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
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
posted by Steve at 4:30 PM
1 Comments:
This one seems like it is disorganized. There are good things here, but the sermon seemed to lack a conherent theme throughout.
I am a big believer in good connections-and sometimes its tough to make that connect from law to gospel. I think that i what I am missing here-a nice connection that helps me to understand that the very God I have messed up against is the same God that forgives me
Post a Comment
<< Home