A sermon by Karen Thomas Smith
Oakhurst Baptist Church
August 1, 2004
Luke 12:13-28
Colossians 3:1-1
Psalm 49
The story we’ve just heard from Luke’s gospel is one I think most Moroccans would love. It’s a story that poor people through the ages have loved, and most Moroccans are poor. Poor people have enjoyed it because it tells of the folly of the rich. The rich man who has so much more than he needs he decides to build bigger barns and he dreams of how he’s gonna live it up, when he suddenly up and dies. You fool, God says, what good has all that stuff of yours done you?
Well, let me tell you, this is a powerful story for me to hear during my bi-annual visit to America, aka the land of stuff. America is the land of shopping. And if you don’t realize that, go to pretty much any other continent and you’ll notice the difference. I am reminded of a story I heard told about a little American girl born in West Africa whose parents were visiting the states when she was about four years old. Her grandmother took her to Wal-Mart, which the child had never before experienced. When she walked in the doors, her eyes widened as she looked around, and she turned and said to her grandmother, “Grandma, does my Mommy know about this place?”
It’s so different, you see, where I live, for example, in Ifrane, Morocco, population 15,000; we have one little central marketplace housing dozens of little shops that all sell pretty much the same limited number of items. You can get fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, groceries and basic supplies like toilet paper without any trouble there. And while the market is small, marketing is even more limited in Ifrane. We have two billboards which went up about two years ago, both of which advertise Maroc Telecom specials.
Not so in the USA. When I first came back from Burkina Faso in 1987, I was acutely aware of everything in my peripheral vision because I was used to people just sort of stepping in front of the car, not knowing the car couldn’t just stop. I had a terrible time driving in this country because of all the billboards and neon advertisements – all this stimulus in the range of my peripheral vision. I couldn’t have driven down Memorial Drive that summer; Owensboro, Kentucky, was bad enough.
But of course, I adjusted, and I readjust quickly to consumer mentality when I come back to the US. I always have a list of stuff I want to be sure to take back: Crystal Light peach tea, Scotch satin wrapping tape, Szechwan chicken spice mix. Real essentials, you can tell. It’s hard to not let our trips to America be taken over by shopping: there’s so much stuff I can’t get there that I want, and we’ve earned our money and paid for our tickets and our luggage allowance, why shouldn’t I just load up on all the stuff my heart desires? This is America.
Indeed, this is America, the land of plenty, which we have filled with great storehouses, bigger and bigger storehouses that we have built as a nation. We have so much. We are the envy of the nations with all our stuff. A kid in Burkina once said to me, “I bet in America everybody has their own donkey.” We laugh because he had no idea about the extent of our nation’s wealth. But that was 20 years ago; now even in Burkina Faso most folks know a lot more than that boy from the countryside, much more so in the more developed developing countries like Morocco. And what they know is not what they learn in school. It’s what they see on TV. Resembling the sunflower fields covering hectares of Morocco’s farmland, even the most remote Moroccan villages are topped with satellite dishes all pointing in the same direction. (Even in places where electric lines do not reach, you can run a TV on a car battery.) American movies, sitcoms, dramas, and cartoons make it into the living rooms of virtually every Moroccan home via satellite. Friends is so popular in Morocco that the seniors of the Al Akhawayn School of Ifrane sang the Friends’ theme song at their graduation in May. They see the luxury we take for granted and, of course, they want it, too.
The Moroccan government worries that Americans are trying to proselytize Muslims in Morocco. But let me tell you, the Moroccan population has already converted en masse to the religion that reigns in the USA – not Christianity, but materialism. It’s a done deal. Moroccans have seen the neon light and have been converted; they are willing to learn English, adopt the American business model, teach marketing to their children (Ola, Coca Cola, one kid said to us in Chefchauen) and do whatever else it takes to get a piece of that pie.
But the god of materialism is not benign. The fruits of the materialistic spirit are dissatisfaction, envy, evil desire, resentment, covetousness, greed. No wonder America has a love-hate relationship with the nations we have so successfully converted. The US is resented for throwing the weight of its attractive wealth around the world to ensure that America can keep living its luxurious lifestyle. In the end, we should not be surprised when the lofty symbols of our dominance in world trade are the targets of terrorist attacks.
It is so, so hard in this culture, and in the world this culture dominates, not to be seduced by the religion of materialism whether we are rich or poor. But we do not have to deliver ourselves up to be sacrificed on its altars. We do not have to bend the knee in obeisance to its god. That is the gospel truth: there is another way, a narrow way, but a way that leads to life. And one key to finding that way, brothers and sisters, is following its dress code. Yes it’s dress code. Put on Christ, the New Testament says, strip off the deadly garments of sin and clothe yourselves in the new creation.
It is a compelling metaphor, drawn, of course, from baptismal practices of the early church – the believer would take off his/her old clothes before entering the baptismal waters and upon emerging, would be wrapped in a new, clean garment of white. The Colossians and us along with them are invited to renew our baptism daily, to intentionally put on Christ again and again.
And so we come to a place like Oakhurst Baptist Church -- with Baptist in our name, with a baptistery front and center in the sanctuary to try to do that – to reclaim our baptismal birthright. We come to find Christ, to take him out of the closet we’ve pushed him to the back of behind our designer suits or designer jeans, to put him on our lives again. If you think about it, it is such an odd thing for us sophisticated, modern people to keep coming together to hear again the story of a homeless Palestinian Jew who lived 2000 years ago. And yet we do, because we believe his story can save us from ourselves, from our materialism and from our other pet idolatries that threaten to do us in.
Now, putting Christ on our lives in our context is not a self-explanatory thing that one can simply “will” to do. We have to learn how to do it, and we learn how to do it from example, from one another. In Colossians 3, the “you” we read – you have stripped off the old self, you have clothed yourself in Christ – that “you” is always plural; this is what we learn how to do together. We can’t do this Christian thing in isolation. We need saints in our communities and saints in our lives who show us a way of living that is not greedy or envious or resentful, but generous, gracious, and compassionate.
We are so fortunate to have saints in our midst at Oakhurst who can teach us. I want to tell you today about a nineteenth century saint whose story you may or may not know, a saint who has often helped me and others in my North African context to put on Christ. Charles de Foucauld was a French soldier who went to Algeria and Morocco in the 1880’s. There, he was profoundly moved by the simplicity of life of the Berber peoples among whom he lived. Though they were Muslims, in them he saw Christ, and he was converted to Christianity through their witness. After his conversion, he put on the jellaba of his Algerian friends and lived alongside them in simplicity and faith. Though he was killed in an anti-French uprising in 1916, his life inspired a movement among Christians in France and around the world – the little Brothers and Sisters of Christ.
There are a number of communities of Little Sisters of Christ in Morocco today, including one group living in Azrou, the next town over from where I live. I visit them from time to time in the simple three-room flat they rent in a “quartier populaire” of the village. Their witness to Christ is their loving presence, and their complete solidarity with the people of Azrou. Just a few weeks ago, Claudia Dickerson and I (along with about 30 other friends) met with two little Sisters who live in the old city of Fez – Little Sister Claire from Switzerland and Little Sister Lalitha from India. Claire served side by side among low-income factory workers in Switzerland during the majority of her ministry; but she chose to retire where she had begun her work – in Morocco. Her pension helps support her and Lalitha who works with handicapped children. The third little sister who lives with them, Elizabeth (from Korea), works with Moroccan women in embroidery; her income, like theirs, comes from what they sell. These women who keep inspiring me to put on Christ, tell me that their desire is still to be converted to Christ again and again.
The story of Christ wherever it is lived in Jewish Palestine, in Barbary Morocco, in the factories of Switzerland, in inner-city Atlanta, in rural Americus, the lived story of Christ can be an antidote to our materialism and all our other deadly idolatries. We’ve got to keep trying to be faithful to tell that story, to live it. That’s what we need from each other, beloved. We need to put on Christ like we put on those t-shirts proclaiming our beloved-ness. Our beloved country and our beloved world need that witness.
We are American, yes, but we don’t have to be the rich fool at the butt of the joke. Brothers and sisters, it’s not too late to put your treasure in heaven, and laugh out loud with your load lightened and your heart free.
May it be so, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.