day and it almost seems that he could be reading this parable:

I think sometimes that I may soon die, although I’m not yet old—forty-seven. I don’t know exactly what kind of conviction this thought carries with it or what I mean by it. Death is always a possibility for everyone. We live in the presence of this possibility. So I have a habitual awareness that I may die and that if this is God’s will, then I am glad. “Go you forth to meet him.” And in the light of this, I realize the futility of my cares and preoccupations, particularly my chief care, which is central to me, my work as a writer.

Then he goes on to say this: “It remains a care, a focus that keeps myself in view and I feel a little hampered.”

Even this spiritual giant can recognize his own propensity for focusing on self in a way that blocks out God. He ends his thought, “The important thing is simply turning to God daily and often, preferring God’s will and God’s mystery to everything that is evidently and tangibly mine.”

The parable indicts each of us, challenges each of us to look at those places in our life where we place self before God. “You fool,” says God. And yet there’s another kind of fool that scripture talks about: a fool who is holy in God’s sight. There’s a great chapter in 1 Corinthians where Paul says, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.” Refer back to our parable where the rich man did what seemed wise to everyone—he built bigger barns to gather his stuff—but was proven to be foolish. “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.” The whole concept of a fool for Christ, a holy fool, is one that exists throughout the history of Christianity, particularly Medieval Christianity. It was raised up in one of the great novels of the twentieth century, The Power and the Glory. I don’t know if you remember reading it; it was set text for us in school. I went back to it a couple of years ago. It’s a story about a hopeless drunken priest who’s got nothing in his life. And he finds himself in Mexico at the Revolution and he makes a decision to stay rather than flee when he has the opportunity. He’s chased and eventually is arrested and faces execution. Graham Greene tells the story:

When he woke up it was dawn. He walked with a huge feeling of hope which suddenly and completely left him at the first sight of the prison yard. It was the morning of his death. He crouched on the floor with an empty brandy flask in his hand trying to remember an act of contrition. He was confused. His mind was on other things. And then he thought what a fool he had been. What a fool he had been to think that he was strong enough to stay when others fled.

The outcome of the story is, of course, that it was that foolish act that is the act that provides for his salvation, that brings this hopeless figure into relationship with God. I know people like that. I know people who are fools for Christ. They’re not perfect, they’re not saints, but they do foolish things. I know people who go to hot places in this world like Honduras and they go there and they build homes for two or three families and they’re foolish enough to believe that in doing that they can start to change the world and be changed themselves. I know young people in this church who are foolish enough to give up their summer holidays to go and work at the Special Olympics, to go and rehab houses in Alabama for poor people, believing that in doing that they can start to change the world or change themselves. I know a bunch of losers from New Covenant Church Atlanta, a bunch of losers who gave up their time to come and do mission. And I know a holy fool called Josh Hiekkila, a member of this congregation, who this afternoon at 3:00 will be ordained to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament. And in that service will be proclaimed not only his ministry, but the ministry of all of God’s people, of all of us who gather and who are foolish enough to believe with Paul that love is the most excellent way to believe with our Lord that if we lose our life, we will save it. People foolish enough to believe that when we take a piece of bread and cup of wine and share it that they encounter the living, loving God. And to that God all honor and glory, world without end.

Amen.