Stewardship Campaign Kick-off October 10, 2010 “The American Dream” Reverend Michael D. Powell Luke 8:11-15

This morning we’re kicking off our 2011 stewardship campaign with Jesus’ explanation of his Parable of the Seeds that were sown among the thorns. Jesus compares those seeds to how we gladly hear the word of God, but how it gets choked out by what he calls “the cares and riches and pleasures of life.” Cares and riches and pleasures, those are the thorns that he says make it impossible for the spiritual seeds to grow and mature.

I’ll be using a lot of material provided by Adam Hamilton during this stewardship campaign. He’s the senior pastor of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection, in Leawood, Kansas. He’s built that church up from a handful of folks to a congregation of 15,000, so he must be doing something right! Although there are significant differences between Morningside and the Church of the Resurrection, I believe that the basic spiritual insights he has to share are truths that apply to us as well.

Hamilton compares and contrasts the American Dream with what he calls the American Nightmare. The founders of this great country had a dream about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. There was a dream of freedom and new beginnings beautifully expressed on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” There was also the dream of equality and opportunity conveyed in Dr. Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech. These are lofty and noble dreams, but Hamilton believes they’re not what most folks mean when they talk about the American Dream. For most people, he writes, that dream has to do with a subconscious desire for achieving success and satisfying the desire for material possessions. It’s the opportunity to pursue more than what we have, to gain more than what we have. We tend to measure our success by the stuff we possess, so consuming, acquiring, buying – in other words, the cares, riches and pleasures of this world - is what the American Dream has come to mean for many people, and it’s turned into a nightmare.

Now, perhaps these words don’t resonate for you at all. If that’s the case, just thank God. Sit back and enjoy the sermon, knowing that it has no new insights or teachings for your life. If you’ve ever felt financially insecure, however, there may be something in these words for you.

The words stress, anxiety and fear capture well the state of mind of many in America today. We’ve witnessed dramatic market losses, the collapse of the world’s largest insurance company, the largest Savings and Loan failure in banking history, and numerous bankruptcies and mergers. Every day seems to bring another piece of economic uncertainty.

“Recently, the American Psychological Association released the findings of a survey they conducted of 7,000 American households. The study notes that 80% of Americans are stressed about the economy and personal finances. Half are worried about their ability to provide for their family’s basic needs. Fifty-six percent are concerned about their own job stability. Sixty percent of respondents report feeling angry and irritable and 52 % report laying awake at night worried about this. The report concludes that, ‘The declining state of the nation’s economy is taking a physical and emotional toll on people nationwide.’” (1) If you’ve escaped this stress, you are blessed indeed.

The causes of our national economic woes are many, and we’d love to blame it all on the greed and dishonesty of bankers, big business and insurance company CEOs, but Hamilton believes that the ultimate causes are not only financial, they’re spiritual, and he won’t allow us to just point the finger at the big guys, either on Wall Street or Main street. He insists that we all take our fair share of credit for the mess we’re in.

Hamilton believes, based on his experience with a congregation of 15,000 United Methodists, along with his knowledge of human nature, that many of us have fallen into the bad habit of focusing too much of our energy and resources on acquiring more and newer, bigger and better. But, the funny thing, according to Hamilton’s sense of humor, is that all of our consuming has not increased our joy in life – if anything it tends to rob us of joy and increase our stress.

So, he is urging us all to rediscover truths that previous generations, products of a simpler time, knew and accepted, wisdom that was drawn from the pages of scripture. Hamilton suggests that joy and contentment are found in simplicity and generosity, in faith and in pursuing a higher purpose in life. He’s obviously not advocating that any of us beggar ourselves or take a voluntary vow of poverty. He’s simply suggesting that we cultivate contentment and re-evaluate what constitutes the “good life.” There’s no sin in having money. It, like anything else, can be used for either good or evil. The problem arises when we make the acquisition of wealth and material possessions the focus of our life.

Hamilton likes to play with words. He blames the current American financial nightmare and the stress it produces on two diseases: affluenza and credit-itis. Affluenza is defined as the constant need for more and bigger and better stuff, as well as the effect this need has on us. He cites the fact that advertizing is in the business of convincing us to be dissatisfied with what we have, and restless for something we don’t have. Nearly every advertisement is specifically designed to appeal to one or another of what earlier generations referred to as the seven deadly sins: greed, envy, gluttony, and the like. The second disease, credit-itis, creates the opportunity (another word for temptation) for us to buy now and pay later. Credit-itis feeds the idea of instant gratification and undercuts our sense of contentment and self-discipline.

Both these diseases, he believes, are symptomatic of an inner sickness. He even dares to call it sin, which is pretty bold for a contemporary United Methodist preacher, since we are not known for dwelling much on sin. But sin, literally defined, is missing the mark, and by now it’s pretty obvious that we’re off target somewhere. The target is God. The target is, simply put, “seek ye first the kingdom of God, and God’s righteousness,” and the promise is that all the other things we really need will be provided. St. Augustine said that our hearts were created by God and for God, and that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. That’s the spiritual seed that was sown in the soil of our hearts but, as Jesus says in his explanation of the parable, those seeds have a way of getting choked out by the thorns of materialism and misplaced priorities.

Hamilton shares a quote from a book appropriately entitled Consuming Passion, by Craig Gay, in which Gay writes, “The most serious indictment we must level at contemporary consumer behavior is that it is ‘spiritless.’ It betrays a decision to sacrifice all noble and truly human aspirations at the altars of comfort, convenience, and safety.” (2) He says that when too much of our energy and our thoughts and our heart’s desire go into those thorny, materialistic cares, concerns and pleasures, there’s nothing left to nurture the fruit God intends us to produce. Our spiritual lives remain immature and unfruitful to the extent we find ourselves pursuing the selfish and nightmarish American Dream dictated by our culture. And then he quotes Jesus, from Mark 8:36: “What does it profit you to gain the whole world, and forfeit your life?”

Hamilton does offer a solution. His suggestions are biblically based, and they’re going to be the subject of my next three sermons. Some of you are familiar with Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace principles, and you’ll recognize some of this material. In a nutshell, what we’re going to be talking about is responding to God’s higher calling in our lives, a calling to simplicity and faithfulness and generosity. Both Hamilton and Ramsey teach that a key part of experiencing financial peace and spiritual freedom is found in simplicity and exercising restraint. They do not suggest that you never buy a new car or go on a vacation, purchase new clothes or go out to your favorite restaurant. But they do suggest that we all seek to simplify our lives and silence those inner voices of discontent that constantly tell us that we need more. They provide guidelines for how we can live counter-culturally, by actually living below, not above our means; and suggest that we build into our budgets the money to buy with cash instead of credit; and that we build in what we need to be able to live generously and faithfully.

My prayer is that over the next few weeks we come to know in an ever deepening way the purpose God has for our lives, a purpose that unfolds the gifts of peace, joy and generosity. May Christ be your shalom.

(1) Quoted by Adam Hamilton in Enough: Discovering Joy through Simplicity and Generosity, p. 5 \

(2) ibid., p. 21