That’s Funny, It Doesn’t Feel Like Fall

Luke 12:13-21

Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." But he said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" And 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." Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then 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. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But 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?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."

I liked Lose’s opening on his workingpreacher reflections: 

“Stewardship season, already?” 

Yup.

Of course, its all stewardship, yada yada yada.

I suspect there is a danger in thinking that the very basics of the walk in Christ are something beyond which we have progressed. . . 

Isn’t this about basics?

I suspect so. 

In a very complex, deep way it is.

And so is all of your life.

Though a friend of mine did not find it too helpful, I liked the comments in the blog hardesquestion.org.

Russell Rathbun - it says he's the “curator” - groovy term - maybe I’m the curator of doing less. Heck I’m the Czar of Doing Less!

I digress.

I liked his riff - not so much his hardest question, as his line before stating his hardest question: 

I have to tell the truth. I think I am the guy who reads this parable as a prophetic word for myself, but I live my life like I read this as a prophetic word for the rich other guy. I don’t want to care about the abundance of possessions, but I do.  Herein lays the hardest question in this text for me:  Can I be honest about my desire for material abundance and the security it promises?  Do I repress that desire it in the name of my “understanding” of the “correct” interpretation of the text?

Heck, that is all good, isn’t it?

I think that in part, my problem is that I CAN be honest about it - but then I avert my eyes from this sad reality. The living my life part is more where the hardest question seems to lie, isn’t it?

In Bible Study this morning, it was clear that there is an abiding temptation with a parable like this, a temptation to read it in such a way that we can see that WE ARE NOT LIKE THAT GUY. 

We hold him at arms length, and maybe grab a broom stick to get him a bit further away.

What might this text do for us AFTER we have responded in self defense?

A couple years ago, I ran across a story by Barbara Brown Taylor.

Who knows if it actually happened. Heck, who knows if I remember it correctly. . . by the time I used it in a sermon, I couldn’t find it. . . 

I remember that I prefaced my sharing of this story by saying that it wasn’t MY story, and by saying that I was hesitant to share the story. 

The way I remember, she said that in worship one Sunday, they prayed for the poor and hungry. Afterwards, a person who had been at the service. A person who was obviously poor. Went up to Barbara and said to her, something like this: “we prayed for the poor today. Why didn’t we pray for the rich? For those who have too much? For those who are drowning in stuff and ignoring God’s call to reach out with their abundance and share?” 

Youch!

I’m not sure this is fitting with this text, but maybe it is.

(It’s more fitting than the pietist move to say that we need to spend more time praying. . . )

There is so much here in these few verses. 

My friend who doesn’t like Rathbun (ok - he just didn’t find it useful this week) really appreciated Mary Hinkle Shore’s sermon. (I digress again, but I was disappointed to learn that Mary and the Norse Horse are classmates. He introduced me to her the other day and I asked her, “you had the same teachers as he did? WHAT HAPPENED?” She was too nice to answer, though she clearly understood what I was talking about. Ask the Vicar, he was there too.)

She makes the marvelous move of looking ahead ten verses to 12:32 “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  

This “give you the kingdom” is plural you. . . This gift is to the flock, not the sole sheep she says. “It is the Father’s good pleasure to give y’all the kingdom.”

How might knowing that have helped the farmer?

Heck, isn’t the more important question, how might it help me?

Yup.