When I was a kid, I got a lot of things wrong, I readily admit it.  And, as I was thinking back humorously on my past mistakes, I couldn’t help but remember one of them in particular as it relates to this morning’ sermon.  You see, back when I was younger, my parents were fortunate enough to give me a car for my 16th birthday.  It was a hand-me-down, Dad’s old car, but I was grateful for it, nevertheless.  It was a 1976 Plymouth Volare with about 175k miles on it, a little run-down from the wear and tear but, overall, a really serviceable car.  And I liked it…for the most part.  I mean it had power steering, power breaks, power windows, a V-6.  But it had one glaring problem, according to my teenaged accounting – the stereo in the car stunk, strangely, it didn’t even have a tape player, something that was fairly standard for the era, believe it or not.  Well, one of the first things I did was sink an inordinate amount of money on upgrading the car’s stereo system.  And when I say, upgrade, boy did I.  You see, I knew a guy at Audio Express, a local car audio shop.  He got me hooked up with a sweet system, with bass cannons in the back and, get this, a removeable face car stereo.  Do you remember those?  They were the height of cool, back in the day, weren’t they?  So, basically, it was an anti-theft design.  You removed the face of the stereo, thereby rendering it inoperable to any wanna be car thieves.  It was pretty slick.  So, anyway, fast forward about a year from me dropping this obscene amount of money on the car stereo.  In fact, I remember as I told my parents what I’d spent, my dad observed that it was likely that I’d spent more money on the car stereo than the car itself was worth.  But, long story short, I was in a wreck on Park Road.  That 1978 Fire Engine Red Plymouth Volare with the obnoxiously loud car stereo was totaled in the process.  Y’all, I’ll never forget the insurance company telling me just how much I was going to receive for the car.  Y’all, it was less than I’d paid for the car stereo.  You know, I mentioned that to the insurance person…they didn’t seem too terribly impressed and they certainly didn’t up the number.  In fact, the person nicely suggested I could retrieve the stereo parts from the car before it was salvaged.  It all went up in smoke, in a manner of speaking.  All that time, effort and money evaporated like so much mist on a summer’s day.  If only I’d learned my lesson way back there in 1993, I think I’d have lived a much more contented life.  Ah, but I didn’t.  I, just along with everyone else under the sun, have made the mistake at times of investing far more of my life’s energy and resources to chasing and attaining things that the Bible assures me will not last.  In the case of that obscenely priced stereo system, it lasted about a year, right?

Jesus tells us as much in our reading this morning from the New Testament.  Matthew 6:19 – “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal…”   Contrast this with something that the Apostle Peter writes in his First Epistle.  There, in 1 Peter 1:4 we read this contrasting statement – “and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you.”

What the Scriptures teach us is that our romance with materialism is bound to bring negative consequences.  You know, we’re doing a lot of talk about negative consequences because I think it’s necessary for us to see that much of our present malaise can be traced back to ways in which we’re wandering apart from God’s ways.  Sometimes these departures are fairly obvious.  On other occasions, we have to take a step back and try to assess our present circumstances from the balcony, so to speak.  When we due, we’re bound to see greater and greater disunity with God bubbling up within our society.

Materialism, to be sure, is on the rise in this country and has been for so long that some of us might not recognize much of a change.  Ah, but the numbers don’t lie.  We are becoming more and more materialistic in our culture.  This can be seen in a number of ways.  In the heart of our cities, amidst the ever-climbing skyscrapers and neon billboards, there lies a pulsing rhythm of change that echoes the surge of materialism in America.  It’s a narrative woven into the very fabric of our daily lives, seen in the bustling streets and the digital screens that light up our homes and palms.  Let us explore this tapestry, thread by thread, to understand the ways materialism has painted its hues on the canvas of our society.

At the forefront of this narrative is consumer spending, a relentless tide that has swelled over the last quarter-century.  Americans, once the archetypal savers, have shifted their gaze from the modesty of yesteryear to the opulence of today. The allure of luxury has never been more persuasive, with spending on high-end goods not just rising but accelerating, as if racing against the very limits of desire.  The temples of this new devotion are as close as the nearest shopping mall or as distant as the online marketplace, open 24/7, always ready to satisfy the next craving.  Here, purchases are not just transactions; they are a rite of passage, a way to announce one’s status, an attempt to buy into a dream that is always just one more purchase away.