Sermon of August 5, 2007

18^th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Luke 12:12-21
August 5, 2007

RICH TOWARD GOD?
Mary Vance, Candidate for Ministry

Here is Jesus in the second half of his ministry. He has turned his face toward Jerusalem, but he is still all over the map, figuratively and literally. Last week our passage included the Lord’s prayer and Jesus’ assurance that when we knock, God will open the door. These are some of the fundamental building blocks of Christian doctrine. After that passage and right before this one, we have some profound statements by Jesus about who he is and who we are in relationship to him. And he’s really on a roll with it when someone interrupts the flow with the question:

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

I’m sure all of you who are teachers know how Jesus must have felt at this point. You just want to look at them and say what in the world am I doing this for?

This is what I would have said if I were Jesus: “Buddy, what makes you think I care about your greedy little squabble with your brother? I am talking here about the Kingdom of God. I’m talking about Kingdom living—a new way and a new world. It’s happening now because I’m here and it’s going to keep on happening. Can’t you hear what I’m trying to tell you?”

Lucky for us, Jesus has a lot more patience and tact when dealing with people than I tend to have. So, instead of railing at this guy, he tells a parable with a message about kingdom living.

The wealthy man in the parable has been a good Presbyterian. He’s worked hard and he’s been frugal and wise in managing his finances. He has also been blessed with good soil, the right amount of rain and plenty of land—blessings that have nothing to do with his own virtues. Now he has a nice retirement fund. More than nice. He has done so well that he is going to retire early and spend the rest of his life on easy street, drinking champagne and eating steak and lobster.

Have you ever heard the adage: If you want to make God laugh, make a plan? Just try to think you have the future all figured out and that you are in control. God just might let you know otherwise.

This is not one of those parables that is really hard to decipher. We don’t have to dig around into the epistemology of individual words the way they teach you to do in seminary in order to interpret it. The problem is how do we deal with the plain message. How do we deal with the tension between the plain message and the message that we want to hear?

We like to hear that God calls us to be productive and industrious, which is true. And we would like to think that if we are productive industrious members of society we will be rewarded with lots of material comfort. In fact, for most of us in this building, for most people in 21^st century North America, we can be pretty confidant that hard work and responsible living will lead to security and comfort. So, God must want that for us. As long as we recognize that all these creature comforts are in the end gifts from God and we thank God for them, there is nothing wrong with being comfortable.

Or is there?

That is really what the rich man in the parable did and God called him a fool.

Like today’s parable you don’t have to think too hard to know what John Wesley was talking about, when he said earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can. And you really can’t argue against it. But you can also understand why people don’t always want to dwell on it. Because it gets hard when you have to start figuring out what you can save and what you can give, because first you have to figure out the difference between a need and a want.

Here’s an example: When James and I were renovating and remodeling the 70 year old house I grew up in, we reconfigured what had been two bedrooms, a hallway and a tiny bathroom into a master bedroom and bath. The bathroom and closet are really spacious and nice, but it ended up that the bedroom is barely big enough. We have to fit our king size bed, two bed side tables, three chests of drawers, our TV, and two large dogs who need to sleep at the foot of the bed. But I really wanted a bedroom big enough to have its own sitting area. So, we started talking about how we could knock out the back wall of the house and extend the bedroom. I think we both said whoa at the same time. We don’t NEED to have the bedroom bigger. Of course we absolutely NEEDED a house with four bathrooms, a sun room, living room, TV room, dining room and detached garage for the our two cars which we absolutely NEED. So, I’m quite proud of myself that we were frugal and responsible and we just have to put up with having a small bedroom, and I have learned to step over sleeping dogs when I have to get up in the middle of the night.

It’s just not that easy to figure out what we are supposed to do with material wealth if we want to claim citizenship in the Kingdom. We could be like Mendicants. St. Francis is one of the most respectable and respected figures in the history of the church because, although he was born to the noble class at a time when there were only two economic classes, he gave all his wealth away and he survived on the charity of others.

But where would the world be if everybody followed St. Francis example? Somebody has to be in a position to support and take care of the poor and needy.

That brings us to the problem with the rich man in Jesus’ parable. It is not that there was something inherently wrong with accumulating wealth because “the land produced abundantly.” There is something wrong with misusing the accumulated wealth. He made all he could and he figured out how to save all he could, but then he stopped.

Remember how Jesus introduced the story:

"Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions."

But when the man found that his farm had produced so abundantly, it apparently didn’t occur to him that life does not consist of an abundance of possessions. He’s sitting there with all this wealth that won’t fit in his existing shelters, so he arrives at the brilliant idea of building a bigger and better barn for them. It doesn’t occur to him that he might do something useful with some of it.

And that is why God called him a fool and said

And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?'

Before this week, I didn’t expect to talk about the capital campaign in a sermon but when I read the lesson for today, my first thought was Hey, this makes it really easy to say “Don’t store up your wealth –give it to the church.” And that is what I hope you will do.

But I had to be honest and recognize that what Jesus is saying to his followers, he is saying to the church. He said:

So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."

It made me stop and think about whether a capital campaign is appropriate behavior for the church. Are we just storing up treasures for ourselves by maintaining this old building?

I made the mistake of asking our pastor about it. He pulled a book of prayer off his bookshelf and went straight to this one:

Righteous God: you have taught us that the poor shall have your kingdom, and that the gentle-minded shall inherit the earth. Keep the church poor enough to preach to poor people, and humble enough to walk with the despised. Never weigh us down with real estate or too much cash on hand. Save your church from vain display or lavish comforts, so that traveling light, we may move through the world showing your generous love, known in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This did not help one bit.

Right about the time James and I joined this church, the congregation was in the midst of taking a long hard look at itself. We were not very involved in that self-examination, but we heard things. One of the ideas on the table was to sell this property -- it’s worth a lot of money -- and move First Presbyterian Church to some bigger, less expensive facility somewhere else. I didn’t even have significant ties to this church but the idea of this place not being First Presbyterian Church made me sad. I worried about it until the study was completed and the session adopted a new mission statement that says:

First Presbyterian Church of Tallahassee is a downtown congregation called to glorify and enjoy God as we worship through the Word and Sacraments, make disciples, nurture faith, serve neighbors, and strive for justice.

Still, the question is are we being vain or are we traveling light? Are we just storing up treasures for ourselves or are we being rich toward God by keeping this place?

Let me give some illustrations that answered these questions for me, and I hope they will help answer them for you.

Last week you might have noticed a video camera upstairs doing some filming for a DVD we hope will inform people about the capital campaign. It’s a DVD about the life, mission and condition of our church. Stan Williams’ brother who is a professional videographer volunteered his time and talents to help us with it. Stan and Ben worked really hard Sunday, Monday and Tuesday on it. On Tuesday morning a small group of our members gathered in the John Calvin room to film a mock Bible Study led by Stan. They actually read a passage of Scripture and Stan started the lesson. After about 15 minutes, Ben said “OK, we’ve got enough” and Stan stopped. I noticed that all of our actors weren’t really ready for Stan to stop. They wanted him to finish the lesson.

This filming was going on last week right after a group of 26 people from this church returned from the Youth Conference in Montreat North Carolina. Nurturing faith is part of this church’s mission statement and that is what going to Montreat is about. Our Youth were asked to perform a music selection for the entire community of about 1,000 people and you got to hear that selection this morning. The Conference director asked Christy about a week before we were set to go whether our group could do it. Christy knew we had enough talent and enough faithfulness among our group of teenagers to do something beautiful and meaningful and they pulled it together with very little notice or prep time. It tugged on my heart every time I heard them practice it and it brought tears to my eyes when they were up on the stage.

The thing is there is something very special about that place called Montreat. Joi Walker, Peggy Cleveland and I were talking about it and Joi suggested that Montreat is so special because it has a long, unbroken history of being a place of prayer. There has been so much prayer, so much activity of the Holy Spirit, that it’s like there is a residual effect and you just feel it when you are there.

It’s the same with this church. Where people roust themselves to come down here on a Tuesday morning for a mock Bible Study and are reluctant to leave it at that. We all know that God is everywhere, but it seems there are places where the barriers we fallen creatures have erected between ourselves and God are more permeable. We all know there are things in our past that have not been holy, like accepting the institution of slavery. But over all, this is a place with a long, unbroken history of holiness, discipleship and evangelism. We exist here in this place because God calls us to make disciples, nurture faith, serve neighbors and strive for justice. I think that is being rich toward God rather than storing up riches for ourselves.

Let me close with a different prayer on the same page as the one I read earlier.

Almighty God, you poured out the Holy Spirit on believers at Pentecost, drawing them together in the mission of the church. Give us great enthusiasm for your work, and keep your Spirit with us, so that, united in peace with one another, we may live new lives as ambassadors of Jesus Christ, who is head of the church, our Savior and our strength. AMEN.

If you would like to receive these sermons by e-mail, send a note to brant@oldfirstchurch.org.

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