Hero
Stories
Object:
Contents
What's Up This Week
"Hero" by C. David McKirachan
"Lessons from the Suburbs of Hell" by C. David McKirachan
"No One Left Behind" by Scott Dalgarno
What's Up This Week
Nothing can stand without a foundation, including humankind. Without something to keep us grounded, we can be blown down by every wind that life sends our way. As Christians, we know what our foundation is. In each of this week's stories, we see various examples of foundations we can stand on, as well as the shifting sands we can fall into. In this week's StoryShare, David McKirachan writes of a foundation forged in the heat of battle in the story "Hero." This foundation not only provides protection, but cements a chaplain's convictions to believe in love and peace when surrounded by hate and war. McKirachan also writes in "Lessons from the Suburbs of Hell" of foundations created in the dark nights of the soul. In this case, the foundation provides a way for a person to simply buffet the storms of life until the first rays of sunlight breaks through the clouds. Scott Dalgarno writes in "No One Left Behind," of an alternate perspective: What is our foundation when we are surrounded by excess? What do we stand on when life is good?
* * * * * * * * *
Hero
C. David McKirachan
1 Timothy 2:1-7
His name is John. His last name settles the issue of ancestry. It has double o's and is pronounced like there's only one. No question, Dutch. He's a chaplain in Seabrook Village, a full service condo city near us. He also attends our ministers' lectionary study every Thursday.
Big and lanky full of strength and self-deprecating humor, he's a nice guy to have around. He was an Army chaplain. After he'd been with us a while we started to hear stories about Vietnam. Like most combat veterans, his stories are terse, leaving out horrors, leaving out blow by blows. None of that would make any sense to those of us who have never faced enemies whose express purpose in life was to take ours.
He told us one story about sleeping in the building or tent where they did chapel. He'd put his cot up against boxes of Bibles. Just like everything in the Army they come by the pallet load when they come. So he built room dividers out of them and had a little privacy in the midst of one of the most unprivate environments imaginable.
The mortar attack came when he was sleeping. Shells lobbing into the camp over all the barbed wire and claymores and machine guns that defended the perimeter so carefully. No specific target or agenda, only to disrupt and frighten and if lucky to maim or kill someone who was close to the explosion. Shrapnel, bits and pieces of superheated metal, made sure the kill radius went a lot further than the explosive concussion. This particular shell landed close, he didn't say how close, but close enough to send fragments tearing toward him, sleeping. He never would have known. After the attack was over and clean up commenced, he found furrows torn in the crates of Bibles, pages ripped. The Word of God had defended him. He kept one of the Bibles, torn and mutilated. He showed it to us. He told us, chuckling, that it made a great illustration. In my book, he's a hero.
But this isn't about Vietnam. This is about a bumper sticker he has on his compact car. It's not the kind of sticker you'd expect from a combat veteran who'd seen the worst an enemy could do. He told us he likes to go the PX at the local Army base and park his car in the row with all the others, most of which proclaim with their bumpers, "God Bless America." Bunting and flags and patriotic decoration continue the push. His sticker has no stars or stripes. It says very simply, "God Bless Everybody, No Exceptions."
Like I said, this guy's a hero.
Lessons from the Suburbs of Hell
C. David McKirachan
Jeremiah 8:18--9:1
Things hadn't been good for a long time. Normal times were awkward and special times were a mess. Something was broken. I couldn't figure it out. I came up with a life change plan and found out she didn't want to change her life, she wanted to change husbands. The rest is too familiar. But the worst part was the terrible powerlessness, the emotional vertigo, the loss of a place to stand. How do you fix a car without wheels? How do you fight when there's no one else in the ring? How can you dance with someone who won't stand up?
It was a new kind of pain, a loss that I had never known. The future of so many things became dark and barren. How could I go forward when the place I stood was the end? All my tears meant nothing. There was no comfort in the country of my life. Loss was all I saw.
I remember trying to make deals with the universe. Plots and schemes, agendas, rain dances in a desert where the rain of affection was only a memory. The stages of grief were incarnate in every room of my house. I remember some of the prayers. Desperation sears specifics into the memory.
It took some time. The aftershocks went on for a few years. But after a few months, in the middle of the desert country I woke up one morning and realized that though all the plans and hopes and dreams were wrecked, I was still breathing. I walked the dog that morning and looked up. The sky was blue.
Two things stuck with me from then. I remember clearly the chaos and pain to be found in the suburbs of Hell. It is a place where we lose ourselves, where there is no hope and faith is a faint memory. It is a place where tears and mourning are the norm, and sleep is little but the vestibule to nightmare. I choose to hold on to the memory of that taste of horror. Each time I revisit its bitterness, the memory teaches me of the dark. It is an effective discipline for one who would walk into the valley of the shadow with those who hear of biopsies and blood tests that find the worst, with those who lose children or spouses to the grinding machines of war or disease or accident. I choose to remember that I might go there and use what I learned of the terrain in that dark and hostile night to tell them that they are not alone, even there. I tell them of the second lesson I have carried with me. Even in the midst of the pain, "Look up. The sky is blue."
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. He is the author of I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder (Westminster John Knox).
No One Left Behind
Scott Dalgarno
Luke 16:1-13
"Once upon a time..." Jesus said, there was a rich man who had a steward, a kind of business manager, and charges were brought to the man that his steward was wasting his goods. The problem here sounds like a simple personnel issue: malfeasance in the workplace. The steward will need to be reprimanded and let go. It seems that simple.
Complications set in when the steward is allowed a few extra days to audit the books and submit a financial statement. Between Friday and Monday, when the books were due, the steward goes around to all the rich man's debtors and cooks the books. Sounds just like Enron. He marks down a percentage of all the debt owed by each, and thereby ingratiates himself with all the people to whom he would be looking for help in his impending unemployment.
"How much do you own my master?" he asks one.
"A hundred measures of oil."
"Take your bill and quickly write down fifty."
"And how much do you owe?" he asks another.
"A hundred measures of wheat," comes the answer.
"Hurry, take your bill and write eighty."
It's hard to tell whether the steward was cutting out his markup, eliminating the usury charges, or just stealing from his master by lowering the debt. I think it's reasonable, in the light of the economy of this parable, to view the steward in the most pejorative way.
By the end of the day he has lined his pockets and the pockets of his master's debtors at the rich man's expense, and his master congratulated him on being so resourceful?
The charming rascal is a favorite literary type. There is something in all of us that wants to see a gifted swindler get away with mayhem once in a while. Hollywood has made a mint on such characters -- think of Paul Newman and Robert Redford in The Sting, or more recently, Leonardo DeCaprio in Catch Me If You Can.
You remember DeCaprio playing the real life crook, Frank W. Abegnale, who "flew" for Pan Am, practiced law for five years in Louisiana as an assistant state attorney, masqueraded as a pediatrician in Georgia, was a very popular sociology professor at BYU, and did not graduate from high school. He was perhaps the most successful con man in history, and ended up spending five years in federal penitentiary. He was released when he agreed to advise the government on other frauds and forgers.
Abegnale begins his 1981 autobiography with the following story from his short career as a Pan Am pilot:
"Good morning Captain," the cashier said. The markings on my uniform identified me as a first officer, a co-pilot, but the French are like that. They tend to overestimate everything... I signed the hotel bill she slid across the counter, started to turn away and then wheeled back, taking a payroll check from the inside pocket of my jacket.
"Oh, can you cash this for me? Your Paris nightlife nearly wiped me out and it'll be another week before I'm home." I smiled ruefully. She picked up the [forged] Pan American World Airways check and looked at the amount.
"I'm sure we can, Captain, but I must get the manager to approve an amount this large. She stepped into an officer behind her and was back in a moment displaying a pleased smile. She handed me the check to endorse.
"I assume you want American dollars," and without waiting for a reply she counted out $786.73. I pushed back two $50 bills.
"I would appreciate it if you would take care of the necessary people, since I was so careless," I said, smiling.
She beamed. "Of course Captain, you are so kind. . . please come back."
It just goes to show that no con man, in or out of the Bible, can work alone.
Now, in Jesus' parable, when the landowner discovers what has happened, he finds himself in a terrific bind. He can jail the dishonest steward and reverse the damage done to himself -- but the problem is there is already a celebration going on down on the Plaza. His tenant farmers are all down at Louis' drinking pints of ale and hoisting them all to him to toast his generosity, and the steward's kindness. He can tell them it's a mistake and pay for it big time with their everlasting resentment, or he can act as if it was his idea in the first place.
This is just what he decides to do. He shows unusual mercy, amazing grace and then... commends the steward for his cleverness. Unbelievable, or perhaps not.
Perhaps the steward knew all along what would happen if his master were backed into such a corner. Perhaps he knew that his master, when push came to shove, would be gracious, was gracious down to his toes. Perhaps that is one of the main points of the parable.
* * *
Then Luke reports an intriguing saying of our Lord he picked up somewhere, probably in a list of collected sayings of Jesus, that we know were making the rounds in his day: "No servant can serve two masters, you cannot serve God and mammon."
Mammon -- what a great biblical word. It's money, but it's more than money. It's the mystique of money, the essence of wealth. It's Las Vegas -- it's Club Med. It's a month of golf at Myrtle Beach. It's the hubris of a company that names an automobile, Infinity. It's Halliburton getting all the contracts in Iraq without having to bid on them and nobody complaining. It's the smell of a magazine like Vanity Fair and the fact that you can't tell the articles from the ads, which is the whole point.
It's what Osama bin Laden hates so much because having come from a rich Saudi family, he's had it, and now, deep in his cave he doesn't have it anymore, so he both wants it and despises it at the same time, and I bet it's killing him.
Mammon is whatever shapes your dreams. It's whatever you expect to save you.
A favorite English professor of mine in college -- Phil, was brought up dripping with it. In college he grew a beard and discovered the writing of Henry David Thoreau and became a convert to the anti-mammon movement going around in the 1960s.
In 1840, Henry David Thoreau had gone to live in a tiny cabin overlooking Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. He gave up comfortable digs and took up a poor man's life confounding his friends and family who could not understand; his defense was a book he simply called, Walden.
In it he says, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately; to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." Living deliberately is, of course, all about choosing God and not mammon (which is always busy choosing us).
My friend went on, of course, to do a graduate degree in English, writing his doctor's thesis on Walden. After college I'd talk to him once in a while. I remember speaking with him in 1980. He'd been a full professor by then for ten years and his father was still asking him when he was going to get "a real job."
In fact, that year his dad asked him if he could put him up in the newest sure-fire money-making enterprise. "What is that?" my friend asked his dad. "Storage units," he said. "Acres and acres of storage units." Phil heard that and realized immediately it was the complete antithesis of all he had chosen for himself.
See, the thing about mammon isn't just the "stuff "that it comprises. It's having to store it. Mammon isn't just having a dozen vintage Ford Mustangs - it's also where you put them. It's endless shelving, and gymnasium-sized walk in closets, and twelve car garages, and storing the videotapes that photograph and itemize all those things for insurance purposes.
I'm happy to say that my professor friend, Phil, is over his reactive obsession with his dad now. He quit living in dumps, became a college president, and made peace with his own ambitious side, which was a good and healthy thing for him.
Listen again to how Jesus puts this: "You cannot serve two masters, God and mammon." It's not that mammon is bad (I'm currently in the market for some new golf clubs). Jesus has been consistently misunderstood on this point. He did not condemn wealth in itself, or ambition. He told one wealthy, young man to sell all he had and give it to the poor, but that was a particular prescription, not a universal model.
What he is saying is that wealth, or any form of mammon doesn't work if we are looking to it for our ultimate fulfillment. It won't work in that case, and people who have tried to make it work know that best.
Many scholars of religion have noted that the current mega-interest in eastern spirituality in the United States probably stems from the increase in wealth since the 1980s. Western Buddhists today are often filthy rich.
Frank Abegnale himself said that all the stuff he collected with the millions he gathered in his elaborate frauds just led to elaborate worrying. Abegnale says he's happy to be free of it all.
Whatever you're banking on as the fulfillment of all your dreams -- be it an antique automobile, your reputation, even your children -- it's still the same. If it's not God, it will collapse on itself.
One of the basic insights in the wisdom of Jesus is that if you try to squeeze something infinite out of something finite, you will not only be unsuccessful and frustrated, you will very likely squeeze the life out of that thing you love, as well.
The first lesson of parenthood is that if children are expected to provide us with peace, happiness, and contentment the load will be too heavy for that relationship to bear.
Conversely, if your parents wagered all their happiness on your success in life, then you yourself have been carrying way too big a burden all these years.
Maybe that's why some people are so much better at being grandparents than they ever were at being parents. By the time their grandkids come along they have given up on those ego needs they had once thrust on their poor children.
* * *
The final truth of the whole mammon business is that you and I only deeply enjoy what we don't ultimately need.
The truth is you can't enjoy anything if you load it up with expectations and demands and insist that it reward you with perfect happiness. No one can enjoy anything that exerts that kind of power over them.
You can't even enjoy your sexuality if you look to it to demonstrate your masculinity or femininity or attractiveness or youth. It won't work.
The radical word of the Christian faith that is as true today as it was 2,000 years ago is that in order to experience "salvation," we must say "no" to all the other gods that clamor for our love and hope and faith and enthusiasm and passion and say, "yes" to the God who continues to love us into being.
We're called to do this not just because it's moral but because it's the only way to be truly free in this life. The Buddha knew this, and so did Jesus.
Who is this God who calls for ultimate allegiance? Simply that purposeful deity from which we came at our birth and to whom we go at the moment of our death.
Which puts me in mind of just one more element in the parable that often gets passed over: The element of time. "Quickly," says the steward. "Hurry," write the new amount.
This may merely be a way of underscoring the steward's malfeasance. But it may also be Jesus' way of reminding us that our lives, like his own, are incredibly short. We have a way of putting off our rendezvous with real happiness. So, once again, hear Jesus' story:
Once upon a time a rich man had a steward, and word came to him that the steward was wasting his goods. So, the word went out that there would be an accounting. The question is, fellow steward, what by your wit, considering the hour, will you do?
Scott Dalgarno is pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Ashland, Oregon. He is also an adjunct professor at Southern Oregon University, where he teaches Film and Ethics. His poetry, essays, and stories have appeared in numerous publications, including The Christian Century, America: The National Catholic Weekly, The Antioch Review, and Alive Now.
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How to Share Stories
You have good stories to share, probably more than you know: personal stories as well as stories from others that you have used over the years. If you have a story you like, whether fictional or "really happened," authored by you or a brief excerpt from a favorite book, send it to StoryShare for review. Simply email the story to us at storyshare@sermonsuite.com.
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StoryShare, September 23, 2007, issue.
Copyright 2007 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
What's Up This Week
"Hero" by C. David McKirachan
"Lessons from the Suburbs of Hell" by C. David McKirachan
"No One Left Behind" by Scott Dalgarno
What's Up This Week
Nothing can stand without a foundation, including humankind. Without something to keep us grounded, we can be blown down by every wind that life sends our way. As Christians, we know what our foundation is. In each of this week's stories, we see various examples of foundations we can stand on, as well as the shifting sands we can fall into. In this week's StoryShare, David McKirachan writes of a foundation forged in the heat of battle in the story "Hero." This foundation not only provides protection, but cements a chaplain's convictions to believe in love and peace when surrounded by hate and war. McKirachan also writes in "Lessons from the Suburbs of Hell" of foundations created in the dark nights of the soul. In this case, the foundation provides a way for a person to simply buffet the storms of life until the first rays of sunlight breaks through the clouds. Scott Dalgarno writes in "No One Left Behind," of an alternate perspective: What is our foundation when we are surrounded by excess? What do we stand on when life is good?
* * * * * * * * *
Hero
C. David McKirachan
1 Timothy 2:1-7
His name is John. His last name settles the issue of ancestry. It has double o's and is pronounced like there's only one. No question, Dutch. He's a chaplain in Seabrook Village, a full service condo city near us. He also attends our ministers' lectionary study every Thursday.
Big and lanky full of strength and self-deprecating humor, he's a nice guy to have around. He was an Army chaplain. After he'd been with us a while we started to hear stories about Vietnam. Like most combat veterans, his stories are terse, leaving out horrors, leaving out blow by blows. None of that would make any sense to those of us who have never faced enemies whose express purpose in life was to take ours.
He told us one story about sleeping in the building or tent where they did chapel. He'd put his cot up against boxes of Bibles. Just like everything in the Army they come by the pallet load when they come. So he built room dividers out of them and had a little privacy in the midst of one of the most unprivate environments imaginable.
The mortar attack came when he was sleeping. Shells lobbing into the camp over all the barbed wire and claymores and machine guns that defended the perimeter so carefully. No specific target or agenda, only to disrupt and frighten and if lucky to maim or kill someone who was close to the explosion. Shrapnel, bits and pieces of superheated metal, made sure the kill radius went a lot further than the explosive concussion. This particular shell landed close, he didn't say how close, but close enough to send fragments tearing toward him, sleeping. He never would have known. After the attack was over and clean up commenced, he found furrows torn in the crates of Bibles, pages ripped. The Word of God had defended him. He kept one of the Bibles, torn and mutilated. He showed it to us. He told us, chuckling, that it made a great illustration. In my book, he's a hero.
But this isn't about Vietnam. This is about a bumper sticker he has on his compact car. It's not the kind of sticker you'd expect from a combat veteran who'd seen the worst an enemy could do. He told us he likes to go the PX at the local Army base and park his car in the row with all the others, most of which proclaim with their bumpers, "God Bless America." Bunting and flags and patriotic decoration continue the push. His sticker has no stars or stripes. It says very simply, "God Bless Everybody, No Exceptions."
Like I said, this guy's a hero.
Lessons from the Suburbs of Hell
C. David McKirachan
Jeremiah 8:18--9:1
Things hadn't been good for a long time. Normal times were awkward and special times were a mess. Something was broken. I couldn't figure it out. I came up with a life change plan and found out she didn't want to change her life, she wanted to change husbands. The rest is too familiar. But the worst part was the terrible powerlessness, the emotional vertigo, the loss of a place to stand. How do you fix a car without wheels? How do you fight when there's no one else in the ring? How can you dance with someone who won't stand up?
It was a new kind of pain, a loss that I had never known. The future of so many things became dark and barren. How could I go forward when the place I stood was the end? All my tears meant nothing. There was no comfort in the country of my life. Loss was all I saw.
I remember trying to make deals with the universe. Plots and schemes, agendas, rain dances in a desert where the rain of affection was only a memory. The stages of grief were incarnate in every room of my house. I remember some of the prayers. Desperation sears specifics into the memory.
It took some time. The aftershocks went on for a few years. But after a few months, in the middle of the desert country I woke up one morning and realized that though all the plans and hopes and dreams were wrecked, I was still breathing. I walked the dog that morning and looked up. The sky was blue.
Two things stuck with me from then. I remember clearly the chaos and pain to be found in the suburbs of Hell. It is a place where we lose ourselves, where there is no hope and faith is a faint memory. It is a place where tears and mourning are the norm, and sleep is little but the vestibule to nightmare. I choose to hold on to the memory of that taste of horror. Each time I revisit its bitterness, the memory teaches me of the dark. It is an effective discipline for one who would walk into the valley of the shadow with those who hear of biopsies and blood tests that find the worst, with those who lose children or spouses to the grinding machines of war or disease or accident. I choose to remember that I might go there and use what I learned of the terrain in that dark and hostile night to tell them that they are not alone, even there. I tell them of the second lesson I have carried with me. Even in the midst of the pain, "Look up. The sky is blue."
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. He is the author of I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder (Westminster John Knox).
No One Left Behind
Scott Dalgarno
Luke 16:1-13
"Once upon a time..." Jesus said, there was a rich man who had a steward, a kind of business manager, and charges were brought to the man that his steward was wasting his goods. The problem here sounds like a simple personnel issue: malfeasance in the workplace. The steward will need to be reprimanded and let go. It seems that simple.
Complications set in when the steward is allowed a few extra days to audit the books and submit a financial statement. Between Friday and Monday, when the books were due, the steward goes around to all the rich man's debtors and cooks the books. Sounds just like Enron. He marks down a percentage of all the debt owed by each, and thereby ingratiates himself with all the people to whom he would be looking for help in his impending unemployment.
"How much do you own my master?" he asks one.
"A hundred measures of oil."
"Take your bill and quickly write down fifty."
"And how much do you owe?" he asks another.
"A hundred measures of wheat," comes the answer.
"Hurry, take your bill and write eighty."
It's hard to tell whether the steward was cutting out his markup, eliminating the usury charges, or just stealing from his master by lowering the debt. I think it's reasonable, in the light of the economy of this parable, to view the steward in the most pejorative way.
By the end of the day he has lined his pockets and the pockets of his master's debtors at the rich man's expense, and his master congratulated him on being so resourceful?
The charming rascal is a favorite literary type. There is something in all of us that wants to see a gifted swindler get away with mayhem once in a while. Hollywood has made a mint on such characters -- think of Paul Newman and Robert Redford in The Sting, or more recently, Leonardo DeCaprio in Catch Me If You Can.
You remember DeCaprio playing the real life crook, Frank W. Abegnale, who "flew" for Pan Am, practiced law for five years in Louisiana as an assistant state attorney, masqueraded as a pediatrician in Georgia, was a very popular sociology professor at BYU, and did not graduate from high school. He was perhaps the most successful con man in history, and ended up spending five years in federal penitentiary. He was released when he agreed to advise the government on other frauds and forgers.
Abegnale begins his 1981 autobiography with the following story from his short career as a Pan Am pilot:
"Good morning Captain," the cashier said. The markings on my uniform identified me as a first officer, a co-pilot, but the French are like that. They tend to overestimate everything... I signed the hotel bill she slid across the counter, started to turn away and then wheeled back, taking a payroll check from the inside pocket of my jacket.
"Oh, can you cash this for me? Your Paris nightlife nearly wiped me out and it'll be another week before I'm home." I smiled ruefully. She picked up the [forged] Pan American World Airways check and looked at the amount.
"I'm sure we can, Captain, but I must get the manager to approve an amount this large. She stepped into an officer behind her and was back in a moment displaying a pleased smile. She handed me the check to endorse.
"I assume you want American dollars," and without waiting for a reply she counted out $786.73. I pushed back two $50 bills.
"I would appreciate it if you would take care of the necessary people, since I was so careless," I said, smiling.
She beamed. "Of course Captain, you are so kind. . . please come back."
It just goes to show that no con man, in or out of the Bible, can work alone.
Now, in Jesus' parable, when the landowner discovers what has happened, he finds himself in a terrific bind. He can jail the dishonest steward and reverse the damage done to himself -- but the problem is there is already a celebration going on down on the Plaza. His tenant farmers are all down at Louis' drinking pints of ale and hoisting them all to him to toast his generosity, and the steward's kindness. He can tell them it's a mistake and pay for it big time with their everlasting resentment, or he can act as if it was his idea in the first place.
This is just what he decides to do. He shows unusual mercy, amazing grace and then... commends the steward for his cleverness. Unbelievable, or perhaps not.
Perhaps the steward knew all along what would happen if his master were backed into such a corner. Perhaps he knew that his master, when push came to shove, would be gracious, was gracious down to his toes. Perhaps that is one of the main points of the parable.
* * *
Then Luke reports an intriguing saying of our Lord he picked up somewhere, probably in a list of collected sayings of Jesus, that we know were making the rounds in his day: "No servant can serve two masters, you cannot serve God and mammon."
Mammon -- what a great biblical word. It's money, but it's more than money. It's the mystique of money, the essence of wealth. It's Las Vegas -- it's Club Med. It's a month of golf at Myrtle Beach. It's the hubris of a company that names an automobile, Infinity. It's Halliburton getting all the contracts in Iraq without having to bid on them and nobody complaining. It's the smell of a magazine like Vanity Fair and the fact that you can't tell the articles from the ads, which is the whole point.
It's what Osama bin Laden hates so much because having come from a rich Saudi family, he's had it, and now, deep in his cave he doesn't have it anymore, so he both wants it and despises it at the same time, and I bet it's killing him.
Mammon is whatever shapes your dreams. It's whatever you expect to save you.
A favorite English professor of mine in college -- Phil, was brought up dripping with it. In college he grew a beard and discovered the writing of Henry David Thoreau and became a convert to the anti-mammon movement going around in the 1960s.
In 1840, Henry David Thoreau had gone to live in a tiny cabin overlooking Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. He gave up comfortable digs and took up a poor man's life confounding his friends and family who could not understand; his defense was a book he simply called, Walden.
In it he says, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately; to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." Living deliberately is, of course, all about choosing God and not mammon (which is always busy choosing us).
My friend went on, of course, to do a graduate degree in English, writing his doctor's thesis on Walden. After college I'd talk to him once in a while. I remember speaking with him in 1980. He'd been a full professor by then for ten years and his father was still asking him when he was going to get "a real job."
In fact, that year his dad asked him if he could put him up in the newest sure-fire money-making enterprise. "What is that?" my friend asked his dad. "Storage units," he said. "Acres and acres of storage units." Phil heard that and realized immediately it was the complete antithesis of all he had chosen for himself.
See, the thing about mammon isn't just the "stuff "that it comprises. It's having to store it. Mammon isn't just having a dozen vintage Ford Mustangs - it's also where you put them. It's endless shelving, and gymnasium-sized walk in closets, and twelve car garages, and storing the videotapes that photograph and itemize all those things for insurance purposes.
I'm happy to say that my professor friend, Phil, is over his reactive obsession with his dad now. He quit living in dumps, became a college president, and made peace with his own ambitious side, which was a good and healthy thing for him.
Listen again to how Jesus puts this: "You cannot serve two masters, God and mammon." It's not that mammon is bad (I'm currently in the market for some new golf clubs). Jesus has been consistently misunderstood on this point. He did not condemn wealth in itself, or ambition. He told one wealthy, young man to sell all he had and give it to the poor, but that was a particular prescription, not a universal model.
What he is saying is that wealth, or any form of mammon doesn't work if we are looking to it for our ultimate fulfillment. It won't work in that case, and people who have tried to make it work know that best.
Many scholars of religion have noted that the current mega-interest in eastern spirituality in the United States probably stems from the increase in wealth since the 1980s. Western Buddhists today are often filthy rich.
Frank Abegnale himself said that all the stuff he collected with the millions he gathered in his elaborate frauds just led to elaborate worrying. Abegnale says he's happy to be free of it all.
Whatever you're banking on as the fulfillment of all your dreams -- be it an antique automobile, your reputation, even your children -- it's still the same. If it's not God, it will collapse on itself.
One of the basic insights in the wisdom of Jesus is that if you try to squeeze something infinite out of something finite, you will not only be unsuccessful and frustrated, you will very likely squeeze the life out of that thing you love, as well.
The first lesson of parenthood is that if children are expected to provide us with peace, happiness, and contentment the load will be too heavy for that relationship to bear.
Conversely, if your parents wagered all their happiness on your success in life, then you yourself have been carrying way too big a burden all these years.
Maybe that's why some people are so much better at being grandparents than they ever were at being parents. By the time their grandkids come along they have given up on those ego needs they had once thrust on their poor children.
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The final truth of the whole mammon business is that you and I only deeply enjoy what we don't ultimately need.
The truth is you can't enjoy anything if you load it up with expectations and demands and insist that it reward you with perfect happiness. No one can enjoy anything that exerts that kind of power over them.
You can't even enjoy your sexuality if you look to it to demonstrate your masculinity or femininity or attractiveness or youth. It won't work.
The radical word of the Christian faith that is as true today as it was 2,000 years ago is that in order to experience "salvation," we must say "no" to all the other gods that clamor for our love and hope and faith and enthusiasm and passion and say, "yes" to the God who continues to love us into being.
We're called to do this not just because it's moral but because it's the only way to be truly free in this life. The Buddha knew this, and so did Jesus.
Who is this God who calls for ultimate allegiance? Simply that purposeful deity from which we came at our birth and to whom we go at the moment of our death.
Which puts me in mind of just one more element in the parable that often gets passed over: The element of time. "Quickly," says the steward. "Hurry," write the new amount.
This may merely be a way of underscoring the steward's malfeasance. But it may also be Jesus' way of reminding us that our lives, like his own, are incredibly short. We have a way of putting off our rendezvous with real happiness. So, once again, hear Jesus' story:
Once upon a time a rich man had a steward, and word came to him that the steward was wasting his goods. So, the word went out that there would be an accounting. The question is, fellow steward, what by your wit, considering the hour, will you do?
Scott Dalgarno is pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Ashland, Oregon. He is also an adjunct professor at Southern Oregon University, where he teaches Film and Ethics. His poetry, essays, and stories have appeared in numerous publications, including The Christian Century, America: The National Catholic Weekly, The Antioch Review, and Alive Now.
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StoryShare, September 23, 2007, issue.
Copyright 2007 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
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