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Sunday, September 26, 2010

When Dreams Become Nightmares

By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Scripture: Matthew 16:24-26 from the Common English Bible 

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. ²⁵All who want to save their lives will lose them. But all who lose their lives because of me will find them. ²⁶Why would people gain the whole world but lose their lives? What will people give in exchange for their lives?

Newsweek magazine one week ago had a very arresting and sobering back page that some of you saw. It told about the 33 miners in Chile who are trapped 2200 feet underground and what is being done to help them survive for the next few months till they are rescued.

Then it asked this question:

WHAT IF EVERYTHING YOU NEEDED TO SURVIVE HAD TO FIT THROUGH THIS SPACE?

There was a picture of the 3.2 inch wide borehole that is being used 24 hours a day-three of these boreholes-and here is the list of all the essentials that are being winched up and down through these very small holes 24 hours a day to keep the miners alive and sane:

• A daily 2000 calorie diet for each miner: nutrition shakes, bread, ham and kiwi fruit
• Five liters of bottled water per day per miner
• Toothbrushes, toothpaste, razors, toiletries
• Special waterproof shoes and lightweight clothing with copper fibers to combat bacteria and fungi
• Journals and reading materials including 33 mini Bibles
• Vitamin D supplements
• A camera and phone line to speak to family, rescue workers, and psychiatrists

That is not a complete list from the article, but I was struck by the question: what if everything you need for the next three months had to fit through a 3.2 inch borehole—could we get what we need-not what we want, but what we need?

The other event that reinforced that question for me these past weeks is the tragic fire near Boulder where 160 homes were destroyed-worst residential devastation in Colorado history. Families had to make some fast decisions about what they were going to take with them from their homes in a matter of minutes. Some had prepared ahead of time a box with important documents or pictures or other items; others had to make more rapid decisions.

What would you take if you had short notice of a fire? What pictures, mementos, objects would be necessary to feed your soul and your life, and would not we all begin to realize that most of the stuff we spend time accumulating is not as important as we thought it was?

What do we NEED to survive and live fully-not what do we want, but what do we NEED?

We are beginning a five-week sermon series today entitled ENOUGH: DISCOVERING JOY THROUGH SIMPLICITY AND GENEROSITY. We have found this program from the Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City and it is being used so widely through United Methodist churches this fall that we have had some difficulty getting a few of the basic books by Adam Hamilton because they are on back order. Some of you have already read the book in a book study here or on your own, and many of us have already begun to make a shift in our culture’s highly consumeristic attitudes and have put some of the values into practice.

The program, if we take it seriously, is deeply Biblical and it gives us a chance to do financial management based on Biblical principles. In that way, it is just like the approach of Dave Ramsey in his Financial Peace University (51 persons are in the new class right now!). The assumptions are that it is good to live below our means, that we want to have as little debt as possible and that how we handle and approach our finances is really a spiritual issue and it has to do with what we worship and what we value most.

That is the way Jesus talks, and Jesus realizing the seductive power of money for all people, tells us that if we worship money, we will get in trouble, but if we worship God and utilize our money as a tool without idolizing it, we will be able to live the life God wants for us.

And Jesus tells us that it is possible to gain the whole world-all the stuff in the world that we THINK will give us happiness and lose ourselves-and to lose our souls in the process.

He also says that a person’s true life is not made up of what we own, no matter how much we own! Have you found that?

The message of Jesus about consumerism is radically different from the other messages around us. Jesus asks us to hold on loosely to what we own-to look regularly at what is enough stuff in our lives. Jesus says that only one thing belongs in first place in life and that is God, and, here is this risky, bold promise-that when we put God at the center of life, all the other things we worry about fall into place.

We forget sometimes how radically countercultural Christ is. We forget how subversive his teachings are-not only about consumerism but about everything else.

Our advertising tells us that having more will make us happier, that keeping up with, surpassing our neighbors in amassing more things, will give us happiness.

And so we are tempted to overspend, to collect more, to buy more, to consume beyond our means.

And all of us face those temptations. Have you ever been tempted to buy something you don’t need? Raise your hand if so. Have you ever bought something and then later regretted it?  Raise your hand.

One of the teachers in our Financial Peace Course told a few weeks ago about the class member in last spring’s class who had gone shopping at Target. She had gone in with her list and had promised herself that she would only put in her shopping cart the things on her list, but she had been tempted-as we all are- and had accumulated in her cart quite a few other things that were not on the list, and when she got to the front and was about to check out, she felt a moment of truth.

She pushed her cart to the side, called a fellow class member, they talked a bit, and as a result of that brief conversation, she left the cart there in the store still full of all of what she had collected, did not buy anything, and walked out of the store to come back a different time when she would only buy what she needed-what she had on the list.

What I like about that story is that is recognizes that shopping can become a kind of addiction and that all of us can be tempted to consume a thing or two that we don’t really need. My temptation about that over the past 40 years is about clothing-particularly something on sale-and I have wound up over the years with a shirt or two in my closet that I don’t really need and haven’t worn for a while-in fact in preparing for this sermon series I went back through my closet and gave a couple of things away.

Let me take a side step for a minute. When any minister in our congregation talks on Sunday morning, we are attempting the impossible task of interpreting the scripture message to 4000 people-that’s how many people we serve, and it is impossible to do that perfectly because our experiences this morning are so varied and different:

So while one of us may talk about giving away some clothing, others of us are worrying about keeping our home or paying the next rent payment while others of us have felt secure enough to do some travel or to be planning some travel. Please know that any of us tries to prayerfully try to take all those circumstances into account.

There still is a basic point that most of us here have been tempted by and bought into a culture of consumerism that says that the only way to have the good life and to be happy is to have MORE.

And it is that emphasis on MORE instead of redefining what is really ENOUGH that has led us from the American dream to the American nightmare. We have lived beyond our means, we have bought goods and even houses that we cannot afford, and we are, individually and as a country right now, suffering the consequences materially and, I believe, spiritually as well.

Here is what two economists tell us in a video used in the ENOUGH curriculum:

[VIDEO CLIP]

Here are the terms that some writers have used to describe where we are individually and as a nation:

We have succumbed to two major diseases: AFFLUENZA AND CREDITITIS!

AFFLUENZA is the pursuit of more and bigger and better STUFF. Most of us have been affected by this worship of stuff, by “the desire to acquire”, and we are worse off spiritually for pursuing that eventual nightmare. And it has distorted our answer to the dramatic question from the Chilean miners of what we really need versus what we think we want. How much space do we need to live happily? The average American home size has gone from 1660 square feet in 1973 to 2400 square feet in 2004-probably larger now.

And according to an article on the Slate magazine web site, in 2005, there was estimated to be 1.9 billion square feet of self storage space in our country-probably more now.

On the other hand, many of our neighbors and members over 55 or so find themselves downsizing to smaller living spaces and finding that they can be just as happy living in 1000 square feet or 1500 square feet of space as they were in 2500 square feet or 3000 square feet of space.

AFFLUENZA is one of the diseases that has infected us and taken some of us off our spiritual track.

The other infectious disease has been CREDITITIS. We have succumbed to overusing our credit cards, over dependent on debt, purchasing more than we can afford, and not only have we and our families suffered from that disease, our nation has suffered from that.

In 1990, the average credit card debt was $3000. Last year, the average credit card debt was over $9000.(Mark Brinker, Hoffmanbrinker.com, 2008).And Dave Ramsey tell us that a high percentage of college graduates are coming out of college not only with student loan debt, but also significant credit card debt as well.

 And when people sign up for Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University class, one of the goals they learn about early on is to stop using credit cards, to set aside each month the cash needed for those monthly obligations, and to pay down and pay off those credit cards. One source tells us that the average consumer credit card purchase is 125% of what a cash purchase would be because if we use a credit card, it doesn’t feel as real as if we have to put down the cash. Is that true for you?

How do we deal with those diseases and regain control of our finances instead of being controlled by them? How do we reduce the burden of debt and reorder our lives?

Does this sound unpatriotic? Does this sound just like common sense and good management and responsible and even Biblical stewardship?

We get back to what has worked for thousands of years. We stop worshiping our stuff and put God’s ways back in the center of life.  We determine to live below our means and to live more simply. We all want to be more generous as well as more in control of what we are blessed with.

We will be offering helps and resources over the next few Sundays to reach those goals. We will have in a week or so some key tags to take with you in your pockets that emphasize CONTENTMENT-that is the word on one side, and on the other side is this prayer:

LORD, HELP ME TO BE GRATEFUL FOR WHAT I HAVE, TO REMEMBER THAT I DON’T NEED MOST OF WHAT I WANT, AND THAT JOY IS FOUND IN SIMPLICITY AND GENEROSITY.

And we will have some mirror clings that have six key financial principles that have been developed by Church of the Resurrection and are just some of the common sense approaches to both Biblical and practical financial management. They are consistent with all the practices, and I promise you that if we all follow them, we will feel more secure, we will have the money we need to do what is important, we will have ENOUGH, and we will discover joy through simplicity and generosity.

We will close today with this prayer:

CHANGE MY HEART O GOD.

CLEAN ME OUT INSIDE.

MAKE ME NEW.

HEAL MY DESIRES.

HELP ME TO HOLD MY POSSESSIONS LOOSELY.

HELP ME TO LOVE YOU.

TEACH ME SIMPLICITY.

TEACH ME GENEROSITY AND HELP ME TO HAVE JOY.

I OFFER MY LIFE TO YOU IN JESUS NAME. AMEN.