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.
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