August 1, 2010
Ecclesiastes 1: 2; 21-23 + Psalm 90 + Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11 + Luke 12: 13-21
Here we are again.
“Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.”
Were you here two weeks ago when Martha came out of the kitchen saying: “Lord, tell her to help me!” This is beginning to look like one of Luke’s literary devices
setting us up for the message to come.
Perhaps it is the voice of Luke
who wants Jesus to speak to the community in which he serves.
Perhaps it is the voice of a pastor who wants the community he serves
to hear and respond to the Gospel.
Either way the parable, found only in Luke, speaks clearly and plainly to us today. It is not the only parable in Luke’s gospel
that reveals a community that included both the rich and the poor.
This disparity was a concern for Luke,
and with love he addresses the issue and its special challenge to the community.
With frightening consistency we all live with a message
playing in the back our minds: “It can’t happen to me.”
Our children take dangerous chances with drugs, sex, and fast cars,
because they think, “It can’t happen to me.”
Where does that thinking come from?
Perhaps a little of it simply comes from being young
and the dream of a long and full life;
but I think a lot of it comes from the adults around them
who live the same way;
perhaps not with drugs, sex, and fast cars,
but in a life style that has separated them from
the reality of death first of all,
and the reality of life around them as well.
That reality can be reduced to a fact that is not refutable:
we are 4.7% of the world’s population
yet we control for ourselves 60% of the world’s resources.
The drug trade alone that continues to destabilize this continent from the south
is for use in this country.
We want the drug traffic stopped,
but never ask who is taking the drugs and who profits from their sale.
All the while we live as though there is never going to be a time to be accountable.
Bernie Madoff was a respectable, admired, white American.
If we do not listen to this parable and let it motivate and guide our judgments, Bernie Madoff is us living as though it’s all ok as long as you don’t get caught,
or in the style of this parable; as long as you don’t die.
But we do die, and we do we get caught.
We are challenged by Jesus in this parable
to consider who is going to get all the stuff
we have piled into our garages, homes, and storage facilities.
He is not suggesting that we get a good lawyer
to write up a Will or Trust document.
He is asking simply how much do really we need,
and when you have more than you need why do you keep it at all? He is asking us to wonder why we have these things,
and what it is we are supposed to do with what we have.
Beneath all of this lies an even bigger question:
are we so badly in denial that we have forgotten that we will, everyone of us, be suddenly separated from this stuff leaving it behind?
There is danger for us followers of Christ in this world today.
The danger is called “denial” and it shows itself in a lifestyle that assumes whoever has the most stuff wins,
anything goes as long as you don’t get caught,
and it can’t happen to me.
The man in this parable is called a “fool” because he is. He talks to himself all the time, did you notice that? We never him talking to his neighbors.
We never him talking to God.
He just talks to himself probably because he is so isolated and so alone.
He is probably so isolated from others that he can’t see them or their needs, and he is so busy building his bigger house and barn that he doesn’t notice.
This must not become our story.
I remember very clearly once when I was a child our pastor said:
“You can’t take it with you, but you can send it on ahead.”
My father often repeated that to us at home
and I’ll pass that wisdom on to you
with all the love and hope that Luke, the pastor, wrote this parable to his church. There is no denial that we have a lot, and that we have most of what there is. Only a fool would fail to wonder and ask why and what should we do with it.