Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena

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

Today’s Scripture Readings – especially the First Reading [Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-26] and the Gospel [Luke 12:13-21] – make us a little uncomfortable – even more than usual. Today’s Scripture Readings hit close to home – closer even than usual. We’re usually perfectly fine when our Scripture Readings talk about spiritual issues but when the Scriptures – and Jesus in particular – begin to invade our wallets and our home equity and our retirement accounts and our living trusts and stuff that we have worked our entire lives to accumulate, then we get uncomfortable. Then we squirm in our pew. Then we get defensive. Then we start making excuses why that part of our lives should be exempt from the probings of Jesus. Let me assure you that discomfort applies to me as the pastor preaching this sermon, as equally as it applies to you as the ones listening to this sermon.

From the standpoint of material wealth, Americans generally have difficulty realizing how rich we are. Going through a little mental exercise can help us to count our blessings. Imagine doing the following and you will see how daily life is for as many as a billion people in the world.

1. Take out all the furniture in your home except for one table and a couple of chairs. Use blankets and pads for beds.
2. Take away all of your clothing except for your oldest dress or suit, shirt or blouse. Leave only one pair of shoes.
3. Empty the pantry and the refrigerator except for a small bag of flour, some sugar and salt, a few potatoes, some onions, and a dish of dried beans.
4. Dismantle the bathroom. Shut off the running water. Remove all the electrical wiring in your house.
5. Take away the house itself and move the family into the tool shed.
6. Cancel all subscriptions to newspapers, magazines, and book clubs. This is no great loss because none of you can read anyway.
7. Leave no television, no internet, no personal game systems, no CDs or DVD players and only one transistor radio for the whole village.
8. Move the nearest hospital or clinic ten miles away and put a midwife in charge instead of a doctor.
9. Throw away your bankbooks, stock certificates, pension plans, and insurance policies. Leave the family a cash hoard of ten dollars.
10. Give the head of the family a few acres to cultivate on which he can raise a few hundred dollars of cash crops, of which one third will go to the landlord and one tenth to the money lenders.
11. Lop off twenty-five or more years in life expectancy.

Now what do you think about your wealth? I don’t think we’d be as uncomfortable with these two Scripture Readings if we didn’t have so much and if the Scriptures weren’t so absolutely dead-on in terms of what they say about wealth. Now you’re probably saying, “Well, Pastor, I really don’t have THAT much. You know you’re not preaching to Donald Trump or Bill Gates or Warren Buffett or LeBron James.

From the standpoint of material wealth, Americans generally have difficulty realizing how rich we are. Going through a little mental exercise can help us to count our blessings. Imagine doing the following and you will see how daily life is for as many as a billion people in the world.

1. Take out all the furniture in your home except for one table and a couple of chairs. Use blankets and pads for beds.
2. Take away all of your clothing except for your oldest dress or suit, shirt or blouse. Leave only one pair of shoes.
3. Empty the pantry and the refrigerator except for a small bag of flour, some sugar and salt, a few potatoes, some onions, and a dish of dried beans.
4. Dismantle the bathroom. Shut off the running water. Remove all the electrical wiring in your house.
5. Take away the house itself and move the family into the tool shed.
6. Cancel all subscriptions to newspapers, magazines, and book clubs. This is no great loss because none of you can read anyway.
7. Leave no television, no internet, no personal game systems, no CDs or DVD players and only one transistor radio for the whole village.
8. Move the nearest hospital or clinic ten miles away and put a midwife in charge instead of a doctor.
9. Throw away your bankbooks, stock certificates, pension plans, and insurance policies. Leave the family a cash hoard of ten dollars.
10. Give the head of the family a few acres to cultivate on which he can raise a few hundred dollars of cash crops, of which one third will go to the landlord and one tenth to the money lenders.
11. Lop off twenty-five or more years in life expectancy.

Now what do you think about your wealth?

Our Scriptures today bother us precisely because we all have so much. Our Scriptures today bother us because they are so shockingly accurate. Over the past 10 years, how many of us have cried along with the Great Teacher in Ecclesiastes – “Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is Meaningless! A chasing after the wind!” – as we’ve witnessed the free fall of our investments, our interest rates and our home equity. How many of us have spent our lives opening up one bank account after another because we keep hitting the maximum that the FDIC-insurance will protect us?

Our Scriptures today bother us so much precisely because we all have so much. Yet, it must be even more than that because the temporal blessings God has given to you and to me are nothing compared with the temporal blessings God Himself gave to Adam and Eve. Imagine! God gave Adam and Eve everything – this entire world. He gave them total authority and control over this entire world, so it must not just be the stuff that we have – because God created “stuff.” It must be our use of that “stuff.”

That’s what Jesus got at in the parable He told in the Gospel today. What a tragedy for that rich man, but not just for him, but – as Jesus said - a tragedy also for anyone who “stores us things for himself but is not rich toward God” [Luke 12:21]. My friends, that’s the key to help ease our discomfort this morning, for its not just the accumulation of “stuff” that’s problematic, but it’s the lack of accumulating stuff about God.

And that’s where our “Great Hymn of the Faith” comes in today: “Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart, naught be all else to me save that Thou art. Thou my best thought, by day or by night. Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.”

This “richness toward God” about which Jesus spoke is not something that we can just acquire. It’s not something we can barter for. It’s not something we can purchase. This “richness toward God” is something truly foreign and alien to us. It only becomes ours as God’s Holy Spirit reveals it to us, as God’s Spirit becomes our vision, as that Spirit opens our eyes to a whole new world we’re often unaware of until that Spirit reveals to us that of all the things in this world that God could have acquired, God set His vision on you and on me. The inheritance that God wanted was you and me. The pearl of great price that God was willing to sacrifice everything for was you and me.

This “richness toward God” is not something that’s like other wealth. This “richness toward God” is the knowledge, the vision, that we are God’s wealth, that His Son, our Lord and our Savior, Jesus, gave everything to acquire the titles to our lives, to become the Lord and the Master of everything He has first given us, to give to us an inheritance that is not meaningless, that does not fade, that does not depreciate, that is not subject to market fluctuations. This “richness toward God” is the full faith and confidence worked by God’s own Spirit that Jesus suffered and died and rose again for you and for me. In the end, it’s not about our riches. It’s about our hearts.

The Scottish missionary David Livingstone, the first European to cross the African continent, died in Africa in 1873. The Africans, for whom he had toiled his entire life, wanted him buried in Africa, but the United Kingdom insisted that his body be returned home. The Africans finally relented. They carried his body to the coast, from which it was transported back to England for burial in Westminster Abbey in London, but before the body left Africa, its heart was cut out and buried under a tree in Zambia. The Africans stated, “His body may belong to England but his heart belongs to Africa.”

Where does your heart belong? Does your heart belong to the meaningless chasing after the things of this world? Or has your heart been captured by the Spirit of God which leads you and me to sing, “Riches I need not, nor man’s empty praise. Thou mine inheritance now and always. Thou and Thou only, Thou first in my heart. High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.”

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

Pastor Christopher Schaar
Historic First Lutheran Church of Pasadena