The end of the story is already written

I was talking to myself this week. I mean, sure, the congregation at the Stewart Health Center of the Springmoor Life Care center was present, and I do so love to be with them. But I think these words were words I needed to hear for myself and I can only hope somebody else finds something lovely in them. I did record them so you can listen HERE as well as read below.

The lectionary texts for the week are:
Genesis 15:1-6
Psalm 33:12-22
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Luke 12:32-40

Come Holy Spirit! Show us your joy in being among us and remind us that the story is already written. Amen

Do you know anybody who tends to expect the worst?

Maybe they look into the past and say “oh, things were so much better then! The Good Old Days were so much better than today.”

Or maybe they peer into the future, fearing the worst thing they can imagine and unwilling to see how things could be better than they are today, even if today is a really bad day.

My mother was always a pretty even-tempered person but she had an eagle eye for police officers. To the best of my knowledge neither she, nor my father, nor any of our extended family ever interacted much with police officers. I don’t think they even got traffic tickets!

But if there was a police officer anywhere around she would admonish us in an urgent voice: “Look out! Police!”

I have no idea what she thought would happen. I could be driving 60 mph in a 65 mph zone and she would look over at the speedometer and say the same thing:  “Look out! Police!” It was startling and I always wondered why
1) She assumed we were doing something wrong and
2) She assumed the policer officer wanted and intended to catch and punish us thoroughly.

In another example, I have a friend who has been certain on and off for the last decade or so that he was about to lose his job. Even after 28 years with the same employer, an excellent record, and a boss that begs him not to retire, every new frustration leads to “This is it! I know I’ve said it before, but this time it’s REAL! I don’t see how I will keep my job this time.”

And after a couple of decades I have to squint and say “it has never happened before, so why are you so adamant – even in the face of much evidence to the contrary – that this time you will be let go?” And every time the answer is the same “No no, this time it’s different.”

Despite decades of no interaction with traffic police, and keeping his job, my mother and my friend both clung to the very human tendency to worry that something terrible and punitive was going to come any minute.



I thought of these stories as I read the middle part of today’s reading: “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; BE LIKE THOSE WHO ARE WAITING”

My mother and my friend were waiting, I think. Waiting for a police siren, or a pink slip. Waiting to be “caught”, even though they didn’t ever seem to be doing anything “catch-worthy.”

Why do we do that?

When do we learn to fear what comes next?

We don’t show as much that kind of fear as children. Wee little children look forward to each moment with wonder and excitement. Christmas! My birthday! We’re going to Disney! DADDY’S HOME! MOMMY’S HOME!

It takes a good long time to go from that certain hopefulness to become the equally certain (and maybe equally misplaced) anxiety about what comes next.



How did you hear the text today, the warning to “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; BE LIKE THOSE WHO ARE WAITING”

Did you hear it with trepidation, as in “brace yourselves because judgment is coming!”

or as a promise, as in

“only thirteen more days until my birthday complete with presents and cake and ice cream and a party!”

I will confess I came down on the worried side. Every time I read this passage I am surprised when the story talks about staying alert because the master will serve up a meal for those who are alert!

Really! That’s what it says!!

Not “look out because if you don’t watch out you will get in big trouble,” but

“look out! You don’t want to miss this chance to have dinner together and enjoy what your master has to offer.”

It makes me wonder what that dinner would be like. Maybe choice delicacies that the master brought back from traveling? Stories of the exotic scenes and interesting people on that trip? Did he want to sit down and share that with someone, and the people in his household were there, even if it was night time?

What if the master wants to sit with his household workers because he missed them, and just enjoys their company?

In thinking of those possibilities, it sounds like this passage is inviting us to be excited like children when we think of God showing up in our lives rather than worried and fearful like adults.

Children live in hope, aren’t afraid to believe that a good thing is coming (sometimes even though it means sore disappointment). As God’s children we can behave like children in that regard: we can look into the future with happy anticipation instead of fearing the worst. We can relax into knowing that God is HAPPY TO SEE US!

 As adults we may recognize that the world is broken and disappointments and pain (and even traffic tickets) abound.

But as Christians, followers of Jesus, people whose master is the God of love – the God who IS love – we know that those pains and disappointments are not the whole story.

We know, in fact, that the end of the whole story has already been written. The story that started at Creation and all things were created by the Word of God…

That in Jesus the Word became flesh and showed us what it looks like to live out a life of love and grace, even in a broken world.

That even though Jesus lived the perfect life of love, the dark brokenness seemed to win – but only for the merest moment in time! – because even though Jesus died a real, human death, that death could not hold him and he was Resurrected! He came back and served his disciples food.

Can you imagine the dread those disciples felt? This was JESUS! How could he be killed? It wasn’t supposed to be that way!

AND IT WASN’T! Because in the REAL end of the story the Resurrected Jesus is alive. The dread we think we have to feel in our broken world has been shown to be unnecessary. We can live like the children we are, certain that the story will not end with whatever pain and fear and anxiety may seem to be lying at our feet.

We live in a broken world but it is the same broken world that Jesus came to live in.

The brokenness could not hold Jesus and because of the Resurrection it cannot hold you.

As a result, you do not have to worry anymore.

You only have to know that this traffic ticket, this medical bottle, this job loss, or whatever difficult thing you anticipate (accurately or not) is not the end of the story.

The end of the story is already written and IT IS GOOD.

Jesus wins, and IT IS GOOD.

Amen.

What would YOU do if you were infinitely wealthy?

Last night I went to sleep sad that my home state of Texas had been the site of yet another mass shooting, this time in El Paso. This morning I woke up to learn that people Dayton, Ohio had joined the awful list of shooting sites a mere six hours or so after the El Paso shooting.

Over the past week 33 people were killed and 56 people were injured in mass shootings in Gilroy, CA, El Paso, TX, and Dayton, OH. All shooters were white, young, and male. May God be with all the people in those 98 networks of humanity - and members of the human networks shattered in all the other shootings that have happened all over the world, the overwhelming majority of which have been in the United States. And may God move the hearts of the legislators and lobbyists who prefer to see this massive loss of life rather than provide a safer environment for everyone who dares to go to Walmart, or to a restaurant, to a garlic festival, or to school.

Now... on to the gospel. Because the Gospel of Jesus Christ gives me much-needed hope on a day like today.

I preached the message below at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Chapel Hill, NC. A recording of the message as delivered in the 11:00 am service is here.

The lectionary texts for today are:
Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23
Psalm 49:1-12
Colossians 3:1-11
Luke 12:13-21

Come Holy Spirit. Show us where true wealth lies. Amen.

What would YOU do if you were infinitely wealthy?

The rich landowner was not infinitely wealthy of course, but he thought he was set for life. That he could just hoard it all away and be good to go.

I hear this story and I wonder: What Jesus was getting at? Why this story at this moment? In the verses before he is surrounded by hordes of people – they were falling all over each other – but Jesus was focused on his disciples:

* What you do in secret will be proclaimed from the housetops, or on facebook.
* Don’t worry about the bullies who can kill your body – God cares about little short-lived sparrows, God CERTAINLY cares about you!
* Don’t worry about what you have to say when you are brought into court. The Holy Spirit is with you and will give you the words you need to say.

In other words – stay focused on Jesus and don’t worry about the worldly powers around you.


When I read today’s Gospel story, then, one could get the distinct idea that Jesus is still talking about the same things. About what is important, about how much we need to worry (or not worry), and about our relationship with the powerful AND the not so powerful in the world.

It sounds, perhaps, like a parable about stewardship.

Now don’t gasp! I’m not going to talk about money, and as a visitor in this place I have nothing to say about budgets or money or supporting your congregation. All those things are very good and very important, but somebody else is doing a good job with them and I don’t have to get into that.

It's pretty clear, though, the Jesus was not supportive of the stewardship of this rich landowner. Which might seem kind of weird if you live in our world today. I mean, the landowner took care of his stuff and worked hard to accumulate wealth. By today’s standards, that landowner was pretty moral and responsible and maybe even holy! Isn’t that what we are SUPPOSED to do, goes the wisdom of the day? Accumulate wealth so we can “live like nobody else”?

It’s so much a part of our current society that working itself seems to have lost its meaning. Doing the work is now a low-class thing. We are urged to accumulate wealth, and if we don’t have to work for that wealth, more the better! Make your money work for you!

Work has, in fact, been redefined not in terms of contributing to a community, but only in terms of money. And if you aren’t the one accumulating more money, you are probably the one doing the tasks that allow others to accumulate.

The messages from our society and culture get awfully close to saying “greed is good.”

Having enough in retirement savings has taken the place of living in relationship with others and meeting the needs of all people by sharing wealth, paying fair wages, and respecting the humanity of workers (not to mention students, children, and older members of the community.)

People are called “resources” if not “commodities” and value comes not from being a person worthy of respect, decent housing, and adequate food, but the means for others to accumulate wealth.

We are encouraged to

Save early!   Gather wealth! Make sure there is enough!

But we don’t ever really know what is enough, do we.

We just know that in a world where money is the only basis of value, not having money means being cast aside, ignored, and denied the basic that things every human being requires and deserves.

Does that sound more like the rich landowner’s world? Or the world Jesus was proclaiming to his disciples?



No wonder Paul denies the differences that marked humanity in his day:
* Greeks and Jews
* Circumcised or not
* Slave or free
* Barbarians who didn’t even speak Greek or Scythians who had a wealthy, complex culture known for their expertise at war.

Today we might say
* Lutheran or Methodist or Episcopalian or Baptist
* Tattooed or not
* Enslaved in human trafficking or border detention or prison, or living the life of privilege based on race
* Pacifists or those who treasure the right to bear arms

Paul is saying that we are all the same. We are all beloved children of God, and that is the important thing. Since Paul is talking about Jesus-followers, we can say that in our baptism we are all made one, without hierarchy.

In those passages we hear that the central assumptions and dividers of social order are cast aside and made irrelevant. CHRIST is the only thing relevant.

Note that Paul is not calling for insurrection or revolution or rebellion. It is so much more than that! He is not calling for overthrow of the social distinctions, he says THEY DO NOT MATTER.


According to the Teacher in Ecclesiastes, there are even more problems: even if we do a great job of building up wealth, we do not know or have control over what will happen to that wealth after we die.

We do not know that our heirs will be responsible with that wealth, or that they will continue our legacy. We tell ourselves that wills and trusts and documents will take care of that… but once we are gone, we literally have no more say in the matter.


But if we aren’t supposed to build wealth, what are we supposed to do with all those resources? Some people have always had more and others less. Jesus himself said the poor will always be with us. So what about THAT?

Well… WHAT IF

Instead of focusing on filling our barns and bank accounts, we focused on building community?

Instead of working long hours for high pay we spent more time with each other, learning about our dreams and pains, anxieties and fascinations?

Instead of accumulating more wealth for a retirement of leisure and travel that may never happen (note the landowner in the gospel!) we give ourselves time to rest and enjoy each other now. To build stronger relationships, to get to know the people around us even if they look and sound and earn salaries different than our own?

Instead of smarter phones we had more, kinder, deeper relationships?

WHAT IF the three shooters this week had been loved by communities that valued all people so much that it never occurred to them to pick up a gun? Would there have been 33 fewer deaths, 65 fewer injuries? 98 fewer families and relationship networks who did not have to bear the burden and pain of so much loss?


Whaddya think?

Could you make a difference for someone?

Or are you thinking… “uh, yeah… right! She clearly doesn’t understand how the world works!”

And maybe I don’t. I completely admit that that may be true. Especially this morning. I do not understand.

But I do know that the whole point of Jesus life, death, and Resurrection was to show us how to do things differently than the world does them.

Over and over Jesus told people to change their focus from the current social order to a new order in which the one with the most stuff, or money, or guns or power, is NOT the one who wins.

In our baptisms we are brought into a new way of being, based not on accumulation of anything and entirely on…

JESUS.

Let me ask that question I asked at the beginning once again…

What would you do if you were infinitely wealthy?

Would you even know that you were?

Would you keep trying to push your net-worth needle higher and higher?

Or would you maybe turn to accumulating power based on that wealth?

OR

Would you share what you have?

Would you spend your time and energy coming up with new ways to enjoy the wealth in your community?

Would you build relationships that could meet all kinds of needs, not just the ones that can be met by spending more money? Not just your own needs?


The answer to that question is critically important, and it isn’t easy, and no matter what you answer we will still be living in this same society and culture that has a very particular set of values.

But here is the BEST NEWS:

You are, in fact, infinitely wealth in the only thing that actually matters for all eternity:

JESUS.

You will never run out of Jesus and you can never accumulate more of Jesus. You can live secure in knowing that living like Jesus, living into your baptism, is enough.

So turn your attention.

Use your time.

Go find new and interesting ways to better understand exactly what you have, and then

Share it with everyone in your life.

And when you have shared with everyone already in your life, go and find others and bring them into your life, too!

Spread that good stuff around because in relationship, with Jesus and with each other, we can do what Jesus taught: Live differently. Live with each other. Be about the goodness of love.

Amen.