Clayton Presbyterian Church
October 15, 2006
We are mesmerized by wealth, whether it be “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” “MTV Cribs,” or your local parade of homes. We have this insatiable curiosity to see how those richer than us live. Of course, it doesn’t end there. Every week there seems to be a new magazine devoted to following the lives of the celebrities. It seems like just about every kind of magazine follows the lives of celebrities. What effect does this have on us? How does it make us feel when we don’t have that kind of life? We are not alone in this habit. If you don’t believe me, listen to Psalm 73.
Scripture: Psalm 73
1 Truly God is good to the upright, to those who are pure in heart. 2 But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled; my steps had nearly slipped. 3 For I was envious of the arrogant; I saw the prosperity of the wicked. 4 For they have no pain; their bodies are sound and sleek. 5 They are not in trouble as others are; they are not plagued like other people. 6 Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them like a garment. 7 Their eyes swell out with fatness; their hearts overflow with follies. 8 They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression. 9 They set their mouths against heaven, and their tongues range over the earth. 10 Therefore the people turn and praise them, and find no fault in them. 11 And they say, "How can God know? Is there knowledge in the Most High?" 12 Such are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches. 13 All in vain I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. 14 For all day long I have been plagued, and am punished every morning.
15 If I had said, "I will talk on in this way," I would have been untrue to the circle of your children. 16 But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, 17 until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I perceived their end. 18 Truly you set them in slippery places; you make them fall to ruin. 19 How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors! 20 They are like a dream when one awakes; on awaking you despise their phantoms.
21 When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, 22 I was stupid and ignorant; I was like a brute beast toward you. 23 Nevertheless I am continually with you; you hold my right hand. 24 You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me with honor. 25 Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you. 26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. 27 Indeed, those who are far from you will perish; you put an end to those who are false to you. 28 But for me it is good to be near God; I have made the Lord God my refuge, to tell of all your works. (NRSV)
Being Poor in a Rich World
The psalmist looks around and sees the rich, and they look pretty fat and happy. Being fat in the ancient world was a clear sign prosperity, for it was only the rich who could afford enough food to get fat. They don’t have the same pain and struggles as other people do. They don’t live paycheck to paycheck. They are so full of themselves. You would think that the world revolved around them. They mock the whole idea of God and use whatever means necessary to get what they want. Others turn to them, not to find fault with their lives, but to praise them and pat them on the back.
Now, if I didn’t know better, I would think that this was an editorial from today’s paper. He could easily be talking about Hollywood stars. For, they are the rich and famous, who take themselves so seriously, as if they were the center of the earth. They have no use for God. They seem to be able to pay their way out of any trouble that they get into. They don’t live lives worthy of being emulated and yet millions just love to tune in and watch them on award show after award show.
We are in the same place as the psalmist.
What kind of effect does this have on us as we peer into the lifestyles of the rich and famous? I think as much as anything, it makes us dissatisfied with our lives. You flip through Architectural Digest, or some other home décor magazine, and all of a sudden you house looks pretty shabby. You look through fashion magazines and in an instant you are out of fashion and fat. You look through a car magazine and in a flash your three year-old car is an beat up junker. It is like magic, really. In one moment you are content, then poof, the next your not. One French writer said more than a hundred years ago that the surest way to remodel your whole living room is just to replace one thing. And then that one new thing makes everything else look a bit older. And so you update the next thing and then the next, until the whole room has been redecorated.
This is in fact the purpose of most television commercials: to make you feel dissatisfied with what you have. They show us images of people who have it altogether, or who just got their lives altogether by purchasing some wonder product. And if we let ourselves, we will soon be swept up into the whole picture and wonder why our lives our so bad, while others have it so good. Why can’t we have it good like all of those other people, we ask?
The psalmist is made miserable with the question of how those who can be so unrighteous can enjoy prosperity, while he tries to live a good and righteous life, but gets nothing. This is what he says in verses 13 and 14, “All in vain I have kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence. For all day long I have been plagued, and am punished every morning.” He wants to understand this but he can’t.
This is how real the psalms are. The psalmist looks around at the world, and if he doesn’t understand something, he brings it to God.
In fact, it is when he is in God’s presence that he gets the answer to his question. He is in the temple and he sees the whole picture. He sees the end. The end is ultimately God himself. We were created by and for him. You can only go so long in this life before you realize that nothing else is going to satisfy. Those who pursue riches and arrogance and lavish lifestyles are going to end up empty. We can see signs of that even now. Rich people are no happier. They probably have more divorces than the rest. They have built their lives on sand and when the storms come, their houses will not stand.
While this is a very current problem for us, this is in fact an age-old lesson.
Solon’s Wisdom and Croesus’ Folly
There was a man named Solon who lived in ancient Greece and who was very wise. He was famous for giving the city of Athens just laws. After doing so, he set about traveling. He went from Greece to present day Turkey to a kingdom called, Sardis. The ruler there was a man named King Croesus who was said to be the richest man in the world. He had heard about this Solon and his wisdom and so he asked him a question. “Who is the happiest man you have ever known?” he inquired.
In his vanity he expected to hear, “Why, yourself, your majesty.” But instead he gave the name of a man in Greece who lived and died simply and nobly. The king then asked him who was the next happiest, confident that he would at least rate second. But no. King Croesus then interrupts Solon.
"But," cried Crœsus, "do you not think a rich and powerful king like me is happy?"
"Ah, Crœsus," said Solon, "I call no man happy until he is dead. You are rich; you are king of thousands of people; you live a life of luxury; but none of these things proves you happy. When I hear whether or not your life has ended nobly, then I shall know whether or not you were really happy."
Years afterward when Crœsus had lost his kingdom and his wealth, he saw how wise this speech of Solon was. Power and wealth are very slippery. You can do your best to acquire them and to keep them, but they just slip through your hands. In the end, those who seem to have so much, will have nothing.
But the flipside of that is that those who seem to have so little will end up with so much. Towards the end of the psalm, the psalmist declares, “My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” What confidence!
I don’t know about you, but I would trade everything that I have to get the strength of God in my life. For if God is my portion, my supply, then I will never lack anything. God is the only one who can satisfy.
The truth that this psalm proclaims is that when we look to God, we find the desire and satisfaction of our hearts. When we look around us at all of the other things, we are discontented. We feel like we will never have enough and we feel empty, when we should be feeling full.
A Passion for Giving
In 2005, when Thomas Cannon died of colon cancer in a hospital in Richmond, Virginia, he was 79. Thomas described himself a "poor man's philanthropist."
When Thomas was 3-years-old, his father died. Once Thomas' mother remarried, the family of six lived in a three-room wooden shack without running water or electricity.
As an adult, Thomas went to work with the postal service. He never made more than $25,000 a year. Upon retirement, he and his wife lived in poverty. Yet over the course of 33 years, Thomas gave away more than $156,000. His gifts were mainly in the form of $1,000 checks given to people he read about in the newspaper who were going through hard times or who especially exemplified courage or kindness. A youth worker in a low-income apartment complex, a volunteer faithfully serving at an elementary school, a Vietnamese couple wanting to return home to visit, and a teenager abandoned as an infant were some of the recipients of Thomas' benevolence.
Thomas' motivation came from an incident that happened as a young man while away at a Naval signal school. When an explosion at Chicago's Port took the lives of many of his shipmates, Thomas concluded "he had been spared to help others and be a role model." This led to his passion for giving.
Cannon biographer, Sandra Waugaman, comments, "Not many people would consider living in a house in a poor neighborhood without central heat, air conditioning, or a telephone, and working overtime so that they could save money to give away."
His life had been saved and so he decided to give it away. If this was true for him, it is even more so for all of those who trust in Christ. For, he has saved our lives, so that we can give them away, just as he gave his life away for us.
How Much Is Enough?
For the next three weeks we will be talking about stewardship, which is the Biblical idea that all that we have is not our own, it is God’s. We hold all of our possessions in trust for God. The question for us is, “How can we be faithful stewards of God’s treasurers?” Is it by spending it all on ourselves? Is it by giving away a token amount and then spending the rest all on ourselves? Or does God have something else in mind?
We began today by looking at Psalm 73 because in it we are reminded that when we consider just how much money we have, if we always compare ourselves to those who are richer, we will never have enough. And if we don’t have enough, then we feel that we can’t afford to give any of it away. However, if we realize that living the lifestyle of the rich and famous might just make us less happy rather than more happy, we can learn to be more content with what we have.
Moreover, if we compare ourselves with the millions and billions of people in the world who have less than we do, we discover that WE ARE THE RICH ONES, and we CAN afford to give generously to others. The paradox is, that we will be happier.
You will be receiving a pledge card in the mail this week, with the request that you consider making a commitment and giving generously over the course of the next year.
But remember, as the Bible says, God loves a cheerful giver.