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Sermon: Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (C) - 18th July 2010
St Aidan's Anglican Church West Epping 8:30 am
Readings: Amos 8:1-12; Psalm 52; Colossians 1:15-29; Luke 10:38-42
In the church I grew up in there was one quote from Jesus that caused a lot of debate. It was the quote Jesus gave during his temptation. Jesus had been fasting for forty days. He was hungry and his first temptation was to turn stones into bread. Jesus response was, “Man does not live by bread alone.” People didn’t like this teaching. They thought of all the starving people in the world. They thought of all those who died because they had no bread to eat. They made the point, that without bread, there can be no life.
We need some bread each day. And that is exactly right. And that is what we pray in the Lord’s Prayer. Give us this day our daily bread. We live at a unique time in the world’s history. Because we know we have enough food to feed the whole world. The world is that wealthy. Though we know that wealth is concentrated in just a few countries. The question for us is “how much do we really need?” How much bread is enough for us?
No matter how much we have, we have that little voice inside that burrows away telling us it would always be better if we could have more. And we live in an environment that always encourages us to want more. The desire to want more, to consume more seems foundational to our Western consumer economy. This economy survives when it can continually achieve growth. It only seems healthy when it can get bigger and bigger.
But things quickly fall apart when there is no growth or when things expand too quickly. Just recently we had our world financial crisis. And as we look at the state of Europe it seems that crisis has a long way to go. But remember what it was like before the crisis. We had this long bull market. The stock market grew and grew every year. People believed they had stumbled on a new kind of economy that would always go up. But people ran out of things to sell, and so new products were developed. Sadly they bundled up junk loans, gave them fancy names and sold them off as well. Amazingly, for a while even those did well. Even those in the financial industry found it difficult to see how this could continue. And of course it couldn’t.
Remember back to the days H.I.H. Back then it was said that no one understood insurance like Ray Williams. That was because no one could understand how his business model could work. And it met its eventual failure just as stock markets around the world crashed in 2008. Now we are left with two groups. One group won’t trust the market again. But there is the other group who wants to return to the good old days without any reform even though we have seen our markets return to the same madness as the Great Crash.
Where do we go to from here? We are permanently wedded to the market system. We don’t have an obvious alternative we could choose. We know that the system we have brings many benefits. Nothing else would have produced the standard of living we now enjoy. Nothing else drives human endeavour like free enterprise. How else would we have the medicines we have, the technology we have? We are at a point that is unique in human history because of our consumer society.
However, it contains its own distortions. For our economy to work it is necessary that we keep consuming. But that consumption usually outstrips our needs. Our consumption is distorted because in fact we over-consume. And that happens because of several factors.
First, we have advertising. This does more than just give us information about a product. The advertiser is attempting to awaken in us a desire for their product. Have you noticed that they never advertise potatoes. I love potatoes and people will buy them whether they advertise or not. I notice Telstra is advertising a new phone. It looks very clever. But I don’t know what it does or why I would need it. The advertisers haven’t awakened in me a desire for that product. But maybe if it was a car, or a holiday or a new film, they might get my attention. They might create in me a desire to buy those things. But the truth is, I could live quite happily without those things.
Then there is built-in obsolescence. No one makes products that last for very long. My grandmother had a sewing machine that lasted for most of her life. You can’t get products like that now. Products must wear out quickly so you will keep buying. How long does a toaster or an iron last these days? No wonder Breville does so well.
Then we have easy credit. This comes in many forms. You have seen those ads that claim, “Nothing to pay till 2012.” You can buy without money. You can buy without saving up. Now credit has its place but the rules have changed. Once you could get credit to buy things that didn’t wear out – things that increased in value – such as a house or land. If you couldn’t pay the loan you could use the asset to repay the debt. But now we use credit to buy products that lose value and wear out. We have the debt but we don’t have any assets. Just recently in Australia our credit card debt became greater than our mortgage debt for the first time in our history. Fortunately, we have almost full employment. But what would happen if unemployment rose sharply and those debts could not be serviced? It becomes more critical when you consider that those most likely to lose their jobs probably have the highest levels of credit card debt. If they defaulted, where would our banks be then?
But another force in our market is the onward march of technology. There are always new products to buy, new products that make our old products look so very out-of-date. I remember the impact colour TV had in Australia. Within a few years everyone had colour TV. Then we got LCD and plasma flat screen TV’s. Harvey Norman finds it hard to keep up with the demand. We had video, that was replaced with DVD’s Then came blue ray. Now we have 3-D TV. But that won’t be the end of it. One electronics company has the policy where they will introduce a significant new product every two years, always trying to fuel our desire to buy more and more.
But what is the impact of this on us? We can’t escape it. This is the world we live in and the market will have its effect upon us. We could end up with too much debt. We could be working too hard. We will feel pressure upon us to keep up with the Joneses. It can be difficult to sort out when enough is enough. A result of this is that we can lose all sense of satisfaction and contentment. That can be replaced by a sense of anxiety that we haven’t done enough. We can find we are worried and upset by many things.
This was Israel’s problem in Amos’s day. At that time the people were very wealthy. Their farms were very productive. It was regarded as a great time of blessing for Israel. Yet the people became so focussed upon making money and being financially successful that it dominated their lives. They did anything to gain an advantage. They resented the Sabbath because it interrupted their trade. They found it hard to wait until it had passed. And when they got back to business they used every trick in the book to gain an advantage. They used wrong measures. They charge excessive prices. Their scales were faulty, they relied on slavery and they sold the sweepings from the floor along with the grain. In every way they corrupted their own markets. This is where they took free enterprise. And so the judgment came that the songs of the Temple will end in weeping. This is where we get that phrase “It will all end in tears.”
So what can we do about it? We need to remind ourselves of the pressures we are under from the media, from our society. We need to remind ourselves again of what is important to us, what is it that really matters to us and then we need to hold on to it, even when that runs counter to the world around us. We must know our values, trust our values, and hold on to them in spite of any opposition.
This is the point of the story of Mary and Martha. Martha had invited Jesus into her home, but she is so like us today. It is easy to become upset and worried by many things. Mary responded differently. Here was Jesus in her home. This was a unique opportunity to learn from him. She did something quite radical. She sat at his feet. She adopted the position of the disciple. This was not the place for a woman. But she was wise enough to take this step and Jesus commended her for it. She risked criticism for what she knew was important. We cannot avoid living in this world but we need not let the world force us into its mould. We are called to be the light on the hill, the salt of the earth. We do that best when we have sorted out what is important to us and we have committed our lives to it..