Distraction Derails Discernment

Luke 12:13-21; Hosea 11:1-11; Psalm 107:1-9

Last Sunday in our thoughts about prayers, I noted that when we shut ourselves in our rooms to pray in solitude we are often distracted. I mentioned wandering minds, ambient noise, pressing schedules, tiredness, boredom with praying about the same topics over and over, as well as nagging questions about the need for prayer and its efficacy. We get distracted when we try to pray.

Those aren’t the only times we get distracted. Our lives are filled with distractions. Studies have found that people’s attention spans are getting shorter. Just think of that in terms of television. A 60-second commercial seems interminable – you know, the ones that tell you what could go wrong if you take this new drug. No way you can pack all that into a brief commercial. A lot of commercials are now only 15 seconds long, and some are just 10 seconds.

Advertisers and marketers deliberately try to distract us. Why do you suppose they put displays of certain products at the ends of the check-out lines, or on shelves at eye-level?

Even though many of us no longer put in eight-hour days, we still get distracted by all the events that we need to remember, all the people that pass through our lives, all the noise that goes on – from the white noise of air conditioners to the beeping of the myriad electronic devices we live with every day. You know, the chime that tells us to buckle our seat belts, the dinging of the refrigerator when we stand with the door open staring into it, and the sounds our cell phones make when a text, an email, or some other notification comes in.

Instant communication keeps us on tenterhooks, always afraid that we are going to miss something, the next Facebook post, the next Twitter feed, the next Instagram. The very things that should alleviate our distractions have become distractions in and of themselves.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus wants us to deal with a particular distraction, one which he says is significant. This distraction is greed. If we can get beyond this distraction, we can accept Jesus’ invitation to a renewed relationship with God. In order for this to happen, Jesus has to expose our human greed and anxiety about money. The parable he tells singes away any illusion that the godly life is synonymous with the American ideals of prosperity and success.

Edward Friedman developed family systems theory and Peter Steinke has been the chief herald of it for over a generation. Their studies have shown that money matters often reveal the true heart of our individual households as well as the household of God. Money is always about more than money. Our spending, our saving, and our general attitude toward material wealth are all invested with emotions and memories. 

A case in point. I was born a generation after the Wall Street crash that ushered in the Great Depression. My parents were in their teens when the bottom fell out. While I was growing up, I heard their oft-retold stories about the deprivation their families experienced. At times it felt that we were still in the depression. And there were times in my youth when they didn’t have very many nickels to rub together. I know that my own attitude to money have been formed in part by that. I wrestle with the things they didn’t spend money on and the things they did spend money on, as well as their spoken and unspoken reasons for doing so. You may be able to think of similar situations in your own history. 

Not having money can be as distracting as having money and trying to keep what you have as well as trying to get more. There are deep trust issues involved. Do we trust more in money than in God? Do our attitudes about money – both poverty and wealth – distract us from the relationship that we are to be having with God? A capacity to trust in God can deepen only as these matters lessen their grip in our lives.

The man who interrupts Jesus’ group teaching was probably the younger of two brothers. By Jewish inheritance law, he would get a third of the estate while the older brother would get two-thirds. He wanted Jesus to be the arbitrator to broker the deal. That’s a role Jesus had no interest in performing.

Jesus keeps on speaking to the crowd, but using the interruption, tells them in no uncertain terms that they need to be watchful for insatiable greediness in their lives. I am sure that they didn’t see that coming. Many of them would have sided with the brother wanting his share of the pot. Jesus declared that the meaning and value of a person’s life was not established through amassing barns full of possessions. 

The economic reality of Jesus’ world was that insatiable greediness had implications for communities as well as individuals. If one person became richer and richer, it meant others conversely would become poorer and poorer. The issue of the one-percent people is as old as human society. Economics was, and still is, a zero-sum game. The individual’s life always has been intertwined with the lives of others as well as with God. Recent studies on hoarding show that the cause is the same for poor and rich, namely fear. Only the price tags are different.

So we have this rich man. “Filthy rich” might be a better description. He wasn’t just a gentleman farmer. He controlled much of the agricultural production for a whole region, a multi-county area, if you will. If that didn’t load the image sufficiently, the prevailing theological perspective of Jesus’ time would have regarded this rare bumper crop as a tremendously generous blessing from God. 

Instead of a blessing, however, the rich man reacts to the banner crop yield with anxiety and fear. “Where am I going to put all this?’ he asks himself. He has nowhere to store his crops. He’s not looking for a short-term or temporary solution. The farmer thinks this is going to be an on-going problem. He has no intention of either selling or sharing his crops at this point in time, in order to pass along the good fortune he has received. No, he wants a long-term solution, which quite simply is more barns, bigger barns, better barns. It is mostly about him. The grain does have to be stored. It can’t be left out in the open to spoil. 

The rich agri-businessman may have been outwardly think about protecting the crop, but inwardly he was telling himself to relax, eat, drink, and be merry. After all had a huge inventory of good things stored up for years to come. His business acumen was probably telling himself today’s storage dilemma was tomorrow’s balance sheet increase. A year or two down the road when there was a bad crop year, he can sell his grain holdings at a premium. After all, it wasn’t his fault that the weather didn’t cooperate. 

This man is so totally self-absorbed that he does not take others into account; neither does he bring his own mortality or God into his thinking. God, however, has taken note. The contrast between the rich man’s self-perception and God’s perception is quite stark. The rich man thinks he will have the life of ease for years to come. 

God has a completely different thought. God judges the man to be a fool and demand’s the man’s life that very night. The man has made elaborate preparations to guarantee himself a comfortable, self-indulgent future but took no preparation for his own mortality. He has been so distracted with his good harvest and with his own enjoyment of the good life, that he has gone off the rails and has failed to discern that God’s understanding of the good life was very different.

While this single reading doesn’t tell us what is involved in being rich toward God, Luke has surrounded it with texts that make it very clear. Being rich toward God means using one’s resources for the benefit of one’s neighbor in need, as the Samaritan did (10:25-37, the reading three weeks ago). Being rich toward God includes intentionally listening to Jesus’ word, which is what Mary did (10:38-42, the reading two weeks ago). Being rich toward God consists of prayerfully trusting that God will provide for the needs of life (11:1-13, last week’s reading). Being rich toward God involves selling possessions and giving alms as a means of establishing a lasting treasure in heaven (12:32-34, the gospel reading for next week). 

These parables and stories, and many more, invites us to shed the distractions that keep us from discerning the graciousness of God, a graciousness that cannot be ignored or run roughshod over by piques of self-importance, self-indulgence, or out and out greed. Don’t let the distractions of your life derail your ability to discern God’s presence in your life and in the lives of others. Shed the distractions and receive the life which is truly rich before God.

Unless noted otherwise, all scripture references are from The Common English Bible, © 2011 www.commonenglishbible.com. 
Copyright © 2016 First Presbyterian Church of Waverly, Ohio. Reprinted by permission.