“To Have, To Do, or To Be?”

Luke 10: 38-42

July 18, 2010 + Food Pantry and Picnic Sunday

Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ

400 Glenwood Drive

Chattanooga, Tennessee 37404

Take a moment and reflect with me: Who are the people that have made a significant difference in your life? I suspect most of us immediately think of parents, grandparents, perhaps a beloved aunt or uncle, a few gifted teachers, some wise and helpful friends, a caring Sunday School teacher, maybe even a pastor(!) If we ponder a bit longer some of us would also think of someone who touched our lives only briefly yet still had a profound impact on our lives. For me such an influential person was Carlyle Marney.

Carlyle Marney – or “Marney” as most people knew him – was a great bear of a man and a lion among preacher. Back in the day he was the Senior Minister of Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was both a Southern Baptist and a liberal Christian theologically and socially. (How times change!) After he retired from Myers Park he became the Executive Director of Interpreters House at Lake Junaluska where he led retreats for clergy, helping them clarify their lives and ministries. I first met Marney when he came to lead a religious emphasis week at Geneseo State College in upstate New York. At that time, in early 1969, I was at a crisis in my ministry. Like many of my contemporaries I had been educated to serve a church that was changing incredibly. This was the 60’s, the era of Civil Rights and Vietnam. Everything nailed down was coming loose. I was intelligent enough to know what was going on, especially in the church, but I didn’t have enough skills to be helpful. Like a fair number of my contemporaries, I might have left the ministry and become a teacher or counselor. I still felt a deep commitment to pastoral ministry but how to do that with integrity?

In my uncertainty I applied to be part of the Doctor of Religion program at Chicago Theological Seminary. This was a degree intended to provide not simply more academic knowledge but also real professional skills in ministry. I was accepted into the program but If I accepted it would mean leaving parish ministry for at least two years. While I was struggling with my decision I met Marney. I remember walking with him across the campus as we were going to one of his talks. I shared my dilemma with him – he inspired that kind of instant trust – and I asked him what I should do. Without in any way presuming to influence my decision he helped me understand that I should go to Chicago and I did. Our conversation lasted only a few minutes but it changed my life.

People like Marney can do that, can’t they? They have a capacity to understand and the wisdom to guide us so that meeting them is life-changing. They are trustworthy so that we don’t need to know them for a long time.

Meeting Marney was what I believe it was like for his contemporaries to meet Jesus. People like Marney and Jesus are what we call self-authenticating. They are who they are. They don’t hide behind a mask of piety or professionalism. Marney was as real out of the pulpit as in it. Like any good Southern preacher he could be salty and earthy, but underneath that “good old boy” façade was a man of deep spiritual insight.

When I attended one of his workshops a few years later at Lake Junaluska, he spoke of how critical it is in our lives to make a basic decision: will our worth as a human being depend upon what we have, what we do, or who we are? Let’s spend a few moments thinking about that choice we all have to make.

How do we measure the value of our lives? Does our value consist in what we have? Many people seem to believe that today. Think of the things we use to measure our significance. Money is the first and most obvious. Get wealth and the more wealth we get the happier we will be. I read recently about Joan Ginther, the luckiest woman in Bishop, Texas. She won $10 million with a Texas lottery scratch-off ticket. She previously had won $5.4 million in a 1993 lottery jackpot, $2 million in another scratch-off game in 2006, and $3 million in a 2008 scratch-off. One wonders if she is happy now, but as my friend Elmo Hall wisely observed, “Much always wants more.” There is never enough.

Marney told the story of a friend, who was a very successful business man. He was a hard-driving Type-A personality. When he had a serious heart attack Marney went to visit him. Coming into the hospital room Marney saw that his friend was reading the Bible. Without even being asked Marney’s friend said, “I’m reading about a damn fool who built barns.” For those who may not get the joke, the man was referring to Jesus’ parable in Luke 12: 15-20. “And Jesus said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

There is a funny story (not true, of course) of a man who went to an undertaker and asked that when he died he would be buried in his new Cadillac. “That would be incredibly expensive,” said the undertaker. “Money is no object,” said the man, so when he died it was done. A huge grave was dug with a ramp going down into it. The man was dressed in his best and put behind the wheel. As the Cadillac was slowly lowered into the grave a gravedigger said, “Man, that’s living!” No, it’s not! and you and I know it. It’s dying. The only real purpose for money is to use it for good purposes while we are alive and enough is all we need. You and I ought to know that.

But looking to money to give meaning and worth to our lives is only one of the things some think they need. Some people seek power to give significance to their lives. But power, whether we use it for good purposes or bad, is always a problem. Lord Acton said it so well: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The English poet Shelley caught this perfectly in his poem “Ozymandias.”

“I met a traveler from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

There are other things some people believe will give their lives meaning and purpose. How about a youthful appearance? Think of the money spent on medical potions and procedures, gym equipment and exercising. I understand that Madonna is having an operation on her hands because she doesn’t want to look like an old lady! She’s 51! You can fool the public but you can’t fool mother nature.

So the list of what comedian George Carlin called the “stuff” we think we have to have to make life full and meaningful goes on and on but someday – sooner or later – it will all be gone and what then? We will have wasted our lives trying to get the wrong thing, things we never owned to begin with.

Marney also said that some of us will try to find meaning in what we do. That sounds better, doesn’t it? Surely doing useful work and good deeds ought to give our lives meaning. Maybe not. That is the point of our scripture lesson this morning, the famous encounter between Jesus and sisters Mary and Martha. Martha is a “doer.” She is angry that her sister is sitting in the living room listening to Jesus while she is slaving away in the kitchen. She tries to get Jesus to shame Mary into coming and helping her but Jesus will have none of it. “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” What on earth is Jesus talking about?

Let’s be clear about what Jesus did not mean. He certainly was not slamming useful work. I think Jesus would have agreed with Sigmund Freud who was once asked what gives meaning to life. He replied: “Leben und Lieben.” “Work and Love.” But, as Marney said, if we measure our lives by how much we do, we end up in do-do! Work is only a means to an end; not an end in itself.

So what does give meaning to life? Being, simply being. Our lives have meaning not because of what we have, not because of what we do, but simply because we exist. God loves us simply because we are. That is what gives value to our lives.

In her fine sermon last Sunday Janice said she had heard several sermons in recent weeks on Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan. Each sermon was more a reflection of the preacher than the essence of the parable. That’s tough to avoid. As preachers we tend to miss the point more often than not. But years ago I heard a story that I think may be close to what Jesus intended. I heard it as a child in the Kalamazoo Methodist Church. The preacher asked a question we should all ask ourselves whenever we read the Bible: Where do I find myself in this story? In the parable of the Good Samaritan most of us would not want to identify ourselves as one of the thieves – obviously bad people – or the priest and Levite – conventionally good but lacking in compassion. Most of us would want to be like the Samaritan, someone willing to do good regardless of the cost or danger even if it means going against social barriers and prejudices. Lord knows, I have preached sermons like that myself: Be like the Good Samaritan.

But in the sermon I heard as a boy the preacher invited us to identify with the man in the ditch. Think of it: Everything he had has been stolen, even his clothing. He didn’t have anything to give his life meaning, or worth or value not even dignity. He was also beaten so terribly that he was physically helpless. He couldn’t do anything to give his life meaning, worth or value. That long-ago preacher suggested that the Samaritan is meant to symbolize God. God doesn’t care about us because of what we have or what we can do. God, like the Samaritan, has compassion on us simply because we are. God loves us and that is all that ultimately matters.

So the words of the old hymn we have heard since childhood really are true:

“Nothing in my hand I bring,

          Simply to thy cross I cling.”

                   Amen and Amen