It seems like it should be so simple:
believe in Jesus, and then you would follow Jesus, living as he would have you
live, serving as he would have you serve, and speaking as he would have you
speak.
But as we all know, it isn’t simple. We believe in God and yet so often we fall short of who God would have us be, we fall back into sin and what comes forth from us isn’t of God, but of the world, and absolutely of ourselves.
This isn’t a new state of affairs. This is a reality that is part of which humankind has become, and Paul absolutely speaks to it in the following verses. We are sinful creatures and even though we believe, it is so very easy to succumb to temptation to build up for ourselves.
That’s where the initial listeners of this passage were. They were having trouble, they were falling into their old habits and ways, they were looking at the ways of the world and thinking (if not resonating with) a mentality that said, ‘watch out for yourself because no one else will’.
Paul says, ‘No! You have been made to know what new life is. Live in that life with Christ and with one another. The scripture reads this way.
Colossians 3:1-11
3 So if you have been raised with Christ,
seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of
God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that
are on earth, 3 for you have died, and your life is hidden with
Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you
also will be revealed with him in glory.
5 Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. 7 These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. 8 But now you must get rid of all such things—anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices 10 and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. 11 In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!
Luke
12:13-21
The following passage takes the theme
from Colossians and gives it a visual: the storing up of treasures. Jesus lived in a society where the people, by
and large, lived off the land in some way.
The parable uses that reality and asks the question: what sort of
treasures are you storing up? Are you
storing up the stuff of the temporal, or the eternal? Thought of in a slightly different way, in
regards to your stuff: whom are you trying to shine the light upon, or bring
glory to? Yourself or God? The scripture reads this way.
Luke 12:13-21
13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 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.” 16 Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17 And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 18 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. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20 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?’ 21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
“Stuff”
Humanity has a fascination with stuff. We’ve wanted the best, the brightest, the most efficient. And it isn’t as if this desire is new. You look throughout the history of the world and there are descriptions everywhere of people who were fabulously rich, powerful, influential. The Egyptians are one of the cultures where this fascination with stuff was taken to an extreme level. The Pyramids were not just a way to show the world how powerful a particular Pharaoh was, but also served as the vehicle through which they were able to take all the stuff that they had accumulated with them, after they had died. Humanity loves stuff.
However, this truth has been taken to a frightening level recently as a new online community has been formed. The premise of this site is that people list, describe, and take pictures of all of the stuff that they have. These lists can then be searched through and people are able to connect with one another on the basis of the stuff that they have. It’s a website to brag about all of the stuff that we have! Think about that. People have taken the mentality that drives sites like Facebook and MySpace, but instead of talking about themselves (and the way that they have portrayed themselves on that site), they’re talking about their stuff.
Now while this site markets itself as a vehicle for people to get to know one another through their common interests, I tend to look at this site and think that we have taken what the Egyptians did, by saying to the world look at me, and decide my importance by the amount of stuff that I have, and updated it for the current world order, except this time, it isn’t just the elite who are doing it: its people on every bracket of the economic ladder. Rich, middle class, working poor, it doesn’t matter, we are driven by the need to acquire and own, and the way that our economy is set up, corporations are more than willing to let us know what the next ‘must have’ item is.
And again, it’s not as if this drive to ‘have’ is something new. The passage from Luke has ‘Someone in the crowd’ yelling out to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” This unnamed person is looking out for theirs. He’s sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening to how God’s love is being articulated through this man from Nazareth, and boom, “Jesus, my family has all the money and that’s not fair. He has what’s mine. Tell him to give it to me.”
Jesus’ response is wonderfully blunt and eye-opening: “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Jesus is saying, to contradict a well know turn of phrase, “the person with the most toys does not win.” Building up the largest possible stockpile of stuff does not bring you peace. Instead the stuff just feeds into the notion that you need more.
Let me pause for a moment and acknowledge that I do realize that when this type of sermon is preached, there is a tendency to shut down mentally and go, “Oh, he’s talking about money again.” While I’ll give you that the surface looks like that, what we’re actually talking about are your priorities and who is in control of those priorities.
Because in and of itself, there is nothing wrong with stuff. We need it in order to live our lives. We need clothes; we need shelter; we need food; we need companionship. Every culture, regardless of where it lies on the economic ladder, has its own variation of how these needs are pictured, but we’ve all got them.
But, as we talked about last week, where does our reliance lie? Does it lie in I-Phone or the Droid, the Ipod, or the Ipad, the house, the car, the type of clothes?
Or do we rely on God?
Our answer to that question will be found in how we respond to Jesus' response of “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions”. If we hear that and go, “Well, that’s true, but I still want to live a certain way”, then we’ve answered the question one-way.
If we hear that and say, “God has given me all that I will ever need and will provide for me in all my needs”, then you’re pointing in a different direction; a direction that is so much closer who God would have you be.
God isn’t trying to take away all the things that we need: rather He is calling us to recognize the difference between what we need and what we want. We want this and we want that. Ok.
But we need God. If we try and control our lives to the point that we get all freaked out when some of the stuff that we want has the prospects of being taken away, then we have not placed our reliance on God.
When my family heads out to do just about anything, whether it only be a couple of hours, or as a long as a couple of days, we call it an adventure. This is what we told Austin we were going on a few weeks ago as we all piled into the van. Everyone else knew that we were going to see what would be his first movie seen in a theater, ‘Toy Story 3’. Austin didn’t realize this until we walked past the giant movie poster hanging on the wall just around from the entrance to the theater. ‘Who’s that Austin?’ “That’s Buzz and Woody! Are we going to see Toy Story? I’m so excited!” From that point on the whole occasion shifted from just going to see a movie.
Now mind you, I wanted to see the movie: I’d seen the first two in the theater and really enjoyed them. But the reason I will remember ‘Toy Story 3’ has nothing to do with the story itself. Because most of the time that I spent in that dimly lit space was spent watching my son as he took in, with wide-eyed wonder, the joy of going to see a movie. Yes the family adventure focused around a movie, but what I will always remember are my son’s reactions.
Now I know that this is in place at least in part because of Austin’s disease, because in the context of this message, you want to have a reality check real quick, have your kid be sick. All of a sudden seeing the hot new movie, reading the most recent best seller, or buying the number 1 CD, doesn’t mean so much anymore. Getting that new kitchen or patio, or upgrading your vehicle becomes something that slides down the list of ‘gotta do’s”.
Would it be nice to have them? Sure. Will my life be irrevocably altered if I don’t? Absolutely not. Will my life be permanently changed if my son dies? Without a doubt.
I’m not saying that I’ve got it all figured out and that I don’t get caught up in the consumerism that we have created. I do! It’s just that I happen to have a check valve that reminds me on a daily basis what’s real and what’s true.
You know why it sounds like the truth? Because it is. Jesus wants us to store up, and be committed to those things that will last for all time: love, forgiveness, grace, service. Jesus wants us to be committed to those things that are eternal.
Because again, what does all of the stuff of the world really get you? What did it get those Egyptian Pharos? Besides being put on display in a museum, what did amassing all of that stuff get them? What did it get the farmer who tore down his barns so that he might erect new ones to hold all of his earthly stuff? What did it get him? Nothing.
Jesus is trying to get that unnamed man and us here today, to let go of all the things that make us think were the ones in charge (Jesus, make my brother spilt the family inheritance: I want it), and instead trust solely on the power, the care, the love, the support of God Almighty. Jesus wants us to get our priorities strait.
Are you pushing to satisfy your wants (which society has told us should actually be needs (they’re not!)), or are you striving to live a life that allows you to walk closer to God? Let me remind you, it’s just stuff! It holds no eternal significance.
Give your life to God. Model a life that shows that your priorities are set by God, and not by the world. Model a life that shows to the world that God is so much more important than all that stuff. Model a life that allows you to look in the mirror and know that all of your needs are provided for, and not by any paycheck that you might receive, but by the God who will always love and support you.
Let the stuff that you strive for be founded in the Creator of All.
After
Sermon Prayer
God, we have a tendency to hold on to the temporal things of this world in a way that deceives us into thinking that they are actually important. More times than not, this is so far from the truth. God, help us to set our priorities in a way that allows all those around us, including ourselves, to know that we place the totality of our lives in Your hand, and that we will receive all that we ever need, because You will never let us go. O Lord, let it be so. Amen.