August 4, 2013 | 8:00 a.m.

More, More, More

Victoria G. Curtiss
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 107:1–9
Colossians 3:1–11
Luke 12:13–21

Why so large a cost, having so short a lease,
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?
. . .Within be fed, without be rich no more.

William Shakespeare
Sonnet 146

My parents are in that stage of life when they are getting rid of material things rather than accumulating them. Instead of waiting to state in their wills how they want their possessions distributed, they have been encouraging their children and grandchildren to tell them now what, if any, of their paintings, furniture, dishes, silver, linens, tools, and so on would we like to have. When one of us indicates a preference, that person becomes the future owner of that possession and sometimes even takes the item home the same weekend. When my mother first announced that she wanted us to say what in their home we would like to own someday, I didn’t give it much thought. I live in a condo in downtown Chicago that is fully furnished and doesn’t have space for more than what we already own. I have everything I need and much more. And yet when I learned that my mother’s original oil paintings had already been spoken for by a few of my nieces, I felt like I was missing out. I better get with the program! Truthfully, I’m not sure I want the paintings, but just the fact that others beat me to an opportunity to get something stirred up this surprising feeling that I was deprived.

There was a man afraid he would be deprived who asked for Jesus’ help in relation to his inheritance: “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” Jesus wisely refuses to get in the middle of that family dynamic.

Families have been torn apart, with relatives even suing each other, around who gets what in terms of inheritance. One woman I met, who had a wealth of material riches already, was nevertheless deeply hurt when she didn’t inherit anything from her parents as did her siblings. The stated reason was because she was adopted and only the biological children were to receive an inheritance. Money is always about more than money. Our spending, our saving, and our general attitude toward material wealth are all invested with emotions and memories. We invest money with meaning about who is favored, how worthy we are—or aren’t—in others’ eyes, how loved we are, and how secure we feel.

I don’t think of myself as a greedy person, and I bet you don’t think of yourself as greedy either. The man who wanted Jesus’ help with his inheritance didn’t see himself being greedy but just seeking that to which he was entitled. But Jesus responds to him, and to us, by addressing the danger of greed. We all want more. And with that insatiability, we are in danger.

There is a Greek word for this yearning or passion for more. It is pleonexia. Pleonexia is an insatiability for more of what I already had, or have, or experienced. Pleonexia means too much of a good thing. It has to do with excess. Pleonexia always functions as an idol. The “more” that we may be yearning for could be intimacy or libido, control or stability, success or satisfaction, knowledge or financial security. Pleonexia can make idols of many different things.

The Reverend Donna Schaper wrote,

Desire works in such a labyrinthine way that it would be hard to find the first knot it ties around our soul. Is it in grade school, as we dress like others and declare “nerdy” anything that wasn’t bought yesterday? Do we parents tighten the noose of wealth by buying Christmas presents equal in sparkle to those of our children’s peers? Does the very commercialism of the Christ event bond us forever to the worship of wealth? Or is it the birthday party, which children associate with “what am I going to get?” . . . We are realizing that what we want is perpetually going to be bigger than what we can earn. We are realizing that our want has grown and that it has been encouraged to grow. (Donna Schaper, “Fool’s Gold,” The Sun,
pp. 18–19)

Recently there was a cupcake truck parked just off Michigan Avenue. On the outside of the van was painted, all in one long line, “more taste more delicious more special more sweet more filling more want more.” More, more, more, more, more. All promised just from a cupcake! And not just a promise, but a beckoning to make us want something that just minutes before we didn’t realize we were missing. We are bombarded constantly with messages about what more we need to own and accumulate to live the good life. Countless advertisements seek to get us to purchase something by using the adage “You deserve it.” President Obama earlier this week rebuked makers of TV reality shows that feed young people with images of extreme wealth and negatively influence them in ways that encourage them to pursue getting rich as life’s top priority.

When we talk poor while we actually have more than we need, when we don’t acknowledge how rich most of us are, we reveal how much we have been swallowed up by pleonexia. Some of us are “paper and property millionaires,” though we never expected it. It’s amazing what the accumulation of pension plans and investments and TIAA-CREF has wrought over the years. We are citizens of the richest nation on earth, so we are among the world’s most privileged people. As Christians we have to struggle with the responsibilities of those who have worldly advantages, while many others face the challenge of limited resources. It’s a lot easier for us, living where we do, than in Mumbai or in Moscow or Managua or a remote African village. But spiritually? Those whose lives are less secure may more readily acknowledge their dependence upon God and feel more deeply their gratitude for evidence of God’s grace. We who live in this society, on the other hand, may be in danger of gaining the whole world and losing our souls.

Let’s be honest. In the parable of the rich fool, which Jesus told, the path the rich man pursued is very familiar to us, even encouraged. When we make more than we expected in a given year, or an unexpected windfall has come our way, we naturally think about how we should preserve and protect it, where we should invest it, or how much we should save for our future.

The lesson of the parable is not against saving per se. There are other scripture accounts that encourage preparing for an uncertain future. For example, Joseph advised Pharoah to store grain from the years of abundant harvest so there would be enough to cover the years when the harvest would be lean. Doing this saved people from dying of a famine. Our own presbytery has helped villagers in Cameroon build grain storage bins so they can feed themselves all year long, from one harvest all the way to the next. That has prevented them from experiencing a hunger season. No, this parable is not a teaching against saving.

This parable is against the foolishness of centering one’s life on possessions. It is foolish to be totally self-centered, accumulating material goods for oneself. You may notice that the rich fool in the parable speaks the word “I” and “my” over and over again. “What shall I do? I have no place. . . . I will do this. . . . I will pull down. . . . I will store” and “my crops . . . my barns . . . my grain. . . my goods . . . my soul.” I, I, I, I. I, my, my, my, my, my. He thinks of no one else. He does not acknowledge God as the Source of his abundance, the Giver of Life. He does not praise God in gratitude for this blessing. He could have bowed in prayerful humility to seek what God would have him do with his resources, but he doesn’t. He could have remembered that he had brothers and sisters who suffered in poverty and whose lives could be greatly enriched if he shared his abundance with them. But he doesn’t. He acts as if of course he is entitled to this bounty, it belongs to him, and it’s perfectly fine if he keeps it for himself, even though he already has plenty. He is totally self-absorbed, turned in on himself.

St. Augustine coined a phrase for this in the fifth century: Homo incurvatus in se—“Man turned in on himself.” Martin Luther resuscitated it a thousand years later. Heather Choate Davis says this “is the best definition of sin I’ve ever heard. Look around. Never in the history of the world have the words man turned in on himself been more apt. And never have we been more in denial about what that means, and the cost of it” (Heather Choate Davis, Reclaiming the Wisdom of Homo Incurvatus in Se: “Man Turned in on Himself” as an Entry Point for the Discussion of Sin in Twenty-First-Century America).

This man does not take into account God, others, or his own mortality. God, however, takes him into account. The rich man thinks he has it made in the shade for many years to come. He has made elaborate preparations to guarantee himself a comfortable, self-indulgent future, but God judges him a fool.

Part of the foolishness of the rich man in the parable is that he didn’t realize that you can’t take it with you. For all of us, when the question is asked when we die what we left behind, the answer will be, “Everything.”

Mostly his foolishness is that he is not rich towards God. He doesn’t praise and thank God for providing for him. He doesn’t seek God’s guidance in what to do with his resources. He doesn’t realize that the purpose of bounty is to provide for the common good. He doesn’t share his money for the benefit of others. He doesn’t care about being a good steward of what God has given.

God speaks to him directly on the futility of the priorities he has chosen in life and on the exact timing of his demise. While none of us gets the memo on the timing of our death, Jesus has clued us in on what is futile. The question is, will it make a difference in our priorities for how we live out our future days?

Whenever we find ourselves feeling shabby or deprived, thinking we don’t have enough or that money is the answer or that more will take care of it or that we can never have too much, we need to stop and make confession to God. We deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us when we think that if we have more of this, just a little more, we will have more life.

Father John Haughey, author of the book The Holy Use of Money, wrote that the desire humans have for more is actually part of how God designed us. But the yearning for more that God created in us is truly a desire for that which is infinite. Our desire for the infinite can only be filled by that which is infinite—God. But we always fasten onto something that is not God and make a god of it. We create an idol. The major activity incited by pleonexia is accumulation. Any object of pleonexia makes a fool of the one pursuing it, because that object lulls us into thinking that our life is coming from that object. For the rich fool, grain was that object. It could be cupcakes or a higher salary or a bigger or second home or invested funds. It can be whatever we feel “we gotta have” because we think with it we will know more life. Wherever we seek to have more and more, we are fashioning idols to worship.

Father Haughey makes a recommendation for how we get back on track, away from our foolish ways. He notes:

Jesus said, Follow me! Don’t follow your culture. Follow me! Don’t follow your biases. Follow me! Don’t pursue that which cannot satisfy you. Follow me! What’s in it for you? Me! Not a grand name. Not an important ministry. Not even importance. What’s in it for you is Me! Your security rests in my love for you. And I hope I am enough for you. For only my love is an antidote to your desire for more. You may be resistant to my invitation for you to follow me. If you want the resistance to go away, then ask me. If you don’t know the source of your resistance, ask me. Learn of me and follow me. Then you will be rich towards God. (Father John Haughey, Presentation on the Holy Use of Money, 1 February 1991 with Ministry of Money)

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church