Feast of fools
Commentary
In Harvey Cox's book, Feast of Fools, he described the yearly medieval
European holiday that turned society on its head. For one day every social convention
was reversed so that those in authority became serfs and servants, and the jesters ruled the
royal courts. Women and men exchanged roles, and children were expected to boss
around their parents. The wealthy groveled while paupers strutted and preened.
Cox applauded the festival, saying that it provided a healthy release for a culture otherwise nearly moribund in its self-imposed strictures. All needed to step outside of their caste trappings now and again, and laugh at themselves and others so that they didn't take it all too seriously. Cox said it was good for people to be reminded that no social position was ever more than a temporary garb one wore, and that all were headed for death, the great leveler of society.
Cox advised each culture to find ways to celebrate its own feast of fools, to laugh lightly at itself, and to permit role exchanges that would melt the harsh distinctions between classes and nudge some fluidity into otherwise intractable social systems.
While Cox's advice was good on many levels, it did not take seriously the foolishness of sinful behavior. There is a "fool," according to Jesus in today's lectionary passage, whose idiosyncrasies are more than just convention or caste. There is a way of life that is inherently foolish and ought not to be celebrated by any days off or vacation rewards.
The fool of Jesus' parable is reflected in the allegory of Hosea and the "Old Self" of Paul's teaching in his letter to the Colossians. Some foolishness is good in all lives as a release and a way of taking ourselves less seriously than we might otherwise pretend. But the deep foolishness, which seeks a life and lifestyle apart from the Creator and the designs of creation and the community of the created, is not a laughing matter; it is downright sinful.
Hosea 11:1-11
Today they are a gracious couple in their senior years who seem absolutely right for each other. They defer to one another in conversation, yet often finish each other's thoughts. They enjoy taking early evening walks, and not infrequently passersby notice that they are holding hands. They travel some, golf a bit more, and appear to have the same tastes in food and fun. Around them circles a group of friends who share coffee dates and Bible studies. This could be a textbook marriage success.
But it isn't. Years ago, I took him home several times when he was completely and utterly drunk. On one occasion he slammed his car into a building and would have done more damage had it not been for a snowdrift that cushioned the impact. His car was totaled and he was slobbering pathetic apologies. After several times of watching him, suspicious that he was trying to drive under the influence, I even called the police and had him arrested.
His wife was exhausted from attempting to mind his childish alcoholic tantrums, hiding their dysfunctional relationship, and working part-time jobs to cover expenses for booze and broken things and high-risk car insurance. He only made things worse by becoming religiously righteous and attacking every heresy and social ill very publicly and with much noise, often berating women who didn't mind their places as obedient servants to obviously superior males. With quiet shame, his wife filed for divorce.
But somehow it never came about. Friends stood by both of them. Together we got him into a crisis substance abuse program. He repented and made a slow series of amends to his wife and family. And through it all the grace of God rewove reconciliation and renewal.
None of us who were on the painful inside of his catastrophic self-destruction imagined this man's sanity or this couple's marriage could be saved. Yet it was. By grace alone it was.
In truth, their affair was another retelling of Hosea's religious soap opera. The pages of Hosea's prophecy tell an amazing story of tender love between Israel and God, couched in the language of youthful passions and marriage analogies. They also describe Israel's abysmal failure paralleled by God's faithful pleading for her to come to her senses and return home to their children.
Hosea lived out the prophetic word of God in a very personal way. He was married to Gomer, a woman who could not leave her lust for promiscuous sexual liaisons even when she had stability and safety at home. Though she bore sons into their marriage, Hosea could not be sure who was the father of either, and certainly suspected his DNA did not match that in the cells of either.
This overpowering word from God came to Hosea in the years 750-723 BC, just as the Assyrian threat was mushrooming. Assyria was the superpower of the Middle East at that time, and rapidly expanding its holdings and borders. Hosea sees God using this aggressive militarism as the means by which to punish Israel. He vocalizes the divine lament, which reviews an anxious and failing marriage from its earliest days when God muscled his love out of Egypt. That is why both Egypt and Assyria take prominent stage in the unfolding drama.
Unfortunately, Hosea would never see God's desire for marriage recovery with Israel become reality. Too soon, Israel would take spiritual adultery and prostitution too far and be lost forever from the ties of covenant troth. In 722 BC, the nation would collapse quickly under the Assyrian invasion. This aggressor took few prisoners and was notably harsh in its scorched-earth policies. Moreover any non-combatants who managed to survive the onslaught were displaced and resettled in far places without communities of common cultural support. This was the Assyrian way of ensuring no pockets of revolt would ever emerge.
Still, Hosea's prophecy lingers in scripture as a testimony of God's faithful love, and as a model for the best of what marriage can be. Those who find a way to imitate both God's long-suffering spousal patience and the best of Israel's too infrequent repentance may experience the recovery of a marriage even when it has been written off as compromised beyond reason and damaged in excess of recovery.
Not every broken partnership can be saved. Nor should foolish, scandalous, hurtful, or destructive behavior be ignored or condoned simply to keep a religious pretense of marital faithfulness. Yet the best remedy to infidelity or other attacks on marriage is repentance, reconciliation, and renewal. These, after all, as Hosea indicates, are very much God's desire. It is, as he notes, the roaring in pain of the great lion of heaven that sometimes brings the wandering fools home.
Colossians 3:1-11
During the heated times of the Reformation, when Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli were exchanging strong words about biblical interpretations and ecclesiastical practices, Zwingli spent a troubled morning walking the mountain trails of his beloved Switzerland. From a distance he observed two goats making their way in opposite directions on a path barely stitched to the side of a cliff. It was obvious that not even these nimble creatures would be able to negotiate a way past one another as they met.
Zwingli watched them round a corner and come face to face. There was a moment of uncertainty as each feinted a power move at the other. Both goats took several steps backward and set hind legs in a posture of attack. In a surprise twist, however, the goat at the lower level suddenly collapsed onto the narrow ledge until the other goat could walk quickly over its back. Then each danced on.
Zwingli was impressed. Here was strength defined by submission. It allowed two opponents to survive a little crisis in order to get on with the larger dimensions of their lives. Zwingli considered this scene a divine parable, and brought it into his next encounter with Luther. Only fools, he concluded, became self-important and belligerent.
It could well be an illustration of Paul's words to the Colossian Christians in today's lectionary reading, also. Recently Onesimus, a slave of Paul's Colossian friend Philemon, had run away from his work on the estate and eventually wound up staying with Paul in Rome. Now Paul was sending him back to his master, and begged Philemon to take in Onesimus as a brother rather than as mere property. As the short New Testament letter called "Philemon" shows, instead of butting heads with his friend, though, Paul bowed and offered a hand of love. A similar thing was happening between Paul and the nearby Colossian congregation, of which Philemon was likely a member. While writing to Philemon, Paul also penned this letter to the church as well. It was struggling with a false teaching that Paul addressed in chapter 2. Now Paul introduced the idea of perspective. In order to clarify right from wrong, good from bad, helpful from hindering, we all need to hike up the stairs of heaven's tower and get the view from above. We need to see things from the vantage point of Christ.
What is most helpful and healthy in good spirituality is honesty. Not just truthfulness that blabs every last thought or feeling in any and all circumstances, but self-awareness that is not deceptive. It is at least as important that I learn to be honest with myself as it is that I try to be truthful with those around me. Paul uses interesting language when he speaks about what we must get rid of. Archimedes, the Greek philosopher who gained fame by discovering specific gravity and the theory of displacement, was supposed to have first uttered the words Paul uses in speaking of disconnecting with the old self. Archimedes had tried to convince his neighbors and friends that evil was merely an illusion, and that pain could be explained away as a projection of an untrained mind. Yet when he was chased by a very real dog, which threatened noisily to chomp a piece of his hinder flesh, Archimedes ran for the nearest tree and hiked himself up into its branches until others could subdue the fierce beast. All laughed at Archimedes, of course, suggesting loudly to him that it was silly for him to try to get away from a dog that could not exist, by his own philosophic teachings. "That may be true," the would-be teacher is supposed to have replied, "but it is not so easy to put off the old self which believes the dog is real."
Too often we allow our emotions to derail blossoming faith because we let them blind us in excessive self-importance. The strength of our emotions, especially when we are at odds with God or someone else, inflates our myopic tendencies toward self-preservation and diminishes our sense of the other's value or place in our lives. We need to keep relationships personal and issues impersonal as we build faithfulness with one another and with God. This is why the old English term for marriage fidelity is "troth" (wedding vows included the words "I pledge you my troth"). It means truth and faithfulness. Both of those begin within my own heart, especially when we claim to be married to Christ.
Luke 12:13-21
This is an embarrassing story for many in our congregations, perhaps including ourselves. There is an insidious link between wealth and divine affirmation in much of our thinking. After all, Abraham, the father of our faith, was a wealthy man. Jacob, his grandson, who eventually bequeathed the name Israel on the race that followed him, managed by cheating and wiles to become richer than his millionaire uncle Laban, all in the context of claiming the blessing of God. King Solomon piously asked God for wisdom to govern the feisty nation bequeathed to him by his father, and was granted excessive wealth in the bargain. The Proverbs often equate wealth with obedience and godliness, while consigning to poverty those who are lazy or evil. All in all, there is a lot of support for connecting wealth and divine favor.
Yet the New Testament turns the tables on this thinking. James 4 and 1 Timothy 6 both blast the wealthy. Jesus warns often against riches and the rich, and in this parable calls the one with great substance an even greater fool.
Why was Jesus so hard on this man? After all, he does not blaspheme God. Nor is it apparent that he abuses his workers or is derogatory to the poor. All in all, he could well be a very nice and spiritually deep person.
We in a western, individualized context are mostly blind and ignorant to the problem that unfolds as Jesus tells his story. We think it is normal that a person who experiences burgeoning affluence should take appropriate business steps to care for the resources extended to him. What is not so obvious is the careful manner in which Jesus shows this man to be increasingly isolated from his community. He has a problem with too great a harvest. He lies awake at night worrying about what he should do. He consults himself and eventually comes to a decision on his own that bigger storage barns are needed.
While most consultants and life coaches might commend him on his appropriate assertiveness, they would not take into account the social customs of the ancient near east. Then, no significant business would be made without bringing it to the elders of the community for discussion and advice. That is why the marketplace and the city gates were so vital to the continued health of the neighborhood. Every day there would be new issues for dialogue: Should this farmer purchase a bull for plowing or breeding? To which family's daughter should that son be betrothed? How might an expanding family be accommodated on the old family farm?
Similarly for this scenario, an exceptional harvest involved not just this wealthy landowner but many people in the whole community. There were workers to be hired and paid and fed and housed. There were builders of all sorts that would be involved in a short-term work project. There would be the sudden need for building materials that would have to be processed through other area merchants.
Without the insulation of wealth, this man would have engaged his peers and superiors in the community about these matters. Instead, he had become isolated by his possessions to such an extent that he now considered only himself in making major life decisions. He consulted no one. He worried by himself. He did not take into account the needs of others or the effect of his decisions on the rest of the neighborhood. He lived splendidly alone in his own gated community. That is why God called him a fool.
Wealth, in and of itself, is not wrong. It may, in fact, be a sign of blessing in certain circumstances. But when it insulates anyone from the give and take of the community, or when it isolates someone from the dialogue that shares the wisdom of the neighborhood, it becomes a burden of fools.
Preaching this passage requires grace and tact. How can we fight the demon of individualized isolation when it digs its tenacious tentacles into the soul of a wealthy society? How can we nurture the dialogue of a community that brings all its players back to the table for conversations on a shared journey? How can the "haves" and the "have nots" find that they are equal in the investment of life, and also in the eyes of God? Certainly we must make clear that while this disease of disconnection is particularly endemic among the rich, it is a malady that can strike denizens of every strata of society. It is the self-reliant who live closest to the edge of atheism.
Application
The book of Proverbs begins with a searching investigation about the lure of Folly and the invitation of Wisdom. As today's lectionary passages indicate, the pull of the former snares many. Only when we become a better friend of Wisdom will we avoid the insidious virus that ruins too many in the Feast of Fools.
Alternative Application
Luke 12:13-21. Jesus' story of the rich fool calls for modern analogies. One of the greatest is a lottery winner "success story." A family of seven, living in squalor and surviving on beyond-expiration-date food purchased through food stamps, won the lottery. Five point nine million dollars! Almost a million for each!
They were feted and toasted and run through several weeks of celebrity talk shows and television gossip splashes. Then they were left to spend and splurge and fend off new- found long-lost relatives and the leeches of investment and wealth-making schemes.
Most forgot them; their fifteen minutes of fame were over. But one reporter, on a slow news day, thought to revisit the story a year later. This is what she found: The husband and wife were divorced and in litigation against each other about fraud and spending and hidden investments; the mother and one daughter were living in a huge mansion on a large property surrounded by high walls and electrified gates and fierce dogs that patrolled the lawns; two sisters had moved across the country and no longer wanted anything to do with the rest of the family; one son was in jail for murdering his brother; and the father couldn't keep a job because of his constant drunkenness.
Meanwhile, in their old neighborhood, most folks were bitter. "We helped them through the tough times," said one former acquaintance, "but they never said thank-you. They didn't even pay off their old bills!" Another woman commented, "I don't understand it; they used to be such nice people."
Do we see ourselves there or anyone else we know? Or have we become too foolish to care?
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 107:1-9, 43
"Let the redeemed of the Lord say so!" How often do we give credit where it's due? As a younger pastor serving in New York City, one of the more intense church arguments I remember having was over a bag lunch program the church was sponsoring. Every Sunday following worship, the members of the church would gather and make a couple hundred bag lunches. Nothing fancy -- sandwiches, fruit, a cookie or two, and something to drink. Then the congregation would head into a nearby park where a host of homeless people spent their days, and we would give them the lunches.
The argument wasn't over whether or not to do this. There was no debate about the ministry at all, except this one thing. The pastor wanted to slip a note in each bag saying, "This lunch was brought to you with the love of Jesus Christ by the people of Washington Square Church."
Some folks thought we shouldn't put our name or any notice in the bags. We should just do anonymous good and be pleased with that. Others, including the pastor, thought it important that the folks receiving the lunches knew both the why and the wherefore. The debate was spirited, and ultimately the name did go into the bag lunches. But the whole discussion recalls this passage from the psalm.
It's a good question, and one that any congregation might take up as an afternoon discussion. Are we the redeemed of the Lord? If redemption through God's love is something that has been experienced in one's life, then it seems only reasonable that it should be shared. If our very spirit has been renewed, our hearts transformed; if we have been saved, redeemed by God, then shouldn't the people who have received such an incredible blessing be willing, not just to "say so," but to shout it from the rooftops?
So many church members attend faithfully every Sunday but rarely discuss or share anything about their faith with friends or coworkers during the week. Why is that? Shyness? Fear of giving offense? Perhaps a bit of both. But in the end, the logic of it all seems so clear.
Let us give credit where credit is due. If God has touched your life; if the Holy Spirit has come and inhabited your heart, then by all means, say so!
Cox applauded the festival, saying that it provided a healthy release for a culture otherwise nearly moribund in its self-imposed strictures. All needed to step outside of their caste trappings now and again, and laugh at themselves and others so that they didn't take it all too seriously. Cox said it was good for people to be reminded that no social position was ever more than a temporary garb one wore, and that all were headed for death, the great leveler of society.
Cox advised each culture to find ways to celebrate its own feast of fools, to laugh lightly at itself, and to permit role exchanges that would melt the harsh distinctions between classes and nudge some fluidity into otherwise intractable social systems.
While Cox's advice was good on many levels, it did not take seriously the foolishness of sinful behavior. There is a "fool," according to Jesus in today's lectionary passage, whose idiosyncrasies are more than just convention or caste. There is a way of life that is inherently foolish and ought not to be celebrated by any days off or vacation rewards.
The fool of Jesus' parable is reflected in the allegory of Hosea and the "Old Self" of Paul's teaching in his letter to the Colossians. Some foolishness is good in all lives as a release and a way of taking ourselves less seriously than we might otherwise pretend. But the deep foolishness, which seeks a life and lifestyle apart from the Creator and the designs of creation and the community of the created, is not a laughing matter; it is downright sinful.
Hosea 11:1-11
Today they are a gracious couple in their senior years who seem absolutely right for each other. They defer to one another in conversation, yet often finish each other's thoughts. They enjoy taking early evening walks, and not infrequently passersby notice that they are holding hands. They travel some, golf a bit more, and appear to have the same tastes in food and fun. Around them circles a group of friends who share coffee dates and Bible studies. This could be a textbook marriage success.
But it isn't. Years ago, I took him home several times when he was completely and utterly drunk. On one occasion he slammed his car into a building and would have done more damage had it not been for a snowdrift that cushioned the impact. His car was totaled and he was slobbering pathetic apologies. After several times of watching him, suspicious that he was trying to drive under the influence, I even called the police and had him arrested.
His wife was exhausted from attempting to mind his childish alcoholic tantrums, hiding their dysfunctional relationship, and working part-time jobs to cover expenses for booze and broken things and high-risk car insurance. He only made things worse by becoming religiously righteous and attacking every heresy and social ill very publicly and with much noise, often berating women who didn't mind their places as obedient servants to obviously superior males. With quiet shame, his wife filed for divorce.
But somehow it never came about. Friends stood by both of them. Together we got him into a crisis substance abuse program. He repented and made a slow series of amends to his wife and family. And through it all the grace of God rewove reconciliation and renewal.
None of us who were on the painful inside of his catastrophic self-destruction imagined this man's sanity or this couple's marriage could be saved. Yet it was. By grace alone it was.
In truth, their affair was another retelling of Hosea's religious soap opera. The pages of Hosea's prophecy tell an amazing story of tender love between Israel and God, couched in the language of youthful passions and marriage analogies. They also describe Israel's abysmal failure paralleled by God's faithful pleading for her to come to her senses and return home to their children.
Hosea lived out the prophetic word of God in a very personal way. He was married to Gomer, a woman who could not leave her lust for promiscuous sexual liaisons even when she had stability and safety at home. Though she bore sons into their marriage, Hosea could not be sure who was the father of either, and certainly suspected his DNA did not match that in the cells of either.
This overpowering word from God came to Hosea in the years 750-723 BC, just as the Assyrian threat was mushrooming. Assyria was the superpower of the Middle East at that time, and rapidly expanding its holdings and borders. Hosea sees God using this aggressive militarism as the means by which to punish Israel. He vocalizes the divine lament, which reviews an anxious and failing marriage from its earliest days when God muscled his love out of Egypt. That is why both Egypt and Assyria take prominent stage in the unfolding drama.
Unfortunately, Hosea would never see God's desire for marriage recovery with Israel become reality. Too soon, Israel would take spiritual adultery and prostitution too far and be lost forever from the ties of covenant troth. In 722 BC, the nation would collapse quickly under the Assyrian invasion. This aggressor took few prisoners and was notably harsh in its scorched-earth policies. Moreover any non-combatants who managed to survive the onslaught were displaced and resettled in far places without communities of common cultural support. This was the Assyrian way of ensuring no pockets of revolt would ever emerge.
Still, Hosea's prophecy lingers in scripture as a testimony of God's faithful love, and as a model for the best of what marriage can be. Those who find a way to imitate both God's long-suffering spousal patience and the best of Israel's too infrequent repentance may experience the recovery of a marriage even when it has been written off as compromised beyond reason and damaged in excess of recovery.
Not every broken partnership can be saved. Nor should foolish, scandalous, hurtful, or destructive behavior be ignored or condoned simply to keep a religious pretense of marital faithfulness. Yet the best remedy to infidelity or other attacks on marriage is repentance, reconciliation, and renewal. These, after all, as Hosea indicates, are very much God's desire. It is, as he notes, the roaring in pain of the great lion of heaven that sometimes brings the wandering fools home.
Colossians 3:1-11
During the heated times of the Reformation, when Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli were exchanging strong words about biblical interpretations and ecclesiastical practices, Zwingli spent a troubled morning walking the mountain trails of his beloved Switzerland. From a distance he observed two goats making their way in opposite directions on a path barely stitched to the side of a cliff. It was obvious that not even these nimble creatures would be able to negotiate a way past one another as they met.
Zwingli watched them round a corner and come face to face. There was a moment of uncertainty as each feinted a power move at the other. Both goats took several steps backward and set hind legs in a posture of attack. In a surprise twist, however, the goat at the lower level suddenly collapsed onto the narrow ledge until the other goat could walk quickly over its back. Then each danced on.
Zwingli was impressed. Here was strength defined by submission. It allowed two opponents to survive a little crisis in order to get on with the larger dimensions of their lives. Zwingli considered this scene a divine parable, and brought it into his next encounter with Luther. Only fools, he concluded, became self-important and belligerent.
It could well be an illustration of Paul's words to the Colossian Christians in today's lectionary reading, also. Recently Onesimus, a slave of Paul's Colossian friend Philemon, had run away from his work on the estate and eventually wound up staying with Paul in Rome. Now Paul was sending him back to his master, and begged Philemon to take in Onesimus as a brother rather than as mere property. As the short New Testament letter called "Philemon" shows, instead of butting heads with his friend, though, Paul bowed and offered a hand of love. A similar thing was happening between Paul and the nearby Colossian congregation, of which Philemon was likely a member. While writing to Philemon, Paul also penned this letter to the church as well. It was struggling with a false teaching that Paul addressed in chapter 2. Now Paul introduced the idea of perspective. In order to clarify right from wrong, good from bad, helpful from hindering, we all need to hike up the stairs of heaven's tower and get the view from above. We need to see things from the vantage point of Christ.
What is most helpful and healthy in good spirituality is honesty. Not just truthfulness that blabs every last thought or feeling in any and all circumstances, but self-awareness that is not deceptive. It is at least as important that I learn to be honest with myself as it is that I try to be truthful with those around me. Paul uses interesting language when he speaks about what we must get rid of. Archimedes, the Greek philosopher who gained fame by discovering specific gravity and the theory of displacement, was supposed to have first uttered the words Paul uses in speaking of disconnecting with the old self. Archimedes had tried to convince his neighbors and friends that evil was merely an illusion, and that pain could be explained away as a projection of an untrained mind. Yet when he was chased by a very real dog, which threatened noisily to chomp a piece of his hinder flesh, Archimedes ran for the nearest tree and hiked himself up into its branches until others could subdue the fierce beast. All laughed at Archimedes, of course, suggesting loudly to him that it was silly for him to try to get away from a dog that could not exist, by his own philosophic teachings. "That may be true," the would-be teacher is supposed to have replied, "but it is not so easy to put off the old self which believes the dog is real."
Too often we allow our emotions to derail blossoming faith because we let them blind us in excessive self-importance. The strength of our emotions, especially when we are at odds with God or someone else, inflates our myopic tendencies toward self-preservation and diminishes our sense of the other's value or place in our lives. We need to keep relationships personal and issues impersonal as we build faithfulness with one another and with God. This is why the old English term for marriage fidelity is "troth" (wedding vows included the words "I pledge you my troth"). It means truth and faithfulness. Both of those begin within my own heart, especially when we claim to be married to Christ.
Luke 12:13-21
This is an embarrassing story for many in our congregations, perhaps including ourselves. There is an insidious link between wealth and divine affirmation in much of our thinking. After all, Abraham, the father of our faith, was a wealthy man. Jacob, his grandson, who eventually bequeathed the name Israel on the race that followed him, managed by cheating and wiles to become richer than his millionaire uncle Laban, all in the context of claiming the blessing of God. King Solomon piously asked God for wisdom to govern the feisty nation bequeathed to him by his father, and was granted excessive wealth in the bargain. The Proverbs often equate wealth with obedience and godliness, while consigning to poverty those who are lazy or evil. All in all, there is a lot of support for connecting wealth and divine favor.
Yet the New Testament turns the tables on this thinking. James 4 and 1 Timothy 6 both blast the wealthy. Jesus warns often against riches and the rich, and in this parable calls the one with great substance an even greater fool.
Why was Jesus so hard on this man? After all, he does not blaspheme God. Nor is it apparent that he abuses his workers or is derogatory to the poor. All in all, he could well be a very nice and spiritually deep person.
We in a western, individualized context are mostly blind and ignorant to the problem that unfolds as Jesus tells his story. We think it is normal that a person who experiences burgeoning affluence should take appropriate business steps to care for the resources extended to him. What is not so obvious is the careful manner in which Jesus shows this man to be increasingly isolated from his community. He has a problem with too great a harvest. He lies awake at night worrying about what he should do. He consults himself and eventually comes to a decision on his own that bigger storage barns are needed.
While most consultants and life coaches might commend him on his appropriate assertiveness, they would not take into account the social customs of the ancient near east. Then, no significant business would be made without bringing it to the elders of the community for discussion and advice. That is why the marketplace and the city gates were so vital to the continued health of the neighborhood. Every day there would be new issues for dialogue: Should this farmer purchase a bull for plowing or breeding? To which family's daughter should that son be betrothed? How might an expanding family be accommodated on the old family farm?
Similarly for this scenario, an exceptional harvest involved not just this wealthy landowner but many people in the whole community. There were workers to be hired and paid and fed and housed. There were builders of all sorts that would be involved in a short-term work project. There would be the sudden need for building materials that would have to be processed through other area merchants.
Without the insulation of wealth, this man would have engaged his peers and superiors in the community about these matters. Instead, he had become isolated by his possessions to such an extent that he now considered only himself in making major life decisions. He consulted no one. He worried by himself. He did not take into account the needs of others or the effect of his decisions on the rest of the neighborhood. He lived splendidly alone in his own gated community. That is why God called him a fool.
Wealth, in and of itself, is not wrong. It may, in fact, be a sign of blessing in certain circumstances. But when it insulates anyone from the give and take of the community, or when it isolates someone from the dialogue that shares the wisdom of the neighborhood, it becomes a burden of fools.
Preaching this passage requires grace and tact. How can we fight the demon of individualized isolation when it digs its tenacious tentacles into the soul of a wealthy society? How can we nurture the dialogue of a community that brings all its players back to the table for conversations on a shared journey? How can the "haves" and the "have nots" find that they are equal in the investment of life, and also in the eyes of God? Certainly we must make clear that while this disease of disconnection is particularly endemic among the rich, it is a malady that can strike denizens of every strata of society. It is the self-reliant who live closest to the edge of atheism.
Application
The book of Proverbs begins with a searching investigation about the lure of Folly and the invitation of Wisdom. As today's lectionary passages indicate, the pull of the former snares many. Only when we become a better friend of Wisdom will we avoid the insidious virus that ruins too many in the Feast of Fools.
Alternative Application
Luke 12:13-21. Jesus' story of the rich fool calls for modern analogies. One of the greatest is a lottery winner "success story." A family of seven, living in squalor and surviving on beyond-expiration-date food purchased through food stamps, won the lottery. Five point nine million dollars! Almost a million for each!
They were feted and toasted and run through several weeks of celebrity talk shows and television gossip splashes. Then they were left to spend and splurge and fend off new- found long-lost relatives and the leeches of investment and wealth-making schemes.
Most forgot them; their fifteen minutes of fame were over. But one reporter, on a slow news day, thought to revisit the story a year later. This is what she found: The husband and wife were divorced and in litigation against each other about fraud and spending and hidden investments; the mother and one daughter were living in a huge mansion on a large property surrounded by high walls and electrified gates and fierce dogs that patrolled the lawns; two sisters had moved across the country and no longer wanted anything to do with the rest of the family; one son was in jail for murdering his brother; and the father couldn't keep a job because of his constant drunkenness.
Meanwhile, in their old neighborhood, most folks were bitter. "We helped them through the tough times," said one former acquaintance, "but they never said thank-you. They didn't even pay off their old bills!" Another woman commented, "I don't understand it; they used to be such nice people."
Do we see ourselves there or anyone else we know? Or have we become too foolish to care?
Preaching The Psalm
Psalm 107:1-9, 43
"Let the redeemed of the Lord say so!" How often do we give credit where it's due? As a younger pastor serving in New York City, one of the more intense church arguments I remember having was over a bag lunch program the church was sponsoring. Every Sunday following worship, the members of the church would gather and make a couple hundred bag lunches. Nothing fancy -- sandwiches, fruit, a cookie or two, and something to drink. Then the congregation would head into a nearby park where a host of homeless people spent their days, and we would give them the lunches.
The argument wasn't over whether or not to do this. There was no debate about the ministry at all, except this one thing. The pastor wanted to slip a note in each bag saying, "This lunch was brought to you with the love of Jesus Christ by the people of Washington Square Church."
Some folks thought we shouldn't put our name or any notice in the bags. We should just do anonymous good and be pleased with that. Others, including the pastor, thought it important that the folks receiving the lunches knew both the why and the wherefore. The debate was spirited, and ultimately the name did go into the bag lunches. But the whole discussion recalls this passage from the psalm.
It's a good question, and one that any congregation might take up as an afternoon discussion. Are we the redeemed of the Lord? If redemption through God's love is something that has been experienced in one's life, then it seems only reasonable that it should be shared. If our very spirit has been renewed, our hearts transformed; if we have been saved, redeemed by God, then shouldn't the people who have received such an incredible blessing be willing, not just to "say so," but to shout it from the rooftops?
So many church members attend faithfully every Sunday but rarely discuss or share anything about their faith with friends or coworkers during the week. Why is that? Shyness? Fear of giving offense? Perhaps a bit of both. But in the end, the logic of it all seems so clear.
Let us give credit where credit is due. If God has touched your life; if the Holy Spirit has come and inhabited your heart, then by all means, say so!
