Layers

Homily for 4 August 2013 (Proper 13, Year C)

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23. Psalm 49:1-12. Colossians 3:1-11.Luke 12:13-21

Simple.

Not simple as in lacking, stupid, inadequate, unsophisticated, not quite all there. Not that sort of simple, the sense in which the word is often used. A somewhat derogatory meaning.

But simple in the way that it is properly used. In Latin, simplex: single, whole, having one ingredient, plain. Simple in the way that mathematicians and philosophers use the word: indivisible, incapable of being splintered—the opposite of diabolical. Innocent, modest, free from ostentation, unmixed.

Here is an image of our psychological development. We begin simple and whole in the Garden of Eden. We see the world around us and begin to make judgments. We begin to clothe ourselves with finery (fig leaves) to make ourselves look more and more impressive. We surround ourselves with layer after layer, like a Matryoshka doll. Each hurt brings more and more scar tissue. We become heavier and more complex, weighed down, more and more rigid, less and less adaptable. There’s more to break down. Like electric gadgets in the car, they’re more difficult and more expensive to fix. The opposite of simple.

Simple is a beautiful word. A restful word even.

It’s easy to read today’s Gospel story as if it were about redistribution of resources. I am nervous about preaching such a message because it soon sounds sanctimonious: look how good I am because I ‘graciously’ give my stuff away. When I attack the mega-rich, it sounds suspiciously like envy. The Archbishop of Canterbury recently said that if he’d been working in the financial services he couldn’t say that he would have behaved any better than the sharp suited barrow boys who’ve got us into this mess. And neither could I. As has been said: ‘it is possible for the rich to sin by coveting the privileges of the poor.’

We live in a society where governments and the advertising industry encourage us to indulge ourselves with what we don’t need. The Lotto! How would you deal with winning millions? Go round the world? Buy this and that? Buy posh clothes? Eat and drink fine food and wine? So what? After all this, you are the same you, but now with new sensations behind you. Your quest for new experiences—for that’s what it is—means that it’s now harder for you to experience the same degree of novelty. You need more and more of whatever it is to get the same degree of stimulation. There’s plenty of biological evidence for this: the biology of addiction. The more we have, the more we want. This is greed. It becomes dangerous for the community when we wilfully accumulate so that others are deprived. We possess – a terrible word. We think we are self-sufficient. If we have enough in the barn, we won’t need anyone else. We become lonely and paranoid. Greed shows a lack of love and trust.

Psalm 17:10: They are inclosed in their own fat and their mouth speaketh proud things.

My precioussssss

It seems to me that today’s gospel story is not about renunciation, though there is plenty in Jesus’ message about exactly that. Today’s story seems more about how to cope with good fortune. It’s not about giving it away: it’s about sharing it. By sharing we demonstrate our connectedness, our not being separate. The Good Samaritan shared his wealth. When we keep things to ourselves we become wizened and twisted and consumed, like Gollum. We become being inclosed in our own fat, behind electric gates and security fences.

The alternative is to stop trying to accumulate goods and feelings and emotions. Simply exist and enjoy. Simply. Living with trust, directed towards the Divine, reminds us that there’s no point thinking that possessing more and more will  make us immortal and invincible. Let’s share what we have—time, talents, money—before it’s too late. That’s what the men in today’s story need to be doing.

St Paul recommends that we kill everything that belongs to the earthly life, especially greed, which is like worshipping a false god. To attempt to keep possessions and memories locked ‘in a barn’ is like chasing after wind. Vanity of vanities. We can not recover the feelings we once had, we can not find the same stimulation we once found. All passion spent. This is a great blessing: I can relax. It doesn’t matter what I have or what I’ve done. What matters is who I am and how I share what I am.

A rich woman dies. Where there’s a will, there are relatives! How much did she leave? She left everything.

In our lives we move from simple to complex and hopefully to simple again. The wisdom of age.

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free
‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain’d,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be asham’d,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come ‘round right.

So you’re in the Garden of Eden, right, and you’re watching the drama of Adam and Eve unfold, with the talking snake and the scrumping of apples. There’s something very strange. The snake talks to the woman who seems to be alone. The big question is: where is the man? We’re told that Eve was created from Adam’s rib, surgery having been performed while yer man was asleep. Biologists have recently managed to grow rudimentary teeth from cells in human urine, so I suppose the woman-from-rib story has something going for it even if cell biology labs in the Garden of Eden weren’t like the ones we have now. A different version of the story from Hebrew literature goes like this: when the Holy One created Adam, the creature had a female aspect facing one way and a male aspect facing the other. The Holy One then sawed the creature in half giving the (now two) creatures a back for one part and a back for the other. So both man and woman were created from a hermaphrodite first creation. Now, that’s more likely, isn’t it? It explains why men and women see things differently—they look in opposite directions, the push-me-pull-you. Anyhow, back to the question: where was Adam? Well, it’s universally acknowledged that men make more fuss of being ill than women, so he was probably taking longer to recover from major surgery than Eve, thus unable to engage in intercourse with the snake. On the other hand—and I think this much the more likely explanation—he was where any self-respecting man would be: hiding from the missus in his garden shed.

Up to now, gentle reader, you might think I’m taking the micturition (though the Hebrew commentary story is authentic). But I have a serious point to make, and it’s this. We all need time alone, and men in particular do. As we get older, we need our solitude more and more. It’s an unfortunate fact that in today’s world success is judged by ‘outgoingness’ and extraversion. The go-getters and self-publicists are rewarded, and the more retiring folk are not. We are required by economic demands to join in the culture of back-slapping hail-fellow-well-met seminars and team exercises and confrontational ‘discussions’ at meetings where testosterone wins. For many of us, this is a real effort. For those of us whose energy comes not from company but from solitude, it’s exhausting to play at being an extravert for any length of time. After a while we long to back home with a book or listening to music or whatever. In my case, my groove on the sofa sings a siren song.

I never said, ‘I want to be alone.’ I only said, ‘I want to be left alone.’

The terms extravert and introvert are used for, respectively, those whose energy comes from interaction with others, and those whose energy comes from rich inner resources. Many of us who seem to be extraverts are actually introverts who have learnt to put on an act as required. And I’m pretty sure that there are more introvert men than is commonly thought.

In my former career, I was disturbed to find important decisions being forced at the meetings at which the issue had first been raised, thus without considered reflection. The idea that we might defer decision until we’d had time to think about the issue was derided as indicating a lack of purpose and courage and commitment. People in power tend to be extraverts—after all, they do better at interview, are better at selling themselves, and are more likely to charm interviewers. And so the cycle perpetuates itself.

A new book Quiet by Susan Cain explores this issue. The author points out that the world needs introverts. We need people who say ‘just hold on a minute, we must think about this’. We need people who don’t just rush into decisions without considering implications.

Our culture makes it easier, I think, for women to recharge than for men. Boys and men who like to be alone, who have solitary pursuits, are looked upon strangely. They are urged to ‘come out of their shell’, to ‘pull up their socks’, to ‘stop shilly-shallying’, to be more like your cousin ‘who climbed Everest when he was six’. This displays more than a little intolerance. It’s not easy for anyone, let alone a child, to say ‘this is me, you will have to accept that I’m not the person you’d like me to be—I am as I am.’

As Susan Cain says, it’s time that we acknowledged the value of introverts. Without them we would have no theories of gravity and relativity, a good deal less technological innovation, and next to no music, art and literature. With more of them I suspect we’d have had far fewer disasters caused by impulsive risk-taking.