Sense of Self / All You Need to Do

Job 23:1-9, 16-17; Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31

Your soul – not to mention our budget – is in mortal danger as you approach the grocery store checkout lane.

You say, "How?"

You've carefully filled your cart with the needed items outlined on your list. You patiently wait in line, always seeming to pick the one that's slowest. Yet somehow, by the time the checker begins tallying up the items in your cart, it has suddenly filled up with a pack of gum, a box of Tic- Tacs , a new TV Guide, a four-pack of AA bateries , three candy bars and a magazine for enquiring minds.

And, if you're a parent with a five year old in the cart, you may also have accumulated a new Pez dispenser, a mylar balloon with a Disney character on it and a plastic "cellular" telephone filled with tiny bubble-gum pieces. Stores purposefully pack this kind of junky, funky, consumer gunk into the narrow gauntlet we must run to get to the checkout counter. Things we would never intentionally have gone in search of now languish under our fingertips – inviting, no insisting, that we grab them.

Although impulsively buying a pack of gum or a candy bar hardly seems earth-shattering or soul-threatening, the truth is that when you multiply the results of such consumerism by millions of people caught up in such consumerism the worldwide ramifications of such little things as a checkout gauntlet are ominous.

I remember how after a bad day at work my father would say, "The world is going to hell in a hand basket." Today we can sigh even more deeply on a daily basis that the whole world is "going to hell in a shopping cart." For an increasing number of people, self-identity and life-
purpose are summed up by the mantra "I shop, therefore I am." Raging consumerism has left the philosopher Descartes' teaching "I think, therefore I am" in the dust, and our consumer culture has never even heard of, much less considered, God's revelation to Moses, "I am who I am; therefore, you are."

Like the rich young man in today's gospel text, we know ourselves, we identify ourselves, we define ourselves, by our possessions, our things, our "stuff." In that text Jesus told him that if he wanted eternal life all he had to do was sell everything he had and give it to the poor. But he couldn't do it. This young man was so possessed by his "stuff" that he couldn't unstuff himself for the sake of the poor, nor for his own sake and for his quest for eternal life. Faced with the choice between his old secure, in-control, in-charge self and the unknown possibilities of life as a disciple of Jesus, the rich man clung to his human illusions of power and control.

So we might ask, this morning, who or what controls your life? What is it that keeps you or me from doing what Jesus told the rich young man to do?

There are many problems facing our world today: poverty, environmental pollution, world famines, world plagues, nuclear terrorism, loss of biodiversity, deforestation, global warming, global cooling, economic crashes, desertification, exhaustion of natural resources, a real shortage of good moral leadership, energy shortages, asteroids, humankind's immunological deterioration, overpopulation. But the most vicious and voracious of all these problems is overconsumption.

But, of course, there are many who would argue with me on that one, saying, "Surely our world's most pressing problem is overpopulation, the nightmare of the Third World, where unchecked population growth results in rampant, crushing poverty and strips away the precious natural resources the land has to offer."

And, of course, these persons would have a point. The world population is climbing from five to eight billion. Every second, three human being die and six more are born; every year 100,000,000 humans are added to the planet's population. A billion new people are added to this spaceship Earth every decade, and the pace is increasing. At this rate, there will be – get this – 694 billion humans by 2150. And this means that other life forms are being pushed out of bed and into extinction.

In 1992, two of the major scientific groups in the world – the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London – issued a joint appeal to the world community. Here's the opening of the statement:

If current predictions of population growth prove accurate, and patterns of human activity on the planet remain unchanged, science and technology will not be able to prevent the irreversible degradation of the environment or continued poverty for much of the world.

The closing words of the document are even gloomier:

Global policies are urgently needed to promote more rapid economic development throughout the world, more environmentally benign patterns of human activity and a more rapid stabilization of world population . . . Sustainable development can be achieved, but only is irreversible gradation of the environment can be halted in time.

All of this is a profound half-truth. And the problem with every half-truth is the other half. The other half of the truth of "over-population" is the truth of "overconsumption," which is the truth of our Scripture lesson for this morning. Scientists calculate that 80 percent of the world's environmental damage is caused by the world's 1.1 billion overconsumers, not by the overpopulators. It is the 20 percent of the world's people who organize their lives around cars, meat-based diets and disposable products that are the primary reason that another 20 percent of the world's population lives in absolute deprivation. And if there was ever an organization that should stress the relationship between overpopulation and overconsumption, it is the church.

In our gospel lesson for this morning, Jesus struck a fatal blow to a young man's disease of addiction and suicidal mania. In Colossians 3:1-17, verse 5 specifies four sins of sensuality followed by "avarice" or "covetousness" which is "the drive to get and get, which is best defined as idolatry. The consumerist lifestyle is fatal to the soul as it is to the environment. One of the biggest beguilers of the Christian mind, even bigger than secularism or sex, is consumerism and its "shabby little gospel of greed and gain".

Economists like to call consumerism "The Jones Effect" (as in keeping up with the Joneses"). Others, like Pope John Paul II, call consumerism one of those "structures of sin" named "superdevelopment," which the pope defines as "an excessive availability of material goods for the benefit of certain social groups." In his 1990 World Day of Peace statement, "The Ecological Crisis: A Common Responsibility," the pope tied "superdevelopment" to our polluting and pillaging of the environment, and stated most emphatically, "The ecological crisis is a moral issue."

So, instead of glaring accusingly at those countries struggling to control their population growth, we must squarely attack the monster we ourselves have let ravage the world. On average, a U.S. citizen causes over 100 times more damage to the global environment than a person in a poor country. The average North American consumes five times more than a Mexican, 10 times more than a Chinese person and 30 times more than a person in India. The richest 25 percent of the world's population use 86 percent of all forest products, 75 percent of energy, and 72 percent of steel production. The poorest use only two percent of the world's resources.

Workers in the developed world – that North America, Western Europe, and Japan – represent about 20 percent of the world's population. They use over 67 percent of natural resources consumed each year and generate over 80 percent of its pollutants. For added perspective, the poorest 20 percent consume about two percent of resources.

Jesus taught all would-be followers to relinquish the love of "things," the desire for stuff that fills our hearts with an insatiable desire for more and controls the mainsprings of our lives. This is why one of the leaders of the Christian faith has said, "Simplicity, moderation and discipline, as well as a spirit of sacrifice, must become part of everyday life, lest all suffer the negative consequences of the careless habits of a few.

But even attempting to curb our won consumerism is not the final answer. The heart of all the planetary problems we face is the human heart. The whole human race is suffering from a virulent, deadly form of heart disease. It is sin and deception and separation from God that have eaten into the vital structures of our hearts and caused the appearance of these life-threatening symptoms.

Jesus revealed to the rich young man the heart of his shortcomings. His "stuff" blocked the staff of life. His love of stuff blocked his way to genuine discipleship, to the kingdom of God. Jesus challenged the man to give up his trust in things, to relinquish his hold on what he held, to give up his control, to take up God's security.

In exchange, Jesus offered the rich man a place as one of his disciples. Here was an offer from the Messiah to travel with him, live and walk with him on an intimate, daily basis. That Jesus' words hit directly at the center of this rich man's most damaged, separated self is evident by the pain those words caused him. The rich man does not scoff or jeer at Jesus' suggestion. He is "shocked," and goes away "grieving," in obvious pain. He feels the truth of Jesus' diagnosis. But he is not able to reach out and take the offered cure.

Can you? Do you know what you're missing if you don't?

Whales are some of the most amazing creatures God made. Fin whales can easily hear the bleeps of other fin whales 4,000 miles away, some scientists argue 13,000 miles away. Humpbacks like to sing in rhyme, and the songs hey sing are always changing while at the same time, they are passed from male to male, so that in any one season all the whales of a single ocean will be singing the same song.

In February 1928, a female blue whale who roamed freely throughout the Antarctic for decades was killed. From measurements taken at the time, some scientists are convinced that she was the largest creature ever to have lived on Earth – bigger than any known dinosaur or sea monster.

But the people who had the privilege of seeing her never saw her. They were in such a hurry to harvest her blubber and find other family members of her huge species that they salvaged nothing – not a single picture, not a single bone. Nothing.

What are you missing in life because of the blubber? What part of God's kingdom are you not experiencing because of the rush to kill or make a killing? What good is "stuff" without the staff of life? Will you give up the chaff for the staff . . . of life? Maybe that's all you need to do to get a sense of self.

Amen.