Poolesville Presbyterian Church
Rev. Dr. David Williams; 07.31.2016
Scripture Lesson:Luke 12:13-21
LISTEN TO SERMON AUDIO HERE:
Summertime, and the living is easy? Americans just can’t seem to stop working.
Every few years, there’s another spasm of interest in this characteristic of the American economy. We work, and work a whole bunch. In major metropolitan areas like this one, the number of hours you put in each week is almost a badge of pride, yet another way in which you can prove yourself superior to those around you.
Downtown, little clusters of young associates regale each other with tales of epic hours worked, 50 hours, 70 hours, 80 hours, 100 hours in a week. Among some junior executives at area contracting firms, where racking up billable hours is next to Godliness, there’s a rumor going around that if you pound back 25 triple espressos in a row it actually rips a hole in the space-time continuum…allowing you to put in that perfect 200 hour week. Either that or your head implodes, and honestly, after 25 espressos it’s a little hard to tell the difference.
This ethic of intensity expresses itself, oddly, in the work schedules of many of my pastoral brethren and sistren. I’ll talk to ministers who’ll tell me they don’t have ten seconds to rub together, that they’re putting in two full weeks every week, that they’re exhausted and overburdened. This confuses me, because for some reason I don’t equate spiritual leadership with shimmering stress and fatigue.
According to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Americans work more than most of the industrialized world. In 2015, the average worker in the United States put in 1,790 hours a year. That’s now almost two full weeks more than the average Canadian, three hundred and fifty hours a year more than the average Dutch worker, and 1,750 hours more than the average Frenchman.
For all of our seeming busyness, we’re still nowhere near matching the industrialized country that holds the record for the most hours spent working. Is it Japan? Korea, perhaps? Nope. Germany? Hah. The Germans work only 1371 hours a year. They put in the fewest hours per worker of any modern democracy, ten full work weeks less per year than we do. The people who work the most: It’s Mexico, at 2,246 hours annually. Mexicans, according to the data, are the hardest working people in the world.
Yes, they are, Donald.
What’s strange about this whole phenomenon is that it’s exactly the opposite of what people used to think 2016 would look like. Back in America in the 1950s, everyone was absolutely convinced that fifty five years in the future, we’d all be working 15 hours a week. They also thought we’d be commuting via jet pack, and I don’t know which one is more disappointing. Strangely, though, studies have shown that when you take into account all the increases in technology and productivity, it should only take a modern worker 11 hours to do the work that took 40 hours to do in 1950. If we were willing to accept the same standard of living as 1950s Americans, an 11 hour workweek might even be possible.
But we don’t want to live in little 1950s houses. We want to live in huge houses. We don’t want to own just one car. We want three cars, which we’ll put in a garage that’s bigger than that little 1950s house. We don’t want just one nine inch television. We want a 108” LCD HDTV…and oh yes, they do make one…so we can see the oil glistening in the pores on Jack Bauer’s nose. We want our cable and we want our and we want our high speed internet and we want our smartphones. We NEED these things if we’re going to be happy. Because we are so much more happy now than we were half a century ago. Aren’t we? We work so hard, every day, to gather in the material blessings of our Tantalus consumer culture, sure that our joy is just that one last gadget away.
We find security in those things, in those objects, in the having and the holding, and we allow ourselves to imagine that it is they that matter.
Though it’s a couple of thousand years ago, it is that ethic that Jesus is addressing in the story we hear from the Gospel of Luke today. The passage from chapter 12 of that book comes to us from one of the long teachings that Luke records. Jesus is standing before a crowd that has gathered to hear him share stories and riddles about the nature of the Kingdom of God. He’s showing them what’s important and telling them what they should value in their lives. He’s just told them to trust the Holy Spirit to guide them in what they have to say when someone from the audience pipes up.
“Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” What the audience member was hoping was to get Jesus to act as most rabbis would have acted, which is to go into a long discussion of the laws of inheritance and to come up with a legal ruling for him...for a small percentage of the inheritance, of course. Perhaps he should have waited on the Spirit just a little longer.
Jesus turns him down with surprising gentleness, and instead uses his question to launch into a story about a man who had so much stuff that he was having to think about building a new five car garage with a finished attic for storage. This is someone who has succeeded by every single standard of classical wisdom. He has invested wisely, he’s planted the right crops, and he is doing absolutely everything right. The wealthy man smiles to himself, sure that he’s going to have a chance to kick back and enjoy the bounty he’s gotten. I’m going to Disney World, baby!
But as Christ tells the story, that’s not what happens. It’s at that moment that God appears to the man and berates him. “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.” In an echo of Ecclesiastes, we hear: “And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”
This is the point in countless sermons where your friendly neighborhood televangelist would start talking about not storing up treasures for yourself but being rich towards God...something you should definitely keep in mind when you see the offering plate that’ll be coming ‘round later. But that totally misses the point of what Jesus is talking about.
Within the story, what is being demanded of the rich man isn’t his barns or his crops or his goods. What’s being claimed is his life...all of his days, all of his actions, all of the choices he has made. The Creator of the Universe couldn’t care less about possessions. It is life that God demands.
That’s one of the primary challenges facing us in our modern culture of work. A deep personal commitment to excellence in all that you do in the working world was viewed by the Protestant reformers as a sign of spiritual maturity. God has given us all certain gifts, and called each of us to a particular task in life, and our willingness to embrace that task and pursue it joyously is a sign of blessing.
But we’re not called on to pursue work for the sake of profit alone. We’re called to work because what work is a joyous and honorable thing. We’re each given a vocation as a part of contributing to the broader good of God’s creation.
What work should not be, though, is all consuming. If it devours time for friendships and fellowship, and takes away those moments that should be given over to prayer and thanksgiving, then it has grown beyond its rightful bounds.
It is our lives that will be demanded of us. When the time comes to settle that account, what will we have to offer?
Let that be so, for you and for me,
AMEN
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