Neill Morgan
Sermon Delivered August 5, 2007
13Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” 14But 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.” 16Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 18Then 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. 19And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20But 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?’ 21So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
How to Get Rich
The changes in direction in this section of Luke’s gospel wrench us back and forth like riding the bumper cars at the State Fair. Jesus begins chapter 12 talking about discipleship, about the courage it takes to say what you believe in a culture that doesn’t want to hear it, how to handle the fear that comes with living against the grain, and how to trust the Spirit of God to give you the words you need if you are put on trial.
In the middle of Jesus’ call to set aside our own desires and fears and instincts and to find courage in case we must die for a cause greater than our own lives, someone in the crowd asks him to step into a bad case of sibling rivalry, a conflict over possessions. “Tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.”
Since an older brother would have had the power of executor of the estate, we can conclude that this is a younger brother asking Jesus for help. We can understand why the younger brother, who had no legal power in this situation, would believe that Jesus would take his side. Jesus has been preaching and teaching and acting in such a way as to give power to the powerless. He had stepped in to liberate powerless people from disease and demon-possession; he told a story in which the hero was a despised Samaritan; he defended the woman of the city who was a known sinner from the condemnation of Simon the Pharisee. And, in last week’s reading that Keatan expounded so beautifully, Jesus walked right into the sibling conflict between Martha and Mary and pronounced Mary not guilty by reason of spirituality.
So, this younger brother had every reason to hope that Jesus would step into his family dispute and tell his older brother to give him a break, divide the estate, and give the younger brother his share.
Jesus’ reply jerks the rug right out from under him. “Friend,” he begins, and the younger brother may have listened with hope, but then Jesus switches directions, rams him at full speed with his bumper car, “who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?”
There’s an irony, of course, as Jesus, God in human form, dismisses his own authority.
But, then, immediately, he claims an even higher authority. “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”
Jesus’ parable exposes the folly of a farmer who believes the blessing of material wealth from a bumper crop will provide him with a secure future. It is an illusion. When we imagine a future with more than we have now, we imagine that we will have more security, more freedom, more independence. But Jesus’ parable says, “It ain’t necessarily so.”
The most common translation of God’s pronouncement to the farmer is that his soul, whose future he believed he would secure with bigger barns, will be demanded of him this very night. “And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” That is one possible translation; there is another, however, captured by Clarence Jordan in the Cotton Patch Gospels, and he preserves the form of the Greek verb that is active, not passive:
God said to him, ‘You nitwit, at this very moment your goods are putting the screws on your soul. All these things you’ve grubbed for, to whom shall they really belong?’ That’s the way it is with a man who piles up stuff for himself without giving God a thought.”
In other words, Jesus says, the things you think you own now own you. The anxiety over preserving them, protecting them, and managing them meant that, far from setting his soul free, these possessions would enslave him.
George, a friend of mine in Austin owned a beautiful painting by Matisse. George is an art collector and has many wonderful paintings by artists whose names you would recognize, and many more by contemporary artists as yet unknown, but this Matisse was by far the crown jewel of his collection. When you stand at the kitchen sink to wash dishes, the window in front of you is not on an outside wall. Instead, it opens up to a hallway and on the opposite wall, about fifteen feet away, hangs the Matisse. When I was in seminary, I was his house-sitter on several occasions, and I always looked forward to washing dishes. (My family is rolling their eyes, “yeah, right.” But, trust me, washing dishes in that house is really quite a pleasure. Every time you look up, you would see that painting and something new, something you didn’t notice before, would emerge from the painting.
I went to visit George one day and went right to the hallway to look at the Matisse, and it wasn’t there. Instead, a painting the same size by a contemporary artist hung right in its place.
“What happened to the Matisse?” I asked. “Did you move it?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said, casually. “The insurance on it got so high it felt like it owned me instead of me owning it, so I got free of it. I gave it to a museum.” He gave a shrug and said, “but look at that painting that hangs there now. I bought it from the artist last month, and I see something new in it every time I look at it . . .”
George understood the difference between ownership and stewardship.
Often, we misuse the word “stewardship.” We use the word as if it means “fund-raising.” Jesus, however, meant something much different.
Fund raising is an appeal to people to use our possessions to reach a goal we desire. From “call now and pledge to keep your public radio station on the air,” to “Donate now to elect the candidate who will fight for YOU!” to the church’s anxious fundraising, “Pledge now to keep YOUR church healthy and strong.” The fund-raising appeal is always an appeal to the goals of the giver, your desires, YOUR hopes, YOUR priorities.
Jesus’ concern about possessions, however, is about something different. When Jesus talked about being stewards of our possessions, he talked about setting us free. He talked about raising our sights away from the illusion that by our possessions we can buy security; and into a new realm, the realm of discipleship.
When Jesus tells the man, “Life does not consist in the abundance of possessions,” it begs the question, “Well then, of what DOES it consist?”
What will give us meaning and a sense of security and freedom from that feeling of powerlessness or despair or depression?
Jesus’ answer, that he gives in so many different ways, is this: “Follow me.” The same invitation that he gave the disciples by the sea of Galilee, he gives to us, “follow me.” “Take up your cross, lay down your illusions, and follow me, for those who will save themselves will be lost, but those who will lose themselves in the project of discipleship will find themselves living an abundant life forever.”
I’ve heard it said that the fund-raising question for the church is about how much it takes to keep the church going, but the stewardship question is about tithing, giving ten percent.
That, however, doesn’t really capture what Jesus is talking about in our relationship to our possessions. He’s not just talking about giving ten percent. He’s talking about how we use one hundred percent of what we have and who we are. Do we use our time, our financial assets, our possessions, and our education and our natural abilities to try to amass more and more possessions in order to feel more secure? Or, do we use all that we are and all that we have to become more faithful disciples of Jesus?
It’s not that owning things is sinful, not at all. But, it is problematic. It’s problematic because our natural instinct is to give it more power than it actually has. The freedom of faithful stewardship is the power Jesus offers us when we open our eyes to the power God has given us to use possessions for discipleship rather than letting our possessions put the screws to us, control us, own us.
The good news is that becoming faithful disciples, and therefore faithful stewards of our lives and possessions, will give us the very things that our possessions promise but cannot deliver: a sense of security, hope, faith, and joy. Faithful stewardship sets us free. It sets us free from anxiety about possessions, and it sets the church free from the anxiety of fund-raising. A church that develops faithful disciples, and therefore faithful stewards, does not need to do anxious fundraising.
The good news is that as we deepen our discipleship of Jesus Christ, we become rich toward God, rich beyond our wildest dreams, rich in all the things that matter, in love among each other, in joy and security, hope, faith, and delight in this world and the next.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Invitation to Discipleship
This is the part in the service when I tell folks who are visiting that Jesus invites you to be a disciple, to follow him, and that we here at Covenant Presbyterian Church invite you to develop that discipleship as part of this congregation. You’re invited to join, and if you want to do that, or you have questions about that, stop and talk with me at the door today.
But, today, the invitation to discipleship is not just the invitation we issue to visitors. It’s an invitation to everyone here, visitors and members alike. Specifically, I invite you to consider deepening your discipleship of Jesus Christ through a comprehensive study of the Bible.
You are invited to learn more about Disciple Bible study, get all your questions answered, stay in the loop, and understand what is going on by attending an informational presentation next Sunday here in the sanctuary, starting at 9:30. I’ve asked the adult Sunday School leaders to bring their classes in here, and if you are not ordinarily part of a Sunday School class, but an adult or a youth going into tenth grade or above, this is a good time to make an exception to your Sunday morning sleep-in, haul yourself out of bed, and come learn what it’s all about. Even if you feel certain that this study is not for you right now, I hope you will consider coming to this presentation so you understand what will be happening all around you at Covenant Presbyterian Church as more and more people are not only more deeply informed, but transformed by a deep study of the Scripture.
If you already know you are interested, I invite you to fill out this form in the bulletin and we’ll make sure you’re in the loop, whether you can attend next week or not. That’s 9:30 next Sunday, August 12, here in the sanctuary.