“John at the
Buckland Mall”
by Bruce
J. Johnson
Scripture Mark 1: 1-8
Recently
I have become somewhat fascinated with a new and burgeoning industry. Want to
guess what it might be? Let me give you a hint…these buildings seem to be
cropping up everywhere. As a matter of fact, there are three of them within
what must be a 2 mile radius on the
That’s
right--- Self- Storage or as it has been called “The Great American
Self-Storage Empire!
According
to the Self- Storage Association, a trade group charged with the monitoring of
development trends, the country now possesses some 1.875 billion square feet of
personal storage. And it is an
industry that now exceeds the revenues of
The cultural
factors contributing to the expanding market are fascinating:
1. High volume E-Bay sellers need
storage space.
2. Mobility of
Americans. The average American will change residences now 11 times in his or
her life and there is a need often to store stuff between moves.
3. Home construction
patterns--- Although the average size of an American home has risen form 1,660
sq. feet in 1973 to 2400 sq ft in 2004, many of these home no longer
have…… ATTICS!
4. And, of course, the most obvious
reason is AMERICAN COMSUMERISM! No other country in the world spends as much on
stuff! As Morgan Stanley notes, in just one telling index, “Over the 1996-2004
period, annual growth in US personal consumption expenditures averaged 3.9%---
nearly double the 2.2% pace recorded elsewhere in the so-called advanced
world.” It has never been so easy/
for so many/ to amass so much!/
Here’s a smile---one of the
reports I read about self- storage goes as follows:
“… in Topeka, Kan., ‘the coolest new building’ in town,
is the Flex Storage Systems building, a well lit, natural-wood-accented
structure that seems capable, if nothing else, of making storage safe for the
Dwell generation. Its location is ironic, to say the least: Near a “glorified
junkyard called JOYLAND; across from an abandoned K-Mart store, and near ‘Fresh
Start Auto Credit: Second Chance Finance.”
The
motto: ‘You can’t take it with you’, but you can
certainly find a place to stash it.’
Well, I suspect that advent would not be
advent without a comment and critique on those forces that threaten the true
spirit of Christmas and the oldest one in the books, I suppose, is the sin of
excessive consumerism. How many times have we all said it?:
“Each year it is earlier and earlier.”
Yesterday’s Hartford Courant carried an
op-ed piece in its “As I See It’ section.
Where did the spirit and meaning of
Christmas go? It appears to have been swallowed up by a new religion and
season: shopping.”
(Leonard J. Zavalick, HC,
Madison Avenue seems to have its way with
us. This year, it began making its case just as soon as the ghosts and goblins
of Halloween disappeared into the night and by now things are in high gear. And
I mentioned last week what Black Friday was like in some store locations!
A few weeks ago, I mentioned
a book by Tony Campolo sporting the neat title of: Following Jesus Without
Embarrassing God. As one might expect, he devotes a whole chapter to
this issue of consumerism and how it corrupts. The title is: “How to Exhibit a
Christian Life Style without Moving into a Commune.”
He writes:
“God has
provided enough to meet everyone’s needs, but not enough to meet everyone’s
wants. There are demonic forces at work in our society that encourage us to
want an endless array of things we don’t need. The media, in general, and
advertising in particular, are constantly at work trying to seduce us into
lifestyles of conspicuous consumption. Day in and day out they try to lure us
into a lifestyle filled with artificially created needs. If we succumb to their
powers, we find ourselves caught up in endless efforts to get more and more
money to buy things we really don’t need, simply because we have been conned
into believing that we have to have them.” (p. 21)
Gandhi had it right when he
said:
“Civilization, in the real sense of the term, consists, not
in the multiplication, but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction--- of
wants. This alone promotes real happiness and contentment, and increases the
capacity for service.”
Tough
lesson to learn!
But
that’s why we our ol’ friend John the Baptist, coming
on the scene fresh from the wilderness and looking the part…. The picture of
asceticism calling for repentance--- that conscious act of change, of changing
one’s mind and heart and one’s orientation in life, one’s direction, of turning
your life around and getting it on the right track!
It must
have been the right time for many because we are told that:
“people
from the whole Judean countryside and all the people from
Of
course, that may not work today. He would have his work cut out for him. He
would talk to no one unless he set up shop at the Mall… maybe the Buckland
Mall.
Advent
begs us to listen with fresh ears and open hearts. It is always the right time
to makes changes when things seem so out of whack but few issues seem as
critical as materialism and consumerism--- they are killing us---! And for
sure, we might know about a number of areas in our lives that we need to change
but certainly, as it relates to the season at hand--- perhaps John is calling
us to reflect on the spending priorities and patterns of our cluttered lives
and their consequences.
I once
read the following assessment:
“We have forgotten who we are in our sins of too much.”
Nancy Bloomer
There are
some pretty harsh commentaries out there. Here is one of them. It may sound
like an old song but the words are recent:
“We are spending too much of our psychic and spiritual
energies on money and things. Money has become the false idol of our culture.
The shopping mall is its icon… We are in danger of losing our spiritual
energies and our capacity for joy, wonder and love in our relentless pursuit of
money and things. Our consumer society is fast approaching a dead end. We
Christians need to be offering the vision of an alternative way of living whose
motto is simplicity, generosity, hospitality. These
are the Christian virtues, not getting and spending, using up and throwing
away…. (or as I am saying this morning----putting it
in storage!)
(Bloomer, The Living Pulpit, July- September, 2004, p. 25)
Were John the Baptist to
find himself at the Buckland Mall he would first probably have a problem with
security but once past that hurdle, I’m sure that he would be holding up the
mirror and demanding that we look at ourselves and change or repent of the sins
of too much!
Let me close with something
said by John Carroll:
“What constitutes a high
quality of life? We all want a good life. We all strive for it. But how do we
define it? It can just as readily be defined as a life with less as a life with
more. And, generally speaking, the fewer possessions, the simpler the life and
the more freedom…. On the surface, this appears to be a sacrifice, making do
with less. A little probing underneath, a little experience, however, suggests
it is anything but a sacrifice. New horizons of joy and pleasure readily can
open before the person who successfully gets rid of the clutter.”
(Embracing Earth, Lachance and Carroll)
Something to think about
this advent season amidst the business of the season--
Let us repent of our ‘sins of too much!”
Amen