Sermon Sunday September 16, 2007

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
This morning I tell you that the God whom we worship, the God who is our redeemer and Savior, the God who created the heavens and the earth; sometimes does things that just don’t seem to make any sense. But I don’t need to tell you this because the world we live in and the culture that you are surrounded by tells you this everyday. Sin, death and the devil are always standing by ready to point out what they perceive to be the shortcomings of this God whom we worship, this God who claims us as His own, and who calls us His children.
And so this morning we see Jesus once again associating with tax-collectors and sinners. This in itself is an act that would have made little if any sense whatsoever during this time. This was illogical not just because it defied the social order of the day. No, this was not just an act of rebellion. This would have seemed like sheer lunacy to many people. And not only did Jesus reach out to the outcast, but He invited them to eat with Him at the table.
The table at this time was a very important instrument for drawing socio-economic boundaries. So who does Jesus invite to His table?? Sinners. Tax-collectors. Is this the appropriate way to plant a new church?? Is cozying up with sinners and tax-collectors while lashing out at the leaders of the established church a very effective way to establish a new evangelism movement??
And when He is challenged by the Pharisees and the scribes about His actions that don’t seem to make any sense to them, how does Jesus explain His actions?? First He asks them how many of them, if they had a hundred sheep and had lost one, would leave the ninety-nine and go after the one sheep.
Now, we don’t really know how the Pharisees reacted to this question, but I am guessing that most of them would have said that they would have stayed with the ninety-nine. And why wouldn’t they say that? I mean what kind of shepherd would leave ninety-nine sheep alone to go after one? I am sure that you would have felt the same way.
Notice that Jesus does not say that the other ninety-nine are penned up and made secure from attack. The shepherd doesn’t get someone to watch over them. It says that the shepherd leaves them in the wilderness. He leaves ninety-nine sheep vulnerable to attack, so he can go after one. That doesn’t make sense. That’s not cost-effective. That’s not an efficient use of your resources. And yet Jesus seems to be saying to you this morning, that doing just that is the appropriate and righteous course of action.
And then Jesus tells this parable of this woman who loses one of her ten silver coins. She sweeps through her entire house looking for the coin and when she finds it she rejoices. She rejoiced over one coin. Have you ever rejoiced over finding a nickel or a dime or a quarter? I mean that might be a nice surprise for you sometime, but does it illicit this unbridled joy that Jesus talks about? Well, according to Jesus, is should.
But this is the God whom you worship. This is the God who has claimed you as His own. This is the God who, in His Son Christ Jesus sought you out and found you when you were lost. This is the God who came to you in the waters of baptism, lost sheep that you are, and placed you among His flock. This is the God who invites you, sinner and outcast that you are to His table, as will happen once again in a few minutes when we celebrate His supper and He will come to you in the bread and the wine, as He has promised to do.
This is the God who revealed Himself, in His risen Son to Paul on the road to Damascus. He revealed Himself to Paul, who in today’s second lesson proclaims himself to have been a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence prior to his encounter with the risen Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus.
And indeed that is true. Paul, when he was known as Saul was once one of the leading persecutors of the early Christian church. He oversaw the stoning of Stephen who was the first Christian martyr. And this is who your Lord picks to be the apostle to the gentiles. This is the man who would write or at least directly influence over half of what we now understand to be known as the New Testament.
Jesus could have picked any of the original twelve disciples or even any one of the hundreds of witnesses who were gathered on that first Pentecost and that would have seemed a more sensible choice. But instead He picks the man who had been persecuting the church with more fervor and zeal than probably anybody else. Does that make sense?
Well, He chose you, does that make sense? He chose you who daily puts your needs and desires before the will and the leading of the Holy Spirit. He chose you who daily takes for granted all that God has blessed you with. He chose you who daily neglects to clothe the naked and feed the hungry. Persecution, blasphemy, and violence reveal themselves in all sorts of different ways.
But, regardless, in sin we all reveal ourselves to be deserving of the condemning words that Saul would hear on his way to Damascus; when Jesus said to him "Saul, Saul why do you persecute Me?"
But this is the illogical God we worship. This is the God in whose name you are baptized. This is the illogical God who would send His only begotten Son to die and bear the penalty for the sin of the very ones who would kill Him with their sin.This is the God who heard the cry of the murdering, adulterer David who begs in this morning's psalm that God would blot out his transgressions according to God’s mercy.
And so He comes to you calling you to daily repentance, calling you through the law so that you are reminded that like David you are born guilty and like Paul you are a blasphemer and persecutor at heart, even if that blasphemy and persecution isn’t quite as obvious as Paul’s. But then Christ Jesus comes at you, His lost sheep, in His gospel with His indescribable grace and mercy, reminding you that He came to save sinners like you, and His grace overflows with the faith and the love that are in Christ Jesus. And like Paul, through faith you have been judged faithful.
And as you daily live in your baptism, and Christ Jesus comes to you in your daily repentance and daily claims you His lost sheep as His own, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God. And so what is left for you to do but to join that celebration, but to bask in the overflowing grace of God’s mercy?
And indeed sin, death, and the devil will continue to come at you and try to condemn you. The culture that surrounds you will try to convince you that it doesn’t make sense that God would choose a sinner like you. And indeed it doesn’t.
But praise be to God that you have been freed from the burden of having to try to convince anyone of your worthiness. Praise be to God that through the abundant love, mercy, and grace of God revealed in the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus you have been freed to be open and honest about your imperfections and iniquities, about your selfishness and arrogance.
You have been freed to be a living, breathing example to your neighbor, not of perfect piety or obedience to the law, but as a recipient of God’s gracious, overflowing, ever-present, and illogical love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness. And that is good news.
Amen

Sermon Sunday September 9, 2007

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to your from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
So are you a disciple??? Do you measure up?? I mean this is what our Lord Jesus is telling you about in this morning’s Gospel lesson. He is essentially telling you the requirements of discipleship. He is telling you what He expects and demands of His disciples. So how do you measure up? How are you doing with this?
Well the first qualifier that Jesus gives comes right away when He says that whoever does not hate their father and mother, their wife and children, their brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be His disciple. Well as I look out at all of you, I see that you all seem to be getting along pretty well with your respective relatives. I mean I am sure that, like anybody, you have your moments when you don’t get along so well with your family, but hate? That’s a little strong.
And, OK when one goes back and looks at the Greek you can see that Jesus probably didn’t actually mean hate the way that we understand it today. He’s not talking about a real intense animosity-laden feeling. What He is talking about is prioritizing your discipleship to Christ before your loyalty to your family. The parallel of this in Matthew probably more effectively illustrates how this would speak to a contemporary culture. In Matthew this qualifier has Jesus saying essentially that whoever loves family more than Him is not worthy of Him.
But to dwell on what Jesus meant by ‘hate’ misses the point. Whether we’re talking about actual hatred of family members or the more contemporarily adaptable translation of loving Jesus more than family we are talking about something that we fail at every day. Daily we place our loyalty to family and friends higher than our call to discipleship in Christ.
So right out of the chute it’s not looking to good. Right out of the chute, you fail. But let’s move on. Lets look at the next qualifier. Next Jesus says if you are not willing to carry the cross and follow Him then you cannot be His disciple. Well you should be ok here right? I mean we all have our crosses to bear right?
Some of you might have illness that you struggle with, or chronic physical pain or difficult family relationships. But is that what Jesus means by carrying your cross? Is that cross-bearing? And I certainly don’t want to belittle those struggles or the importance of them, but again that is not entirely what Jesus is talking about here. Jesus is talking about intentional sacrifice here. He is talking about living out your discipleship to Christ to such an extreme that you are literally putting your life on the line.
Most of the early apostles, not just the twelve, but all of those early witnesses to the Christian faith; most of them were martyred for their faith. When they brought the Christian witness to a new town, often they would face very intense hostility, so much so that they were literally putting their lives on the line and many of them ended up dying for the faith.
Dying to defend your faith is cross-bearing. But even those early witnesses failed at this calling on a daily basis. Even among these heroes of the faith, there were sacrifices that could have been made that weren’t. And so daily you also fail at the call to true sacrificial cross-bearing.
And finally, at the end of today’s Gospel lesson Jesus says that nobody can become one of His disciples if they don’t give up all their possessions. Obviously none of you have done that. You all have homes to live in. And in those homes you have all sorts of different possessions. So, again you all fail. None of you have succeeded in this call to give up your possessions.
So that’s it. We are all completely inadequate for the call to discipleship that we all struggle with. The demands of discipleship are very high. Jesus doesn’t just make it extremely tough, He makes it impossible. The demands to love Jesus more than your family, and to bear your cross to the point that you are willing to put even your lives on the line, and to give up all of your possessions, are far too difficult for you and ask way too much of you for you to have any sort of hope of ever fulfilling them.
Jesus isn’t just giving a motivational speech here. He is showing that God demands that those who would become His followers be able to give up everything. He is showing that God demands perfect obedience. But this has always been the standard. The first lesson for today reminds you of this when it says that if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, if you love the Lord your God, if you walk in His ways observing His commandments, decrees and ordinances then you shall live and become numerous and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess.
This is the same standard that Jesus has for those who want to become His disciples; perfect obedience, perfect sacrifice. So why aren’t you doing it? Why aren’t you living the perfectly obedient life? I’ll tell you why, because you can’t. You cannot become a disciple of Christ on your own, left to your own efforts.
But that doesn’t stop God; your Lord, your Creator, your Redeemer. From the beginning of time He decided to be your God. He created your inmost being and He knit you together in your mother’s womb. And He promised that you would have no other Gods beside Him. And He refuses to allow the slings and arrows that the devil throws your way to stop any of that.
And so He sent His Son to fulfill the perfect obedience that you couldn’t and to be the perfect sacrifice that you are not able to make yourself. He sends His perfect and sinless Son Christ Jesus to take all your sin, every last bit of it, with Him to the cross. He sends His Son to defeat death and to thus permanently break down the barriers between you and your Creator, your Redeemer, your loving God.
He sends His Son to make disciples and it is through His Son Christ Jesus that disciples are made. Before ascending to the Father after defeating sin, death and the devil through His death and resurrection, Christ Jesus commands His disciples to go therefore and to make disciples of all nations, and that command is also extended to you today.
But Jesus does not just leave it at that because then He tells them just how disciples are made by following the command to go therefore and make disciples of all nations by telling them how it happens when He says by baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and then teaching them to obey everything Jesus has commanded them. And then Jesus promises that He is with them to the very end of the age.
You don’t need to worry about how to make yourself a disciple of Christ or how to strive to become one because in the waters of baptism you have already been made a disciple of Christ. Indeed in the baptism liturgy it is proclaimed of the baptized that they are made a member of the priesthood we all share in Christ Jesus. And as Christ Jesus continues to come to you in His Word and in the sacraments and in fellowship with each other, your faith in Christ Jesus is nurtured and sustained and you grow in your discipleship.
Being a disciple of Christ is not simply about being a nice person, or being a purpose-driven person or having a transformed life. It is about having new life as a new creation as Paul reminds us in 2nd Corinthians "..if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. Everything old has passed away, see everything has become new." And only Christ can do that. But praise be to God, He has already done it in you and continues to do it through you.
Amen

Sermon Sunday September 2, 2007

Fourteenth Subnday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
So who do Jesus' words from this morning's Gospel lesson make you think of? In this morning's lesson tells you that all who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted. Is there anyone in particular that this makes you think of?
If you watch the news then you've probably heard the stories about the US senator from Idaho who was recently arrested for soliciting a male prostitute. Maybe those words from Jesus this morning make you think of that. Or if you're a sports fan, maybe you hear the words of Jesus this morning and the first thing that you think of is Michael Vick of the Atlanta Falcons, who earlier this week pleaded guilty to dog-fighting charges.
Or maybe the image that comes to mind is more one of people who exalt themselves and still need to be humbled. I mean, it would be hard to watch one of the entertainment award shows, like the Oscars or the Grammies, and not feel that some of our celebrities could stand to be knocked down a peg or two, especially when they try to pass themselves off as experts in something that really has nothing to do with acting or singing or whatever it is that they actually do.
Certainly one can see in all of those examples, situations that could quite easily be understood as cases of the self-exalted being humbled or needing to be humbled. So, how do you feel about yourself when you see these cases of the self-exalted being humbled? Do you feel sympathy for the individuals?? Do you feel like justice is being served? Maybe there is even a little part of you that enjoys seeing the mighty being knocked down. Do you even think to yourself 'Well I sure wouldn't be that stupid and careless if I were in their position.'
And so you can see that in the face of the mighty and the self-exalted being humbled, more than likely it is your tendency, not to humble yourself but to exalt yourself. Your tendency is not to enter into the humility of those who have been shamed or humbled, but to say to them 'You had this coming' or 'I wouldn't have made those kinds of mistakes if I were in your position.'
"Those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted." This goes against so many of the values and ideologies that our culture embraces. We're not supposed to humble ourselves. C'mon we're American, we're supposed to pull ourselves up by our boot-straps and earn our own way and not let anyone get in the way of that. That's the American dream isn't it?
But again here comes Jesus in His Word flipping the American dream and all our visions and expectations of what we think of as right, proper, and appropriate upside-down. Jesus tells you in today's lesson that you are not to sit in the place of honor, but rather you are to go and sit at the lowest place. He shows in His word for you today that it is better to go to the lowest place and then to be called up to the place of honor, rather than to go to the place of honor and be sent down, and thus suffer great shame and embarrassment.
But is this simply about avoiding shame and embarrassment for you? In verse 12 Jesus says that when you have a meal you should not invite your friends or your relatives or your rich neighbors so that they may invite you in return, and thus you will be repaid, but rather you are to invite the crippled, the lame, and the blind.
Martin Luther refers to this as an inward honor in which there is a high regard for your neighbor. He writes of this inward honor in direct contrast to an outward honor which tends to be insincere and mercenary, and one that is ultimately demonstrated by a desire to receive something in return.
But again that is not what Jesus wants for you. Jesus frees you from being bound to an outward honor where the focus is always on you, and how your treatment of God's creation, particularly your neighbor, will eventually effect, not your neighbor but you. But again, Jesus flips that around and says "Stop it, you don't need to worry about yourself." He frees you from being curved in toward yourself so you can see your neighbor.
And in the Hebrews lesson, you can see that it is not just in His will for you to see your neighbor, but rather for you to identify with them, to see how they see. In Hebrews you are told to not neglect to show hospitality to strangers and that you are to remember those in prison, as though you were in prison with them and those who are being tortured as if you yourselves were being tortured.
A modern-day paraphrase of this could basically be understood to mean that until you have walked the same path of someone else you have no right to judge or condemn them as individuals. Hold them accountable for their actions? Yes. Have an awareness of how someone’s mistakes may affect how you approach your relationship with them? Yes. But to self-righteously exalt yourself above anyone in judgment and condemnation is not your place or your calling.
The author of Hebrews gives a radical element to the importance of hospitality to strangers by saying that through hospitality to strangers, we could potentially be entertaining angels without even knowing it. This applies to anyone who has been placed in our midst, no matter what we might think about them, no matter what they might look like, no matter what we might know about them or their past. We are to assume that anyone placed in our midst is someone to whom we are called to show hospitality to and to share the love of Christ with.
So indeed we are called to humble ourselves by identifying with the struggles and challenges of our neighbors, and to care for them and to share the love of Christ with them. And this is a call to humility that in our pride, envy and self-absorption we fail to live up to everyday.
But while we fail at this, there is One who identifies with us completely. There is One who comes to us who, even though He is sinless, He became sin for us. That is why He came; to bear the burden of your sin. He did not come to be entertained. He did not come to be placed in the seat of honor. He came to humble Himself to a degree that we could not even come close to imagining. He did this not by standing above us in condemnation, but by laying down His life on the cross, where He was lifted up in glory, for you.
Daily we continue to bind ourselves to an outward honor of selfishness, and not an inward honor of selflessness. Daily we neglect our call to hospitality to our neighbor. Daily we forget and overlook those who suffer. And we judge and condemn those to whom we have no right to judge or condemn.
But praise be to God that Christ Jesus remains vigilant. Hear the words of promise in our Hebrews lesson which promise us that Christ Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He never forsakes us even to the point of death; where He continued to turn things upside down by defeating death not by avoiding but by going through it, and bringing about new life and a new reality and a new kingdom.
Nothing can drive Christ Jesus away from us. His vigilance continues as He continues to bring about His kingdom through the Word proclaimed, through baptism, through His supper, through fellowship with each other and through you. There is nothing left. Stop worrying about you, and go to your neighbor in love, humility and selflessness knowing that Christ Jesus will never forsake you.
Amen

Sermon Sunday, August 26, 2007

Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
In our Gospel lesson this morning Jesus appears to be providing healing for a woman in great need of healing. But does that really get to the heart of what is going on? Does that sum up the events that we read in this lesson? Is this just one more healing in the list of all the other healings that Jesus performed?
To answer that, perhaps we should first look to the way the leader of the synagogue responds to what Jesus does. If you look in the lesson it says that the leader of the synagogue was indignant because of what Jesus had done. But in the translation that we read from the leader of the synagogue uses the word "cure" instead of "heal" which I don’t quite agree with. The original Greek word here pronounced therapeuo, is actually better translated as heal.
In other words the leader of the synagogue sees that there is a healing going on, which is generally understood to be more meaningful than simply a cure. But even by recognizing that there is a healing going on, the Pharisee still sells what is taking place in front of him short because he tries to fit it within the rules and traditions that he was used to by condemning Jesus for performing a healing on the Sabbath.
But is he so wrong for being mad? I mean think about it. This woman whom Jesus is healing has been stricken with this ailment for 18 years. What’s one more day?? Why couldn’t Jesus have told the woman to wait a few more hours and she would be healed? Sabbath is from dusk to dusk, so really she wouldn’t have even had to wait until the next day, she would have just had to wait until the sun went down. Is that such an unreasonable request?
Apparently it was, because Jesus turns around and reveals the hypocrisy of the Pharisees by showing that even they, the Pharisees, these models of piety, are guilty of even doing some work on the Sabbath. And whether you can call the miracle that Jesus performs in the synagogue a work or a healing or a cure or whatever is irrelevant, because ultimately He is showing here today in His Word, to you that He is about much more than either a cure or a healing.
After Jesus performs this miracle He then says to the woman that she has been set free from the ailment. He doesn’t just say that she is cured or healed, but that she has been set free. And what has she been set free from? Well in verse 16 Jesus refers to this woman as a "daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years."
And there you have it. Jesus does not come to bring merely a cure or healing, He comes to free you from bondage to sin, death, and the devil. He comes to provide release for the captive and recovery of sight for the blind. And He does so not by providing merely a restored life, or a transformed life, as so many people in contemporary Christianity like to say, He does so by providing new life. A new life in Him that will not be constrained by any social order or tradition.
The fact that Jesus performs this miracle on the Sabbath shows once again that He comes to upset the apple cart of the old way of thinking. And to do something as simple as merely waiting a few hours so as to avoid performing a healing on the Sabbath and thus appease the leader of the synagogue, would have been more in line with preserving the old way than to bring about a new way and a new reality. He shows that He will not allow even a piece of the old way to be preserved, because He knows that it is in our nature to cling to the old way of the law.
Jesus comes not just to defy social conventions and traditions but to defy and provide release from the dominion of Satan. He comes to reveal His kingdom. And this is something that the Pharisees were all in favor of, but they wanted to believe that the defeat of Satan and revelation of God’s kingdom would come through them with great pomp and circumstance. And in the same way we want to believe that Satan will be defeated and God’s kingdom will be revealed through our best and most pious efforts, or through the right political candidate, or through military might or whatever earthly means we might imagine.
But Jesus won’t have it that way. Jesus does not have His kingdom revealed in a way that is dictated or determined by rulers of the world. In today’s lesson Jesus reveals the kingdom of God not through the grand authority of the Pharisees ruling from on high, but through a woman who had been struggling with being crippled for eighteen years. She was a woman and she was crippled.
This would have pretty much made her a social outcast in her culture. And yet it is through this woman, and not through the Pharisees that Jesus reveals His kingdom. It is not through being served, but through servanthood that Jesus reveals His kingdom. And it is this servanthood that would eventually take Him to the cross where the full glory of His kingdom was revealed, as sin, death, and the devil were defeated for you, not through great military might, but through the laying down of His life for you, where He bore the burden of your sin; all of it, every last bit of it, past, present, and future.
And as we read in John’s Gospel, the words Jesus was heard to say before breathing His was last were "It is finished" and He meant it. And what was finished was the captivity to sin, death, and the devil of God’s people, no matter what the future might hold. No matter how much you struggle with sin on a daily basis, and you do. He continues to come to you as He does now in His Word and will in a few minutes as you come forward once again to receive the bread and the wine in His Supper.
By the grace of God revealed to you in Christ Jesus, the kingdom of God has been revealed to you, and in the waters of baptism God claims you, His children as His own and marks them with the cross of Christ, seals them with the Holy Spirit and brings to you you place in His kingdom, the kingdom which we read about in the lesson from Hebrews which the author of Hebrews describes as the kingdom that cannot be shaken.
As most of you know, I just returned from vacation. I spent part of my vacation visiting my sister and her family in Los Angeles. And, I’ll be honest when I was in LA and I thought of Grenora or Zahl, it felt almost like I was on a different planet. It’s a very image-conscious culture out there. It seems like everybody has a new car and they all have the most current model of cell-phones along with the text-message things, and they all have really nice homes. And I’ll admit there was a part of me that got a little swept away in all that.
But then when I came back and I was going through my mail I came across two thank-you notes; one from a family member of someone for whom I had done a memorial service, and another from a couple whose wedding I had presided over, along with a simple greeting card from a fellow pastor who went to the churchwide assembly in Chicago, the same week that I was enjoying my first week of vacation.
And maybe I am overstating it, but in those two thank-you notes and that simple greeting card I saw something that was pretty difficult to see in the image-conscious driven culture of Los Angeles; and that is the kingdom of God. And that is not to say that I don’t think that God’s kingdom is being revealed in Los Angeles. Of course it is. But in that simple contrast I was reminded that it’s not in the image-driven materialism that we as a culture embrace, that God’s kingdom is revealed.
Rather, through faith in Christ Jesus, God’s kingdom is revealed through that which often might seem small and insignificant in our culture; things like simple gestures to reach out to someone, a crippled woman in need of healing, or a rural community of faith in North Dakota. It’s all a part of the Kingdom that cannot be shaken, the Kingdom that you have been made a part of.
Amen

Sermon-Sunday August 5, 2007

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
These are some harsh words that Jesus has for you this morning. He comes to you this morning telling you of a rich man who appeared to own some farmland which apparently produced so abundantly that the man has ran out of room to store his crops. This man is simply wondering where he can store all the goods that he has worked so hard to produce. This is probably a situation that many of you can relate to this time of year. What could possibly be wrong with what this man is doing? After all he is the one who has put all the time and effort into producing these abundant crops, of course he is going to want somewhere to put them.
But along comes Jesus and once again He’s completely flipping things around. He bursts upon the scene today, telling you that your very life is being demanded of you and He asks you of all these things that you have worked so hard to prepare and build up and earn; Whose will they be?
And, like the rich man from the parable in today’s Gospel lesson you struggle to grasp that your life here on earth is merely temporary. And lest you think that this does not apply to you take into consideration the reality that simply having a roof over your head, a car to drive and three meals a day, automatically places you within the ranks of the wealthiest 5% of the population of the planet. We just happen to live in the wealthiest country on the planet, so not only are we wealthy by global standards, but we are frustratingly insulated from being able to see just how truly wealthy we are.
And so again, here comes Jesus in His Word, challenging you and asking you about all these goods that you have worked so hard to prepare and build up ‘Whose will they be?’ Jesus doesn’t appear to have any interest in them. He doesn’t come to you today in His Word wondering whether you have been frugal enough and saved up all of your goods for Him. He does not come demanding any of your material goods. He comes demanding your life.
He comes to you in His Word demanding the very thing which you are absolutely unwilling to give; your life. Like the rich man in the parable from today’s Gospel lesson you have sought security and comfort for the future, not in the things of your Lord, but in the things of the world. By clinging to these goods that you falsely convince yourself belong to you, what you are doing is clinging to the very thing that your Lord demands of you; your life.
And in how He addresses the rich man, Jesus shows you how your Father in heaven feels about this sort of thinking. God calls this man a fool and thus reveals to you today the futility and foolishness of clinging to your material possessions and basing your hope and security on your material possessions and your material wealth.
It is important to note that God is not really making a moral judgment on the rich man here. He does not call him evil or wicked, He calls the man a fool. In a well-known verse from Psalm 14 we are reminded that it is the fool who says in his heart ‘there is no God.’ The problem is not the acquisition of wealth. In Jesus’ time material wealth would have been seen as a blessing from God. It would not have necessarily been presumed that more wealth meant more blessing, but it would have been seen as a blessing from God.
The problem was also not the storing up of goods for the future, including future generations. This has often proved to be wise and prudent. The problem is in seeking to secure your future without reference to God.
You may protest and resist Jesus’ condemnation by saying you have always believed in God but when you manage your life and your possessions and your future according to an accumulation of material possessions and material wealth with no reference to God, you are doing so as if there is no God. This type of approach to life is inherently self-centered and thus can only be thought of as greed, which Paul shows us is a form of idolatry in our second lesson for today.
So here you sit, clinging to your wealth, clinging to the very thing which your Lord demands of you; your life. Here you sit clinging to what our Old Testament lesson refers to as deeds done under the sun and describes as vanity and chasing after wind. Here you sit, unwilling and unable to give the very life which your Lord demands.
But the very One who comes to you today in His Word, Christ Jesus, is the One who, in baptism comes to you and takes that life from you. He has taken your earthly life with all its greed, and idolatry, with Him to the cross. He has taken all of your efforts and toil and strain which Ecclesiastes tells us again is nothing but vanity, and He has left them at the cross. And in exchange He has given you new life. He has given you eternal life with Him.
Christ Jesus comes not to make you rich with earthly treasures for yourself, but rich toward God. In the first chapter of Luke it says that God has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. The rich man in today’s Gospel lesson was rich, not merely by his material possessions, but by how dependent he had become upon them. His possessions had actually begun to possess him. He had built his security and hope in things of the world and not in things of God; which of course is greed and idolatry. This kind of vanity can only lead to death.
But praise be to God, in Christ Jesus, death has already been faced for you. In baptism into Christ Jesus, you have been brought into the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus. In baptism you have been taken through the valley of the shadow of death and by the grace of God you have come out victoriously.
Indeed Christ Jesus has come not to make you rich with earthly treasures but to make you rich toward God, and being rich toward God begins with recognition of just how hungry and needy you are in light of God’s grace.
And so here He comes to you again today saying you fool your life is being demanded of you, exposing the foolishness of your greed, idolatry and selfishness, but then lifting you up in the grace of forgiveness and making you rich toward God.
So now that you have once again been reminded that all of your efforts of storing up, and building up of earthly materials and preparing for the future are ultimately futile and can only lead to death then what is left but to hear the words of promise from Paul who tells you today that in Christ Jesus you have stripped off the old-self, and you have clothed yourself with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its Creator.
The very life that your Lord demands of you has been taken from you and is now hidden with Christ in God. And when that life is revealed, it is with Christ, and not with any of your earthly possessions that you will be revealed in glory.
The future is secured in Christ, you don’t need to worry about it. You don’t need to worry about all the things that you prepare and build up and how long they will last and whose they will be in the future. Throughout the history of God’s people, God has revealed Himself to be faithful to us in the midst of our unfaithfulness, and our foolishness, our greed, and our idolatry; faithful even to the point of death on a cross, for you. And in that faithfulness, where everything has been given for you, you have been made rich toward God.
Amen