Stories matter
Luke 16:1-13, Amos 8:4-7, 1 Timothy 2:1-7
Philip Van Dam
 

It is important how we tell a story.  If we say that a girl has to clean the entire house while her stepmother and stepsisters get to have fun, then we have one picture.  If we say that a woman has three teenage daughters, one of whom is a step daughter, and her step daughter always feels picked on, no matter what the woman and her other two daughters do, then we get a very different picture.  In one we have the normal view of Cinderella.  In the other we have a very different view, where the stepmother and sisters are trying to do what they can for an ungrateful Cinderella.

Similarly, if we say that a person would hide on highways to rob hard working people of their money, and then share the money with his gang and their accomplices, we are saying something quite different from if we say that a person stole from the rich and gave to the poor.  Of course these stories describe Robin Hood.  But our story tends to be determined by who we are, or who we would be if we were in the story.  Up through the 1800s and the first part of the 1900s most Americans would have been relatively poor, and they were being victimized by the wealthy and powerful.  We would have identified with Robin Hood.  But things have changed, even if we don't realize or acknowledge it.

Everyone here knows where they were on Sept. 11.  That will be seared into our memories for the rest of our lives.  Here people did not panic too much.  Back in the state of Indiana people reacted as if it were a blizzard.  Gas stations in some towns soon sold out of all of their gas.  In order to keep from running out of gas some stations raised their prices.  This would keep people from buying more gas than they needed.  That was one perspective.  I heard a pastor complaining about a gas station that raised its prices 30 cents near here.  In some places in Indiana they raised the prices 2 and 3 dollars a gallon.  Most customers would call it price gouging.  Similarly most customers who were able to get gas, or were able to buy food in the grocery stores would say they were just being prepared.  They did not see their actions as harming anyone.  But for the person who is just about out of gas, and has to take his or her kid to the hospital when there are no stations in town with gas.

I think that we would see our actions as being harmful if we individually bought up all the food in town when a bad snowstorm was hitting, and then some people starved.  We can see it if we do it all by ourselves, but we usually don't see it if we just contribute to the problem.  Amos says, "Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land".  What do we say in response to this?  I don't trample on the needy.  I don't ruin the poor.  I run my business ethically.  The question for us is- Is this enough?  Is it enough to simply run our business ethically and not cheat people?  I think that the answer is no.
If we go to the store and buy up all the food, we are not cheating anyone.  We just got there first.  You remember the old saying; finders keepers, losers weepers.   We tell ourselves that we were the first ones to develop a technology, and so we are entitled to all the wealth that comes from it.  In the story of the Good Samaritan, the priest and the Levite did not take anything from the man who had been robbed.  They were not the robbers.  They were just fulfilling their duties to remain ritually clean so that they could perform their duties in the temple.

We do the same today.  We go about our business.  We look at what we have done, and we say I haven't cheated anyone, I haven't lied to anyone, I haven't broken any of the commandments, so I must be in pretty good shape.  There are some problems with this attitude.  Jesus talked with a rich young ruler who thought the same thing.  He had kept all of the commandments, but then Jesus asked him to give up all he had and follow him.  The problem is that the rich young ruler had not followed the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself.  With modern communications and transportation this commandment has expanded to include the whole world.  This is because goods and services move across the world, and because we can help or hurt people on the other side of the world.

Let me illustrate this.  I tend to overeat, and since others in the world have less food than they need, then I am taking food from these people, and am therefore breaking this commandment.  But there are bigger examples.  One third of the world's tuna harvest goes to feed American cats.  The fertilizer used on American golf courses is enough to grow enough food to feed the world.  What we as Americans use reduces what is left for the rest of the world.  When we use these resources, they aren't there for our neighbors in other parts of the world.  I am not saying you can't have cats.   We have two.  But when we don't spay or neuter our cats, and more cats are born than are needed, then we are taking food away from people in other parts of the world.

What keeps us consuming these resources are the stories we tell ourselves.  The first story is that it doesn't hurt anybody else.  But we also tell ourselves that we need to do this.  We need to accumulate more wealth so that we will have enough.  We need to accumulate more things to make our life easier.  Much of our motivation is because we feel insecure.  We feel like we need to keep up with everybody else.   I have to do all of these things because of what other people are doing.  And so we put our faith in our wealth. I have seen this happen with congregations.  My Mom's congregation was left three million dollars.  They invested and used the interest for missions.  Giving for missions has gone every year since.  We put our faith in this countries strength, but on Sept. 11, we were shown that this country is not almighty.

We need to realize that we cannot put our ultimate faith in anything of this earth.   We cannot put our faith in anything that is produced by us.  We are limited.   We are mortal, and everything we produce is temporary.  This includes the United States.  Everything in this life will eventually end.  1 Corinthians 13 says that everything eventually comes to an end.  Saying that we shouldn't put our faith in limited things doesn't mean that we cannot own things.  Of course we can.  We just cannot put our faith in them.

The point is that we don't need to put our faith in limited things.  This is because we have been baptized.  In our baptism we were given everything that we need.   We were given eternal life.  We were given the power to serve God.  We were given Christ himself.  Because of our baptism we will never be alone.  And because of our baptism we never have to be afraid or insecure ever again.  Because of our baptism we have the freedom to give to others, without worrying that we won't have enough.  Because of our baptism we can take risks, like the Good Samaritan, knowing that the new life we have been given can never be taken away.  Because of our baptism we are free to love our neighbors as ourselves, even when our neighbor is on the other side of the world.