Please pray with me… Loving and Gracious Lord, bless the hearing and bless the speaking, that your Word may take root in our hearts and bear fruit in our lives, for the healing of the world you so loved, Amen.
Have you heard about the newly classified disease effecting the nation, affluenza? No, not influenza, you can get immunized against the flu, but this is affluenza- what happens when too much stuff makes us sick. According to an “official” definition on their website, affluenza is the bloated, sluggish, and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses; or, an epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by dogged pursuit of the American Dream. Affluenza is the sickness of over-consumption, and it surely is contagious! This website has a list of symptoms of Affluenza that afflict the American public, alongside some scary statistics. For example, did you know that the average American parent spends 40 minutes a week playing with their children, but six hours shopping? Another statistic: since 1950, Americans have used more resources than everyone who ever lived before us. There is also a chronology of the American pursuit of wealth; in 1957 the personal happiness indicator peaked; since then, as consumption rose, personal happiness steadily decreased as well. The website even lists a treatment plan for this illness, and a list of tips to beat affluenza; the final one is an invitation to tune into the PBS TV show, check your local listings…
This silly play on the words affluence and influenza is a cheeky but candid reminder that our stuff can make us sick. Apparently, though, human preoccupation with stuff goes back a few more centuries, into the depths of the human heart. In today’s Gospel reading, we have a man about 2000 years older than the conception of modern day America who we might easily diagnose with affluenza. Our patient has no name; all we know about him is that he was about to travel somewhere, maybe on a business trip or a vacation. This man kneels before Jesus, compliments him, and with I imagine great admiration and anticipation, he asks him, “What can I do to inherit eternal life?” In some sense, he is asking Jesus, how can my life be the best possible? This isn’t necessarily about having some magical key into heaven; he is asking Jesus: how can I live life to the fullest? We know that this man is a righteous man; he comes from good stock, we might say. He has followed the commandments, he hasn’t strayed too far from the beaten path. When he tells Jesus that he has been a good man, the Gospel reading says, “Jesus looked at him and loved him.” I imagine Jesus smiling at him with tenderness, taking him seriously enough to tell him the truth of his condition. “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” This young man is shocked at his words, as if the rug had been pulled out from underneath him and his world were crumbling. He goes away grieving, we hear, because he was a man with many possessions. He had much to lose.
What we learn from the Gospels is that Jesus was a healer. Unlike many of the other people Jesus meets along his travels, who have illnesses, or are possessed by demons, this man is possessed by his own possessions. Maybe even without realizing it, he was attached to his stuff; so much so, that it was making him sick. Jesus’ diagnosis is affluenza, and his prescription is “let it all go and follow me”; the side effects of this medication are serious grief. The grief that comes with loss. Like a child who cries when someone takes away their toy; we all know the feeling; the rich, upright young man leaves Jesus’ side sad and shocked. We don’t know what becomes of him, only that it is very hard for the wealthy. They will have great grief. The disciples are shocked by this, too. When they ask, then who can be saved?, in Greek the word saved also means healed. Who will be able to get over this case of affluenza? How will any person attached to so many things be healed? Is there any hope for the rich young man, is there any hope for rich Americans?
If you are an Old Lutheran, I use the term Old loosely, to include myself or anyone old enough to remember the Green hymnals we got rid of last month, you remember one of the confessions said at the beginning of the service: “we confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.” We say these words not with individual pronouns, but with the communal we, because we all are caught in the web of sinfulness and brokenness that traps not only us personally but our whole world. We are trapped in a world of global marketplace that views people as human capital to be exploited, that would like to limit our lives to working, shopping, and resting- but only so that we can continue to work and shop. Other people are stuck making the things that we consume. When I was in South Africa, I was blessed and cursed to see a textile factory that made jeans destined for our country. Rows and rows of women cutting, sewing, folding, men in dark rooms laundering the jeans for the stonewashed print, the dyed and detergent-filled water flowing unregulated into the river people depended on to drink from. And we had to wonder, why? Why do we need these things? We live in a crazy world, possessed by our possessions, and we cannot free ourselves from this web. If it were all up to us, we would not be able to let go of the things that possess us. Jesus acknowledges to the disciples that it is not possible for human beings alone to enter the kingdom of God, but for God, all things are possible.
Jesus heals the rich man from his affluenza by setting him on a path of grief and discipleship. Now, the most important relationship in this man’s life is not his stuff, but this encounter with the living God, Jesus. He must grieve, and we will grieve, too, because we know that our own fulfillment is not in our wealth and not in our stuff, but in our relationships. You know the saying, “the most important things in life aren’t things.” How easily we forget, but yet when someone asks what truly matters in our lives, we know it is the relationships. In relationship with the people who share meals with us, who take the time to enjoy a cup of tea, to listen, to smile, and laugh. Our relationship with our ancestors, who tell us a story about who we are, where we come from, and what we ought to value. Our relationships with God on our Sabbath day, when we say NO to the craziness of the hectic world to sing next to our brothers and sisters to praise God for an hour and fifteen minutes. Our relationship with the people who make our stuff, like the man who found a picture of a girl in China who was putting his iphone together. Our relationship with the people who grow our food, with the land, the plants and animals that nourish our bodies help us to consume more mindfully. Our relationship with our stuff can be put in perspective by the areas of our lives we know give us real life.
It’s our relationships that give us life, not the things, and first and foremost it’s our relationship with Jesus shows us the way and calls us to follow: Jesus gives us the gift of reality, the gift of seeing a broken world, so that through our grief, new life can grow. The young man’s grief, and ours, is like the compost heap. We throw rotting things on the compost and we can turn the compost with a shovel, in order to help the growth along, but the actual composting happens by the mystery of God. A smelly mess turns into rich smelling sweet earth from which new life can grow. The mystery of grief, of the tears the young man shed on account of his many possessions, are the pathway to new life and possibilities.
For us, it is not possible to overcome the affluenza afflicting the nation. But for God, it is. In fact, Jesus is already leading the way. May God guide us through our grief as we learn to follow Jesus Christ, the risen one, for the healing of the whole world. Amen.
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