by Mark Scandrette
Epistle Reading: 1 Timothy 6:6-19
For Sunday, Sept. 29, 2013: Year C—Lectionary 26
I recently finished writing a book about abundance, generosity and contentment called FREE. Three days before this book was released, I went out and spent many hundreds of dollars on a flashy gold ring with three diamonds.
The moment the jewelry store worker handed me the receipt and my little felt covered box, I got sick to my stomach and nearly threw up. What had I done? I have a public reputation as an advocate for contentment, simplicity and voluntary limits to consumption. How did it come to this?
A Difficult Task
My grandmother died. For the funeral I returned to the house my grandfather had built where she had lived for nearly 65 years. My family moved around a lot, but my grandparents home in Rapid City, South Dakota was an enduring place we could go back to that never changed and was full of interesting objects.
My grandfather collected antiques, Indian arrowheads, dinosaur bones, guns and gold. Everything in the house was just as it had been all of my life, which was a great comfort to my sister’s and I when we arrived for the funeral. But strangely now it seemed lifeless. The meaning of that place and those things was connected to the life of my grandparents. Now that both of them have died, my mom and her sister face the difficult task of figuring out what to keep, sell, or throw away.
I’ve now watched this happen with both sets of my grandparents and I’m taking notes. I hope to leave as few things as possible for my kids and grandkids to argue over after I die. We really do take nothing with us.
Something to Remember?
But I wanted something to remember my grandparents by. At the funeral I noticed that my aunt had a gold ring on each finger. My mom has the same habit of wearing bling on her hands and wrists. My grandfather in particular loved Black Hills Gold jewelry — rings and belt buckles adorned with leafy etchings of gold in three different tones. It must be genetic, because I feel naked if I’m not wearing at least 5 rings. To me the value of the rings isn’t important; it’s how the rings express my individual style and memories.
My people for many generations have lived on the Great Plains, on the Western frontier, where 60 million buffalo once roamed. My parents and siblings and I have all moved West. Now that my grandparents have passed on, it’s not likely that I will ever return to South Dakota. To honor the memory of Ray and Hazel Clow, I decided I would buy a piece of Black Hills gold jewelry, which I will pass down to my children as a family heirloom.
My mom accompanied me to a store that advertised 40 to 70 percent off, which appealed to my sense of thriftiness, and I planned to spend about a hundred dollars. First we looked at silver rings with small applications of the multi colored Black Hills gold. But they looked chintzy in comparison with the “real” and six times more expensive solid gold rings. When I make purchases I usually spend weeks or months researching the products and shop around for the very best quality and price. But here I was in a cheesy tourist shop in Keystone buying on impulse, with my grieving mother standing by my side. Against my better judgment I went for it, and now I have an audacious and gaudy gold ring that makes me look like a mafia don or cunning pool shark.
Needing Another?
I’m not beating myself up too much about this impulsive purchase and I can come up with rationalizations about honor and times when it’s appropriate to kill the fattened calf or break the perfume bottle in celebration. But I am embarrassed about breaking my own “rules” of consumption. What I neglected to mention until now is that I already have a lovely heirloom ruby ring given to me by my grandfather. What made me think that I needed another?
Prior to the 20th century, the accumulation of wealth, for most humans, was limited by resources being tethered to the cycle of the seasons and the yield of the land. In our post-industrial society, many of us now have far more than we need for basic survival and thriving. The 12 percent of us who live in Western Europe and the U.S. represent 60% of the global consumption. We are being invited to consider setting voluntary limits to our consumption, to embrace and enjoy the simple pleasure of life that can be shared by all, sharing our abundance with those who have less. We can acknowledge our place of privilege and learn to be “rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.”
One of the most curious sayings attributed to Jesus is, “Use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” I’d like to learn how to better act on this more relational approach to wealth, spending less on myself and learning to make friends with the poorest of my brothers and sisters around the world.
The Nature of Desire
It’s no surprise then that this incident has got me thinking about the nature of what I desire. Desire is at the center of who we are as embodied beings. We crave food, God, affection, sex, achievement ...and so much more. It's enticing to believe that having what we want will make us truly happy, but does it?
The wise and experienced teacher of Ecclesiastes once said, "The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing: "What is healthy desire? At what point do our desires become selfish, insatiable, disordered or destructive? How do our desires shape us? Is it always good to get what we want? Can we experience satisfaction even when we don't get what we think we need?
The Hardest Question
This seems to be what Paul was getting at when he said, “godliness with contentment is great gain” and “if we have food and clothes, we will be content with that.” But is it possible that our Maker has provided everything we need to be content and fulfilled in this moment?
Mark Scandrette is passionate about taking risks to follow the revolutionary teachings of Jesus and shares stories from his personal experiences. A sought after voice for creative, radical and embodied Christian practice, he speaks nationally and internationally at conferences, universities and churches, offering training and coaching to leaders and organizations. Wherever Mark travels and speaks he hopes to inspire groups to take a more active and creative approach to spiritual formation and missional engagement. He is the author of FREE: Spending Your Time and Money on What Matters Most (IVP 2013), Practicing the Way of Jesus (InterVarsity Press 2011) and Soul Graffiti (Jossey-Bass 2007) and contributor to the Animate:FAITH video series (Augsburg Fortress 2012).
