First Presbyterian Church, Cottonwood Falls, KS

Rich Toward God: Luke 12:12-21, Col 3:1-11

Rev. Pat Ireland, Pastor

August 1,2010

Luke 12:13-21

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

16 Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17 And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 18 Then he said, ‘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. 19 And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20 But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

Colossians 3:1-11   [Paul is at the turning point of his teaching on baptism as a participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  For Paul, the resurrection signaled the beginning of the reign of God on earth and baptism initiates believers into that kingdom.  SO, he begins to explain that means for how we are to live under God’s reign.  Listen for God’s word for you.]

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, 3 for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.

5 Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient.  7 These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. 8 But now you must get rid of all such things--anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices 10 and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. 11 In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all.

At first glance our two scriptures are very different.  Paul is preaching salvation through participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Jesus is responding to an everyday situation: “Tell my brother to be fair!”  One is making a scholarly argument.  The other is dealing with everyday matters.   Yet, both teachers focus on greed… because it is idolatry.

Now, idolatry is a rather arcane concept of worshiping false gods.   But greed is something with which we are very familiar.  Our current financial woes can safely be laid at the altar of greed.  Maybe idolatry is not such an old fashioned notion after all.

Let us pray:  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts honor the Lord that we might have no other Gods before him.  Amen

One time, at a Presbytery meeting, I met a man who told about how poor he’d been as a child during the depression.  He went on to say that he had since built and sold multiple business and was now comfortably retired.  I asked him if he still felt poor and he replied; Yes.

My mother was born in 1918 and her attitude about money, learned in the depression,  was one of her greatest gifts to me, and sometimes burden.  She was the daughter of a horse and buggy country doctor who was often paid for his services in chickens or produce.  That’s why my grandmother, a teacher, babysat to supplement their income.  I learned at a young age the old adage: “Use it up.  Wear it out.  Make it do or do without!”

At the same time she taught me that there was always enough money for what was really important.   I remember her telling me the story of Momma’s Savings.  I think it came from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.  The story, as she told it, was that Momma always kept a small saving stashed in a jar or tin in the cupboard and if they really needed it, Momma could dip into the savings but somehow the family always found a way to avoid having to use Momma’s money (which is fact was but a few coins).  

One example: as I child I knew it was expensive to send me to church camp.  But, I also knew it was a priority for my mom.  I went and those summer experiences shaped me almost as she did.  Meanwhile, in Sunday School I learned to tithe and to pledge.

My father, on the other hand, was a believer in the philosophy offered up in the musical, Hello Dolly.  ‘Money is like manure; it isn’t any good until you spread it around.’  He was a loan officer so we could always borrow.  All major purchases were done with credit.

These influences combined to help me avoid anxiety about money while still learning how to pinch pennies and, for the most part, they have served me well.  Though, at times, I do regret not being a little freer with money, but Mike brings that to the family!

Attitudes about money are learned very early and are very hard to change.  Perhaps that is why Jesus talked so much about it.

Jesus had been encouraging his followers to be fearless and faithful in preaching the Kingdom of God, and along comes this man who is embroiled in a family feud over an inheritance.  He wanted a religious authority like Jesus to make a judgment against his brother.   We might think the guy’s problem sounds petty in the midst Kingdom talk.

But Jesus responds to the question indicating the two issues are related.  It is, however, typical of the Kingdom, that rather than receiving the kind of judgment provided by religious texts like the Book of Deuteronomy, Jesus gives the man – and the crowd – a warning: "Beware! Watch out! Be on guard against greed!  For one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions."

Jesus knows just how seductive material possessions are.  Jesus warns us about the way "things" can take over our lives, even become our lives, if we do not "watch out."

Haven’t you ever fantasized about receiving a windfall of money, and how it would make you feel relieved and secure at last?   That’s what happened to the rich farmer in today's parable?  There’s no indication this was an evil man, that he’d cheated or stolen his wealth.   Like all of us, he's benefited from good luck, from the rain that "falls on good and evil alike."

The trap he falls into is in his next steps: when he has a windfall, he doesn't run into the village celebrating and announcing his plan to share his good fortune with the community, let alone get their help with deciding how to deal with this excellent problem.  He turns inward and he stays there, figuring that he can be self-sufficient and secure solely because of his wealth.  Eleven times he uses the first-person ("I" and "my") and never "our" or "their."  Several commentaries point out the irony that the community, unaware of his solitary thoughts, will inherit his bounty and probably think well of him!

Jesus is not just down on wealth and material things.  It is much deeper than that.   Jesus knows the seductive power of possessions, and he wants to clear the way for us to receive much greater blessings and joy.  The man's anxiety about the inadequacy of his barns mirrors in some ways our own preoccupation with handling our possessions, protecting them with security systems, investing them safely, worrying about them.

It's not that such things are irresponsible or wrong, but they do distract us from what is really important.  Eugene Peterson's paraphrase of the passage following the parable is enlightening: "What I'm trying to do here is get you to relax, not be so preoccupied with getting so you can respond to God's giving....Steep yourself in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions." The Message As beloved children of God, we have a Parent who wants to give us good things, if we can just make room in our lives for them!

The world teaches us to value things according to their price.  But you are priceless!  Your life is of incalculable worth.  You are precious in God's eyes, not just some of you, but every single one of you.  Our value is not correlated with the value of our possessions, of course.  And because of that, when there's an abundance of goods, Jesus seems to be saying that sharing is the way to go.  That was the mistake of the rich fool.  He could have known an incomparable joy in the short time he had left, if he had spread out the abundance of his goods among the community.

This is the only time in the Gospels that God actually speaks in a parable.  Maybe that’s because the rich fool has shown blatant disregard for God's role in his life, that a direct word from God is most timely or maybe Jesus is saying that it takes a divine intervention for most of us fools in a foolish society to learn that security lies entirely beyond our reach.

Our security lies in God.  In a sense, the rich fool has used his wealth to set himself up as a kind of "god" who can ensure his own welfare.  The seduction of wealth is the illusion it gives us of control over our lives.  That is why it is idolatry!

Everything we have is a gift from the living God.  We may work hard, but what we have is a gift, not a reward.  Wealth is a means, not an end, and most of us need an attitude adjustment about it.  What’s more, deep down, we want an attitude adjustment.  We have seen in our own lifetimes incredible bouts of greed – in the 80's, and the 90's, and the terrible price we are now paying for the greed of recent years – no wonder that we have given way to disillusionment and hunger for what truly satisfies.

So, What does it mean to be "rich toward God"?

Surely it means realizing that wealth is not happiness.  It means reminding ourselves regularly that money and possessions do not bring peace of mind.

Additionally it means deciding to share rather than hoard.  There is a story about the Marquis de Lafayette, who helped the American colonists during our War of Independence from Britain.  When he returned home to France, he lived on his big estates and did very well.  He was in the same social class as the rich man in Jesus' parable- but acted very differently.

In 1783, after a poor harvest, Lafayette's workers were still able to fill his barns with wheat. "The bad harvest has raised the price of wheat," said one of his workers. "This is the time to sell." Lafayette thought about the hungry peasants in the surrounding villages. "No," he replied, "this is the time to give." Lafayette was "rich toward God."

We need to ask ourselves if we can give more to the needy.  We need to ask if our lives, in all their multi-faceted and multi-tasking glory, reflect the priorities God would like us to have.

Third, being rich toward God means a commitment to serve God instead of money. While it is important to be responsible about money, to plan for our retirement and our needs, we should also plan for what someone has called our "expirement" – for the death that came unexpectedly to the rich fool in this parable told by Jesus.  Some of us can give in death what we conserved in life.

Finally, Walter Bruggemann, scholar of the Old Testament prophets, reminds us that this teaching is urgent for our society.  Not only because of the perennial seduction of greed, but because we live in a society of bad tax law, bad credit arrangements, and bad advertising, all of which seek to make greed into a civic virtue.  We know better!  We may choose against such foolishness for a life of neighborliness.

What we need, then, is a different posture toward wealth and possessions.  It is offensive to speak of a human being's "net worth" measured in dollars and cents!  We can't measure our value and our security in our accumulated goods.  If the last year has taught us anything it should be that:  We can't trust our storehouses.  We must trust God.

But these are hard words to hear, as hard today as they were in first-century Palestine.  The crowd must have drifted away after hearing them from Jesus, so he addressed his disciples, telling them about the flowers and the birds which are gloriously beautiful and which worry not a moment about what they want or need.

The Kingdom of God not about our net worth but about our infinite value in God's eyes.  When we are rich toward God we always have enough to share!