Sermon by the Rev. Caela Simmons Wood
First Congregational UCC of Manhattan, KS
Luke 12:13-21
July 31, 2022
Nik Wallenda is an expert on fear.
He’s a seventh-generation professional tightrope walker. He holds 11 Guinness world records and is best-known for walking over Niagara Falls and an active volcano on a tightrope.
Nik and his family have been circus performers since the 1700s. If you’ve ever seen them perform, you’ll remember it because they do so without a safety net.
That’s right. I said NO SAFETY NET.
You might think that if your family had been doing this for over 200 years you’d have a high degree of confidence that it’s safe. And you might not be too afraid.
But…the thing is…it’s not safe.
Over the centuries, several people from the Wallenda family have died while performing and others have been seriously injured or had close calls. Back in the 60s the Wallenda family had a signature trick called “the seven.” A mind-dizzying walk across a wire involving seven people. Four who form the base, walking on the wire with poles held between them. Then two more on top of those horizontal poles that the base four are carrying. Those two are also carrying a horizontal pole. And perched atop it all, the seventh person balanced on that pole, sitting on a chair.
Although they had successfully completed this feat many, many times before, in 1962, they had a tragic accident in Detroit. One of the performers lost their stability and the pyramid collapsed. Two of the Wallendas died and three more were seriously injured. [1]
This is just one story of tragedy in the Wallenda family. And, yet, to this day, there are Wallendas who continue to carry on this dangerous family tradition. How do you get up and do something like this day after day? How do you choose to put your very life out there with no safety net?
I have a sneaking suspicion that every Wallenda who steps onto the wire must have a safety net - an invisible one. Every one of them must have some story that they tell themselves, something they believe in deeply, an invisible net that gives them the ability to keep showing up like this.
I don’t know what that invisible safety net is for each of them, but for Nik Wallenda, the safety net is his faith in God. Having read several interviews where he speaks about his faith, you can tell that it’s the thing that enables him to keep going, despite all the fear. He says that hopes his life is a testament to learning that there’s a difference between healthy fear and unhealthy fear. [2] He has a healthy fear for his work that makes him very careful, very intentional about his training. And he doesn’t believe God is somehow magically holding his feet to the wire. It seems he has a very real understanding that he is not safe. And yet he keeps going anyway.
How?
To be honest, I don’t totally understand.
But Nik Wallenda is on my mind this week because Jesus’s parable of the Rich Fool is also about invisible safety nets. It’s a story about how humans seek security.
The story begins when a man comes up to Jesus and asks for help with a family squabble. As happens in many families after a death, there is conflict about money. This man says to Jesus, “Tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.”
Jesus refuses to be the judge, saying, “Friend, why would you think I’m supposed to judge or arbitrate in this way?” Instead, Jesus offers advice, “Be careful, friend. Be on guard against greed of any kind. Life isn’t about having security in our material possessions. Let me tell you a story….”
(Side note: please notice that when people have to make difficult moral decisions, Jesus doesn’t swoop in and tell them what to do. Instead, he entrusts them to take all the information available to them and make the right choice for themselves.)
And then Jesus tells this parable about the one we’ve come to know as the “Rich Fool.” Now, on the surface, the Rich Fool isn’t doing anything terribly wrong with his money. He’s a landowner who has a good year. He’s surprised by his good fortune and wonders what to do with his abundant harvest. “What should I do with all of this,” he wonders, “I don’t have enough space for all this grain!” And so says, “I know what I’ll do. I’ll build myself some new barns. Bigger than the ones I had before. There will be plenty of room to store all it all. And I’ll say to my soul, ‘Soul, you’re set for years to come! Eat, drink, and be merry. You’ve got no worries.’”
Easy peasy, right? Except…Jesus continues, “Seeing this, God said to the man, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is being demanded of you! So now what? What happens to all this stuff you’ve stored up? You can’t take it with you, you know.”
Oh. Oops.
The man’s problem isn’t that he’s rich. Having wealth isn’t in-and-of-itself the problem here. But having money can make it harder to get our souls centered in the right place, can’t it? Biblical scholar David Lose says that the Rich Fool’s errors are two-fold. First, he says, “The farmer has fallen prey to worshiping the most popular of gods: the Unholy Trinity of ‘me, myself, and I.’” [3] When he discovers he has an abundance, he only thinks about his own needs. He seems to exist in complete isolation from everyone else, doesn’t he?
Artist Jim Janknegt has created a piece called the Rich Fool that I can’t share here due to copyright, but I hope you’ll Google so you can see it on his website. [4] He’s reimagined the Rich Fool as our contemporary. In bright colors he depicts two houses that we are able to peer inside. On the right, a family of eight gathers around a table together in a modest home. On the left, the Rich Fool dines alone except for a hooded grim reaper-like figure pointing at him menacingly. The only other figure in the home is what seems to be a small statue in the front room. A statue of a small person with a hole where their heart should be.
The feeling of isolation in the piece is palpable. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with living alone, of course. It’s possible to live alone and deeply connected to others. But Janknegt’s piece is a visual reminder of one of the things Jesus seems to be telling us in this parable - that those who have the privilege of financial independence must be on-guard against the temptation of isolation from the wider community. When we fool ourselves into thinking we don’t need anyone else - when we begin to believe that we are self-sustaining - we may find ourselves like the Rich Fool - entirely focused on my, myself, and I.
The second problem, says Lose, is that God is nowhere to be seen. [3] The Rich Fool doesn’t reach out to community and he doesn’t reach out to the Spirit, either. He makes his decisions in isolation. His wealth allows him to curve in upon himself. Perhaps his privilege has even lulled him into believing he is entirely self-sufficient and doesn’t need a connection with that life-force of goodness, that breath of creativity, that heartbeat of justice that we call God.
If the Wallendas are operating with invisible safety nets, the Rich Fool’s safety net is locked away tight in his big barns.
The problem, of course, is that those big barns don't actually provide security. They don’t solve what ails us. They don’t fix the inherent risks that come with being human.
At the end of the day, we are mortal. And being mortal carries risk. Period.
We often talk about living in an anxious age and there’s no doubt that we are. There are so many risks that we could choose to be aware of each and every day, should we choose to get honest with ourselves and ponder them.
There’s no risk-free way to be human. There are only ways to learn what Nik Wallenda is talking about, how to tell the difference between healthy and unhealthy fear. Ways to do what Joan Didion counseled when she noticed that we humans “tell ourselves stories to stay alive.”
The stories we lean into are the stories found in these ancient texts. And the stories that are still unfolding here and now as God continues to speak forth new life into a world that is brimming with creativity and confusion, anxiety and beauty, new life and painful endings. These are the stories that help us sort through healthy and unhealthy fear.
These stories - this faith - can be our invisible safety net. The thing that enables us to get up each day and keep going in a world that can sometimes feel scary.
Jesus offers this story as a reminder that whatever we cast below us as that invisible safety net takes on sacred status in our lives. If we’re not careful, our big barns can become our gods. In fact, that’s the default for us humans, it seems - in ancient times and today.
But this cautionary tale is also a story of hope. A reminder that there are invisible safety nets below us as we walk the tightrope act of being human: webs of love and care, justice and strength that stand ready to catch us when we falter.
The parable invites us to consider our safety nets. To name them and make them visible. To be honest with each other about whether we are wise or foolish as we weave our nets. To share them as instruments of healing with the world around us. To weave them with great care for our neighbors and hold them tightly as we complete the great acrobatic feat of being human. Together.
NOTES:
[1] https://historydaily.org/flying-wallendas-deadly-tightrope-accident/3
[4] https://www.bcartfarm.com/wfs15.html
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