THE NEED FOR BIGGER CLOSETS

SCRIPTURE READING: Matthew 2:1-12

A recent story headline in the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune read “Boom In Area Storage Units”. Depending on how you look at it is, on the one hand, an economic advantage. It provides employment in the community and it builds an entrepreneurial opportunity and aids in raising the tax base for the community. So, from that standpoint it brings an economic advantage for the community. From another point of view it is shameful. It seems to me shameful that we have such a need to store our extra things that we have to take our things outside our homes to store them.

We are aware that over a year has gone by since the Hurricane Katrina disaster where homes were swept away with all in them. Our own members have helped in the recovery effort at Back Bay Mission and the work is not done yet. It seems banal that we should now be worrying about where we’ll put our stuff, our toys.

I confess that seven years ago when Joy and I were looking for a new home, the thing that we were most aware of was the need for closet space. You see we have just as much stuff as anyone else. We have not lived Spartan lives. We have lots and lots of stuff. We haven’t yet had to rent a storage space, but I have from time to time considered building another garage. When I consider the poverty and hunger of the world’s people, I am ashamed of myself.

While I’m confessing, I’ll tell you of a discovery I made when I moved from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan to Wisconsin Rapids. We had an attic full of stuff in boxes. Not once, I emphasize, not once in the six years we lived in that house did we visit all those boxes to get something out of them that we needed desperately. We didn’t even look inside them. The only time I visited them was when I went to the attic to take some more stuff up so that we could store it and not look at it again. I learned then that if you don’t open a box within a year it is stuff you don’t need.

Now mind you, I’m probably not going to give up any of that stuff unless it would be to Goodwill or in a garage sale so that someone could buy my stuff so that they could fill their closets or storage bunkers. You see how silly this sounds? Even as I utter these words I wonder where my values are. Are they in the things I can see and can touch?

Mark Trotter, of the First United Methodist church in San Diego, tells a story of a local college professor who taught freshman English. To the entering class he assigned a 500-word paper on the topic: “Why are you attending college?” He encouraged them to be candid and straightforward, but the results were nevertheless unexpected. Paper after paper seemed to have been written by a machine: college was a means to an end of success, status, prosperity, and security. Only two papers stood out, dramatically different in spirit and content from the others. These papers talked about college enabling the writers to do something with their lives that would be good for the world, that would better the planet, and that would serve others better. The professor was at first encouraged, because it only takes two to make a difference. But then he became mightily disturbed. Both students who authored these papers were not from the United States. The students who sought service over status, success and security, were from Angola and Lebanon. I hasten to add that they were not from Angola or Lebanon, Indiana. That story was told some time ago. I would hope that over a student generation or so that those attitudes of American students would have mellowed. I can see that we are in need of some light.

I can see that I am in need of some light. That is what epiphany brings to us. It brings the light of the star that led the wise men from the east to the place where lay the light of the world. All that they could do was bring stuff. Gold, frankincense and myrrh were as far as their imaginations would reach. They knew that kings would expect tribute. That was the old order. If they had followed Jesus’ career, they would have been enlightened to see that he was not that kind of king. He brought light to the world. He brought not military might as most kings did, but he brought right. He shone his light on those areas of life where there was exclusion, hurt, suffering, religious hypocrisy, hunger and misuse of power.

Now that we are in this season in which we celebrate Jesus’ life as a light to the gentiles, we need to look to our values and to the place where we will renew our lives and let his light shine on us.

We have a wonderful opportunity to engage ourselves in some real soul searching here in this church. We have the convergence of a lot of opportunities for this kind of work. First, we have the celebration of Epiphany when God’s light shone forth to present God’s saving presence of a baby to gentiles, those beyond the community of Israel those who thought that they were the promised ones of spiritual privilege. We know that God plays no such favorites. Secondly, we also have the opportunity in this New Year to allow God’s new light to shine on us and to see our lives for what they are. Where we are shallow and consumed by our things, we can look around us and get outside of ourselves to see the world as it is and see what we can do about making it a better place. In other words, allow the words of Jesus’ teachings to break into our consciousness to speak to us of ways in which we can make life better for those around us. In the third place we are looking forward to the arrival of a new leader among us. That person will bring energy and imagination to the ministry of this church, your ministry.

Through these three events you will have much new light to shed on the work of this church.

Jesus comes now in the sacrament that is before us to bring the light of his forgiveness and the nourishment of our spirits through these elements so that we may be equipped for the journey.

We cannot divorce ourselves from the world of material things. We are flesh and blood creatures, but we need the spirit of the living Christ to help us to see that we are not only creatures of the flesh. We are those who can respond in compassion to the world once we allow God’s light to shine around us and within us.

Sermon preached by Reverend Jake Close at First Congregational United Church of Christ, Appleton, Wisconsin on January 7, 2007.