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The following message for the moment is delivered by the Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler-Theoman. Today's sermon is entitled "The Strange Story of Mr. Bigger Barnes." The scripture reading for the morning is from the Gospel according to Luke, the twelfth chapter. I begin the reading at the verse numbered

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15. "And Jesus said to them, 'Take heed and beware of all covetousness, for a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.' And he told them a parable, saying, 'The land of a rich man brought forth plentifully.' And he thought to himself, 'What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?' And he said,

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'I will do this. I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry.' But God said to him, 'Fool, this night your soul is required of you, and the things you have

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prepared, whose will they be?' So is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God." May God bless to us and to our spirits' understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Permit me to tell you this morning the strange story of Mr. Bigger Barnes. Bigger was, of course, a family name. Bigger Barnes was raised on a farm, which is a great place to be brought up because farms bring forth not only good produce, but very often good people. There is a healthy atmosphere on a farm. There is a respect for honest labor. There is a unity

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of the family, which one does not find in other places. The moral climate of a farm is much to be preferred over many places that claim far more sophistication. Bigger himself went on to become a farmer. Now, to be a good farmer takes both brains and brawn. And Bigger had brains. He was shrewd. He was calculating. He knew how to plan ahead. And he also was

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not the least bit hesitant to show the calluses on his hands or the sweat on his brow. He used both his mind and his muscle in his work, and he became very rich. And then one night he sat down, as he often did, to contemplate what he had accomplished and to set new goals for himself. Now, he did not do this with any sense of arrogance,

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and there was no greed in it. Here was simply a man who planned ahead. And here also was a man who was not a workaholic. He did not feel compelled to be always at labor. And so he came to a remarkable decision. He decided to retire. "I shall build great storehouses for my produce," he thought, "and I shall address my soul to eating, drinking, and relaxing."

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But then a sad thing happened. He died. On the very night that he arrived at that decision, he died. Now, make no mistake about it. Figure Barnes was not a bad man. He was an honest man. He was a wise man. He was a hard-working person. There was nothing selfish or stupid or lucky that constituted his success. Yet for all of that, he did make some rather strange

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mistakes. For example, quite strangely, he made the making of a life less important than the making of a living. You know, life consists of many dimensions, and when we focus on only one of them, we lose a lot that life has to offer. For example, if all we're interested in is being industrious, then we are little more than machines. If all we're interested

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in is to be well-educated, well, such people have a tendency to be cold and unsympathetic. If all we're interested in is politics, we have a tendency to become selfish and scheming. If all we're interested in is the social life, we become a playgirl or a playboy. If all we're interested in is religion, we become a fanatic, one of those individuals often

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described as being so heavenly that they are no earthly good. There are, you see, two realms to life. There is the internal realm, which consists of the spiritual, the religious, the artistic, the ethical. And there is the external realm, which has to do with the instrumentalities and the techniques by which we make a living. And it's a very sad thing when these two

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factors of internal and external become unbalanced. And that's what happened to Bigger. An example from our own time would be that of Howard Hughes. Now, Howard Hughes was a very brilliant man. He was a business genius. He was an inventor. He was a distinguished aviator. But all of these things were from the external realm. He ended his life living

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in dark rooms with the drapes taped to the walls so no light could enter. He spent most of his time watching old movies, some of which he had seen hundreds of times. He wore nothing but a ragged bathrobe and Kleenex boxes on his feet. He had four doctors in his personal employ, but he paid no attention to any of them. He needed eyeglasses but refused to

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buy them. He needed hearing assistance, but he refused to purchase what was necessary to give him that assistance. He spent most of his days stacking and restacking newspapers. And he would not shake hands. He was afraid of contracting germs. When his barber came to cut his hair, he'd have to prepare himself in the same way that a surgeon prepares himself

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for surgery. And the barber, incidentally, was paid $1,000 every time he cut Howard Hughes' hair. Hughes ate nothing but chicken soup out of a can and one flavor of ice cream. On one occasion, he ordered 350 gallons of that flavor. And the day it arrived, he decided he didn't like it and he never ate it again. Now, here was a man who owned hotels and motels,

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airlines and television channels, apartment buildings, restaurants, whole factories. He had a great living, but he had no life. This is the reason that Paul did not write, "For me to live is my Dunn and Bradstreet rating." Instead, he wrote, "For me to live is Christ." Because when Christ enters into a life, he balances, you see, the internal and the external,

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so that the life is a healthy one to behold. Now, Bigger Barn's second strange confusion was that he misunderstood the nature of the soul. He said, "Soul, you have ample goods, so eat, drink, and relax." Now, that in itself is testimony to the fact that he didn't know anything about the soul, because a soul does not eat or drink. A soul does not depend on

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what it has, but rather on what it is. That's the reason Jesus said, "What does it profit a man if he gained the whole world and lose his own soul?" The soul, you see, is not concerned with the things of the world. The soul is, as it were, a kind of God-shaped vacuum in our lives. And as long as that vacuum remains empty, then our lives are unbalanced, distorted,

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and to some degree ugly. But when in the person of Christ, God fills that vacuum, then when the internal and the external are brought into proper relationship, beautiful things are seen. What we all need is not to feed our souls with eat or drink, but to fill our souls with God. I think this morning of a German composer who was living in Great Britain.

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He was a rather inept man socially, and as a result, he had very few friends. He was bitter and cynical, and because of the stress under which he lived, he eventually had a stroke which left him partially paralyzed. In discouragement, he returned to his rooms one night to find that an acquaintance of his had dropped off a libretto for him to

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study. He brushed it to one side, but as he did so, he happened to notice the first line of the text of the libretto, which was, "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people." And those words struck his soul. And so he sat down and he read that libretto from the beginning to the end. And then immediately he began to compose. For 22 days, he sat at that desk composing.

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His servant would find him asleep at the desk. He was constantly stabbing notes onto that paper. Occasionally he would get up and hobble up and down the length of his room, singing his choruses and waving his arms. His name, of course, was George Frederick Handel, and the piece of music that he wrote was The Messiah.

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Now if you ever listened seriously to The Messiah, you have found that your soul has been touched. Why? Well, you see, Handel said that in the process of writing that piece of music, he forgot all about his body, and his soul was in touch with the eminence of God. So you see, Handel's soul and the spirit of God went into that music, and that is the

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reason it touches the spirits and the souls of those who listen to it with seriousness. My friends, the sun and the moon and the stars will all pass away, but there are two lights which are eternal. One is the light of God, and the other is the light of the soul. The soul is the only thing in us on which God has written the word forever. So let us not

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make the mistake of bigger barns and confuse the nature of the soul. And strangely enough, bigger barns also made a miscalculation about what he owned and what he did not own. If you look at this little story, you will find that the small word "my" appears in it again and again. "My crops, my storehouses, my grain, my goods, my soul."

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It is really odd that such things should have been said by bigger barns. After all, he was a farmer, and I don't think anyone comes face to face with the reality of God's involvement in our life and our work as much as a farmer does. He sows his seed, and then he must rely upon nature and nature's God for the increase. But you see, bigger barns forgot that the

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earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. He forgot that we are only stewards in this life and not owners. There was a convention of businessmen on the West Coast some years ago that invited a multimillionaire to come and address them on how they could be successful as he had been successful. And

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he began by saying, "I have something to confess to you, and that is that I was once a compulsive gambler." In fact, he said, "One night in Las Vegas, I came to the place where I literally lost every penny that I owned. And I was so dismayed that I began to weep, and I hurried into a men's room so that no one would see me. My plan was to go into one of the little

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stalls and there to be able to weep in private until I had composed myself. But as I approached the stalls, I saw that on each door there was a little meter, and you had to put a dime into the meter in order to open the door. And I didn't have a dime. And a man at the sink washing his hands, seeing my predicament, said, "Here, I'll be glad to give you a

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dime." And I replied, "No, I won't take the dime from you, but I will borrow it. And if you'll give me your name and address, I'll send it back." "No," the fellow said, "it's just a dime." I said, "Look, I want to give you what is yours." So that the man at the sink gave him the dime and also his business card. And then that man left, and

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this fellow who was speaking to these businessmen said, "I walked over to the door where the booths were, and I discovered that someone before me had not closed the door all the way, so I didn't need the dime to get in. I went in and sat down and wept. And then I came out and washed my face, and I started to leave the gambling casino. And as I crossed

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the floor where the slot machines were, I felt that dime in my pocket. So I put it in one of the machines and I hit the jackpot. And then I took that money, changed it into larger coins, put that into the machines, and won another jackpot. Before I left that casino that night, I had won $357,000. I never gambled again after that night. I went on

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to invest my money, and through careful investment and stewardship, I have become the multimillionaire that I am today. But if I could ever find that man who helped me, I would give him one half of all of my fortune." And one of the people in the audience said, "Well, you said that you got his business card when he gave you the dime." Or he said, "I'm

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not talking about the fellow who loaned me the dime. I'm talking about that fellow who didn't close the door on the booth all the way." It's a sad thing that people who become successful often forget just how much they owe to God and how much they owe to others. It is an indisputable statistic that those who are very wealthy give less

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proportionately to charity than those who do not have very much. This is one of the problems of the successful capitalist. But it is a problem for other economic philosophies as well. The capitalist believes that everything belongs to the individual. The socialist believes that everything belongs to the society. The communist believes that everything belongs

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to the state. But the Christian believes that everything belongs to God, that we bring nothing into this world and take nothing out of it. It would be a great thing if we could get our heads out of our bank books long enough and our noses away from our economic concerns long enough to notice that this ebbing, flowing, coming and going thing which we call our planet

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has on it many strange propositions. But the cloudiest of all those propositions is that we call possession. Why? Why, because we are all terminally ill. All we have is a brief loan from God for a little while. And bigger barns forgot all about that. And that led him to his most colossal blunder. He prepared for only one emergency. Every life has in

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it two great emergencies. The first is the emergency of life itself, and the second is the emergency of death. Bigger barn said, "I have enough to last me for all the rest of the years." But God said to him, "This night your soul will be required of you." Bigger barn said, "I shall build greater storehouses to hold my produce." But God

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said, "You should be digging a grave." It's very tragic to see people who will sell their goods for profit and let their souls go for nothing. Paul Rees tells about a man who came to a little English church and he called upon the vicar and he said, "I noticed you have a very beautiful churchyard, graveyard around your church and I'd like

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to be buried here. Can I make arrangements for the purchase of a plot?" And the vicar said yes. And they went out and walked about the cemetery until they found a place beside some beautiful flowering trees and with a magnificent vista. And they decided upon that plot and the businessman said that he would purchase it. And they stood there for a moment

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and looked at the beauty of the place and listened to the birds singing and the branches above. And then the old vicar said to the man who had come to buy the plot, "Now you have made arrangements for the resting place of your body. May I ask you if you've made plans for the resting place of your soul?" And the man said to him, "No one has ever

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asked me that question before." Well, after today, none of you are ever going to be able to say that no one has asked you that question before because I'm asking you right now. Have you prepared a resting place for your soul? If you have not, then you are a danger to yourself and to others because you have forgotten that you are finally required to

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settle accounts with God. The soul must be paid back and every loan comes due. I have often thought that it does not behoove any of us to call any other person a fool. That is so for two reasons. First, because the Bible says we should not do so. And secondly, because common sense tells us we should not do so. For there is enough wisdom in the most

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foolish of us and enough foolishness in the wisest of us to make that word an inappropriate word for us to address to one another. But when God calls a person a fool, when God, the omniscient One, the One who knows everything about the internal realm and the external realm as it relates to each and every one of us, when God says that such a person is

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a fool, we can know that that naming is accurate. And God said to Bigger Barnes, "Thou fool." You focused on making a living and not a life. You misunderstood the nature of your own soul. You miscalculated what you owned and what you did not own, and you prepared for only one emergency. Let us not be so foolish. Let us, who are careful to ensure what is perishable,

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also ensure those things which are eternal. Let those of us who are careful about the titles to our properties be equally concerned about the title we have to the kingdom of heaven. If we are smart enough to keep a roof over our heads, then let us not be so stupid as to let our souls go bare and naked.

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Seek ye the Lord while he may be found; call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked and the foolish forsake his ways and thoughts and return unto the Lord. He will have mercy upon them, and he will abundantly pardon. God grant that we might not say to our souls, "Souls, take thine ease, eat, drink, relax."

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Instead, let us say to our souls, "Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, as the swift seasons roll. Leave thy low, vaulted past. Let each new temple, nobler than the last, shut thee from heaven, where the dome more vast, till thou at length art free, leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea."

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Let us pray. O God, if thou wilt, bless these words to the loving and the lifting and the saving of souls. For Jesus' sake, amen. [Silence]

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