I’m sure that we all were all horrified last week by those pictures of Wennington, the village in Essex where so many houses burned down in the hot weather. I don’t think that any of us imagined that a compost bin in our back garden could smoulder, catch fire, and cause so much devastation. The area looked like a war zone, somewhere which had been blitzed or one of those cities that’s been so blasted in Ukraine. We can only begin to imagine the distress and shock of the residents whose entire lives were wiped out in a few short minutes.

We must fervently hope that everyone was properly insured. But, while houses can be rebuilt and restored, what can’t be replaced are things which have no monetary value but are treasured mementoes of our past. So there are the photograph albums, tickets, even advertising flyers, which remind us of past people, places and events. There are souvenirs of our honeymoon or the pictures scrawled by our children. There’s the tea set which was left to us by Auntie Marge, the cutlery which was a wedding present from Uncle Alf, the vinyl records which bring back memories of our teenage years even though we can’t play them any more. Then there’s the books which are far too important to be taken to the Oxfam shop. And what about the drawer of assorted screws and things that “might come in useful one day”? Those poor people haven’t just been left homeless; they have been bereaved.

We live in a society where the things we possess declare our values. For instance, someone may buy a top-of-the-range Mercedes because it declares to everyone around, “Look at what I can afford – I’m doing better than you are, thanks very much”. Another person may potter around in a battered old Fiat Panda and say, “Why should I need anything more? It does the job”. And there will be other folk who say, “I’ve got rid of the car and now get around on an electric bike – I want to save the planet”. And, of course, it’s not just our vehicles that say who we are and what is important to us: so do our house, our clothes and everything else we possess. We buy what is important to us.

Moira and I faced a problem when we ended our missionary service in Africa as we had to decide what to do with our possessions. The logical thing to do was sell everything: we could do with the money and every item would readily find a home in a country where the shop shelves were often bare. But we couldn’t bring ourselves to do that: much of what we’d taken out had been wedding gifts which had a sentimental value. So, although it was quite expensive to do so, some treasured items were packed up and sent back to Britain. We didn’t want to lose all of our history – and how exciting it was when the lorry arrived at our new home and we could start unpacking!

As we all know Jesus had a great deal to say about wealth and possessions. It is not true that he taught that money and belongings were intrinsically evil; rather, he told his listeners to regard everything they had as a gift from God, to share it with the poor, to make sure that it didn’t become an idol which gets in the way of discipleship, and not to depend on it for ultimate security. Luke’s Gospel contains several parables on this subject, and the tale of the rich man who built ever-bigger barns to store his crops, only to have his life suddenly snatched away, is one of the most striking and memorable.

By most peoples’ reckoning, this man was acting in a wise and responsible way. His farm was thriving. His grain harvest had been unexpectedly good. He was too sensible to sell it off at a time when the market was depressed; instead, he was going to save it and give himself a financial “cushion” which would help him to enjoy his golden years. I think we would all commend this man for being so sensible and shrewd; but the one thing he hadn’t catered for was the possibility of his own sudden demise. For making that cardinal error, God calls him a “fool” – what a shocking condemnation that is, what a criticism of the belief that we can control our lives or of the trust we place in our possessions! And yet amassing goods and property is something that most of us do, in fact it’s become second nature to us.

It is Shakespeare who, in one of his sonnets, encapsulates the tenor and thrust of Jesus’ message in poetic form:

          Why so large a cost, having so short a lease
          Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? . . .
          . . . within be fed, without be rich no more.    

This parable explains very clearly the paradox of basing our personal happiness on wealth and possessions. For, ultimately, we all become what we love; hence, if what we love perishes, then we shall perish too. That’s a depressing thought, but Jesus underlines it just a few verses further on by saying, “Wherever your treasure lies, there your heart will be” – we’ll be looking at that passage next week. What he is saying is simple: if we centre our life on “things”, then we are basing it in the wrong place. As the “Westminster Shorter Catechism” famously says, we were created to focus on God – in fact to “enjoy him” – and it is only in him that we can find true and eternal security.

I wonder if you noticed how many characters there are in this story? Well, apart from God there is only one: the rich man. When he talks, he talks only to himself; and when he thinks, the only person he thinks about is himself: “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” and “I know what I’ll do: I’ll pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry’.” There is no thought of generosity, that he might celebrate his good harvest by giving some of it to others who haven’t been successful or to other members of family (for surely he had relatives). No; this man is fixated on himself alone – there isn’t even any suggestion that he might give thanks to God. All he’s interested in is maximizing his pension for a comfortable retirement.

I’m sure that we’ve all heard of Francis of Assisi who was renowned for his love of nature, so much so that he has become a spiritual icon for the Green movement. He set up a monastic order (which still exists) and asked his followers to give up all their earthly possessions and take a vow of poverty. Now it’s possible that Francis actually went further than Jesus in his teaching (for Jesus never suggested that private ownership is inherently evil), however he was right to suggest that the goods of the world are best enjoyed by sitting lightly to them. That’s not a lesson we are happy to hear: we like our “stuff”!

There are modern Franciscans who believe that his message is even more relevant today than it was in his own time, and I think we can see why. Although Francis obviously never said so, it is our addiction to consumer goods which depletes the Earth’s resources, which condemns people to slave in appalling sweat-shops, which pollutes the atmosphere and our seas. Many people today are telling us to think of the consequences of our consumer society and challenge the politicians’ beloved but unsustainable dream of constant economic growth. The world’s abundance is to be shared rather than hoarded. And, in any case, we’ll never be satisfied with what we have.

At this point some of you might be saying, “None of what you’ve said this morning applies to me as I am not rich. I don’t have gold bullion stashed in the bank, I don’t have a luxury villa on a Caribbean island, I don’t have a super-yacht moored at Monte Carlo, nor a private jet waiting at a secluded airfield. Oh yes, I am comfortably off, I run a small car, I’ve got some savings in the building society, the mortgage has been paid off, there’s life insurance in place so that my dependents are provided for if I pop my clogs, I can take a short holiday each year – but I’m nowhere near rich”. If you are saying that, I sympathise with you because my own position is fairly similar.

But, in fact, virtually everyone in this building – and of course I don’t know your individual financial circumstances! – is rich in comparison with the vast majority of the world’s population. We don’t have to live in a tin shack or a mud hut with no running water. We don’t have to choose between sending our children to school or to hawk newspapers to drivers at traffic lights. We don’t have to till our field with the crudest of ploughs and then pray for the rains to come. We haven’t had to flee our homes because a cyclone has struck or because we’re in a war zone.

And may I say that most – perhaps not all – of us who are in church this morning aren’t living in a street where only one in twenty people is employed; we’re not ekeing out our life in a tatty B&B, or curled up in a shop doorway. I hope we’re not putting our energy bills to one side because we’re terrified to open them nor queueing at the food bank for our basic necessities – which are the realities of life for too many people in Britain today. We recognise, too, that God asks us to help our neighbours so we are pretty generous in our charitable giving – always, of course, being prudent to leave a safety net of funds in the bank. After all, we wouldn’t want to be reckless, would we?

Earlier on I mentioned Francis of Assisi. A more modern saint – one who today may be largely forgotten outside Catholic circles – was Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. He had been regarded as a conservative choice for the post, but became more and more outspoken about human rights auses in his country. He repeatedly denounced violence, whether carried out by the Army, fascist groups or Communist radicals, and defended poor peoples’ demand for political change. At a time of heavy press censorship, his weekly radio broadcasts were one of the few ways people could find out the truth about the atrocities that were taking place. Romero’s message was not welcomed by those in power and he made many enemies. Following several death threats, he was shot dead on March 24^th 1980 while celebrating Mass.

Why am I mentioning Romero? It’s not just because of his courage in fighting for justice; no, it’s because of something he said – words which have become a sort of motto for Cafod, the Catholic equivalent of Christian Aid. They are: “Aspire not to have more, but to be more”: not only do they remind us of the importance of how we live our lives, but they take us back to Jesus who insisted that temporary earthly wealth was far less important than eyernal heavenly treasure.

The man in our story could have been a great blessing to many people if he had used his grain wisely. But he failed to invest in the needs of other people and didn’t put his savings in the Bank of Heaven – so  he ended up penniless in both physical and spiritual terms. God’s verdict on him was that he had been a fool. What will be his verdict on us?