Sermon for Proper 13: Year C (1979) scriptures:
Today’s Epistle, Gospel and Psalm reminded me of a quote that I think about frequently, “The things you own end up owning you.” This quote comes from Chuck Palahniuk’s book “Fight Club” which was made into movie with Ed Norton and Brad Pitt.
In the book, this is a pivotal point for the unnamed protagonist. An explosion in his apartment destroyed all his earthly possessions. He’s unsure what to do next and calls a person he barely knows whose name is Tyler Durden and meets Tyler at a bar who upon hearing this poor man’s story, Tyler utters this quote, “The things you own end up owning you”.
Spoiler alert here because the reader or viewer (and the protagonist), think the protagonist is talking to his new friend, Tyler. But we all eventually discover that the protagonist is instead talking to himself. Or as I prefer to say, talking to someone who’s not there (or sometimes ‘talking to someone who’s not there yet’).
What’s happening here is a revelation for this character. Before the explosion the protagonist confessed to striving to possess more and more. Getting that last piece of IKEA furniture was going to make him “complete”. But now his new voice, Tyler, points out to him the power the possessions had over him. Because no matter how much was consumed, it provided no long-term satisfaction, and it would never make him “complete”.
But instead, it made him more splintered.
All in all, to me when I think of idol worship in these current times, this is what I think of. And my concern is that our ‘things’ or our relationship with our things holds more importance than our relationship with each other and with God.
Peter Kreeft in his book, “Heaven: The Heart’s Deepest Longing,” asserts, “Since an idol is not God, no matter how sincerely or passionately it is treated as God, it is bound to break the heart of its worshipper, sooner or later,” Kreeft asserts. “Good motives for idolatry cannot remove the objective fact that the idol is an unreality. Moreover, you cannot “divine joy from non-divine things.”
Or as the proverb says, “You can’t get blood from a stone’. And you can’t get love from one either. And I’m fairly certain if you think about all of the possessions you love, not one of them loves you back.
So, what are we supposed to do _ give away every possession, and begin a life of walking the earth like David Carridine in ‘Kung Fu’? Not necessarily. It’s not a sin to be rich. But it is a sin for that wealth to be your God. It is a sin to let yourself be bound by their weight and let their power reign over you.
Jesus warns in today’s Gospel, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions”. And note, this is not a decree to give it all away, but instead to watch for signs of greed.
And a way to do that is from today’s letter from Paul, “clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience … clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony”
From here, the Church asks us to be good stewards. Much in the way we expect our governments to be good stewards of our tax dollars, God wants us to be good stewards of our wealth.
And our wealth is made up of more than how much money we have in the bank. It is “Our personal response to God’s generosity in the way we share our resources of time, talent, and money. Stewardship reflects our commitment to making God’s love known through the realities of human life and our use of all that God has given us. It is also our service to God’s world and our care of creation.” *
Our true wealth is measured in our “commitment to ‘working, praying, and giving for the spread of the kingdom of God’” **
Back to the start of the sermon, the character Tyler Durden’s second line of imparting wisdom after stating “The things you own end up owning you” is_ “it’s only after you lose everything that you’re free to do anything.” To me, this means if you can lose the shackles and weight of your possessions, you’re free as God intended us to be, to live in his image, “to make choices: to love, to create, to reason, and to live in harmony with creation and with God.” ***
Referenced scriptures:
*from “An Episcopal Dictionary of the Church, A User Friendly Reference for Episcopalians,” Don S. Armentrout and Robert Boak Slocum, editors.
**(BCP, p. 856)
***(BCP, p. 845)
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