BASE HEADER LEVEL: 2

2013-08-04 11th Sunday after Pentecost C

“Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.”

• and thus begins a long and current tradition of people trying to use God as an excuse for greed.
• and Jesus is smart, because sometimes the way we do this is subtle.

Someone from the crowd comes to Jesus and calls him teacher, master. O Wise One. Decider of what’s right. Please tell my brother to do the right thing, which is to share the inheritance with the family. And the family, of course, you know, happens to include me.

OK, so maybe it’s not so subtle… you gotta give him points for trying. Jesus, of course, sees right through this. Jesus does not give a teaching on the proper way to divide a family inheritance. Jesus says,

Man, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?

And if this was a couple hundred years later, the man would have said, well…it says right here in the Apostle’s Creed, “…he will come again to judge the living and the dead…”

And Jesus would say, “No, No,… who said that you could use my name to obtain wealth?”

Jesus knows what this is about, and it’s not the proper administration of a family estate. Jesus does use this as a teachable moment, though, and he gets to the heart of the matter with the use of a parable.

You know how sometimes Jesus uses parables that are so cryptic that you need a decoder ring to figure out who’s who and what the point is after all?

This is not one of those parables! Jesus tells us right from the start what the issue is here. The issue is greed. Jesus says, “beware of all kinds of greed. Your life is so much more than ‘what you have.’”

Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 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. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 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?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

We’ve done this before…do you hear a theme going on here? …I, I, I, … my, my, my…

The rich man is so intent on being the only person in the world that matters that it’s downright comical. I mean, even when he has discussions: they’re with himself!

His total independence, though, is really only in his imagination. The bible text reminds us, it was the land that produced abundantly. We can safely assume that the rich man himself didn’t harvest all these crops. There were surely others who helped in this endeavor. Yet, the man can only think of himself. There’s no room for God or anyone else in his plans for himself.

Now…we can be honest. When you hear these plans of the rich man (replace his current savings with a larger savings so that he can have better financial security) do you think, “Hey, that guy sounds like a wise person.”? I do. Is it so bad to have a nest egg? Should I stop funding my 401K?

Remember: this is not a parable about investment advice. Greed is the name of the game…that’s what Jesus says is the problem here. At least for the purposes of this parable, the problem is not being wealthy, owning land, or saving for the future…the problem is greed. Greed is the relationship that the rich man has with his possessions. They are only his. He has built them as a fortress around his soul. They have drawn his attention so inwardly, that they’ve replaced God in his life.

And when the truth finally hits him — when he finally sees his soul in the hands of God — I imagine he realized just how poor he was.

So, let’s just say that the truth has finally hit you. Maybe your life isn’t being demanded of you this very night, but maybe you have that moment of clarity to see your soul, your life in God’s hands.

You might notice, as I do, that some of the stupid stuff that I worry about — that I pay time and energy and concern into, are actually more important in my imagination, that they are in reality.

You might notice, as I do, the successes and failures that I consider to be my own are actually shared.

You might notice that you’ve been investing the least in the things that are most important.

So, what’s the opposite of greed? Is it just being poor? Is it making unwise or foolish financial decisions? Is Jesus saying we should just not care about money, or property, or work?

Actually, the parable ends with the same word that it begins with: rich. It started with the rich man, but it ends with ‘being rich towards God.’

Don’t let those words pass by without noticing them. Being rich towards God. Can you believe Jesus calls us to do that? It’s not just paying our dues. It’s not ‘paying the God tax’ so that we can stay in good graces.

God entrusts us with gifts & asks us to be rich in their use.

Being rich towards God involves our attitude and use of the blessings that we have already been given. It means constantly repenting our tendency to think in terms of me, me, me. And to turn towards our neighbors and think of us, us, us, as God’s Kingdom.

This is why our call to faithfulness says Tithe Thankfully. It’s not a painful requirement of being a good person. It’s a grateful response. We’ll talk more specifically in the coming weeks about what this word tithing means — how you can do it, and how you can do it thankfully. For now, in its most basic sense, tithing means to give back to God what we have been entrusted with: our selves, our time, and our possessions. All of which belong to God.

It’s the response you have from the perspective of the rich man in the parable when his life was demanded of him.

I read an anecdote this week of a seasoned pastor who said, “I have heard many different regrets expressed by people nearing the end of life, but there is one regret I have never heard expressed. I have never heard anyone say, ‘I wish I hadn’t given so much away. I wish I had kept more for myself.’”

Here’s the deal: you don’t have to wait for the end of your life to have that perspective. You don’t have to wait til the last moment to realize that your whole life and being have been in God’s hands all along.

That perspective is for now. That’s faith.