Luke 12:13-21
August 4, 2013
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
On July 4th when we celebrated Independence Day, we may have recalled the key words of the Declaration of Independence: All people are created equal and have certain inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That was 237 years ago when our country’s founders frame those words. But today, we see that the “pursuit of happiness” has morphed into the pursuit of “hedonism.”
If happiness is about well-being and contentment, hedonism is about the relentless pursuit of pleasure as the only intrinsic good in life. If happiness is about having enough, hedonism is about never having enough.
We don’t have to go very far to see what I mean here:
-Our recent economic crisis that we are just coming out of was the result of hedonistic financial practices that used debt to pursue pleasure. We lived beyond what we could afford.
-The obsessive pursuit of sex and pleasure leads to higher rates of divorce, broken homes and the objectification of people into pleasurable objects rather than human beings made in the image of God.
-The insatiable appetite for food leads to obesity rates over 35% of the US population, which are expected to climb to 44% by 2030. We are coming toward almost half of us would be obese.
We used to associate hedonism with guys like Hugh Hefner, lounging in his silk pajamas at the Playboy mansion with a group of beautiful women. But in these times, hedonism is mainstream.
The irony of hedonism is that the more we pursue pleasure, the less we tend to enjoy it. The supermarket tabloids are full of stories of the rich and famous whose lives are perfectly miserable.
A new study from the San Francisco Federal Reserve conclude that people who earn less money than their neighbors in affluent neighborhoods are more likely to commit suicide than their counterparts earning the same income in less wealthy neighborhoods. And a Princeton University study concluded that once a person makes a salary of $75,000 a year, any additional income does not lead to increased happiness. Now don’t get any idea of cutting my salary!
The relentless pursuit of more, it would seem, is a fool’s goal.
Besides hedonism, psychologists recently identified another growing disorder related to the inability to ever fully attain pleasure. They call this anhedonia, meaning “without pleasure,” People diagnosed with anhedonia experience a loss of interest in activities that previously gave them pleasure. Anhedonia leads to feelings of emotional numbness, apathy, loss of sex drive, and the inability to enjoy simple conversations, hobbies, relationships, or anything else.
While many people suffer from clinical anhedonia that may require treatment, an even larger segment of the population would seem to be suffering from a cultural form of the disorder. People have a difficult time distinguishing what they want from what they need. The pursuit of pleasure is leaving us broke, depressed, unfulfilled, numb and broken. We even might have anhedonia!
Rich Fool
Of course, this isn’t just a recent problem plaguing us. Jesus identified it a long time ago. In a crowd one day, a man clearly focused on the pursuit of more asked Jesus to be his advocate in a family dispute over an inheritance. Jesus, of course, is not a lawyer or an executor to this man’s estate responds with wisdom saying: “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15). Jesus doesn’t care about what the man cares about—the pursuit of wealth. Jesus knows that there’s no connection between material acquisition of stuff and happiness.
Jesus goes on to tell a parable about a rich man whose land produced abundantly. He had run out of storage space to keep his grains and goods. He decides to tear down his smaller barns to build bigger ones to keep his things. He builds barns in order to increase his security.
This rich man is hedonistic. The personal pronouns “I” or “my” are used eleven times in just three verses (17-19). The man is having a monologue and most of the story has one character–him. The only conversation he has in the parable is with himself, and it’s all about what he’s going to do with his wealth. His goal is the achievement of hedonistic pleasure—to relax, eat, drink and be merry. Notice that all of this hopeful attainment is all in the future: “I will do this…I will pull down my barns and build larger ones…I will say to my soul.”
Greed narrows our focus inward. Instead of thinking, “I have a lot of extra, I wonder who I could help?” the man is only concerned about his own leisure, pleasure and security. The greatest good the man can imagine is a life of maximizing his own pleasure. He believes his future to be secure, and too bad for others who didn’t get theirs.
Atheism
After the rich man’s monologue, another character appears—God. God disrupts the man’s monologue. What the man fails to recognize is that the “harvest” he enjoys doesn’t come from his own efforts. Only God makes the crops grow! The man is so focused on his own greed that he can’t see that God is the one who blessed him in the first place.
The rich man might say that he believes in God, but he acts like there is no God, no recognition that God might have some claim on his life and that God is the one who provided the abundance to him for God’s own purposes.
God calls him a fool, echoing Psalm 41:1—“A fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” In Israel’s wisdom tradition, “foolishness” is not merely stupidity, but rather the arrogant, obstinate disregard for God. When we believe in our deepest hearts that there really is no God—or at least no God that has claim on all the aspects of our lives, including our wallets—we’re prone to living only for ourselves and speak only in the first-person singular—“I” and “me.” Not only is the rich man hedonistic, he is an atheist.
Jesus’ point here is that it is God who brings the harvest and that this fool has completely ignored that fact. The harvest is a symbol of God’s kingdom, God’s reign and rule, God’s abundant grace given for all of God’s people. Harvest means that God is doing something great for and through his people and the workers including the rich man are invited to respond and participate.
And if he remains a fool, he loses everything. “This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” Death becomes that for which there can be no security offered. Riches cannot be a hedge fund against mortality. Fools store up their treasures for themselves and are not rich toward God. Only God provides any trusting assurance of true happiness.
True Happiness
Instead of hedonism or anhedonia, Jesus implies that God is inviting us to respond to the harvest through what could be called, Theohedonia—the pursuit of pleasing God. Yes, this is not a real word but it has true meaning—Theohedonia is the pursuit of true happiness, contentment, and purpose in life. The pursuit of pleasing God takes us out of the first-person pronouns and into God who is inviting us to look at the needs of others rather than the hedonistic wants we pursue for ourselves.
Theohedonia also challenges our cultural anhedonia because it calls us to move from an inward focus to an outward focus. An increasing body of research, in fact, suggests that one of the best treatments for depression is helping others. Service and generosity are pleasing to God and help others get what they need.
Jesus says that’s the way of the kingdom. We shouldn’t worry about what we wear, eat or drink. After all, it’s the hedonistic “nations of the world that strive after all these things and your Father knows that you need them?” (12:30). Instead, we pursue the kingdom and “sell your possessions and give alms” to those who are in need. That’s what being “rich toward God” is about—riches stored in “purses that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will also” (v. 21, 33-34).
Before the 2008-09 recession, I sat down with a financial planner to talk about my retirement investment.
He asks me, “How many years do you expect to work?”
“Oh, I’m in great health, perfect health,” I replied. “I think I can expect many more years.”
“Well,” he said, “you have wisely put your trust in the Baptist retirement plan for your future. My job is to be sure that we make wise choices so that you will have a secure retirement.”
With that he pulled out a stack of charts and graphs, many of which meant nothing to me. He told me which stocks and bonds I ought to look at and buy and reassuring me that base on historic precedents, he said, “You have nothing to worry about. You are well on your way for a bright future. Congratulations.”
Two years later I lost 25% of my accumulated investments. You did too. When I asked my financial planner, “What about my future now?” he responded, “Hey look. All we can do is to make some predictions, some educated guesses.”
Those charts and graphs and projections?” I asked.
He said, “Those were just ‘predictions.’” “Look. Trying to figure out which way the market will go is a crap shoot, voodoo.”
This is what we call wisdom? Isn’t it interesting that the one we would call a successful, prudent businessman, Jesus portrays as a fool? Have I been a fool to think that my Baptist retirement investment will become so abundant that I will need to build new barns to store all of the goods or to open up a new bank account?
It’s interesting that the recent financial crisis happened in America where, according to a poll by the Pew Forum reported 92% of Americans believe in God or a higher power. And yet, it was in this country of supposed God-fearers that self-focused hedonism that got the ball rolling on a worldwide economic meltdown? People love to claim that we are a “Christian nation,” but the reality is that while we might cognitively believe in God, our financial practices don’t reflect that belief. We consume more and more of the world’s resources and give less and less of our abundance to people and issues that matter to God. Instead of the biblical standard of tithing, 10% of income, the percentage of income that people in US churches give is 2.56% on average. If we’re going to change the world, then we need to be the first ones to open up the barns!
How can we in this church begin to challenge the hedonism of our communities, while helping those suffering from cultural anhedonia to find a different purpose and focus for their lives? Can we stop building bigger houses and stop worshipping “barns” and instead offer the bounty of God’s blessing on us to find our hurting neighbors? Are there ways that we can provide opportunities for people to learn how to use their money to please God and, as the result, to live happier lives themselves?
It is clear that the pursuit of hedonism doesn’t lead to true happiness. The old wisdom, “He who dies with the most toys, wins,” is a great lie. The rich fool found out that, in the end, we take nothing with us.
The framers of the Declaration of Independence believed that happiness could be achieved along with the unalienable rights to life and liberty. Though the government has protected life and liberty from all forms of threats, people have been left to sort out for themselves the meaning of happiness.
Despite all of he wealth we have accumulated—increased life expectancy, central heating, big-screen TVs, retirement pensions, and venti-white-chocolate-mocha Frappuccinos—true happiness has lagged behind our prosperity.
Bobby Kennedy gave a speech at the University of Kansas in March 1968. He said the nation’s gross national product measures everything “except that which makes life worthwhile.”
In the end, true happiness is found in the pursuit of God—the only treasure worth striving for!
Let us pray.
Lord, forgive us when we love the material blessings you give us more than we love you. Forgive us when we trust the stuff that we have accumulated more than we trust you. Forgive us when we sacrifice too much for material well-being and neglect the really important matters in life. In those times when we are honest about our sin, when we admit to our confusion and misplaced affections, we are made more grateful that you save sinners like us. Amen.