CLUTTER

Nathan Attwood, Pastor, Marianna First United Methodist Church

"Take care! Be on guard against all kinds of greed. For one's life does not consist of the abundance of possessions." Luke 12:15.

Jesus says to be on guard against "all kinds" of greed. It's interesting to think that there might be many kinds of greed. We all know the kind of greed that causes us to want more and more, to want to feel the sense of importance that comes with being rich, to allow ourselves the soul-crushing delusion that we can get enough money to keep trouble at bay and make ourselves safe in the world. That's not the kind of greed I want to talk about.

The kind of greed I want to talk about doesn't feel like greed at all. As a matter of fact, maybe it's not helpful to think about it as greed, because greed has a negative ethical connotation. Rather, I want to think about our relationship to things. What does our relationship to things teach us about ourselves?

I'm pretty well free of the common kind of greed. But, I must admit, I have a problem with clutter. I keep all kinds of things. Sadly, I keep them in piles. And boxes. And the attic. Also the garage.

I'm not a hoarder. I'm just getting old. I have tons of things that mean something to me. I have my grandfather's desk and my father's desk. I have tubs and tubs of photographs from back before digital cameras. I have more books than I will ever be able to read. I have boxes and boxes of files full of papers no one will probably ever see. My children are too old to play with toys, but I still have their toys--tokens of the tiny versions of them. 

I'm a sentimental person, so I struggle to get rid of things I connect to people I love. I have nearly every 'thank you' card I've ever received from my decades of ministry--for weddings, funerals, Bible studies, ministries that mattered to people who matter to me. How could I just trash them? I have books that were given to me by old pastors who have since died. My shelves and counters are encumbered by knick-knacks, gifts from kind souls, souvenirs from mission trips, adventures, and ministries. A plaque from the hospital chaplain ministry from twenty years ago, a statue from Rwanda, a coffee cup from a church I pastored when I was a young man.  I still have the T-shirt from my first Vacation Bible School when I began my ministry as a youth pastor in Bonifay in 1999, another T-shirt from a mission trip in 2003.  People and experiences mean a lot to me, the objects remind me of precious memories, and so the things pile up.

Frankly, I also have a problem getting rid of things because of a sense that, "You never know, I might need it someday." Many times I start purging my office and think to myself, "What if I need to refer to this for ministry? What if I decide to teach this subject again? What if I decide to write my ministry story someday and I want to remember this? What if my kids want to know what I was doing all these years and they get interested in these things?" Maybe there's part of me that thinks if the things related to what I have done go away, the memory of doing the things also goes away, and then something of the life I have lived and what I have done with my days will evaporate.

And here's another thing. Sometimes, when I've gotten rid of something, I've later needed that thing and wasted money acquiring a new one. I don't like to shop. So I want to have the things I might use and have them available when I need them. I have no emotional connection to my clothes, for example, but I struggle to get rid of them because I just don't want to put myself in a position to need to buy another shirt or pair of pants. That's the mentality that causes me to still have that extra cooler, the extra set of golf clubs, or a third set of jumper cables.

I'm no hoarder. I've been around many hoarders and my situation is not like there's. I can't stand the stacks. Clutter makes me nervous.  At the same time, I wonder if hoarders have the same struggles in their relationship to things as I have but on a magnified scale.

Our society teaches us that our lives are defined by the things we own and the things we buy. We get our sense of what life means from the barrage of images from advertisers who give the impression that to be important we need to be propped up by the feeling we get from their products--the vehicles we drive, the make-up we wear, the apps on our phones, the ever-fancier and ever-pricier insulated cups we carry around.

Jesus sets us free from all that. Jesus shows us that our worth is found in being so beloved by God that the Son of God died to pay the price for our redemption. Jesus teaches us that our identity is not found in what we own or buy but in being children of God who are known by name and have an eternal citizenship in heaven.

Naked I came into this world, and naked I will go out, said Job. The one perfect man had no recorded possessions but a single seamless robe. If I clean out my attic, I've lost nothing of me, of who I am, of the love I've shared, the life I've lived. God has stored away all that is precious in eternal storehouses that will last long after the storage units of this world have been emptied of our lives' acquisitions to be auctioned or transferred to the dumpster.