1 Trinity Church in the City of Boston the Rev. Morgan S. Allen August 4
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Trinity Church in the City of Boston The Rev. Morgan S. Allen August 4, 2019 Year C: Proper 13, Luke 12:13-21 Come Holy Spirit, and enkindle in the hearts of your faithful, the fire of your Love. Amen. Vanity of vanities! All is vanity … and a chasing after wind.i Of urban cowboys, before Li’l Nas X had his “horses in the back,”ii Glen Campbell knew “every crack in [the] dirty sidewalks of Broadway.”iii In the summer of 1975, Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy” became a runaway, crossover hit, reaching #1 on all three Billboard charts – Country, Rock, and Pop – in the same week.iv While not as blithely subversive as the contemporary, genre-challenging “Old Town Road,”v Campbell’s cover of the little-known song presented its own contradictions and complexities, all at odds with the merry patrons punching its number on honky-tonk jukeboxes. He sings: Well, I really don’t mind the rain, and a smile can hide all the pain …vi where hustle’s the name of the game, and nice guys get washed away like the snow and the rain. The song’s videovii begins with Campbell, vested in blue jeans and a western-styled blouse with its collars rolled above his wrists, walking along a generic street and singing earnestly into the camera. As the chorus approaches, the video dissolves into a dream sequence, presumably realizing the refrain’s anthemic fantasy: Like a rhinestone cowboy riding out on a horse in a star-spangled rodeo. Like a rhinestone cowboy getting cards and letters from people I don’t even know, and offers coming over the phone. 1 Two weeks ago, we read the story of Martha and Mary, which concludes Chapter 10 of Luke’s Gospel. In a comment on the priorities that faith requires, Jesus says to Martha, “you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary,” who sat at Jesus’ feet, listening to him during his visit, “has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”viii Then, in last week’s Gospel lesson from Chapter 11, the disciples ask Jesus how to pray. Jesus, of course, commends them to petition God for their “daily bread,”ix and, reiterating the sufficiency of God’s provision, offers the familiar “ask … seek … knock”x trilogy of encouragement. This morning’s appointment from Chapter 12 draws on both themes – priority and provision – to commission the disciples’ richness toward God. And while today’s parable surely warns against the barns we raise and the material stuff with which we fill them, the parable’s foil to righteousness is not so simple as the discrete, greedy desire of an individual, but the selfish madness we all suffer in a world ordered by consumerist values of safety and security … of success and celebrity. Born in Billstown, Arkansas, in 1936, Glen Campbell’s uncle introduced the guitar to his five- year-old nephew, and, as the country-boy mythology goes, Glen taught himself the instrument by playing along to Djano Reihart albums on the Victor Victrola.xi In 1960, he moved to LA and played professionally in “The Wrecking Crew,” a band of session musicians. Working in anonymity, he played for the studio recordings of the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations;” the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling;” and Elvis’ “Viva Las Vegas.”xii While playing these session gigs, Campbell also began recording music under his own name, and, during the mid-Sixties, he charted a few minor Country & Western singles until, in 1967, he broke through with the album By The Time I Get To Phoenix.xiii Like most of his C&W compatriots, Campbell wrote very few of the songs he sang, and he penned none of his biggest sellers. An easy, toothpaste-commercial handsome, he served as a malleable, marketable clean-cut alternative to The Beatles, who recorded Sgt. Pepper at the time Campbell released the easy-listening, “Gentle On My Mind.” Indeed, in 1969, Campbell sold more records than the Fab Four, and CBS contracted him to lead The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, a variety show picked to succeed the politically charged satire of the Smothers Brothers.xiv However, in 1972, as the sparking politics around the Nixon administration’s corruption began to flame, CBS cancelled the milquetoast Goodtime Hour. Though Campbell released no less than nine albums in the next three years, none recaptured his late 60s successes, and tracking tightly the now-familiar arc of celebrity decline, Campbell’s social drinking devolved into full-bloom alcoholism, “warring” hard to dull the disappointments at home and on the radio.xv 2 As noted in a recent Christian Century, “Jesus prefaces [today’s] parable with a warning against greed, which ancient philosophers believed to be a form of depravity and a lack of self- control.”xvi He warns, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”xvii Note that Jesus points us toward the character and culture of “one’s life,” rather than toward our independent behaviors. “Then,” the Gospel continues, “[Jesus] told them a parable.”xviii Following that setup, the parable begins with two important details, an adjective and an adverb: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly.”xix See, this man, who is already rich, is only getting richer, for his wealth has become self-generating beyond what he can either consume or capitalize. Despite his abundance, he chooses to measure his life on the world’s terms – safety and security … success and celebrity – and blinds himself to his fortune. Therefore, in a fit of busy-ing madness, he “pull[s] down [his] barns and build[s] larger ones [to] store all [his] grain and goods.”xx By 1975, Campbell’s accumulated fortune and his accruing royalties already could beget wealth that neither he nor his children’s children could spend. Even so, as “Rhinestone Cowboy” soared toward #1, his downward spiral quickened. Campbell traded liquor for cocaine, he ended his sixteen-year marriage, and “enough” – even an abundance – was not enough. xxi Perhaps as an admission, then those familiar bars spoke to him: There’s been a load of compromising on the road to my horizon, but I want to be where the lights are shining on me. In the video’s dream sequence, Campbell teleports to a fenced, suburban, riding arena, surrounded by an ordinary parking lot with distracted automobiles pulling in and out as he trots a small horse. Vested in a bedazzled white suit and hat, a white ascot knotted around his neck and a red, sequined rose embroidered on his lapel, he leads his steed in small circles, waving his hat and singing, Like a rhinestone cowboy riding out on a horse in a star-spangled rodeo. [The absurdity of scale apparently not catching his or anyone’s attention.] Like a rhinestone cowboy getting cards and letters from people I don’t even know, and offers coming over the phone. 3 Though we experience the same, smug satisfaction at Campbell’s dissolute end that we feel as Jesus’ parable exposes the foolishness of the rich, we miss the fundamental ironies: We are the rhinestone cowboys! … riding in tiny, unfulfilling circles – wanting the cards and the letters, the success and the celebrity – no matter how transparently clichéd our inevitable crash. We are the wealthy fools! … earning and earning and earning – building the barns and buying the stuff, seeking safety and security – no matter how easily we judge the parable’s farmer. Ignoring the struggles for Civil Rights, the protests of war, and the fascism of the President, we tune the Goodtime Hour and collectively pretend the world is as its host grins (even if that dribble of white powder on his upper lip signals otherwise).xxii We refuse to accept that where “hustle’s the name of the game,” we lose even when we win for, on the world’s terms, enough will never be enough. Challenging the prescription that discrete acts of munificence can cure our shared madness, Jesus charges us to inaugurate a new community! Not a “Rhinestone Church” of occasional generosity or a congregation depending upon the grand contributions of a few, but one founded upon richness toward God. Overturning the maddening priorities of a rigged game, Jesus charges us to inaugurate a new community! Not a cloistered clique of like-minds or a congregation prizing its own self-righteousness, but one drawing so near to the living Christ that we can hear even the whispers of God’s Good News. Indeed, awaking this morning to the despairing word of two more mass shootings – griefs too great to bear – the living Christ charges us to inaugurate a new community. Not an echo chamber of indignation or a congregation trafficking in easy solutions, but one seeking what God seeks and, trusting the sufficiency of God’s provision, devoting ourselves to the promise of a peaceable kingdom.xxiii Trinity Church, let us inaugurate this new community here! That as God transforms us – and as we transform one another – so, too would the world be transformed with us. Toward and ever more Beloved Community, Amen. i Ecclesiastes 1:2b, 14b. ii Lil Nas X. “Old Town Road.” 7 EP, Columbia Records, 2019. While the lyrics can earn justified offense, I suggest the song’s adolescent language is borne mostly of satire. iii Campbell, Glen. “Rhinestone Cowboy.” Capitol Records. 1975. The song was written and originally recorded by Larry Weiss, who released it on his 1974 album, Black & Blue Suite.