Sermon preached at St Mary's, Primrose Hill by The Reverend Mark Wakefield on Sunday 5 August 2007

Eccles 1.2, 12-14, 2.18-23/Col 3.1-11/Luke 12.13-21

It won’t have escaped the notice of many of you that militant atheists are more than usually vocal at the moment in their condemnation of all things religious. Knocking the whole idea of God is currently something of a publishing phenomenon, with Richard Dawkins’ book “The God Delusion” near the top of the paperback bestseller lists and the journalist Christopher Hitchens’ book “God is Not Great” also doing well. And all this in an age when God was supposed to be dead.

I must say that I rather welcome the attentions of Dawkins, Hitchens and friends, even though their real targets are the religious fundamentalists and those of us of a more thoughtful, questioning disposition just tend to get caught in the cross-fire. I say this because the very success of their books shows that questions of ultimate meaning do have real relevance for modern men and women and that must mean that we have an opportunity – if we can but take it – to share the gospel.

Underlying the criticism of these militant atheists is the view that those of us with faith are cowards who refuse to face the hard facts about our earthly existence. Where we claim that there is a purpose and goal to life they see, to quote Richard Dawkins, “nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” While there is a real debate to be had here, the charge of cowardice is one that it is easily refuted. I say this because whatever comfort there may be in the idea that there is a purpose to our lives, is more than matched by the often uncomfortable demands that the gospel makes of us.

Today’s gospel reading is a case in point. I suspect I’m not alone in feeling sympathy for the rich man who builds barns in which to store his wealth and then says to himself “I’ll relax, eat, drink and be merry”, confident in having enough put by for future years. How often, on a bleak winter’s Monday morning, have I fantasised about there being some rich, long lost relative out there who’s soon going to die and leave me all his money, or wondered why I didn’t become a banker rather than a broadcaster, in which case I’d be retired by now and driving an Aston Martin?

Well of course, for fantasists like me the gospel has a rather bleak message. “You fool!” says God to the rich man. “This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you’ve put by, whose will they be?”

It’s such a simple, human mistake to make this, isn’t it – the idea that somehow we can find all the security and happiness we need in material wealth? Having said that, it’s important to stress that the Bible isn’t anti-wealth, which is just as well given that St Mary’s is rather depending on all of us who love and care for this place to dig it out of a rather big financial hole! What’s more there’s plenty of evidence that there were rich Christians in the early church and it’s very likely that Luke, the author of today’s gospel, came from a wealthy background. No, according to our faith, there’s nothing wrong with riches so long as those who have them share them with those who don’t and so long as we don’t kid ourselves – as the rich man in this story did – that somehow the richer and more successful we are the happier and more secure we’ll be.

The trouble is though, that just like the rich man in the story, it’s all too easy for us to be beguiled by riches and to not realise how much we are in thrall to them.

A few years ago I decided on a major mid-life career change and swapped my life as a TV producer for that of a management consultant. To begin with all went well, although as any of you have ever tried a big career change, easy it ain’t. But then disaster struck – the stock market took a nosedive and my new company’s fortunes plummeted with it. For the last 6 months of my time with them it was pretty obvious what was going to happen as the company progressively made more and more people redundant. Finally it was my turn, which coincided with the whole company going bankrupt.

Those six months were, as you’d imagine, pretty awful. The job market was in a terrible state and just 18 months or so into a career change at a relatively late age I was hardly a great prospect. How, I fretted, were we going to manage without any money? Almost as bad, how would I deal with the humiliation of redundancy and loss of status and position?

Then, to my amazement, something wonderful happened. With no job in prospect I resigned myself to working from home and using all my old contacts to drum up bits of work as best I could. There’s no doubt that we were much poorer than we had been and I had no grand job title or swanky office to go to but I was much, much happier than I had been for years. The reason? I now had time for my wife and my children that I’d never enjoyed before. I had time for dear friends, one of whom needed support and help I’d not been able to give before. I also had time for myself – for playing tennis and running and meditation and prayer - all things that I had previously squeezed to the margins or forgotten altogether.

But the really interesting thing – and the reason why I’m telling you all this – is that it was only then that I realised that I had so far lived my life on the false assumption that material wealth and status were of great importance to me and that I’d allowed them to crowd out the things I cared about far more.

I’m very much back in the world of work now with a full time job and while I like to think that I’ve learnt my lesson I’m sure I’m still far more in thrall to money, possessions and status than I’d care to admit. After all, we live in a society in which these things are constantly held up as worthwhile goals. Just look at the crazy cult of celebrity that’s taken hold of us and that’s so in evidence on our television screens and in magazines like “Hello” and “OK”. We may think that being invited into Posh and Beck’s fabulous new mansion in LA is ridiculous but at the same time it is all rather riveting, isn’t it?

Lest I blame all this on the media, I think those of us who are parents have a lot to answer for as well. Show me the proud Mum or Dad who doesn’t want their beautiful, talented son or daughter to take on the world and do something wonderful and be something wonderful, whereas surely all that we should ever wish for them is that they be happy?

The fact that we live in a society in which the whole idea of material success is so pervasive that it seems to permeate the very air we breathe, means that we need the shock therapy of the bible all the more.

Of course the difficulty with this shock therapy is that it can be so easily misunderstood as something that’s life-denying and possible only for the most saintly and holy among us whereas the very opposite is true. For this is an urgent call to each of us to rid ourselves of the illusion that wealth and status – whether we already have them or simply aspire to them - are of ultimate value to us and to remember always that as human beings made in God’s image we are ultimately and only made for relationship – loving relationship with each other and with God. That is the true goal of human existence and in that alone lies the key to the abundant life to which Jesus calls us.

This task of ridding ourselves of illusion, of searching our hearts to find the image of God within us, lies at the heart of this journey to which we have all been called. It may not be easily achieved but that it will be worth the effort we should never doubt, for at its end lies the peace and fulfilment that each of us so longs for. St Augustine saw this journey as one of restoration, of each of us rediscovering something in ourselves that we have lost sight of:

“Man must first be restored to himself” he wrote “that, in making himself as it were, a stepping-stone, he may rise thence and be borne up to God.”

“Amen” to that.