The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
August 1, 2004

Life is More Than Stuff
Ecclesiastes 1:12-2:23 and Luke 12:13-21 

I want to tell the stories this morning of three successful people. The first comes from recent history. The second two are taken from our scripture readings for this morning. 

Chester Carlson was born in Minnesota in 1906.[1] His father suffered from both tuberculosis and severe arthritis in his spine, that left him unable to work for much of Chester’s life. An only child, Chester’s mom worked as a housekeeper. Chester’s odd jobs become the household’s main source of income by the time he was in high school. During his junior year, his Mom died, leaving Chester to provide for himself and his father. 

Chester was an inventor at heart. He kept a notebook full of ideas of all kinds. The notebook expanded during his three years at a local junior college and as he finished at Cal Tech with a degree in Physics. Chester went to work for Bell Labs, first as a researcher, then in their patent department. While working in the patent office, Chester took law classes. He could not afford his textbooks and so spent many hours at the library often copying long passages down by hand. This got Chester working on the problem of document duplication. 

By 1937, Chester was ready to apply for a patent of his own for a process that would later be named xerography. On October 22, 1938, Chester’s theories had gone so far as to allow him to make the first photocopy. As Chester Carlson worked to market the invention, he was turned away by 20 companies including Kodak and IBM before convincing Haloid to take on the project after a decade of working to sell the concept. Years of refining were still needed. Other engineers worked on the project and Haloid changed its name to Xerox, but Chester stayed with his baby and his idea paid off in ways he could never have foreseen. He got a mere fraction of a cent for every photocopy. In 1964, that was nine and a half billion copies. Chester amassed more than 200 million dollars in a hurry. 

Sitting on the top of a mountain of money, Chester built a fairly modest three bedroom house in which he and his wife lived out their days. The last 10 years of his life, Chester spent giving away money faster than he could make it. His philanthropy seemed to know no bounds and it was almost always anonymous. He built university buildings and had other people’s names put on them, like the Arthur Amos Noyes center for the study of chemical physics at Cal Tech, which he named for a famous professor. Chester supported Civil Rights and pacifist groups, international aid organizations and libraries and more.  

Chester died in 1968 at the age of 62, with far more money than he could give away even while working at it very hard. The Secretary-General of the United Nations said, “To know Chester Carlson was to like him, to love him and to respect him. He was generally known as the inventor of xerography, and although it was an extraordinary achievement in the technological and scientific field, I respected him more as a man of exceptional moral stature…. He belonged to that rare breed of leaders who generate in our hearts faith in man and hope for the future.” 

I want to turn to the second success story. This morning’s Old Testament reading offered us a glimpse into the little book of Ecclesiastes. Usually attributed to King Solomon, Ecclesiastes’ author calls himself simply The Teacher.  Though he does described himself as a King of Israel in Jerusalem and later goes on to tell of his accomplishments saying, “I made great works; I built houses and planted vineyards for myself; I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees.”  

What did this wealthy man think of all he had done? He wrote, “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”  

The word translated there and throughout the Book of Ecclesiastes as “vanity” is the Hebrew word Hevel. The plain sense meaning of the word is a puff of wind, vapor, a breath. The Teacher uses Hevel to describe how everything is fleeting, quickly passing away. The Teacher looks at all his accomplishments and says that they are but a puff of wind, a vapor, something that passes before it ever fully existed. [2]

Finally our reading for today leaves us with the cheeriest thought of all. The Teacher says, “What do mortals get from all their toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity.” 

This week we find in the words of Holy Scripture that everything we do amounts to nothing and all of our work, everything we do, everything we become is nothing but a puff of wind, a fleeting breath, something so ephemeral that it is gone before it is fully formed. The Teacher tells us that everything that you ever accomplish in this life will amount to nothing. The Bible gives us the definitive word from a man who has really made it to the top and found all he had seen and done and become is worthless. The Teacher describes himself saying, “I had everything a man could desire!” (2:8b NLT) and yet he says, “There was nothing worthwhile anywhere” (2:11b).  

If you read the entire Book of Ecclesiastes, the picture gets even more bleak. Let me give you just a sampling. The second verse of the book says, “Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.” A closer translation of the Hebrew word hevel would be something like, “A puff of wind of a puff of wind, everything is fleeting.” The New Living Translation (NLT) does a great job of capturing the sense of the words in writing, “Everything is meaningless, utterly meaningless.” There’s a great Bible verse to put on T-shirts and bumper stickers. 

The Teacher seems content to pose the questions without giving any lengthy discourse that can be considered an answer. Ecclesiastes tells us that it’s not only OK, it’s biblical to question all that we have seen and experienced.  I think it’s important to pause just long enough to take in a breath of fresh air. In a world that will pressure you, as a Christian, to have all the answers and present a public face that says you have your act together, the Teacher says that all that is meaningless. It’s OK to have more questions than answers.  

In understanding what a fleeting puff of wind human life is, the Teacher learns humility. Learning humility is no small trick for a great king who possesses land, property, and other wealth exceeding all who have come before him. The Teacher sees how fleeting and meaningless all his possessions are and he is humbled.  

Both of the men in our first two success stories come to learn that there is more to life than possessions. They each get everything and find that stuff in itself does not make them happy. Chester Carlson found joy in giving. The Teacher found meaning in his humility. 

In our Gospel reading for this morning, Jesus teaches that, “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then Jesus tells a parable of a rich man who is our third and final success story for this morning. The rich man has such a bumper crop that he no longer has enough barns to store all his land has produced. The man decides to build larger barns so that he can live for many years off the fat of the land. The man in the parable is convinced that he finally has it made. He finally has enough stuff to sit back and relax. Jesus warns that Judgment Day could come that very night. Or as Jesus subtly puts it, 

“You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” 

When it comes to the end of life, stuff is just stuff. Any stuff you own will not in and of itself make you happier. The picture on the big flat screen TV may be nice and sharp, but that alone will not bring you any extra happiness. The Hummer may turn heads in traffic, but the driver isn’t a better person for owning that car. Chester Carlson with his hundreds of millions and the Teacher of Ecclesiastes with a kingdom as his feet, both learned that stuff in itself doesn’t make for the good life. It was the rich man in Jesus’ parable who could not learn the lesson. He based his happiness on acquiring enough wealth to earn a chance to relax, eat drink and be merry. 

But what if you could already tap into that happiness? Wouldn’t it be better to find joy before you were sitting on a mountain of money? After all, some of us could come into a million or two. But shy of hitting the lottery, none of us is likely to land on a pile of gold.  

Jesus offers a way out. Jesus offers a way to peace with your stuff that works whether you have a lot or a little. Jesus answer is to realize that your life is not made up of the abundance of possessions. Don’t even bother going down that road he warns us, it only leads to ruin. 

So get the stuff you need. Take care of yourself and your family. But don’t bet your happiness or theirs on accumulating just the right stuff. Even if you get that whole living room you want from The Pottery or the bedroom set that would put the Dream House to shame, it will not bring you happiness. Stuff is just stuff. Right now, as at the end of your days, what matters more than stuffs is relationships. Making peace with yourself. Working on relationships with family and friends. And yes, most importantly, making room for your relationship with God. These are investments of your time, energy and money that pay off. Work on these relationships rather than amassing possessions. These relationships with family, friends and God will pay off whether your life becomes a financial success or not. For life does not consist of the abundance of possessions.  

Amen.