Sermon: The High Road (Aug 4, 2013)

Sermon: The High Road

Luke 12:13-21

Today’s Gospel, which is known to us as the parable of “The Rich Fool”, almost seems like a black comedy, but it is a passage of protest; “Why build bigger and bigger barns?”

In Korea, I have seen these things very often; mega-corporations like Samsung expand their business empire both domestically and globally, while completely monopolizing the Korean markets and destroying many small and medium-sized businesses. The company cares for its own wealth and welfare alone, not the innovation and entrepreneurial health of other businesses.

South Korea has thousands and thousands of churches in its small half of the Korean peninsula, including many mega-churches with tens of thousands of members. When a church is growing, people think first to build a bigger building to accommodate the increasing membership and eliminate barriers to its growth. Seeking God’s will and centering on the Spirit rarely comes as their first priority. It’s not only a Korean story, I believe. It’s the story of all of us who, in many ways, are influenced by the our world’s aggressive promotion of growth as the greatest good.

These days I have been thinking a lot about the evils inherent in transnational capitalism and neo-liberalism, two schools of thought steeped in the ‘growth first’ belief. In this paradigm of thinking and of the world, BIG is good. Greed is good.

In his 1987 film “Wall Street”, director Oliver Stone creates an icon of excess in the character of Gordon Gekko. Michael Douglas won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Gekko, and many of us still remember his iconic speech in the movie:

“The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed – for lack of a better word – is good.

Greed is right.

Greed works.

Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Greed, in all of its forms – greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge – has marked the upward surge of mankind.

And greed – you mark my words – will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.”

Gekko is a fictional character, but he has real life counterparts. On May 18, 1986, Ivan Boesky, the king of junk bonds, advised the graduating students of the Berkeley business school; “Greed is all right, by the way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.” (Quoting from the website: Journey with Jesus.)

Well, in today’s Gospel, Jesus shouts sharply; “Watch out!”

“Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.”

I wonder how we are doing.

In my youth, I encountered a phrase which has become quite well-known among many Koreans:  “Small is Beautiful”. That doesn’t mean that you should collect pretty and small things for a hobby. What I understand from the grass-roots movement in Korea, which was inspired by a book with the same title, written by British economist E.F. Schumacher, is that we have to turn away from the belief that ‘bigger is better’ so that we can be gentler, less violent, more appreciative and self-sustaining ...."greener!" (Remind the people of the Call to Worship prayer: Green Hallelujah) 

Some people may feel uncomfortable if they believe that the church or any religious organization seems to be too much involved in politics or global economics. They may think the church should be apolitical, focusing purely on spiritual matters. But the spiritual and the political are inextricably intertwined - it matters to God that “Some people are sagging with food while others need $3 for a mosquito net.”(Shane Claiborne) It matters to God when some people become homeless while an Olympic stadium is built on the other side of the road. Why does spirituality matter to us? Spiritually really matters to us because love cannot be forced - but it can be made to grow, with patience. Empathy cannot be demanded, but it can be fostered, with care. Generosity cannot be extorted but it can be provoked, when empathy and spirituality have opened our eyes and our hearts to need and possibility, by being connected to, knowing and embracing God’s heart which cares for the 100 percent, not just the wealthy few and the middle class.

Greed is not only unhealthy, it’s wrong. We know that our world’s economic/political system is not a level playing field. To maintain and keep our lifestyle at the same level we have been enjoying for decades past, in this era when the world’s economy stagnates, with fewer job opportunities and less income - our shrinking paycheques demand cheaper products. With increased competition and the need to produce cheaper and cheaper products, corporations move their factories to Third World countries with slack labour laws and desperate workforces. Our need for cheap abundance, our desire to fill bigger and bigger barns, hurts local industries and engenders virtual slavery in poverty-stricken countries.  

God wants to see us dismantle disparity in our world, not build “bigger and bigger barns.”

Martin Luther King Jr. says in his sermon collection, The Strength to Love.

“One of the great tragedies of life is that people seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying. On the one hand, we proudly profess certain sublime and noble principles, but on the other hand, we sadly practise the very antithesis of these principles. We talk eloquently about our commitment to the principles of Christianity, and yet our lives are saturated with the practices of paganism. We proclaim our devotion to democracy, but we sadly practise the very opposite. We talk passionately about peace, and at the same time we assiduously prepare for war. We make our fervent pleas for the high road of justice, and then we tread unflinchingly the low road of injustice. This strange dichotomy, this agonizing gulf between the “ought” and the “is”, represents the tragic theme of people’s earthly pilgrimage.”

He continues on, saying, 
“Too unconcerned to love and too passionless to hate,

Too detached to be selfish and too lifeless to be unselfish,

Too indifferent to experience joy and too cold to express sorrow,

They are neither dead nor alive; they merely exist.”

I’m hoping that we, as a church, the body of Christ, we who have the warmth of flesh and the pulse of a bloodstream, do not merely “exist” but live the “ought.” Loving and suffering, caring and life-sharing, being concerned and being warm enough to express our deep sorrow for our neighbours’ sufferings are what we ought to do, how we ought to be, how we should live. The church cannot stop being political, because our faith, at its heart, is opposed to how much of the world is run today. Our faith is political, because what we fight - greed - is also political. What we should aspire to be is not politics-free but greed-free. What we should store away is the love of Christ.