Finding the Perfect Storage Unit
Rev. Rob Rynders
Sunday, August, 5, 2007
Tempe 1st UMC


One of the things that comes with being a United Methodist pastor is that every year you are not quite sure if you will be staying at your current appointment or if you will move to a new one. If you do get moved to a different appointment sometimes it may be close enough that you can stay in your current home, but often it involves calling the moving company. The same goes for being a college student. Another population that is also always on the move are college students. Often times college students live in a different place every year of school. This is my first year as a UM pastor, last year was Melissa’s first year, and for 9 years before that I was an undergraduate or graduate college student. Needless to say I have moved 9 times in the last 10 years. Each time this involved packing up everything I own and for 4 of those years everything both of us owned. It was pretty easy at first. My first year of college all of my belongings, minus a little bit of furniture, fit into my four door car and there was still enough room for my mom to ride shotgun. As the years went on each move required bigger and more transportation for all of my stuff. I soon went from needing a pick-up truck, to needing to also use my friends truck, to needing four friends vehicles, to a U-Haul truck, to a large moving company truck, and then one and a half moving trucks this last move. Now to be fair, all of my sister-in-laws belongings were included in this last move.

I am not sharing this with you to brag about how much stuff we have acquired over the years but to illustrate a fact that all of us can relate to. No matter how much we try, unless we are forced to, most of us end up with more and more stuff as the years go by and not less and less. Our garages and closets are full and we sometimes consider renting a storage unit from one of the many storage unit companies that we see all over town. Recently one of our friends moved back into her parents house with her husband while they wait for their new house to be finished next month. Of course they had to find somewhere to store their things so they spent a day checking a bunch of storage unit companies. They searched and searched visiting companies with security gates and surveillance, lighted units, 24 hour access units, and the one they finally decided on that has all of those things plus air conditioning. Can you imagine what our spiritual lives would be like if we searched for a relationship with God and neighbor as hard and as seriously as we need for places to store all of things we have collected over the years?

That’s what today’s parable is all about. It’s not one of Jesus’ parables that is subtle, symbolic, or metaphorical. it’s meaning is not meant to be difficult to figure out. In fact it’s pretty straight forward, and that’s what makes it so difficult to hear and to admit that it applies to us.

In the NRSV translation this is story is called “The Parable of the Rich Fool.” Today we take the word fool to mean dumb, or stupid, or gullible, or all of the above. In the Bible, however, to call someone a fool means to call that person arrogant, and that is the precise attitude that the rich man in the parable has. As Jesus describes, the man has accumulated an extra yield from his crop and decides that instead of giving the extra grain to those who need it and not wanting to let it go to waste decides to build larger storehouses as a sign of his wealth and success. The man, however, does not have much time to enjoy is prosperity because God comes to him and calls him a fool and tells him that his life will soon end and everything he has stored up will no longer be of use to him. The point of this parable is simple, no matter how much we have we can’t take it with us when we die. If our goal in life is to have the most stuff by the time our lives on earth come to an end then this parable is a reminder that those who focus on storing up treasures for themselves will be left disappointed. Instead, through this parable, Jesus calls us to an attitude that is entirely different. In a world and society that tells us to buy, collect, and save as much as we can, we, as the body of Christ, must live as alternatives to the world of materialism and model the Kingdom of God by storing our treasures with God through living lives of justice, compassion, mercy, and discipleship.

I think, perhaps, that the fact that we have messy and overcrowded garages and some of us own storage units is not going to ruin society or keep us out of God’s good graces. It is when our individual attitudes of greed and materialism come together with many other individuals that we walk a dangerous line of neglecting and fracturing our relationship with God and neighbor.

I recently read an article in a business magazine that detailed the boom of the bottled water industry. Never before have we spent so much money on something that we can get practically free. Here are some bottled water fun facts:
-24% of the bottled water we buy is tap water re-packaged by Coke and Pepsi.
-Fiji water produces more than a million bottles a day while more than half the people in Fiji do not have reliable drinking water.
-We pitch into landfills 38 billion water bottles a year—in excess of $1 billon worth of plastic.
-If the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water cost our monthly water bill would run $9000.
-Worldwide 1 billion people have no reliable source of drinking water; 3,000 children die a day from diseases caught from tainted water.
-Finally my favorite: If you bought a bottle of Evian water for $1.35, for the same cost you could refill that bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months and 21 days.
-Now bottled water in and of itself bottled water is not evil. There is of course the fact that we give hundreds of cold bottled water to our homeless population each week because of the extreme summer heat.
-Many also advocate that we reduce, reuse, and recycle our use of plastic water bottles and each time we buy bottled water we can remind ourselves of steps we can take to bring clean and safe drinking water to the rest of the world.

While water often sustains life we also know that it takes life. We are quickly approaching the two-year anniversary of hurricane Katrina. There are still neighborhoods that are not rebuilt and may never be and not surprisingly it is the poor and the ethnic/minority persons who have still not recovered. We can rest assured though that hundreds of millions of dollars went into fixing the Louisiana Superdome so the Saints have a place to play football. While that feat was a symbol of hope for some, it made many of us think that recovery and rebuilding efforts were finished despite the fact that thousands of persons are still without homes. Fortunately, this church and many other churches still recognize the need in New Orleans and have and will continue to send work-teams to that area.

One of the most disturbing figures of how we spend money as a society is how much do we spend on war. According to The National Priorities Project every week we spend a minimum of $2 billion as a nation on war. There has been an over $6 billion cost to Arizona taxpayers over the last four years, or roughly what it would cost to hire over 145,000 school teachers, 148,000 public safety officers, or to provide1.4 million scholarships for university students. No matter how you feel about war it seems if we can spend that much money on death we should be able to spend at least as much on life.

So how can we make sure we are storing our hearts and our lives in God’s Kingdom not storing them in material things and physical storage units? Perhaps the perfect storage unit is the Kingdom of God, this storage unit, however, only takes acts and attitudes of love, justice, mercy, peace, compassion and equality. What are some practical ways then that we can make sure our focus is on the Kingdom that is among us?

-Look at where our money goes, what are our priorities when it comes to spending money? Do we invest in or support organizations that harm the environment or violate human rights? Do we spend frivolously on things we don’t need or even necessarily want?

-And not just money, but time. Can we spend our time volunteering for an organization or advocating for a just cause?

-Do we spend enough time with God? Can we spend more time tending to our spiritual lives?

We must also remember the difference between the good life and the blessed life. Sometimes we feel like even though we have been blessed that we still need to be blessed some more. If we are blessed are we living as a blessing to ourselves or to others who are in need?

We are called to seek an alternative life than the one that is presented to us on TV and in advertisements. We are called to live simply and give abundantly.

I have spent most of my ministry working with youth. On every youth mission trip I have led I required that the teenagers leave their ipods, and CD players at home, so they can be more focused on building community rather than spending their free time in a corner listening to their music. They always fight me at the beginning and some of them go through personal listening device withdrawal for the first couple of days. By the end of the week, however, every youth has practically forgotten that they even owned a pair of headphones. The experience of living in community, sleeping on the floor, and spending their day selflessly helping those in need replaced their need to constantly be connected, wired, and plugged in. For most of these youth, although they promptly find their ipods as soon as we return home they now realize that life is no longer centered in a click-wheel but that life is something bigger than themselves.

When we are intentional about living and focusing our lives in Christ by being rich towards God we experience not only physical but also spiritual transformation. Being rich towards building God’s Kingdom helps us to follow Jesus’ call to discipleship. God works in us to be in closer relationship with God and neighbor, and creation. God multiplies our ability to be more loving and compassionate.
Our lives become less stressful and we feel better about ourselves when our focus is on God and an outward relationship to the world.
And finally, our relationships with our families, friends, co-workers, classmates, neighbors, and yes, even strangers become stronger and more fulfilling.


So is this parable about giving away every thing we have and living in poverty or is it about being responsible and generous with what we have? I think it is about both, depending on what God is calling you to do. Many Christians throughout history lived without owning anything and gave their lives to serving the poor and many still do today. For most of us, however, that is not what we are called to do. Believe me, I have my share of stuff and gadgets. I think though that the struggle can be more difficult for the haves than the have-nots. I only mean this in the sense that at every moment Jesus calls us to be generous and self-less givers, to close the gap between rich and poor and to break down barriers of injustice in whatever form they exist. And sometimes it is harder to be generous when we want to protect and are fearful of losing everything we have ever accumulated for ourselves. The best thing, however, about worshiping a loving and gracious God is that even when we ignore those moments where we can make a difference God does not abandon or forsake us; God is constantly offering us another chance. So think about those places in your life where you can scale down and live more simply. Think about how God is calling you and all of us as a church to not store up treasures for ourselves but how to live richly toward God and all of creation. In the name of Jesus Christ, may it be so. Amen.