Rich in Things and Poor in Soul.

Luke 12:13-34.

I.

            So Jesus has just finished this intense sermon about martyrdom and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and who has the authority to cast into hell.  And we might expect the crowd to be awestruck and deeply repentant.  We might expect them to be circumspect and humble.  We might expect them to be quiet and thoughtful.

            But no.  A man in the crowd sees his opportunity.  No sooner does Jesus stop talking than he shouts out: “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.”

            I imagine Jesus sighing heavily.  “Seriously?  That’s what you’re concerned about?  Money?  I’m talking about saving your soul, the meaning of your life, your eternal destiny, and all you can think about is money?  Friend,” he says, and he almost never calls anyone “friend” in Luke.  It’s like he’s trying to keep himself from calling this man something else.

            “Who set me to be judge or arbitrator among you?  Who do I look like, Judge Judy?  What is this, Small Claims Court?  Instead of worrying about getting your share of the family inheritance, you perhaps might want to consider where your own greed will get you.  Life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.  You’re lucky you are well-to-do enough to even be talking about an inheritance.  It is a foreign concept to most of your neighbors here.  I am far more concerned with the people who have nothing than I am with you getting a big enough share of your family’s wealth.  And I’m pretty sure you don’t really want me to tell you what to do with your money.  You wouldn’t like it.”

            Then he launches into a parable about a rich man whose farm overproduced so much that he prudently built bigger barns to store it all… but then he suddenly died.  Who gets his wealth then?  “So it is,” Jesus concludes, “with those who store up riches for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

            Saint Augustine perfectly expressed Jesus’ view here when he said that the safest place for rich people to keep their wealth is in the bellies of the poor.  John Calvin had the same opinion.  He didn’t see any point to being rich except that you would have more to give away.  Giving money away to help the needy is what being “rich toward God” means.  For Jesus it is the only way for a rich person to be saved.

            I get extremely impatient when the attitude of this farmer in Jesus’ parable infects the church.  The church should not be storing up resources; whatever resources the church acquires should be spent on mission as soon as possible.  Too many churches are sitting on large piles of money and valuable real estate, not to mention stocks and bonds, that are not doing anything for mission today.  Worse, we are evaluating the viability of churches based, not on the effectiveness and quality of their discipleship and mission, but on how much money they have!  It is no wonder we are in the state we are in as a denomination.  “Rich in things and poor in soul” is the way Harry Emerson Fosdick says it in his great hymn.

II.

            Jesus turns to his disciples.  “Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.”  He goes on for several verses about how God takes care of even flowers and birds, some are naturally so richly arrayed that they put King Solomon to shame.  It is those who have no trust in God who are always worrying about what they will eat and wear, these are the people who are overly anxious about having enough money, who are fretting about the future, who are saving and storing and hoarding for tomorrow.

            Jesus’ point in that little parable is that the future doesn’t exist.  Jesus only cares about what you are doing now.  Jesus only cares about the fact that the farmer stored all this grain in his barns, while all around him people were going hungry.  The argument, “But I needed it for the future,” is immaterial if not repulsive to Jesus.  All we have is the present moment; the future is an illusion.

            “Instead,” Jesus says, “strive for God’s Kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.”  As Mother Teresa famously said, “God is not calling us to be successful; God is calling us to be faithful.”  Period.

            People have things exactly backwards, and this un-faithful way of thinking easily infects the church.  The church is not called to be “successful” by the world’s standards.  God will not evaluate us on the basis of how much grain we have stored up in our barns, or how much money, property, staff, or even members we have.  In fact, the more resources we are sitting on certainly weighs against us.  I imagine Jesus saying, “There were hungry people in your neighborhood, while your church maintained a million dollar endowment.  What’s up with that?”  Well, we felt it prudent only to use the interest….  Really?  Does Jesus say, or even imply, somewhere that we should not spend capital?  There is no indication that Jesus thinks we should even have capital.

            God is not about prudence.  God isn’t even about “responsible stewardship,” as we like to define it.  In 31 years of ministry I have seen nothing snuff out exciting, innovative mission faster than “responsible stewardship.”  But prudence and stewardship and responsibility, as defined by Jesus Christ, are really about doing God’s mission and realizing among us the Kingdom of God.  It is about bringing out this new community of peace, equality, freedom, and justice.  It is about moving ourselves into this new quality of relationship with each other.

            Jesus says that if we do that, if we keep his commandments, then we may be found worthy to have more to contribute to this mission.  “All these things,” says Jesus, meaning food and clothing and resources, “will be given to you as well.”

III.

            “Do not be afraid, little flock,” Jesus says.  Fear is always the problem.  Fear is the manifestation of a lack of trust in God.  It is out of fear that we engage in this backwards thinking.  And as I said, this infects the church in many ways.

            We say, “Yikes, we’re losing members.  We’re going broke. We can’t afford our building or our minister.”  That’s how we frame the problem; in terms of what we don’t have; in terms of fear of loss, of not having enough.  Our barns aren’t full enough.  We make a judgment based on some ideal situation from the fondly remembered past when the church and Sunday School were overflowing with people.  After we spend a decent amount of time going through the stages of grief, blaming each other, and wallowing in nostalgia, we might finally decide to address what we think is the issue, which we have already framed poorly in purely quantitative terms.        

            “What should we do?” we eventually ask.  Then instead of looking to God’s Word for the answer, we consult everybody but.  We listen to a marketing consultant from the Harvard Business School.  We even visit churches that are growing to see how they are doing it.  We read books by sociologists.  We hire a “church growth consultant” who will give us a one-size-fits-all fool-proof plan for gaining members and money. 

            They might even remind us that Jesus says, “It is the Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.”  And they interpret that to mean that God wants just what we want: more members so we can have more money so we can keep doing that we’ve always been doing. 

            One thing they don’t usually do is continue reading on to the next verse, where Jesus says: “Sell your possessions, and give alms.”  What?  I thought this was about how to get more resources.  Isn’t that the problem, that we don’t have enough?  Are you telling us that Jesus wants us to give away what resources we have?  What sense does that make?  How are we supposed to fill our barn by giving our grain away?

            This is what I mean by backwards thinking.  God isn’t calling us to have full barns; the farmer in the parable isn’t a hero.  God is calling us to give what we have away.  The point is the giving.  It is not that the call to give resources away is getting in the way of the real goal which is having a full barn.  It is that having a full barn gets in the way of the flow of God’s grace and resources into the world.

            The point is the Kingdom of God, which Jesus is always describing in terms of generosity, equality, sharing, lifting up the lowly and emptying the full, healing the sick, and distributive justice.  This is his mission from before Jesus is even born, as we know from his mother’s hymn in Luke 1.  It was never about saving up stuff for yourself; it was always about giving what you have away.

IV.

            Jesus advises the disciples to “Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.”  Real value is “in heaven.”  What we have there cannot be taken away from us.

            A “treasure in heaven” is a treasure that cannot deteriorate.  It will last forever.  It cannot be taken away.  Contrast that with earthly treasures that are subject to theft, natural disaster, economic downturns, or the entropy symbolized by the corrosive images of “moth and rust.”  Moths, of course, destroy fabric and rust is what happens to even the hardest metal, iron.

            But why would one really want a treasure in heaven?  I mean, given a choice between an earthly 20-dollar bill and a heavenly one, which would we be more likely to choose?  Yes, an earthly treasure is subject to certain liabilities, but while we have it things are pretty good, and you can usually take significant and effective steps to diminish those liabilities.  It’s like the farmer in the parable.  Yeah he didn’t get to take his wealth with him, but he probably had a good time with it while he was here!

            Undergirding our attitude here is an unspoken assumption that heaven just isn’t real.  Some would say that it is a fairy tale perpetrated on the poor to get them work hard now and to delay gratification until after they die.  But you don’t see the people who are getting wealthy from the work of others delaying gratification.  They seem to know that physical money is way better than heavenly money.

            But heaven is not just this remote place or existence that we only know after we die.  It is an intensely real and present happening that breaks into our life all the time in experiences of joy, delight, wonder, beauty, intimacy, wholeness, and love.  Heaven means being without fear, without shame, without anger, and without all the destructive and painful consequences of those emotions.

            Jesus is not giving us just a way to go to heaven when we die; he is also, and I say more importantly, giving us a way to live in heaven, at least in part, now.  He is telling us that true happiness and real satisfaction and ultimate gladness cannot be attained through the collection of material possessions and objects; but it can be, and often has been, attained through the kind of self-emptying he embodies and teaches. 

            This is more than just the superficial satisfaction we get from giving to someone or helping them.  That’s fine and good.  But it’s when we realize that in letting God’s resources flow through us into the world that we are plugged into God and God’s power of love that holds the whole universe together, that we are just bathed in a joy and delight and a peace that passes all understanding.

V.

            Finally, Jesus makes one of his more famous statements.  He says, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

            If our treasure is invested in death, destruction, exploitation, greed, fear, consumption, and rage, then that is what is going to characterize our heart, our soul, our whole life.  Angry and fearful people are not happy and joyful people.  They are doing violence and creating injustice, and generally forming a world so out of synch with God’s love and will and truth, that eventually by the weight of its own corruption and falsehood it will simply collapse, bringing many down into pain and sorrow.  It has happened to every empire built on the fearful human imagination, implementing greed by means of murder, from Pharaoh’s Egypt on.  Read the book of Revelation for a detailed description of what this looks like.

            The choice between earthly and heavenly treasures is really just a choice between on the one hand being sick, miserable, and in pain, and inflicting all that on others, and on the other hand resting in the joy and blessing and peace and beauty of the Lord… now.  Today.  In the present.

            “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” 

            Our real treasure is everything that God has made, this whole beautiful earth and its people, birds and flowers, sunlight and sea.  Only when we let go of what we think we have, are our hands open to receive what God has for us.  And what God has for us when we participate in God’s infinite giving to the world, is joy and blessing beyond measure.

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