SUNDAY, AUGUST 5, 2007
Ecclesiastes 1:2,12-14,2:18-23, Colossians 3:1-11, Luke 12:13-21
Grace and Peace to you from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
"Alfred E. Mammon, Jr. died yesterday at his home of a massive
heart attack. One of the wealthiest men in the state, he was the
controlling stockholder in the Mammon Casket Company. Mr. Mammon
had developed the corporation from a small Mom & Pop business
into a nationwide mega-corporation with outlets in all 50 states
and 13 Canadian provinces. He is survived by a wife Helen, a son
Alfred III, a daughter Susan, and three grandchildren. He was pre-deceased
by a sister in 1985. Funeral services will be held at All Saints
Church, Monday at 11 a.m."
Pastor Schmitt rang the doorbell of the Mammon house and waited
for someone to answer. He thought about Alf and Helen. He'd been
at All Saints for 12 years and saw Alf regularly at Christmas and
Easter. He gave generously to the congregation and Helen was a pillar
of it. She was active on the altar guild and chaired the social ministry
committee. She was busy, always busy with charity work. He suspected
that her commitment to the needy was born of her own need to feel
useful, needed.
Helen came to the door. "Pastor," she said. "Do
come in. I'm waiting for Alf III and Susan. They should be here shortly.
We all imagined that this would happen one day. You know how he worked
- all day, every day. He was 62. He could have retired. Of course
he could have retired 20 years ago easily on what he made. But he
wouldn't hear of it - never felt like he had enough, no matter how
much. I think my talk of his retiring frightened him. It's funny,
it's almost as though retirement would have killed him if his working
hadn't."
"You sound a wee bit bitter Helen, are you?" Pastor responded. "No,
not really, I'm long past bitter. I'm just really sad. Alf loved
me. He really loved me. I know he did. He was faithful to me; he
never looked at another woman. Work was his mistress, his first love.
Making money was his hobby and his life. We're wealthy Pastor, really
wealthy. He gave me everything that money could buy, but the thing
I wanted most - his time and his attention."
"Is that why you've given so much of yourself to the church,
Helen?" Pastor continued.
"Alf wouldn't let me
work. We really didn't need money anyway and he thought it demeaning
to him and us if I were to work. When the kids were in school,
I was PT A President and the Booster's Club chair. Between the
kids and my school work, I had a life, but they grew up and went
off into life, and I realized I had no life at all. I became discouraged.
Alf sent me off
to New York to shop. I bought a full-length mink coat and sat in
a room in the Waldorf Astoria in front of a beautiful fire and an
elegant room service meal with china, crystal, and a rare flame lily
from the tropics in a silver bud vase. I sat in a chair, wearing
the coat, and stroked my mink sleeve for an hour. I almost went into
a trance."
"Then from out of nowhere,
I began to tear and then sob. I wept like I've never wept before.
I realized that I had bought the coat, not to flaunt my wealth,
but because it was soft. It enveloped me and made me feel warm.
I wept because even though I was married, I was alone. Alf could
provide me with a full-length mink coat, but he couldn't give me
what I really needed - I needed his full attention, his time; I
needed his presence and not just a body lying in a bed or sitting
across the table eating food. I needed him. I am sad because he
couldn't do that for me. Security was his god. It's so ironic.
He wanted to have enough money that he'd never have to worry about
having enough money. He had everything, two beautiful children,
a wife who loved him, but he could never feel secure, never safe."
You may not know this about
him Pastor, but Alf grew up very poor. He
lived in the east side of Baltimore during the depression and his
father died when he was very young. His Mom was unskilled and
baked bread and did laundry but they were evicted from places several
times because she could not make the rent. Once, he told me,
about having to steal milk and bread off the back of someone’s
porch. He was caught and the people forgave him when they learned
his story. He always felt so ashamed of that though. It
was like it left a stain on his spirit. I think he resented
God and questioned his existence as much as he loved and needed God.
"You want to know what
else is ironic? He made all his money on caskets - he made a whole
range from reasonably priced steel to solid mahogany so that people
could look their best when their friends and family took their
last look at them. Then they went into the ground alone. It' s
so ironic that now Alf will be buried in a coffin of his own making
and will be as alone for eternity as he was in this life - though
he was surrounded by loving possibilities, and possibilities of
love. It's so amazingly sad."
Pastor Schmitt was quiet for
a long time. "Do
you remember the parable Jesus told about the farmer who tore down
his large barns to build even larger ones? Do you remember how
it went? The angels came for the man the very night that he had
completed his barns. And they addressed him as fool. Jesus wasn't
suggesting that God took the man's life as a punishment for trusting
in riches rather than in God, but that he was crazy and foolish
because he had made wealth his security and his god. In doing that,
he had sacrificed his life just like Alf did."
Helen replied, "Do you
think God will hold that against him?"
Pastor Schmitt replied. "No,
I think Jesus is probably sitting with Alf right now, consoling
him because he wasted so much of his life when he could have known
what true life is, years and years before, if he had only believed."
God's Word stands over and against us as warning and promise. Believe
in God and live.
Amen.
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