Sermon #2

As promised:

This sermon was done for Trinity in August.

Deal, or No Deal! How many of you are familiar with this show? For those of you who don’t know, this is a game show where a contestant is presented with 26 briefcases with monetary amounts in them from one dollar to a million dollars. They are to pick one of them with the hopes that it contains the one million dollars. That case is put aside and then the contestant is asked to ask one of the ladies holding the cases to open their case, exposing the amount of money contained within. It is a sort of elimination round – as the cases are opened, that monetary prize is eliminated. There is a person watching this and will make an offer to purchase the original case from the contestant based on which prizes remain and how likely it is that the contestant holds the million dollar case. Each round presents with eliminations and an offer. At the end of each offer, Howie Mandel, the host, says: “Deal or no Deal!” to the contestant and they have a choice to make. Should they accept the offer and potentially profit over what their case contains or should they refuse and try to find that million dollars, or stick with the case that they originally chose. The game is one of tension and greed. Often times people choose to go with their case and lose money they could have had, and sometimes people choose to go with the offer and walk away happy that they won something – if not the million dollars. It is interesting to see how people will reason out their decisions about money – especially where chance is involved.

We often see this behaviour when it comes to games of chance and money. People in the world are often willing to make a deal, or bargain for something better. We even hear of this behaviour with God. People sometimes pray saying: “God, if you could do this for me, I will do something that I think is equal in value for you.” Have you ever prayed like that? Why is it that people seem to want more than what they have? Why is it that we have turned life into a game of Deal or no Deal where we compete to keep up with our co-workers, our neighbours, or even the people we see on tv?

Our gospel lesson today opens with a man asking Jesus to command his brother to split the family wealth for his gain. Jesus takes this opportunity to teach a valuable lesson. First he warns about calling on people of authority to solve any problem that requires an authority. There are people with gifts and talents who have been called to the roles of judge and arbitrator – Jesus is neither of these. But perhaps more importantly, Jesus speaks to another issue.

Jesus speaks about greed. We may have a tendency to think of greed as merely trying to accumulate more money, more possessions, more food, just more and then some more on top of that. Greed is not only about accumulation, it is also about the ability to give away and it is about our sense of security and comfort. Jesus says all kinds of greed. A simple search in a dictionary revealed dozens of words associated with greed: acquisition, avarice, gluttony, materialism, self-indulgence, yearning, and a word we know from other places in the bible: coveting. In fact there are new words being created to describe greed. Pleonexia is a new word to describe the abnormal contemporary conditions of greed. Is described as more serious than greed: “Pleonexia is a heightened and unhealthy condition, as anorexia is the pathological extremity of a brand of asceticism. There is need, then there is desire, then there is greed, and then there is pleonexia.” Apparently the word greed is tough, but we have both the need to diminish it by dividing up the kinds of greed there are in the world and the need to say that greed isn’t that bad, but pleonexia – that means there’s a problem.

It can be easy to be heavy handed when talking about greed. Further on in Luke past today’s reading, Jesus speaks about what the disciples are to do to avoid falling victim to greed… and it can read as a list of systematically getting rid of everything that you might possibly own for a life of complete reliance on God to provide as the moments of life pass by. I imagine that complete and utter dependence on God to provide could be a terribly hard life to live, but Jesus does not mean to be taken literally. Here, in this lesson, Jesus explains what our greed leads to and why we are to be aware of it:

“Life does not consist of an abundance of possessions”: there is no freedom in “stuff”. What you accumulate you then have to care for, look after, worry about, and protect. When I was a child, my brother and I desperately wanted a puppy. We wanted our parents to get us a puppy, we drew pictures of puppies to put on the fridge and in the workshop so they were aware that our “greatest desire” was there for them to see. Finally, after what seemed like ages (and was probably closer to a couple of weeks) we were going to get a puppy. But there were some particulars to sort out. My brother and I were to pay for the puppy with equal portion of our savings. We were to walk, feed, and clean up after the puppy. The puppy was ours in every way. It was to be a great responsibility. Shortly after we got that puppy, there were many times when we didn’t want to have a puppy anymore. It was inconvenient, annoying, seemingly always hungry.. and then always having to go outside. We didn’t have a fenced yard so you had to go out with the puppy because it might run away and we had to clean up after it immediately lest we step in “something” when we were later running around in the yard.

It can feel as though you have become a slave to all of the things that you have collected as they require more and more of your time and presence. Some things we insure to protect ourselves from loss, some things we lock up in safe places so that nothing can happen to them. We want to feel reassured by the stuff in our lives, and are often left feeling burdened and worried about that very stuff. But sometimes we don’t feel that way. Sometimes we want to spend time with all of those acquisitions – that’s why we got them in the first place. There is a sense of accomplishment, wealth, comfort, and security knowing that we have. We have, we don’t need. And we did it. And yet, one person’s treasure often turns out to being another person’s trash.

However, Jesus isn’t speaking merely of the accumulation of things. In his parable, the rich man is merely looking to look after his abundance. His land produced well and he seeks to protect that wealth. And he invests time and energy into planning for safekeeping in the future so he can be comforted, relaxed and enjoy the rest of his life. And God comes into this picture and tells him that he is going to die and all that he has planned is for nothing because it will be for no one else.

“So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.” God wants us to be aware of our lives and those around us. God wants us to have the freedom to see the world. And God wants us to share everything in our lives with those around us, and in so doing, become rich towards God. Our desire to be God’s people, to live lives shaped by Christ opens our eyes and provides a freedom from greed that can leave us blind and indifferent to the world, and turn us from a worship of God to a worship of wealth and accumulation. That is the bondage that Jesus speaks to free us from.

So how does being rich towards God change us and change the world? The life of a Christian is one of freedom from bondage – we are free to share the earthly treasures with those around us because we are freed from the desire to keep everything for ourselves. We can come to realize that it’s not really ours in the first place. Everything belongs to God. And all that we have is a gift from God. Through our baptism we die to sin, we die to earthly temptations and to earthly treasure. When we are baptized we are filled with God and all that is glorious in heaven. We are told to therefore put aside our earthly bindings and to embrace a new self that is not bound and tied to the earth, to sin, or to greed. We are washed clean by the waters of baptism, we are clothed in a new self, we are renewed and filled with Christ, who is all in all. Thanks be to God. Amen.