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It Is Of No Use!

SCRIPTURE TEXTS: LUKE 12:16-21; 1 TIMOTHY 6:7-9

A Rich Foolish Man

I'm sure that all of us are very familiar with the story of the rich fool in the Gospel of Luke. According to the scripture, this rich man "had a land which bore good crops" (v. 16b). The land was a prime source of wealth for the rich man.

This is true today, especially in a place such as Hong Kong. The real estate dealers are busy all the time for property speculation. At the same time, transnational corporations are behaving exactly the same in terms of capital investment for land anywhere in the world according to their own calculation.

As there was abundant harvest, the rich man's problem was where to keep them. He then decided to build a bigger barn to have a place to store the crops. It never occurred to him to share whatever is in excess of his needs. The more he had, the happier he was. Similarly, transnational corporations are always setting up more businesses in order to control international financial markets. Their objective, capital accumulation. That is the logic of the capitalist system.

As we read in the scripture, this rich man called himself as "A lucky man! You have all the good things you need for many years. Take life easy, eat, drink and enjoy yourself!" (v. 19). While this rich man as well as all the rich people in the industrialized countries enjoy their life eating and drinking to their hearts'

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content, there is a vast majority of the world's population who are dying without food.

We can see everyday, as it is widely covered by the mass media, more than 2.1 million Rwandan refugees are fleeing to Goma, to Bukavu and Kamanyola in the southeast of Zaire. A UN official appealed for a HK$720 million for immediate crisis funding. Short-term needs include 600,000 blankets, 50 water tankers, 150 transport vehicles and 200,000 rolls of plastic sheeting. Indeed very basic needs—it is not even food, but just water; it is not even houses, but just protection from the heat of the sun and the cold of the night. One million refugees need 500 tonnes of food a day. Aid agencies are barely providing only 20% of that. Human crisis is everywhere—in Haiti, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and closer to home is the situation in the Thai-Burmese border, Jaffna, East Timor, Kashmir, and Mindanao (although they do not get as much media attention) and in many other parts of the world where victimized peoples are dying day by day.

However, rich men are taking their life easy, eating lavishly, drinking too much and indulging in anything according to their taste and luxurious lifestyles. But all these are irrelevant in our life! Therefore God said to them, "You fool! This very night you will have to give up your life, then who will get all these things you have kept for yourself" (v. 20). Our tendency is to model ourselves after the rich man, to follow the rich man's example. But in the end, this kind of life is of no use.

Many people are behaving like the rich fool. They are usurping their power and position, influencing others to serve their self-interests. But if you strip them of their position, they are nothing, they become useless and helpless in our society. As the Bible says, "But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and are caught in the trap of many foolish and harmful desires, which pull them down to ruin and destruction" (I Tim 6:9).

Courageous Men

In the Book of Daniel, you will find another story which is related to Christian living in our time.

"King Nebuchadnezzar had a gold statue made, twenty-seven meters high and nearly three meters wide,.... in the province of Babylon" (Dan 3:1), Then the king gave orders for all his officials to come together to attend the dedication ceremony. As

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soon as the music started, everyone was supposed to bow down and worship the gold statue. Anyone who does not do so will immediately be thrown into the blazing furnace. "As soon as they heard the sound of the instruments, the people of all nations, races and languages bowed down and worshipped the gold statue which King Nebuchadnezzar had set up" (v. 17).

But there were some Jews in charge of the province of Babylon —Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego— who disobeyed his majesty's orders. So they were brought before the king. And the king said, "Do you think there is any god who can save you?" (v. 15b). Then these three courageous men answered, "Your Majesty, we will not try to defend ourselves. If the God whom we serve is able to save us from the blazing furnace and from your power, then He will. But even if he doesn't. Your Majesty may be sure that we will not worship your god and we will not bow down to the gold statue that you have set up" (v. 16-18). Then the king lost his temper and ordered his men to heat the furnace seven times hotter than usual and for these three courageous men to be thrown into the heart of the blazing fire.

Even though the king had a horrible way of punishing them, it was of no use because they showed no sign of being hurt because they were protected by God. Soon after, the king promoted these three courageous men to higher positions in the province of Babylon because they were servants of the Supreme God!

The question we have to ask ourselves now is: Do we have enough courage to confront all evil in our midst? If we sincerely remember Daniel's story, we shouldn't be afraid of any kind of oppressing mechanism in the society, in work places and in our community life. As in Daniel's story, there is no use harming those who truly believe in our God.

Likewise, in the Book of Acts 5:17-42, when the High Priest and the Sadducees persecuted the apostles for teaching the Gospel, it was of no use and instead the Gospel spread out like wild fire. Early Christians built a catacomb (a large underground shelter) for the protection and promotion of Christianity. It was of no use to prevent those who were truly determined.

Even the Romans who used their power to crucify Jesus Christ on the cross and bury Him in the tomb, their power was of no use because He rose from death after three days. It was of no use

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because He is our Lord and Saviour who will break through all human barriers.

So why are we so afraid of all the kinds of confrontation and persecution? Those who belong to the Protestant denomination are bound to protest to all kinds of injustices and corrupted power. This is the way a Christian should live in our contextual situation. Let me quote from Aristotle,

Human nature is given to us and not chosen by us. We can act against it but we cannot abolish it. It is a function of society, he believes to help us to act in accordance with our true nature, for this reason, the purpose of the state must be a moral one.

However, we are experiencing that the modem state is not a moral one but a corrupted one. Therefore, it is our Christian responsibility to clean up all these dirty business and build a just society. These things we are supposed to do.

An Ambitious Old Man

Let me conclude by sharing with you a novel by Ernest Hemingway entitled The Old Man and the Sea. I am sure that some of us still vividly remember the movie version of this novel wherein the old man was portrayed by Spencer Tracy. The story revolves around an old man who used to be a popular fisherman during his younger days. During those times, he was well-respected and famous in his home harbour village. However, as he grew older, he was not able to catch a good amount of fish as he used to, so much so that his reputation drastically declined and the villagers began to mock him.

Subsequently, this ambitious old man dreamed of having a great catch once again in order to restore his glorious popularity and reputation. So one day, he went fishing in the deep sea to be able to turn his high expectation into a reality. Fortunately, he caught a huge fish that was sure to surprise all the villagers in his home harbour. However, he was unable to put the big fish into his small fishing boat so he just decided to firmly strap it onto the side of his boat.

While he was on his way home, he was so excited and full of joy and great expectation of being treated as an honorable man again. However, a school of sharks surrounded his boat and

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started to feast on the big fish. Even though he struggled hard to keep the sharks away, it was of no use. Moments later as the sharks finished off the big fish, he realized that all his dreams for recognition, pride, honour and sense of achievement had been washed away. And when he arrived at the village, his glorious dreams and pride were turned into shame and frustration.

Perhaps what the Bible is trying to tell us today can be captioned as follows—

What did we bring into the world? Nothing! What can we take out of the world? Nothing! So then, if we have food and clothes, that should be enough for us (I Tim 6:7-8).

Like the old fisherman, we tend to concentrate on the pursuit of fame and glory for our own personal interests. We lose track of our duty and we become more concerned about the honour and recognition that a great catch brings rather than the catch itself.

But we can do something here and now. That is — to love each other, to share with one another and to support each other in order to make our community become truly humane; a community based on equality, justice, peace and happiness. These things we can do and we can do now! (1994)