St. John’s Lutheran Church, Toluca, IL – 8th Sunday after Pentecost
Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23; Psalm 49:1-12; Colossians 3:1-1; Luke 12:13-21
Gospel: Luke 12:13-21
13Someone in the crowd said to [Jesus,] “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” 14But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” 16Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 18Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
NRSV
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Thy Wisdom Be Done
Grace and Peace to you, beloved of God, in the name of our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ.
I really don’t like the idea of leaving the fruits of my hard labor, under the sun, to those who I am not sure know what they are doing. They may waste it all!
Vanity! Says the Teacher.
You know, it gives me the rashes thinking that all that I have worked for, with wisdom, knowledge, and skill, ought to go for those who did not work for it!
This is also vanity and something worse! A great evil! Says the author of Ecclesiastes.
What is it with human beings that they get obsessed with it and lose their sleep over it? Don’t they remember that the labor hardships are a vexation because we did not listen to God back in the garden?
This is also vanity, foolishness!
It is not only foolishness but also not right! Wrote the psalmist, wicked are those who place all their trust in their own skills and boast about being rich!
I am sorry to be the one to bring it up, but God has a real beef with those who deny generosity to others because they cling to greed, which Paul says is the sin of idolatry. They trust other things rather than the Word and the Wisdom of God.
Such Word and Wisdom always made clear that God’s people should practice generosity with one another without asking in return. We are expected to share the fruits of our labor because once we had nothing and God gave us everything.
Jesus is particularly tough with those who like to claim their skills and riches for themselves. It is not about having possessions. It is about those who place misguided trust on what they think they achieved by themselves and ignore God’s call to be good news to all the people. They rebel and seek to secure a future apart from God! Fools! Unwise people who think they have it all and know it all. Right now, their lives are being demanded from them. God wants God’s stuff back, for they passed by the beaten down, the poor, the lame, and the blind; they refused to mind the future of the ones who will come after them; while rejoicing in God’s abundance.
Their lives are being demanded from them. God wants God’s stuff back.
No, beloved of God, Jesus does not give any kind of greed a pass.
The truth has been proclaimed to us. God’s law of love and mercy was written in the tablets of our hearts, and we have heard of God’s expectations many times before. Therefore we hurt.
We know, but we still cannot help ourselves. This this This vanity overpowers us and leads us to despair. The teacher is right. Yet we run from what we know. We become fugitives hiding behind the obsession with the fruits of our labor. Then behold, our vexation, the fruit of our distrust in God’s promises, becomes what we think makes us righteous under God.
We live to work, obsessively, and often miss the grace God has poured upon us and the faithful relationships he gives us as gifts.
It is here that the upside down takes over, and we live our lives thinking that we have to earn every single breath we take. The ones who think they did, pat themselves on the back and despise the ones who they perceive did not earn their right to live.
It is foolishness, vanity, upside down, and evil because it denies the free gift of life to all of God’s beloved children. Instead of bearing fruit among the community of sinners made saints by the cross, it breeds anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language among ourselves, beloved children of the same God, born of the same Spirit.
It is foolishness, vanity, evil, upside down, and it is not the way, the truth, or the life. Jesus Christ is. He has already declared us righteous and made us free to live. He has earned, for you, for me, and for all, the right to live abundantly. May we not live to work, but work hard for life. May God’s wisdom reign on earth as it does in heaven. Amen.
Bridging Faith 