Larry Sermon
preached on 9-25-05
by Andrew Rich
Today we will be reading from the Gospel According to Larry 1, part one, page 12-13.
Sermon #93
Slip on your Gap jeans, your Nike T-shirt, your Reeboks-or maybe even your Cons if you think that makes you cool and ironic in a Kurt Cobain kind of way. Grab your Adidas backpack, ride to school on your Razor, drink your Poland Spring, eat your PowerBar, write a paper on your iMac, slip on your Ralph Lauren windbreaker. Buy the latest CD from Tower, check the caller ID to see who's on the phone, eat your Doritos, drink your Coke. Stare at the TV till you're stupefied.
Is there any time of the day when we're not being used and abused by the advertising companies? Can we have an inch of free space, do you mind? Some ambitious kids rent their head space-the outside, not the inside (although the inside space is certainly emptier)-to local companies by shaving ads into their hair for all their friends to see. It's just a matter of time before corporations figure out a way to sell you stuff while you're sleeping. Maybe some kind of vitamin that releases visual and sonic enzymes that run like a ticker tape through your dreams-ALL THE LATEST RELEASES NOW AT BLOCKBUSTER ... CHEESIER NACHOS AT CHILI'S . . . BY THE WAY, YOU'RE SNORING. . . .
What I've just done is normally known as plagiarism, or at least it would be if I didn't give full credit to the author, Janet Tashjian, for all the glory of the Gospel According to Larry. I must confess, I have seen a new ideal. Not a new faith or god or anything, nothing sacrilegious about this. I think in order to keep this somewhat brief, so I can get back to homework and let you get on with your days today, I should just tell you what I'm talking about here.
Simplicity.
In life. In your life. In our lives. Think about how complicated your life is. What are you going to do once you get home? Do you want to do it or not? We all have things that we don't want to do, but wouldn't you want to minimize the number of those? Think about how much stuff you have, how blessed you really are.
How much of that could you do without? My bet is a whole lot. I recently read a book that I found in the library, from which I just read you a passage. It's entitled The Gospel According to Larry, and is about an activist teen who starts a website and preaches simplicity and anti-consumerism. (Of course, one of the huge ironies of the book is that his step father (who he lives with after his mother's death) is the head of a big advertising firm, but back to the message.) Larry only lives with 75 possessions in his life. This includes everything, his clothes, his keys, his music, his bike, his laptop, his backpack. Now the rules are, that if the item is a set of something, then it counts as one, such as a notebook or a pair of shoes.
Now is the time where I pause for a moment of reflection on what I've said so far, take a sip of water and move on.
This is the point now, where you can see the line between fiction and reality. Especially for a working adult, with bills and work and being an independent entity and all, (which, I admire you all for) it would be nearly impossible to do. I'd like to now present a challenge, to anyone who has lots of spare time, to find just 150 things that you could live with happily. If you can do this, I'll bake you a batch of the cookie of your choice, to go with the immaterial concept.
I want to go back to something that I just said for a minute or so. A working adult. A playing child. Isn't it funny, that kids always say 'When I grow up, I wanna be insert vocation here,' while adults always say 'When I was a kid or your age, I would always insert activity here'. So, in other words, when you're a kid, you want to grow up, and when you have grown up, you want to be a kid. So in truth, to coin a phrase, the grass is always greener on the other side. But another way to say that is you will always want something more. So the question you should ask yourself is, will being this or getting this actually make me feel better once I have it, or will I just be accumulating more stuff?
I also recently read a book called Slick, by Daniel Price. The book was amazing, (as was The Gospel According to Larry and its sequel.) I took breaks from reading summer reading in order to read this book. The main character is a publicist, who puts spin on various events happening in the media, and generally altering the public opinion of events at large. This was an amazing book for me to read, because it showed me just how much we're distorted by the powers that be. I kind of wonder what we would be like if we didn't have advertising constantly telling us what to be like, whether we realize it or not. I think that corporations definitely get between simplicity and us, by selling us a lot of worthless stuff.
Now once again, I'm not telling anyone to stop buying food that isn't soy, buy only converse all stars, and go and join a commune, because converse is actually now owned by Nike who uses child labor for very low wages, and we very much still want you here at church. And there's nothing wrong with soy. But what I am trying to tell you is this. I don't think anyone will ever have exactly the life they want. Even the oh so famous celebrities whose lives are incredible and everything is beautiful, still have problems, so they say. And I believe them. With all the stuff that they have in their lives, it must be hard to live simply. They have to always promote people getting more stuff. And that must be tough.
And since no one will ever be entirely satisfied with the life they have, you can add more and more stuff to your own life, amassing a bigger and bigger stockpile for the the big earthquake/flood/natural disaster, wasting all your money and time away on the pursuit of material objects, or you can search for a greater truth. I sure haven't found it, and most people don't do just one or the other, most probably live somewhere in between. Just live your life, being happy with what you have. That's all the advice I can give you.
1 from The Gospel According to Larry by Janet Tashjian
© 2005 by Andrew Rich. All rights reserved. Please consult the author at tabernacle@tabunited.org if you wish to use the text of this sermon, in whole or in part.
