What about just enough?

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23

Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity, and a chasing after wind. I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me - and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. So I turned and gave my heart up to despair concerning all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes the one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity. 

Psalm 49:1-12

Hear this, all you peoples; give ear, all you who dwell in the world, you of high degree and low, rich and poor together. My mouth shall speak of wisdom, and my heart shall meditate on understanding. I will incline my ear to a proverb and set forth my riddle upon the harp. Why should I be afraid in evil days, when the wickedness of those at my heels surrounds me, the wickedness of those who put their trust in their own prowess, and boast of their great riches? One can never redeem another, or give to God the ransom for another’s life; for the ransom of a life is so great that there would never be enough to pay it, in order to live forever and ever and never see the grave. For we see that the we die also; like the dull and stupid they perish and leave their wealth to those who come after them. Their graves shall be their homes forever, their dwelling places from generation to generation, though they had named lands after themselves. Even though honored, they cannot live forever; they are like the beasts that perish.

Colossians 3:1-11

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. But now you must get rid of such things - anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!

Luke 12:13-21

Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

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Something I am learning about the hard work of relationships, is that it is much easier to work toward being financially secure and professionally successful, much easier than it is to be with other people, and with myself, as we are. We have a long history of working ourselves to death to have something to show for ourselves, which is not to say we should go the other way and be completely wasteful stewards, but how much living do we miss when we fill up on earning value for ourselves instead of celebrating the value we already have?

My paternal grandfather worked every single day he could, never taking vacation until the very end of his career with the US Postal service, when he had so much vacation and sick time accumulated it was two years’ worth when he retired. Or at least that’s the way I’ve heard the story. And I really admire his work ethic, but he missed out on a lot of his family’s life by being on that train all the time to deliver the mail, and he wept over that loss when he was dying. To illustrate more recently than a century ago, I have worked hourly wage jobs with people who do not stop to take breaks even though it is legally required to do so. Which may not seem like a big deal, but people who are so afraid of a bad review that they even clock out for their lunch and keep doing little work-related things, that prevents their coworkers from feeling free to take their own breaks as they need them. 

This Gospel reading today makes me think of these people. The ones who work their way to wherever they think they are going, not so much out of passion for the work as for anxiety over their reputation and usefulness. They get so consumed by their work that, at the end of the day, a lot has been accomplished, much has been built, except there are no personal relationships grown. I’ve been one of those people, and I know a lot of people who would also identify with that struggle. It’s not that I’m not passionate about the work, but sometimes it feels like, if I stop working long enough to look around I might not like or even know what I see in the mirror. This story feels very familiar to the Mary and Martha experience from two weeks ago in that way.

Looking at the way the lectionary organizers put this together, I wonder what they were intending by keeping the prologue to this parable in the reading. Because the question that sparks this story is as important as the story itself. Two brothers coming to have Jesus decide who gets which part of an inheritance. Or, rather, one brother trying to use Jesus to get the other brother to divide things more fairly, it seems. Now, we won’t get the story of the Prodigal Son for a few more chapters in Luke, but this division of inheritance usually means that someone has died, and the two young men who can’t share what’s been left to them are having some sort of, what, family spat? Identity crisis? Like, who are they and what’s to be done with their reputations now that their patriarch is gone? What do they have to show for who they are now that they’re not identified by the previous family mascot? Or, even at its most basic, who are they to each other? Because if they need to bring in a third party to act fairly with one another, what must their relationship be like? Why do they rely on the law to navigate their brotherhood?

It’s so much easier to deal with stuff and with laws than with people. Logic is easier to wrap our heads around than feelings and anxieties and pains and vulnerabilities. But we are so much more than what box we fit into or what kind of paycheck we bring in. Going through the upstairs office next door, I’ve found all kinds of records of this parish’s history, and the papers and articles are absolutely fascinating. I was particularly excited to find the notebook of youth ministry, the Luther League records, to see how that ministry was done fifty or sixty years ago, but I was so disappointed to find only attendance and offering tallies. Not that it wasn’t cool to see last names I recognized, but I was so sad that the memories of what that ministry was had been reduced to statistics. Where were the campfire stories? The narratives about feeding the hungry or even having a social get-together? We are so much more than our numbers can tell. And yet isn’t that how we measure success? Isn’t that how we measure fear, too? After all, we're talking about sharing two pastors with eight congregations, and each parish has its own reasons for being part of the conversation, but de we expect to feel better about our value if we get more stuff done? Why do we do that to ourselves?

Something that the commentators brought up a few times on this Gospel today is the way the rich man talks to himself. His land produces much, and he takes credit for it. Then he is so turned in on himself he doesn’t even consider who else around him might be hungry, he doesn’t plan for a harvest festival for the community, he doesn’t celebrate his laborers who planted and brought in the harvest, he decides that what he has already isn’t enough and he must build himself larger storage units. What does he do for his soul? He takes his leisure, isolated from community, completely self-absorbed.

We’ve got this gap, this wall, this break in relationship between ourselves and one another, between ourselves and the Holy. It’s as though we’re trying our hardest to be something we’re not because there’s something we find inherently wrong with being mortal, with needing food and drink and sleep and other people. Well how much more could God do to tell us we are indeed good enough as we are, how much more than by putting on that same humanity completely to live and walk with us? And if we think there is anything less worthy about our pain, the very act of dying on the cross is what we identify as Jesus’ saving act for the world. 

Because being human is enough. It’s what we were created to be. Whatever we hide from behind our possessions and our status symbols, whatever fears of not measuring up to standards or not being worth loving, we tell a story of a God who has not only declared us very good from the beginning, but who has come to be with us as one of us. We tell a story of a God who loves us so deeply and completely, based on nothing we have done, based on nothing we have earned. Our story is of a God who loves us. Without measurement. Without requirement. Which also means that love, that acceptance, that embrace, is not something we can ever lose. Take a day off, God will still love you. Lose your job, you are still worthy. Close our doors, God still loves us. Our value does not rely on anything we do, and that can be really hard to sit with. Because it means we can’t control it. We can’t say we deserve more than anybody else. Or that we deserve less. It means we are good enough as we are, and always have been, and always will be, because God loves us just as much now as ever, and that love will not fade or waver, ever.