10. Sunday after Pentecost, 08/01/2010

Sermon on Luke 12:13-21, by Samuel D. Zumwalt

¹³ Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." ¹⁴But he said to him, "Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?" ¹⁵And he said to them, "Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." ¹⁶And he told them a parable, saying, "The land of a rich man produced plentifully, ¹⁷and he thought to himself, 'What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?' ¹⁸And he said, 'I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' ²⁰But God said to him, 'Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' ²¹So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God."

LIFE WITH JESUS: PRICELESS LORD

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The guy in the parable had it all, and no man had given it to him. He was a hard worker. He was a saver. He was a delayed gratification guy who didn't buy on credit. Our government could learn a lot from this guy. Most Americans could learn a lot from this guy. But, he had one really big problem. He wasn't immortal. He never got to enjoy it!

"Cabaret," a Broadway musical (1966) and then film (1972), was set in late Weimar Germany during the rise of the Nazi movement. Among its many memorable songs was one entitled "Money Makes the World Go Around" (lyrics by Fred Ebb, music by John Kander). If you don't know the song, you can find on YouTube the rather vulgar film rendition sung by Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey. That's your first Jeopardy lesson for the day...quiz to follow.

Martin Luther writes in the Large Catechism: "A god is that to which we look for all good and in which we find refuge in every time of need. To have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe him with our whole heart...That to which your heart clings and entrusts itself is, I say, really your God" (Book of Concord, Tappert edition, 365:2-3).

In the Small Catechism, Luther explains the First Commandment against having other gods: "We are to fear, love, and trust in God above all things" (Tappert, 342:2).

Now today the Gospel lesson is about what a lousy god wealth is when you aren't immortal...which, I believe, would include all of us. But Jesus' story is, as Luther understood, about a lot more than money. It's about the priceless treasure we all need!

WHEN THINGS GO BADLY

My friend Alan Campbell, a retired Episcopal hospital chaplain and onetime petroleum geologist, told me a story about his first boss in the oil business. Apparently, the man's brother came to ask his wealthier brother for a loan. The man agreed to the loan but, instead of looking at his brother, he wrote something on a sheet of paper. Looking up, he handed the poorer brother a loan agreement and a repayment schedule.

When he read the sheet, the younger brother became angry. He said: "But you're my brother." To which the other replied: "Yes, and I want to keep it that way." After the younger man signed the paper, his brother wrote him a check. And the younger brother paid him back in record time. He didn't want that piece of paper hanging over his head.

Of course, there are people in this room who could tell a hundred stories about loaning money to a sibling or an adult child - loans that, to this day, still have never been repaid. Perhaps the loan recipient sees it as a down payment on a future bequest. Perhaps the loan recipient keeps telling her or himself that the note will be repaid. Perhaps deep down inside there is a childish sense of entitlement that the loan giver ought to share the wealth with no strings attached. Nevertheless, the dishonesty of having asked for a loan that the person has made no effort to repay stands as a barrier between the parties. As the wealthy oil man understood, giving a loan to a relative without putting it in writing will end in heartache and hard feelings!

How many other horror stories do you know about the destructive power that money has played in relationships? You do remember that was the occasion for Jesus' parable! A man wanted Jesus to tell his brother to divide his inheritance with him.

How lousy a god has wealth been for you or for someone you know? Or perhaps how has the absence of wealth driven someone you know to desperate measures?

JESUS, PRICELESS TREASURE

Lutheran hymnist Johann Franck wrote a famous chorale by that name. His second stanza reads: "In thine arms I rest me; foes who would molest me cannot reach me here. Though the earth be shaking, every heart be quaking, Jesus calms my fears. Sin and hell in conflict fell with their bitter storms assail me, Jesus will not fail me" (Lutheran Book of Worship #457, tune by Johann Crueger).

Jesus is the antidote to the bitter poison of greed and for the gangrenous wounds inflicted by squabbles over money.

Yet, one church body is spending countless dollars on lawsuits and lawyers trying to wrest control of property from congregations that want to leave the "demonination," I mean, denomination. In the Florida Bahamas Synod of the ELCA, a former LCA congregation voted twice to leave the denomination, but the Synod Council said: "No, not with the property!" In another ELCA Synod, one congregation has voted twice to leave but national headquarters is asking for mission dollars to be returned from the congregation's early years. In several synods and congregations, terrible power games have been played with peoples' lives. And unbelievers read these stories in the news or hear about them at work, and they say: "There's another reason not to be a Christian!"

I thank God for my Bishop Leonard Bolick who has said to congregations in this North Carolina synod that if they really want to leave the denomination they can go with the knowledge that they are still sisters and brothers in Christ. No ugly squabbles over money or property! Now that's a Christian leader that the world can respect!

When Jesus is your priceless treasure, you don't need to be anxious over the label that's on the building - especially when you didn't pay for that building!

Hear again Luther writing about where his treasure is: "I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the virgin Mary, is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, delivered me and freed me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with silver and gold but with his holy and precious blood and with his innocent sufferings and death, in order that I may be his, live under him in his kingdom, and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, even as he is risen from the dead and lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true" (Small Catechism, Explanation of the 2^nd Article of the Apostles' Creed, Tappert, 345:4).

A NON-ANXIOUS EMPHASIS ON MONEY MANAGEMENT?

Hundreds of congregations have either left or are in the process of leaving the ELCA. Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ (lcmc.net) report that 259 of its more than 400 congregations have voted to join since August 2009. Later this month the North American Lutheran Church will be formed at a founding convention in Columbus Ohio. There are no estimates yet of how many U.S. and Canadian Lutheran congregations will leave to affiliate with the NALC. Meanwhile, many hundreds of traditional ELCA congregations will remain in place either out of faithfulness or out of inability to decide.

Needless to say, whether congregations leave or continue on, there has been massive financial fallout at national, synodical, and even congregational levels. Anxious leaders have done a lot of chiding people about being selfish or heartless without looking in the mirror at how their own leadership, or lack thereof, has caused budget problems.

Christian spin doctors are some of the smarmiest operators in that category using buzz words like "mission" and "maturity" to try to shame people into becoming tithers so that fiefdoms may be saved. To date, no one in our denomination has seriously proposed selling the 11-story corporate headquarters next to Chicago O'Hare Airport or perhaps reducing the numbers of synods or bureaucratic structures that waste God's money on redundant and unnecessary functions. No one has seriously proposed offending the alumni/ae by eliminating most of the seminaries of the ELCA. Two would be plenty!

And so a sad re-visioning of Jesus' parable is enacted all across our denomination as leaders hope to build bigger and bigger barns for the bumper crop of donations that surely will come if only we can all love God more and stop being so angry or unloving.

But many of us tend to forget that first part of the Gospel lesson: "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." We are most anxious managing God's money when deep down inside we think it's ours and, more importantly, forget that Jesus is alone the priceless treasure without which we cannot live!

COME TO THE FONT AND THEN TO THE TABLE

There's a bit of the man in the crowd and a large part of the man in Jesus' story in each of us. Let's put the right name on both. It is the old Eve or the old Adam in you and me whose god is something or someone other than the Triune God, whose treasure is something or someone other than God's priceless treasure, Jesus Christ!

The only way to deal with sin, death, and evil is to eradicate it - to go right down to the roots. That is why God had to become human in order to save and redeem us lost and condemned creatures with His holy and precious blood, His innocent suffering and death! That is why God the Holy Spirit had to drown us in the waters of Holy Baptism!

Come to the water, this day, child of God! Return to the ship of your Baptism! There is no other safe place in the storms of this life - financial, theological, or what you will. Bishop, pastor, layperson, repent and believe the Good News that Christ alone is the antidote to whatever it is that ails you!

Come empty-handed to God's table of grace, child of God! Hear again Christ's promise: "This my body, this my blood, given and shed FOR YOU for the forgiveness of sins!" There is no greater treasure than Jesus the priceless treasure which cannot be taken from you!

And when you rise from the waters of Holy Baptism and leave God's holy altar, share in your heavenly Father's joy by using only what you need each day and putting God's surplus where it belongs feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, welcoming the stranger, and sharing God's love with those still in bondage to sin, death, and Satan!

AND if we must "own" church property, which from God's eternal viewpoint looks rather silly, then let's do well to remember that unless the lost are being found, Satan's prisoners are being set free, and lives are being eternally shaped and changed by the Holy Spirit therein, then all those monumental organs and ego-erected shrines and sparkling stained-glass windows must look to God like bigger and bigger barns built by preening walking corpses wearing nothing other than the emperor's new clothes!

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Samuel D. Zumwalt
St. Matthew’s Evangelical Lutheran Church
Wilmington, North Carolina USA
E-Mail: szumwalt@bellsouth.net

Zusätzliche Medien:
www.societyholytrinity.org

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