Sermon for Pentecost 12: "Pride and Humility"

 + 12^th Sunday after Pentecost – August 28^th, 2022 +

Series C: Proverbs 25:2-10; Hebrews 13:1-17; Luke 14:1-14

Beautiful Savior Lutheran

Milton, WA

 

 

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

“There is one vice, writes C.S. Lewis, of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly anyone ever imagines they are guilty.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 121).

 

Can you guess what sin that is? Lewis is referring to the sin of pride. The chief sin. The sin that leads to all other sins.

 

It is pride – and its opposite, humility – that are on full display in our gospel reading in Luke 14 this morning. Pride in the hearts, minds, words, and deeds of the pharisees with whom Jesus was invited to dine. Humility in the heart, mind, words, and deeds of Jesus who comes with mercy to heal a sick man and to save you.

 

Luke 14 begins around the dinner table at the home of one of the rulers of the pharisees. St. Luke tells us why Jesus is invited to dinner with the religious rich and famous. They were watching him carefully, he says. The pharisees were following the old adage of keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. 

 

Jesus isn’t the only unlikely guest at this dinner party. A man with dropsy – or edema in today’s medical language - also happens to be there. Luke doesn’t tell us this, but it seems likely the pharisees planted him there at this Sabbath day dinner party to entrap Jesus. 

 

If Jesus doesn’t heal the man, clearly he isn’t following God’s command to love his neighbor. And if he does heal the man, well then, he doesn’t love God by keeping the commandment to observe the Sabbath day. To quote the famous Admiral Ackbar; “it’s a trap.” 

 

Jesus, however, is on to their game. He turns the question back on them. “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?” What’s their answer? If the pharisees had smart phones you can imagine them googling their copies of the Talmud and Mishnah with the key words “healing” and “sabbath.” The pharisees lived for this kind of codifying the law. Parsing it out to the smallest list of do’s and don’ts. They prided themselves on their 613 ways to keep the Law. And yet when Jesus asks the question they’re silent. They could not answer. 

 

Instead of listening to the words of the Rabbi, Jesus, they busy themselves with scorekeeping all the ways Jesus breaks their manmade rules and traditions. Instead of spending the Sabbath day receiving God’s words and promises, they work to glorify themselves. Instead of living in humility and hospitality towards the sick man in their midst, and Jesus their guest, they look for the place of honor, are self-centered, and prideful. 

 

Now, it’s easy to listen to stories like this and think to ourselves, to quote another pharisee, “Thank God am not like those other men.” But the truth is we are like them, aren’t we. There’s a little pharisee within each of us that loves to keep score, compare ourselves with others, glorify ourselves, look out for number one, to live as if God and my neighbor did not matter and as if I mattered most. 

 

This is why Jesus goes on to tell a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him, ⁹ and he who invited you both will come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place. ¹⁰ But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. ¹¹ For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

 

Jesus concern here isn’t really about proper table etiquette a wedding reception. If the pharisees look at the kingdom of God through their self-glorifying ways – pride, Jesus sees the kingdom of God through his self-giving ways – humility. 

 

And in the kingdom of God humility is always given to you. Not taken or grasped for yourself. you don’t make yourself humble…like when you’re being interviewed for a job, “Oh yes, humility is one of my best traits.” Humility is a passive gift. God gives humility; we receive it. God humbles us so that he may exalt us. This is what Jesus is getting at in that closing verse of the parable. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled…by God, and he who humbles himself will be exalted…by God.”

 

These words are the way life works in the kingdom of God. It is a life lived in mercy. In sacrifice. In humility. And this is the way Jesus lived and died for you. 

 

If there’s anyone who deserves the higher seat, the place of honor, and the exaltation, it’s Jesus. And yet for you he took the lower seat. For you he lived and died in humility to save us from our foolish pride.

 

In the words of Paul, though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

 

This is the way it is in God’s kingdom. No one owes anyone anything because all has been paid by for by the blood of Jesus. Whatever we owed, Jesus paid by his sacrifice for us. All of our pride and self-centeredness – Jesus died in humility for that too. 

 

And in return, Jesus invites you to his banquet table with no preconditions and expects nothing in return. As Luther said on his death bead; we are all beggars. It is Christ himself who took the lowest seat in life and in death to exalt you in his humility, and then to turn you outwards in his humility and love towards others in your life. 

 

In Christ – and that’s the key – in Christ and his humility for you, you are humble servants. In Jesus’ humility, you are exalted to a better place, a better seat. A table and a feast of his body and blood given and shed for you.

 

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

 

In Memoriam - Linda Dyson: "The Traveler"

 + In Memoriam – Linda Dyson + 

September 24^th, 1947 – November 28^th, 2021

John 14:1-6

Beautiful Savior Lutheran

Milton, WA

 

 

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

 

“Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

 

I go to prepare a place for you. In these words, Jesus gives us comfort in our grief. Promise in the midst of sorrow. Hope and life in the midst of death. Jesus also gives us his word for our journey through life. Jesus’ words are traveling words.

 

And that’s something I think Linda, and you who know her, would appreciate. Linda loved to travel.

 

She traveled through hospitals and maternity wards delivering babies and witnessing the miracle of life. 

 

In more recent years she traveled anywhere there was warm water and a place to splash down in scuba gear.

 

Linda spent time with family and friends traveling the Scriptures together, reading, studying, inwardly digesting God’s promises to us in Christ who is the way, the truth, and the life. 

 

And through it all, our Lord Jesus travelled with her, his grace and mercy, her constant companion. There is no greater journey than to walk in our Lord’s ways and in His word. For Linda, that journey began on the day of her baptism, where our Lord washed and cleansed her from all sin; where He clothed her in Christ’s righteousness; where he transported her from the kingdom of darkness to his marvelous light; where He poured out His Holy Spirit to dwell with her, not for a short day-trip, but for her whole life, and even to eternity. 

 

This is what our Lord Jesus does for you and all who are baptized and believe in Him. Jesus the Good Shepherd walks through this valley of the shadow of death with you, as he did with Linda. Not only that, Jesus Christ the great traveler walked into the valley of the shadow death for Linda, and for you.

 

Jesus’ words to his disciples, and to us, here in John 14, remind us that Jesus himself is a traveler. Jesus’ journey to the cross began in the Virgin Mary’s womb and at his birth in Bethlehem for you. Jesus sojourned into the wilderness to be baptized in the Jordan River and then to overcome Satan’s temptations for you. Jesus walked throughout the Judean countryside, preached the good news of his coming to save, healed the sick, and raised the dead. And through it all he set his face towards Jerusalem. After three years of teaching, preaching, healing, and revealing who he was and what he came to do, Jesus journeyed to Jerusalem. Jesus walked to a hill outside the city walls carrying his own cross, and with that cross he was crucified with Linda’s sin, your sin, my sin; Jesus died Linda’s death, your death, my death. 

 

But the cross was not the end of Jesus’ journey. Not yet. Jesus traveled the paths of the dead. He was crucified, died, and buried. Many have traveled that road, but only Christ Jesus has journeyed through death and the grave, and he did that for Linda and for you. Jesus died in our place, and rose again three days later so that for Linda and for you, death would not be the end of our journey either. Jesus rose from the grave so that one day, he will call us forth from our graves and raise us from the dead in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

 

So it is for Linda and for all who believe in Christ our Lord. Death and the grave do not get the last word. The grave is not the final destination. Linda’s travels do not end in the grave. Her body, and our bodies will rest for a time, until our Lord returns on the Last Day. And then the journey with our Lord continues in a glorious, real, bodily resurrection from the dead. 

 

This is what Jesus declares to us today as he did for Mary and Martha at the death of their brother Lazarus…

 

“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, ²⁶ and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. 

 

By God’s grace and mercy, Linda’s hope and faith was in those words and promises of Jesus. Words and promises that traveled with her, her whole life through. Before GPS and smartphones, travelers used to use a compass or the stars on their journey. Find true north and you’d find your way. For Linda Christ crucified and risen was her true north. It was Christ’s grace and promise that led her, followed her, and carried her every step of the way. 

 

May it be so for each of you as well. On your journey, in all your travels, trust in Christ who journeyed to the cross, through the grave, and out again three days later to for Linda and for you.

 

The Lord bless your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.

 

The peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

Sermon for Pentecost 11: "The Narrow Door"

 + 11^th Sunday after Pentecost – August 21^st, 2022 +

Series C: Isaiah 66:18-23; Hebrews 12:4-24; Luke 13:22-30

Beautiful Savior Lutheran

Milton, WA

 

 

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

A good teacher will tell you that the key to getting the right answer is to ask the right question. 

 

Here in Luke 13, Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem – remember that important detail for later – when someone asks him a question: “Lord, will those who are saved be few?”

 

A lot of theological ink has been spilled on that question. No doubt, we’ve all wrestled with that question from time to time as well. How many people will be saved, a lot? A little? 

 

Now, we don’t know why this person asked Jesus this question. It could’ve been a purely intellectual exercise. You know, a stump the rabbi kind of question. It could’ve been asked out of concern or despair: “Am I in? Am I one of the few?” It also could’ve been asked out of pride: “Will only a few be saved…cause you know, Lord, I think it should be me and not those tax collectors and sinners over there.” 

 

“Lord, are only a few people going to saved?” How would you answer this question?

 

How does Jesus answer the question? In typical Jesus fashion, he answers the question by redirecting the conversation. Jesus shifts the focus of the question and the answer back upon his hearers, and ultimately back to himself. Jesus directs his answer not only to the guy asking the question, but to the crowds, to his disciples, and to you. Throughout this section Jesus uses the plural form of you.

 

Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. 

 

Jesus’ words reveal the truth of the Scriptures – which is outrageous and scandalous to many in our age of tolerance – that Christianity is exclusive. The way into the kingdom of God is incredibly narrow; everything else is a brick wall. Every other road is a dead end. There is only one, narrow door.

 

Reminds me of a scene from C.S. Lewis’s book, The Silver Chair. One of the main characters, Jill Pole, finds herself in the magical world of Narnia. She’s terribly thirsty. And standing between her and a fresh stream of water, stands the Lion Aslan. “Aren’t you thirsty,” he asks. “I’m dying of thirst,” she replies. Yet she cannot approach the stream for fear of the Lion. “Isn’t there some other stream?” She asks. Aslan simply replies, “There is no other stream.”

 

This is the way of Christ. The door to God’s kingdom is a narrow, exclusive way. “No one comes to the Father, except through me,” Jesus said. “There is no other name given under heaven by which men are to be saved.” Jesus’ death and resurrection are the only way that leads to life. There is no other way. All other paths, no matter how pious, how religious, how rigorous, how full of works and rituals and disciplines, run head long into the brick wall of the Law and come to nothing but destruction.

 

From our point of view, here in this fallen world, in our fallen sinful flesh, it sure looks like the answer to the question, will those who are saved be few? Is yes.

 

The right question, though, isn’t “how many?”. But how do you get in? What’s the price of admission through the narrow door?

 

And the answer to that question isn’t found within ourselves. Remember, Jesus spoke these words in the presence of the religious leaders of his day. Those who were working hard to please God. Keep the Law. Follow the feasts and festivals, the tithes and traditions. Not bad things to strive after, until you place your trust in those things rather than the mercy of God towards sinners. 

 

To strive to enter the narrow door is confess and believe and live in daily repentance and forgiveness of sins. To strive to enter the narrow door is not to say, “Look at all I’ve done. I’ve wrestled and struggled. I deserve this,” but rather to realize that the price of admission through the narrow door isn’t our virtue, devotion, works, goodness, feelings, or anything else, and you’re brought through the narrow door by Him who is the Door. Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

 

Remember where Jesus is headed. Jerusalem. To his own striving and struggle for you on the cross. Interestingly, the Greek word for ‘strive’ here is αγωνιζω. Where we get our word ‘agony’ from. And Jesus suffered agony. Jesus bled. Jesus was crucified. All to pass through that door for you. Every Law that needed done, Jesus did. Every sacrifice that needed to be made, Jesus made. Every Word that needed to be proclaimed, Jesus proclaimed. Jesus outdid our best efforts. And by His death, He has opened up the door to the feast. Where sinners saved by grace dine with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the prophets, and a countless number of people from east and west, and from north and south. 

 

Jesus’ words reveal that the kingdom of God inclusive as well as exclusive. Yes, Jesus is the only way. But will only a few be saved? No, not a few, but many. Many who had no inherent “right” to be there. 

 

Not just a few, or even a lot, but “the many,” all who believe. “For He bore the sins of the many, and made intercession for transgressor.” “This is my blood of covenant poured out for the many for the forgiveness of sins.” “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. 

 

The narrow door of Jesus crucified and risen is also a wide door, embracing all of humanity in one perfect life, squeezing the world through one perfect death, one resurrection from the dead. Just as one man, Adam, dragged all of humanity into sin and death, so one man, Jesus, pulls all humanity into His forgiveness and life by His own cross and tomb. The question is: Will we trust it? That’s the question Jesus asks: When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?

And that brings us back to the original question this morning. Will only a few be saved? It depends on how you look at it. From our perspective, from our inability to find the narrow door and squeeze our way through it on our own, the answer is yes, only a few. Fewer than a few in fact. There’s only one who has made it through the narrow door on his own merits; and Jesus did that for you.  

But when you look at it from God’s perspective, through the narrow door of Jesus’ death, the answer is no. Not a few, but many, a great multitude no one can count from every nation, tribe, people, and language. The narrow door of Jesus’ death is wide enough to include the worst of sinners, the chief of sinners, even you. 

Will only a few be saved? The key to getting the question right is by looking to God’s answer in Christ crucified for you. Jesus is that narrow door that leads to life for the world and for you.

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Sermon for Pentecost 10: "A Peaceful Division"

 + 10^th Sunday after Pentecost – August 14^th, 2022 +

Series C: Jeremiah 23:16-29; Hebrews 11:17-2:3; Luke 12:49-56

Beautiful Savior Lutheran

Milton, WA

 

 

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

Adam and Eve were tempted, ate the fruit, disobeyed God’s word and there was division between creature and Creator.

 

Not long after Genesis 3, Cain murdered his brother Abel and the division of the Garden spread to the family. 

 

Generations later that sinful division spread throughout all creation so that by Noah’s day, the Lord saw that the wickedness in man’s heart was only evil continuously.

 

Hundreds of years later, after the Red Sea crossing in Exodus, we find Israel dancing and worshiping and reveling in their division before their false god of the golden calf. 

 

And on and on the story of Scripture goes. The bible is the story of man’s ever increasing sinful division from God and one another. And yet Scripture is also the story of God’s ever patient, steadfast love to rescue, reunite, and reconcile his people from their own division in His Son Jesus.

 

Knowing this makes Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel reading all the more challenging to understand. Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.

 

Wait a minute, you might be thinking to yourself. What’s Jesus saying? I thought the angels greeted the shepherds at Christ’s birth with shouts of, ““Glory to God in the highest and peace to His people on earth.” Didn’t Simeon declare, “Lord, now you let your servant depart in peace” as he held 40-day old Jesus in his arms? And I seem to remember Jesus greeting his disciples with the word of peace before and after his death and resurrection saying, “Peace be with you.”

 

If you have been listening throughout Luke’s gospel, you would know Jesus brings peace. It has been on the lips of angels and the tongues of His disciples. It is Jesus’ promise to the sinful and the suffering. It’s true, Jesus has come to bring peace. Jesus is the prince of peace. Jesus life, death and resurrection makes peace with God for you. 

 

Luke reveals this divisive peace in the crucifixion. Jesus is crucified between two criminals. Both men are guilty of crimes leading to their crucifixion. One wants deliverance and he demands it now. He wants Jesus to be the God of glory who brings him down from the cross. When Jesus does not do it, he does not believe. The other criminal trusts in Jesus. He trusts that the ways of God are beyond our understanding. He humbly asks Jesus to remember him when He comes into His Kingdom. This man, who believes, has peace when dying. Though joined in a common death, these two criminals are divided by peace: Peace in Jesus.

 

The peace He brings is different than the peace we imagine, however. Jesus brings a peace that paradoxically at the same time brings division. Faith in Jesus will divide households. “Father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother” (12:53). There is peace in Jesus, but the peace of his forgiveness; his death and resurrection for you; this peace is also a dividing line.

 

I imagine that for many of us – probably all of us in some way – Jesus’ words hit home. That coworker who scoffs when you say you’re going to church this weekend. The close friendship that grows more distant over time because you know you disagree on matters of your Christian faith and life and their unbelief. Your husband or wife with whom you have dinner table arguments over what you belief and confess in your Christian faith. Your brother or sister who seem to believe very differently from how they were taught the faith. Your son or daughter or grandchild who was baptized, confirmed, and whose faith in Christ now seems, at least to you, to have grown cold. Life seems to have no end of painful division.

 

And if all of that didn’t weigh heavily enough on us, Jesus’ words reveal there’s a deep division within each of us as well. We are divided against ourselves. You are baptized. Redeemed in Christ. A habitation of the Holy Spirit. And yet we wrestle. We struggle. We daily sin. There’s a civil war going on within each of us between who we are in Christ, and what St. Paul and our Lord call the flesh. Our old man or old Adam, as Luther calls us, that dwells within each of us.

 

This is why Jesus speaks these words: Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.

 

As difficult and as hard to understand as they are, Jesus’ words are good and true. For He is going to the cross to make peace for all of our division. Jesus was crucified to reunite what we have divided in sin, to reconcile what sin separated, to restore what sin had broken.

 

The cross of Jesus is the turmoil that brings eternal peace, the division that brings eternal unity. The division Jesus brings is like that of a surgical knife that cuts away a tumor. The Word of God is sharp and accurate, dividing joint and marrow, sinner and saint. It divides us from Sin that dwells in us. Christ’s division is a necessary healing cut. He cuts away the old in order to raise up the new.

 

In a gracious paradox the cross of Jesus brings peace by dividing us from our sin. Where the Son of God is divided from the Father, peace is made for you. Where our works of division only brings further division, Jesus’ work of division on the cross brings peace. This is the fiery baptism of God’s wrath that Jesus longs to accomplish because in his death on the cross he makes peace for you and all of our divisions.

 

Does that mean that our daily interactions with neighbors, that strained relationship with friends, or those divisions in our own families go away? Sometimes, but not always. In this life there will always be division. But it does mean that in Christ, in Jesus’ dying and rising, living in the peace of your sins forgiven you bear Jesus words of peace, and you go into those relationships that are divided with his peace in your heart, mind, and on your lips. 

 

So we pray for those divisions in our life. By God’s grace, so far as it depends on us we live peaceably with all. And rest all the more in the grace, mercy, and peace of Jesus from whom you are never divided. 

 

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

 

Sermon for Pentecost 8: "Christ's Treasures"

 + 8^th Sunday after Pentecost – July 31^st, 2022 +

Series C: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-26; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

Beautiful Savior Lutheran

Milton, WA

 

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

Havel havelim. Vanities piled on top of vanities. Emptiness. Nothing. Vapor. All is vanity. Wealth, fame, celebrity, power…all of it. Vanity. Nothing. Chasing after the wind. 

You clean the house and by the time you’re done more messes have mysteriously appeared. You build a home, care for it, and one day sell it, only to have the next owner after you trash it beyond recognition. The rich man and the poor man, no matter how fancy a casket they have, both eventually find themselves six feet under.

This is what Solomon calls vanity of vanities. A chasing after the wind. It all sounds rather depressing doesn’t it. And apart from God’s gifts to us in all things in life; and apart from God’s gifts to us in and through Jesus – that’s exactly what life is. Empty. Meaningless. A vanity of vanities.

And yet, Solomon also reminds us, “There is nothing better for a person that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God.”

There’s the key to Solomon’s words and Jesus’ parable of the rich fool from Luke 12 this morning. All meaning and joy and value in life is given and found in the one who is greater than Solomon, the one to whom Solomon’s wisdom points us – Christ, the wisdom of God in the flesh. Apart from Christ, everything is vanity of vanities. Empty. Meaningless. Chasing after the wind.

In Christ, however, everything – even the fleeting, temporary things of this life –are gifts from the hand of God.

A man in the crowd came up to Jesus. “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” Two brothers are bickering over their dead father’s inheritance. Their time of grieving was brief. Bury the old man and divvy up his portfolio. All his hard-earned assets and wise investments was now in the hands of two bickering fools. Jesus will have nothing to do with it. “Man, who made me a judge or arbiter over you? I came to save the world by dying and rising. I came to be judged, and I will come to judge the living and the dead by my own life and death. I came to save you, and you’re concerned about your savings account?”

The man in the crowd completely missed the point. “Jesus’ ministry isn’t the incidental patching up of injustices. Rather it is the bearing of the final injustice – death – and the raising up from it an entirely new and reconciled creation” (Robert Farrar Capon).

“Take care, be on guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions,” Life as in the whole of one’s existence and being, all of life – body and soul. This man in the crowd’s life. His disciples’ lives. Your life. This is what Jesus cares about. And he cares enough about our life – the whole of it – to warn us against covetousness. Similar to the old word avarice. The unfulfilled longing for more. The hunger that is never satisfied. The thirst that is ever slaked. The void that we can never seem to fill. Oh, but that doesn’t stop us from trying does it. We live in a world that only seems to enable our addictions. With a click or a scroll or a tap of the screen we’re promised instant wealth, power, fame, love, friendship, meaning.

Reminds me of a conversation in Dante’s Inferno, as he walks through the third circle of hell, his guide, Virgil says, “Envy and arrogance and avarice are the three sparks that have all hearts enkindled.”

Covetousness. Greed. These are masks of a much deeper problem. Symptoms of a much more deadly disease. Idolatry. A self-absorbed love. It’s not the stuff, the possessions, the wealth, or God’s gifts in creation that are the problem. The problem is the sinful heart that places those things at the center.

So Jesus warns us to watch carefully what it is that we fear, love, and trust in. Coveting leads to idolatry. Idolatry leads to death. Idols consume their communicants from the inside, leaving an empty shell of nothingness at the core of your being. This is life without God, life uncentered, life without  Christ in the middle.

But this is not your life. Your life is hidden with God in Christ. You are created in Christ, redeemed in Christ, made holy in Christ. In Christ you have all good things. Without Him at the center of your being, your identity, all you do and all you have will be vanity of vanities, nothing, empty, a chasing after wind.

That was the problem for the rich fool in Jesus’ parable…‘What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and I will store all my grain and my goods there. And I will say to myself, “You have many goods stored up for many years to come; relax, eat, drink, and enjoy yourself!”’ 

My crops, my barns, my soul, my grain, my goods. He never knew once prayed “give us this day our daily bread,” to acknowledge God as the Giver of the gifts. He never once confessed that God had made Him and all creatures, that God in His fatherly divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in him, had provided clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, land, and crops. He never once gave thanks to the Lord for He is good.

And that’s the problem Jesus is addressing for us here in Luke 12. The fool in the story is a fool in the biblical sense of the word; one who’s life is not centered in Christ and his gifts. The fool in his heart says there is no god. The fool thinks that all he has is his and his alone. The fool chases after the wind. Vanity of vanities.

But this is not who you are in Christ. You who were foolish have been made wise. You are baptized in Christ. Christ is the center. Your life is hidden with Christ in God. Christ the center of your work, your play, your worship, your wealth, your possessions. Christ lived life under the sun for you. He worked, He rested, He bled and died for you. He took upon himself all our covetousness, envy, greed, and sin. His death was not a vanity of vanities but a holy of holies. He redeems and reconciles and raises up your work out of its emptiness and meaninglessness. 

Your land, your house, your wealth, your barns and silos, your grain, your profits and portfolios, everything is God’s, not yours. They’re all on loan from God. You are stewards, caretakers. Even our lives are not our own. You are not your own. You’ve been bought with a price. The life of Jesus, His blood, His death. He became poor that you might be rich in His dying and rising. You are God’s treasured possession, enabling you to hold your treasured possessions with the dead hand of faith – offering, sharing, giving. Rejoicing.

This is what it means to be rich in towards God. To realize and rejoice that our life – all of life – consists in receiving all that Christ’s gives us. And in Christ, your faith is not in vain.

 

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.