September 29, 2013
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
(Insert a card in the bulletin and invite everyone to write down, privately, one thing in their life that they regret. Fold it up and put it into your pocket or purse.)
Everyone knows Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak became billionaires from Apple. But few people know Ron Wayne who was one of the founders of Apple who along with the two Steves had a hand in designing the famous Apple logo. Wayne owned 10% of the company while Jobs and Wozniak each owned 45%. But Wayne decided to hand back his stake, fearing that he would be liable for a portion of a $15,000 loan if the company went under.
Apple succeeded, of course, and if Wayne had held on to his share it would now be worth more than $37 billion. Does he have any regrets?
Two years ago at the Sojourners Retreat, we watched the 2007 film starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson, The Bucket List and made our own lists of all the things we want to do or see or accomplish before we die. Freeman and Nicholson saw the Taj Mahal, skydived, hiked up to Machu Picchu and shook the hand of the president. They had no regrets at the end when they kick the bucket. When I last reviewed my bucket list, I have checked off of the things! I want no regrets too.
Jesus tells the story of a rich nameless man who was “dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.” The man dies, is buried and finds himself in Hades being tormented.
Does he have any regrets? Jesus implies that he does. But none of his regrets involve poor business decisions or missed opportunities to make money. He does not say, “I should have held on to my 10% stake in Apple.” No, the rich man’s regrets seem to go in a different direction, one that matches a trend we are seeing today. It’s more like having regrets on not being able to do what’s on our bucket lists.
Regrets
A nurse who specializes in the caring of the dying recorded the “top five common regrets of the dying” in the British newspaper, The Guardian. There’s no mention of missed business deals. No regrets about skipped bungee jumping or even about marriage—despite the many jokes that link regret to the choice of a mate. There was an ad in the classifieds by a woman, “Husband Wanted.” Next day, she received a hundred letters. They all said the same thing: “You can have mine.”
The top five regrets discovered by the nurse include:
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
People admit that they feared change in their lives, so they pretended that they were content. In fact, they wish they had laughed more and allowed themselves to be sillier.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
People feel badly that they were so caught up in their own lives that they let important friendships slip away.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
Many people suppress their feelings in order to keep peace with others.
2. I wished I hadn’t worked so hard.
This regret was expressed by every single male patient; every single one of them.
And the number one big regret, discovered by this nurse in 2012:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a true life to myself, not the life others expected of me.
This is the most common regret of all. Most people had not honored even half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made or not made.
Do these regrets ring true for you? What would you regret if this were you last day on earth?
Rich Man & Lazarus
Jesus tells a story that the rich man was not alone in his life and at his death. “At his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores” (vv. 20-21).
Lazarus may have had some regrets, but they probably did not include number 5: I wish that I had let myself be happier. For Lazarus, happiness was not a choice. It was a scrap from the rich man’s table that never came.
Jesus tells us that, “the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried” (v. 22). And there, in Hades or hell, we begin to get a sense of the rich man’s regrets.
Regret Number 1. I wished that I had cared for the people around me. The poor man Lazarus was lying at his gate, covered with sores and the rich man stepped over or around him each time he left his home. Every single day, the rich man missed the chance to help Lazarus by simply giving him the leftovers from his table.
Regret Number 2. I wished that I had listened to Moses and the prophets. The rich man realizes in death that he had not paid attention to the word of God as it came through Moses, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18). He had not heeded the prophet Isaiah who commanded, “share your bread with the hungry…bring the homeless poor into your house” (58:7).
Regret Number 3. I wished I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. This is the Number One Regret of all. Every day, the rich man ignored poor Lazarus, fully aware of the teachings of Moses and the prophets. But he didn’t have the courage to live a life of integrity, one in which his actions were in line with what he observed and what he believed.
The rich man saw the poor man and knew that Moses and the prophets commanded him to help. But he did not. The rich man fell into a trap set by people who blamed Lazarus for his poverty, insisting that he must be lazy or morally deficient. Sitting around the rich man’s table, they would say, “God rewards goodness and punished wickedness—it’s always been that way! So dress lavishly and eat sumptuously. You deserve it!”
In hell, the rich man feels a big regret. He says to Abraham, “I beg you to send Lazarus to my father’s house—for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment” (16:27-28). The rich man cares deeply for his brothers; he is not a man without feelings.
Abraham replies, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them” (v. 29).
The rich man realizes this is right but Moses and the prophets were not enough for him. “No father Abraham,” he pleads; “but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent” (v. 30). Surely they will turn their lives around if dead Lazarus comes back to life and warns them!
Shaking his head, Abraham says, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (v. 31).
Abraham is talking to us, right along with the rich man and his brothers. Are we convinced? Are we persuaded to change our ways if someone actually rises from the dead?
Jesus has risen, but we still have regrets.
Wealth and Greed
Before this story and I mentioned this last week is Jesus’ remarks, “No slave can serve two masters…You cannot serve God and wealth (v. 13). The rich man believed that his wealth came from God and therefore deserves it. We call this prosperity gospel. It goes something like this.
“We are children of God. Now if we allow our children to run around in rags that reflects poorly on me. People would say, ‘Why do you let your children run around in rags? Can’t you provide for them? They would be right. I shouldn’t let them do that. They are a reflection on me. In the same way, I am a child of God. Do you think God would want me running around in rags? No, I should look good. Dress nice. Let other people know that God has blessed me because God is an abundant God, just waiting to shower blessings on you. The more you allow it, the more God will shower them on to you too.’”
Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? That is, unless you’ve ever read over our text for today or any of Jesus’ teachings. In Deuteronomy 28, we are told that if we only obey the Lord our God, we will be blessed beyond measure. All wealth and power will be ours. We like to believe this.
The Pharisees in particular taught that wealth and prosperity were signs that a person’s life was right with God. It’s an easy trap that we fall into. When something good happens to us, we often say, “I’ve been blessed.” And if we are really pious, we learn to say, “I’ve been blessed” no matter what is going on in our lives. While this sentiment reflects the truth that God is in control and we are grateful for the luxuries that we enjoy, it can lead to some dangerous theological conclusions.
No criticism to BMW owners but to say, “I’ve been blessed with this new BMW” implies something about the person who doesn’t have one. Is the Christian with the BMW a better prayer? A better tither? Do they read their Bibles more often? Maybe they’re just live in Marin County?
Why doesn’t God give every believer a BMW? Maybe because God knows that the parts and labor would kill some of us? The fact is that we don’t know. Some of us are able to lead lives of privilege and luxury and others struggle from paycheck to paycheck—and there is no rhyme or reason for it. Wealth is, truly, the material world’s reward for material triumphs, and it’s distribution has very little to do with the nature of God or the Body of Christ.
When Congress reduces food stamps and not just for the small percentage of people who abuses such charity and end up penalizing and hurting the poor in our society so greatly, we must speak out about it. If it was left only up to the rich man or for that matter, up to us, we would not be able to see all the Lazaruses sitting outside of our iron gates.
But if we choose God over wealth, we would know what to do with our wealth. If we choose the one who tells the story of the rich man and Lazarus, we would choose God. Jesus said, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Or, “And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil or spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.” Or his instructions to his followers: “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money, not even an extra tunic.”
In America today, we Christians have a sin of greed. Besides the ordinary shopping areas where we go for our groceries, the real truth about our big shopping malls is that we don’t need most of what they sell. Little is essential to our survival, our work, or our play.
Pretty soon the holiday season of shopping madness will be upon us and advertising will create a desire in us to have what we really don’t need. Did you know that the average American shops 18 hours a week? That’s a lot of time for stores to delight in us on things that are frivolous and unnecessary.
I wonder if our propensity to hoard, or buy, and to acquire may be a fearful response to life. Our greed is largely fueled by fear—fear of scarcity, fear that there is not enough to go around, fear of missing out, fear of having something taken from us. Do you posses your possessions, or are you possessed by them?
No Regrets
Let’s be honest. None of us is perfect, and we will all come to the end of life feeling that we have made mistakes along the way. There are choices we feel badly about, alongside opportunities we wish we had seized. But what would it mean for us to die with no big regrets.
The top regrets of the rich man can teach us the lessons that we—like his five brothers—need to learn. We don’t want to arrive at our dead bed saying: I wish that I had cared for the people around me. I wished that I had listened to Moses, the prophets and Jesus. I wished I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, in which my actions were in line with my beliefs.
We are not yet in the afterlife, calling out to father Abraham. We are not stuck in a place of regretting that we did not do enough, that we did not do more, that we did not choose wisely, that we did not have enough time. As long as we are breathing, we can choose to care for the people around us, listen to the teachings of the Bible, and live a life that is true to our deepest convictions.
If we do, we’ll have no big regrets.
(At the end of the sermon, get out your card and look at your regret. If you cannot change this regret, I invite you to turn this over to God. If your regret is something that can be changed, commit to begin changing it today.)
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, keep loving us enough to tell us the truth about ourselves, even when the truth hurts. Enable us to live our lives with no regrets so that we may be true to the person you have called each of us to be according to your will. For those regrets that we can’t do anything about, we offer them to you, O God in order for us to become renewed once again. And for those regrets that we have the opportunity to change, we pray for the will and convictions to make a difference in the world. With joy in our hearts, we look ahead to bring peace and justice to others. Amen.