Sunday July 31th, 2022 Worship

When I was first reading through the assigned readings for this week, I read through them all and couldn’t understand what it was that connected the Gospel to the other readings… It was after thinking this through for several minutes that I realized that I had accidentally read the wrong Gospel passage. In case anyone is wondering, I do have recurring nightmares that I show up to church on Sunday morning with a sermon thoughtfully crafted for the wrong Gospel. Once, I was redirected to the correct Gospel reading, however, the existential nature of this week’s readings made more much sense. And, this Gospel feels really fitting for the culture in which we live today.
Whenever I read this text, I can’t help but hear it as a social critique. How many ways do we see greed infect the lives of countless people in our culture? One example that has stood out to me since the beginning of the pandemic is the hoarding of things like toilet paper and water that happened as news of the pandemic broke. It took over a month to find a store shelf with toilet paper on it in our town in Iowa; and when it was there, customers were limited to one pack and would loudly yell if they were told that they had to put some back. It was like we had reverted to being children on the playground, unwilling to share the toys that we had.
Another story came to my mind this week too, as I think about all the stuff that we have all accumulated over our lives. When I was in high school youth group, we would occasionally play this game called “Bigger or Better.” To play the game, we were split into two groups, and each group was given a plain, simple, ordinary paper clip. We were then sent out into the neighborhood for a designated amount of time knock on the doors in our neighborhood and ask if they had anything bigger or better that they were willing to trade for. Of course, we knew which part of the neighborhood to go to that had the bigger houses because we thought that would increase our chances of coming back with the biggest or best item. Well, it’s safe to say that people really appreciated teenagers coming to remove any unwanted junk, especially as most people didn’t even want to trade for whatever we had, they just simply gave us their unwanted items. My group was deemed the winner as we came back with this large TV, one of the big boxy ones with wheels. Naturally one of the wheels fell off as we were pushing it back to church across the busiest street in our town; we were certainly a sight to see. At the time, it felt like a win-win to all of us; we won the game and got a new TV to be used in our youth room, and the people that gave it to us no longer had to pay to dispose of it. Yet, as I have been thinking about it this week, I realized how much we had been conditioned to win and to always seek the bigger and better. I think that is the exact opposite of what this Gospel is telling us today.
I think this Gospel has a lot to ask us about our priorities. What are the things that bring meaning to our lives? Is it the relationships that we have made? The love we have shared? The money we have stored in the bank? Or the number of items that we have collected over the years? For the man in this story, he spent so much time working and working to fill his stores, but I wonder if he ever did anything besides just work. Like us, it seems like he had told himself that he couldn’t rest until these things had happened.
‘You fool!’ (Luke 12: 20). This is not quite what we expect or perhaps want to hear from God, but perhaps it can be a reminder to consider what we prioritize in our lives. It is about how we steward our lives. During this last semester of Seminary, I spent a lot of time studying stewardship because it felt like it was most commonly understood by congregations as that time in the Fall when the pastor stands and asks for more money from the pulpit. Yet, seeing stewardship as only that excludes all the other ways that we steward our lives. Yes, part of stewardship is how we budget and spend our finances, but it also about what we do with our time, how we treat our bodies, how we care for the earth that God created, how we share God’s love with others. Stewardship is about us being entrusted to care for everything that God created, including ourselves, our time, our talents, and our possessions.
I think that this narrower understanding of stewardship is what leads me to ask even more questions about this Gospel parable, including what did the man mean when he said to himself, “You have blessings in reserve for many years to come. Relax! Eat, drink and be merry!” (Luke 12: 19). When I was a kid hearing this, it didn’t make sense to me, but as I have grown older, I have seen how we as a society are so focused on working and storing up our treasures so that we can rest later in life. But, it also makes me wonder what parts of life we miss out on when we are focused so intently on things that we think will bring us happiness later, but are not life-giving in the moment. I am not saying that working hard isn’t important and I also know that it can be a privilege to work jobs that we love instead of just jobs that will pay rent and get food on the table. But, I think about the stories I have seen from European countries where people have actual lunch breaks, to go out, get lunch, rest, in the middle of their days instead of quickly eating at our desk or during meetings like many of my peers and I have been doing.
I also have a second question I have been thinking about related to this too: how do we understand blessings? Our inclusive Bible translates what is in his reserves as ‘blessings,’ but what does that even mean? Like stewardship, I think we often have a narrow vision of blessings when we as a culture think about it in terms of things like the trends from a few years ago like #Blessed or “Too blessed to be stressed.” It seems like blessings get reduced to the collection of things that we have, and we are “blessed” when God has given us many good things. But, what does this say to the people were not able to have food stored up or people who lose their stores because of various life circumstances? I am certain that there have been many faith crises because of this idea of blessing over the years when blessings are equated only with money and stuff.
‘You fool!’ (Luke 12: 20). God is inviting us into something so much bigger than just wealth and stuff. As someone who has watched families become divided over money and inheritance, I am continually brought back to the importance of relationship and reprioritizing the relationships in our life. While I know money is something that we need to live, especially in today’s culture and as the cost of living is continually rising, but money and the items we have collected will not save us and they are not the things that give us life and breathe. That only comes from God, but it is so easy to forget that when we get into the hustle and bustle of life, working to build up our stores. Yet, God continually waits with open arms, calling us back to the one who gives us life, forgiveness, and healing. The one whose blessings endure forever, the ones we do not need to lock into a storehouse or hide away in greed.