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The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost Are you a pack-rat? I know I surely am. Everywhere I look, I am reminded of this single fact. My drawers are full of memorabilia dating back to who knows when. My files are thick with documents that I will never use; my bookshelf holds texts I will never get around to reading; my wallet is full of ticket stubs, callings cards, and junk from yesteryear. My office? Forgetaboutit! And my attic, cellar, and garage? Well, my wife may be in listening range, so we won’t even go there. Now, mind you, I love all this stuff. I am attached to it. I have been known to pick through my own trash to recover things I have thrown away, because it’s too painful to see them carted off to a landfill somewhere. Yes, I am a pack-rat extraordinaire. And, I know am not alone. It’s simply human nature. Life is ephemeral and transient, and the soul somehow needs and wants physical attachments. Human beings have always loved to accumulate things. And Americans have refined this ancient practice into a way of life. We as a people amass more things we can’t possible use, more products that become junk as soon as it comes out of the box, more merchandise than we will ever need. And then, we go out and do it all over again. We are drowning in things. Things that obsess us. Things that control us. Things that we have to lock up, and maintain, and warranty, and fret about. Things that weigh us down and make us crazy. Things that rust, and bread down, and nickel and dime us to death. Things that deplete our resources, suck dry our energy, mountains of things that pollute, corrupt, and destroy. Things we own, or rather, things that own us. So, my friends, I wonder, what are we to do with this simple directive in our Gospel this morning that Jesus has for those of us who seeks to be his disciples: “And he ordered them to take nothing for the journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics”? Is it that Jesus, as an itinerant preacher, had no need to own anything? Is it just that our Lord did not have a clue about living in the modern world, and that he couldn’t possibly know how to survive in a consumer culture like ours? Is his commendation just about self-denial and giving up the great pleasures we derive from having all these things in our lives? Or is it something else altogether? Could it be that Jesus is telling us a secret about living life fully, living life simply, living life unencumbered by the things that can but only distract us and weigh us down? Is Jesus revealing to us a truth that is liberating and life-giving as any other we must learn on our earthly pilgrimage? Folk singer Tracy Chapman sang about this same truth: “Consume more than you need. This is the dream. Make you pauper. Or make you a queen. I won’t die lonely. I’ll have it all prearranged. A grave that’s deep and wide enough for me and all my mountains of things. Oh they tell me, there’s still time to save your soul. Yes they tell me. Renounce all, renounce all those material things you gained by exploiting other human beings.” Those of you who have taken the opportunity to see the film “An Inconvenient Truth” know the terrible price we are paying for the mountain of things we cannot or will not renounce or give up. Traveling lightly, as Jesus commanded, affects everything that we do, everything that we are, and its effects reach everything that is. Our mountainous ecological footprint, if unchanged, will take us all into oblivion. Our Gospel this morning tells us there is another way. Every once in a while, you know, I think I get a glimpse of what Jesus is talking about. And it comes simply by doing what he says. Many of you know that the past six years, I have spent time on Monhegan Island in Maine, in a little parsonage with no electricity and the most basic of accommodations. To get to Monhegan, you take the mail boat out of Port Clyde or New Harbor, and for all intents and purposed, anything you need for your stay on the island, you carry one. In this day and age, when most of us look for our favorite outlet store or golf course or fancy restaurant when we are on vacation, this might not seem like much of a holiday. But I have to tell you, it is close to bliss for me. Monhegan is small, as islands go, so each day I hike here and there with a rucksack full of brushes and oils, and scrounge up something to paint. I only eat what I bring with me on the boat, and then, only when I am hungry. I wake at first light and then it’s off to bed when dusk arrives 15 hours later. There is no car, no computer, no telephone, no t.v. to distract me. The batteries left in the old radio in the parsonage are usually dead, so I receive no news from the outer world. My world, for a week or so, consists in being alone, with precious few things to worry about. The gulls and the surf, the cliffs and fog horns and occasional human contact are my only companions. And as for the mountain of things and the many distractions I have left behind me? One by one, they start to lift from heart and mind. And I am drawn to a place where all that I can see, and all that I can sense, and all that I can feel is the wonder, and the awesome magnificence of this creation and of our Creator God. I think this is what Jesus means when he says: “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” One old bishop friend of mine years ago used to talk about the kind of experience I have on Monhegan each year as being a thin place. In other words, a place where there is little to separate you from the mysterium tremendum, the Almighty God. And I wonder now what it all means, living as I do, living as we do in our world choking on our possessions, and choking the world to death with our possessiveness. I know this much. This old pack-rat still has a lot of house-cleaning to do. I can and I must travel more lightly. And I believe we all can and must learn to do the same. But the trade-off is worth it. For as our lives are drawn into the lightness of being, as we travel ever more freely, the Kingdom of God does come near to us, and we can see and know and fell that it is here, where our true home abides.
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