Community: The Eternal Investment
By Charles Rush
November 1, 1998
Luke 19: 1-10
ere is a true story of a lawyer in Texas trying to console a
weeping widow. Her husband had passed away without a will.
"Did the deceased have any last words?" asked the lawyer.
"You mean right before he died?" sobbed the widow.
"Yes" replied the lawyer. "They might be helpful if they are not
too painful for you to recall."
"Well, as I remember it, he said, 'Don't try to scare me! You
couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with that gun.'"
Famous last words. There have been many famous last words that
make you wonder. Richard Loeb was on death row for murder. He'd been
in a fight with another inmate and was stabbed 56 times. His last
words were "I think I'm going to make it." Speaking of optimistic
denial, the legendary swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks final words were,
"Never felt better". Or how about these William Palmer, who was hanged
in 1856, was told to step on the scaffold's trap door. He asked the
executioner "Is it safe?" Now there's a great question. Finally,
Phineas T. Barnum, the outrageous showman, asked a question with his
last words: "How were the receipts today at Madison Square Garden?"
There is an unreality to these comments. Their lives appear to
have just had the tape cut. They didn't conclude. Speaking
personally, I am hoping that I get a picture on what the meaning of my
life is all about before the lights cut off and I bet you do too. I
hope to bring it to a conclusion.
Our lesson this morning about Zacchaeus is a story told tongue in
cheek. Actually, it is probably more relevant to us than we would
first imagine. We are told that Zacchaeus is a chief tax collector and
rich. Zach was not a very popular guy with the folks in the country
because he colluded with the Roman imperial power and lived a life of
luxury as a result. People talked about him pretty much the way that
people in Wichita, Kansas talk about Wall Street investment bankers
with their wine cellars full of Pouilly Fuise, their Hoyo of Monterey
cigars and their Gucci loafers.
Zacchaeus is interested in hearing this Jesus but he doesn't want to
get too close to him. Zach is content to remain on the fringe of the
crowd and check it out from the safety of the anonymous tree. Like a
lot of us, he only has one foot in the door of the church-content with
the back row.
When Jesus is finished talking, he walks by Zach and calls him by
name. Then we get this wonderful hyperbolic response. Zacchaeus gets
it and makes an immediate change. Hearing Jesus for the very first
time, Zacchaeus spontaneously offers to give half of everything he owns
to the poor and to pay back anyone that he has defrauded 4 fold. There
goes that fortune. Think about that for a moment. Can you imagine
repaying 4 fold for every time you signed a windfall deal for the
firm?
Jesus is stunned, apparently, and he can only say "salvation has entered
this house this day".
This story is hyperbole. It is what we preachers always dream will
happen. You preach a story on stewardship and someone leaves a note in
the plate saying "Reverend, I would like to underwrite the church
budget for the year. Furthermore, those needed renovations that you
estimate at $2.5 million, I'll cover it. Furthermore, I want to donate
the remainder of my estate to improve education for all the students in
Newark."
What would it take for you to have such a change of perspective, a
radical transvaluation of values? The sports caster Mitch Albohm was
watching TV when he saw his old professor from Brandeis being
interviewed by Ted Koppel. His professor had Lou Gerhig's disease and
was slowly losing control of his bodily functions. He relayed to Ted,
rather matter of factly, that in the relatively near future, he would
suffocate to death because nothing would work anymore. Koppel bore in
with more questions about what it was like to be living a death
sentence. This professor made the remark "I've never felt more alive."
Mitch Albohm booked a flight to Boston to go see his old professor from
Brandeis. He shows up and his old professor is delighted to see him,
only now the professor is just a dying man named Morrie. This is what
Mitch writes about that first encounter . . .
"The first time I saw Morrie on Nightline, I wondered what regrets he
had once he knew his death was imminent. Did he lament lost friends?
Would he have done much differently? Selfishly, I wondered if I were
in his shoes, would I be consumed with sad thoughts of all that I had
missed? Would I regret the secrets that I had kept hidden?
"When I mentioned this to Morrie, he nodded. 'It's what everyone
worries about, isn't it? What if today were my last day on earth?' He
studied my face, and perhaps he saw ambivalence about my own choices.
I had this vision of me keeling over at my desk one day, halfway
through a story, my editors snatching the copy even as the medics
carried my body away.
"'Mitch?' Morrie said.
"I shook my head and said nothing. But Morrie picked up on my
hesitation.
"'Mitch', he said, 'the culture doesn't encourage you to think about
such things until you're about to die. We're so wrapped up with
egotistical things, career, family having enough money, meeting the
mortgage, getting a new car, fixing the radiator when it breaks -- we're
involved in trillions of little acts just to keep going. So we don't
get into the habit of standing back and looking at our lives and
saying, Is this all? Is this all I want? Is something missing?'
"He paused.
"'You need someone to probe you in that direction. It won't just happen
automatically.'
"I knew what he was saying. We all need teachers in our lives. And
mine was sitting in front of me."
(Tuesdays With Morrie, p. 64, 65)
"Mitch made a list of subjects to talk about with Morrie and he flew
back to Boston every Tuesday and they talked about that list until
Morrie died. On the eighth Tuesday, they came to talk about Money.
"Mitch brought the paper with him from the airport. He held up the
headline so that Morrie could read it. In bold letters it read 'I
Don't want my Tombstone to Read 'I Never Owned a Network'.
"Morrie laughed, then shook his head. The morning sun was coming
through the window behind him, falling on the pink flowers of the
hibiscus plan that sat on the sill. The quote was from Ted Turner, the
billionaire media mogul, founder of CNN, who had been lamenting his
inability to snatch up the CBS network in a corporate megadeal. I had
brought the story to Morrie this morning because I wondered if Turner
ever found himself in my old professor's position, he breath
disappearing, his body turning to stone, he days being crossed off the
calendar one by one- would he really be crying over owning a network?
"'It's all part of the same problem, Mitch,' Morrie said. 'We put our
values in the wrong things. And it leads us to very disillusioned
lives. I think we should talk about that.'
"Morrie was focused. There were good days and bad days now. He was
having a good day. The night before, he had been entertained by a
local a cappella group that had come to the house to perform Morrie's
love for music was strong even before he got sick, but now it was so
intense, it moved him to tears. He would listen to opera sometimes at
night, closing his eyes, riding along with the magnificent voices as
the dipped and soared.
"'You should have heard this group last night, Mitch. Such a sound!'
"Morrie had always been taken with simple pleasures, singing, laughing,
dancing. Now, more than ever, material things held little no
significance. When people die, you always hear the expression 'you
can't take it with you'. Morrie seemed to know that a long time ago.
"'We've got a form of brainwashing going on in our country,' Morrie
sighed. 'Do you know how they brainwash people? The repeat something
over and over. And that's what we do in this country. Owning things
is good. More money is good. More property is good. More
commercialism is good. More is good. More is good.
We repeat it -- and have it repeated to us -- over and over until nobody
bothers to even think otherwise. The average person is so fogged up by
all this, he has no perspective on what's really important anymore.'
"'Wherever I went in my life, I met people wanting to gobble up
something new. Gobble up a new car. Gobble up a new piece of
property. Gobble up the latest toy. And then they wanted to tell you
about it. 'Guess what I got? Guess what I got?'
"'You know how I always interpreted that? These people were so hungry
for love that they were accepting substitutes. They were embracing
material things and expecting a sort of hug back. But it never works.
You can't substitute material things for love or for gentleness or for
tenderness or for a sense of comradeship.'
"'Money is not a substitute for tenderness, and power is not a
substitute for tenderness. I can tell you, as I'm sitting here dying,
when you most need it, neither money nor power will give you the
feeling that you're looking for, no matter how much of them you have.'
"I glanced around Morrie's study. It was the same today that it had
been the first day I arrived. The books held their same places on the
shelves. The papers cluttered the same old desk. The outside rooms
had not been improved or upgraded. In fact, Morrie really hadn't
bought anything new- except medical equipment- in a long, long time,
maybe years. The day he learned that he was terminally ill was the day
he lost interest in purchasing power.
"[All the things were the same, even though everything had changed. The
house was now filled] with friendship and family and honesty and
tears. It was filed with colleagues and students, friends, meditation
teachers, and nurses. It had become, in a very real way, a wealthy
home, even though Morrie's bank account was rapidly depleting.
"'There's a big confusion in this country over what we want versus what
we need' Morrie said. 'You need food, you want a chocolate sundae.
You have to be honest with yourself, you don't need the latest sports
car. You don't need the biggest house.'
"'The truth is, you don't get satisfaction from those things. You know
what really gives you satisfaction?'
"'What?'
"'Offering others what you have to give Do you want to know how to find
a meaningful life? Devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself
to your community around you, and devote yourself to something that
gives you purpose and meaning.' 'And you notice', he added grinning,
'there's nothing in there about a salary.'
"Of course, this runs exactly counter to what we have been devoting
ourselves to ever since we graduated college. In general, we've been
pretty invested in making enough so we can buy a house, then a better
one, furniture, then really nice stuff, vacations, then dream get
aways. We spend most of our effort working ourselves into positions
where we make a difference with people of influence.
"The dying man Morrie says 'Mitch, if you're trying to show off for
people at the top, forget it. They will look down at you anyhow. And
if you're trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it. They
will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere.
Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.'
"He paused and then he looked at me. 'I'm dying right?'
"'Yes.'
"
'Why do you think it's so important for me to hear other people's
problems? Don't I have enough pain and suffering of my own?'
"'Of course I do. But giving to other people is what makes me feel
alive. Not my car or my house. Not what I look like in the mirror.
When I give my time, when I can make someone smile after they were
feeling sad, it's as close to healthy as I ever feel.'
"'Do the kinds of things that come from the heart. When you do, you
won't be dissatisfied, you won't be envious, you won't be longing for
somebody else's things. On the contrary, you'll be overwhelmed with
what comes back.'
"Morrie coughed and coughed. We were silent for a while. Then he said
in a weak voice 'This Ted Turner guy, he couldn't think of anything
else for his tombstone?'"
(Ibid. pp. 123-8).
"Truth be told, we need to stop thinking about our money as a
commodity. We need to see it for the community that it can
facilitate. We need to stop relying on it as a substitute for real
live intimacy and sharing. And the more of it we have been blessed
with beyond meeting the minimum needs for our families, the more of it
we need to release to seed love and caring around us. Each year, we
need to be focused on giving it away, investing in loving community.
"Truth be told, we need to back up and take a look at the big picture
for our lives and think the whole thing through from the reality of the
fact that we are going to die in the not too far distant future. We
need to begin investing in things that are eternal, things that are of
intrinsic worth. That is what spiritual stewardship is all about.
This is what the Spirit of God moving in our lives looks like.
Perhaps, before we are infirm and looking back, perhaps we might too
hear the words that Jesus uttered to Zacchaeus "Behold, salvation has
entered your house today."
Amen
