8-1-19 - Bigger Barns

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

Jesus’ stories usually contain some detail that grabs the imagination. A stand-out feature in this parable of the rich fool (as this story is often named…) is the bigger barns this man builds to store all his grain and possessions. In a country in which many have so much “stuff” we have to stow what we can’t use in rows of storage facilities cluttering our landscape; in a time when television viewing options include not one but several “reality shows” about people who hoard – including shows that combine hoarding and storage facilities! – this parable chimes a contemporary note. Many Americans have more belongings than we can use, even compulsively buying things on credit, and then going into debt to store it all. We are indeed “building bigger barns.”

Commentators more knowledgeable than I have noted this phenomenon and reasons for it. In part it reflects anxiety about our economy, and about cultural change – a literal unwillingness to let go of the past even when we no longer need to hang on to it.

I believe it also has deeper emotional and spiritual roots – we are literally stuffing, trying to fill the vacant places in our hearts. As communities have become more dispersed and families often more fragmented; as technological and cultural change seems to accelerate while economic possibilities shrink; as people have become less familiar with the language and practice of faith traditions, and less rooted in communities that nurture spiritual connection – there is a spiritual void.

Most of us don’t like emptiness. We seek to fill it with all kinds of things, mostly to numb the feelings of aloneness or disconnection it brings. Filling spiritual emptiness with material things doesn’t work, as we know. Feelings that get stuffed down or numbed out just emerge in other, often more destructive, ways.

We may not be hoarders, yet we might ask ourselves, before God, “Is there anything I think I need more of than I really do? Anything – time, money, Facebook friends, awards, meetings on my calendar – that makes me feel more secure because I have a lot of it?”

Here’s another question: “Is there pain or emptiness in me I'm not willing to feel? Do I numb myself with work, food, alcohol, games, television, internet, [fill in the blank]? What if I let that feeling bubble up, give it some air, feel it?” There you are, sitting quietly in the company of the God who made you - you can take the risk to feel. I find that feelings, once they’re felt, tend to quiet down and fade away. Like two-year-olds, they mostly want to be acknowledged.

And then, instead of emptiness, we have some holy space to fill with holy peace, holy passion, holy presence. That is my prayer for you today – holy peace, holy passion, holy presence of the One who made you and loves you more than you can imagine. Those gifts are constantly renewed – and we don’t need a bigger barn to keep them in.

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