Two stories.
The first:
An elementary school teacher told her class about a naughty little boy who disobeyed his mother and went sledding one afternoon without his mittens, cap, and snow suit. Because of it, he caught pneumonia and died.
When she finished, one boy raised his hand. “Go ahead, Tommy,” the teacher replied. “Just one thing teacher; where is his sled now and could I have it?”
Now the second:
There was once a farmer who had two sons. When he died, he left his lands to his boys. Over time, one of the sons married and raised a family of six children. The other son remained single. The two young men farmed the land together, and everything they harvested, they divided equally. And they did well.
One night, while going over his accounts, the unmarried brother began thinking to himself, “my brother has seven mouths to feed, and I am all alone. He will need a bigger share of the crops than I need.”
So late one night, long after his brother had fallen asleep, the unmarried brother got out of bed, walked to the barn, and began carrying sacks of grain to his brother’s barn.
Meanwhile the married brother was thinking to himself, “my brother and I are getting older but I have been blessed with a wife and six children to take care of me when I am old. My brother has no one. He will need more than his share to store up against old age.”
And so this brother too got up in the dead of night while his brother was asleep and went out to the barn and began carrying sacks of grain to his brother’s barn. This went on for several nights.
Then one night, the brothers met in the field midway between the two barns and when they saw each other and realized what the other had been doing, they began to weep. They dropped their sacks of grain, and embraced.
Which of these stories best represents how most people today deal with stuff… things… their possessions?
Which story illustrates how we should deal with our possessions?
In the gospel lesson Jesus calls us to consider how we deal with material stuff in our life and who or what is at the center of our life.
Immediately prior to our passage for today, Jesus had been talking about deeply spiritual things; teaching about prayer, holiness, what it meant to be a believer in God, and one listener has missed it all.
In the midst of Jesus’s teaching on these important spiritual matters, one fellow goes off topic and asks Jesus to intercede on a purely materialistic matter about money and inheritance. He was not hearing what Jesus said, because he was thinking about worldly things.
and I don’t think he is necessarily all that unique. How often do we miss the spiritually significant things that the Lord would have us pay attention to because we are distracted by things of the world? How often do we miss what Jesus would say to us in worship here, because our minds are elsewhere?
Jesus rebukes that fellow and warns him about temptation to greed; covetousness ; a desire for the things of the world. Then, using a parable about a wealthy farmer, he attempts to get him and others to consider their lives and see what is at the center.
Consider the mindset of Jesus’ imaginative wealthy farmer. He says: What shall I do, I have nowhere to store my crops. I will do this—I will pull down my barns and build larger ones to store my grain and all my goods and I will say to my soul,’ then advising his own soul, with what arrogance, he gives himself the following wisdom: “Soul you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat drink and be merry”.
I and me. He considers himself and his things to be the very definition of life; everything belongs to him, exists for him, and gives him his meaning and purpose, and security in life. He lives by the proposition: He who dies with the most toys wins, which is fine if this material life is all that exists—if there is no life after death to be concerned about—if there is no God to be accountable to.
But God says to him: “Fool”, and that is a strong word for God to use. The psalms describe the fool as one who says in his heart there is no God. “Fool: this night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God”.
The reality of human mortality makes futile a purely materialistic life, a life which disavows God in lieu of material possessions.
Though he has attained worldly wealth and notoriety, Jesus points out, ultimately he has nothing.
Our lives as Christians are continually pulled in two directions; compelled to live in either of two life constructs.
The world pulls us toward a materialistic life that has as its goal the complete immersion of self into the physical world. Materialism affirms that physical well-being and worldly possessions constitute the greatest good and the highest value in life.
Materialism invites us to live a life that acknowledges and affirms any behavior, activity, or attitude if its end result is our pleasure, amusement or indulgence. The intrinsic value of other persons and relationships, of altruistic ideals and values, are subsumed into the whirlpool of self. And there is no real need for God or his religion.
Malcolm Muggeridge noted interestingly: Sex is the mysticism of materialism and the only possible religion in a materialistic culture.
That may give some insight into our culture today. Value, meaning, and purpose in life are derived from what we have, how we look, and having everything our own way.
The Holy Spirit however works to impel us in another direction: toward being rich toward God—of seeking to accumulate in our lives transcendent things, qualities that are not of this world: Holiness, righteousness, purity, joy, peace. He encourages us to be concerned with pleasing God rather than with pleasing self, a life that values the Cross, that puts God first ahead of self.
This life has God and his glory in the center, with all we are and have revolving about him. There our life finds its purpose, meaning, pleasure and satisfaction in him, and though we may have things, nice homes, cars etc., or may have attained some wealth or notoriety, we do not claim it as ours but as a gift and blessing from God for his purposes.
Paul in his letter to the Colossians notes this struggle between two ways of life. He warns: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth….your life is hid with Christ in God….”
“Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness” which he says is akin to idolatry because it puts self in the center rather than God. he continues: “….put away anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk…do not lie.”
“ …Now put that all away…you have put off the old nature…and put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator.” His warnings remain timely for Christians today.
in Jesus Christ, we are given a new nature, a new life, an eternal life not bounded by this mortal and earthly existence, so that our ultimate goals and satisfaction are not to be found in this world, and it is a waste to do so. We are to be possessed by God, not by worldly things.
A famous man toward the end of his life wrote: “I have now disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing more I wish I could give them and that is faith in Jesus Christ. If they had that and I had not given them a single shilling, they would have been rich; and if they had not that, and I had given them all the world, they would be poor indeed.” Thus Patrick Henry, a founding father, expressing what he believes makes one truly rich.
So as we consider our life today, for what or whom do we live?
Are we are rich toward the world, or rich toward God?
Are our minds, our souls, our lives focused on the things above, or on the things on the earth?
In the 19th century, an American tourist visited a noted Polish rabbi.
Astonished to see that the rabbi’s home was only a simple room filled with books, plus a table and a bench, the tourist asked,
“Rabbi, where is your furniture?”
“Where is yours?” replied the rabbi.
“Mine?” asked the puzzled American. “But I’m a visitor here. i’m only passing through.”
“So am I,” said Hofetz Chaim.
May our Lord give us grace to rightly deal with the temptations to materialism, to deal rightly with things in our lives. May we be rich toward God and live our lives with the mindset that in reality we are only passing through.