RICH MAN…POOR MAN

A sermon based upon Luke 16: 19-31

By Rev. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership, 

November 3^rd,  2019

This parable reminds the approach to evangelism that was once popular in America, by the name of “EE” or “Evangelism Explosion.   It was an approach intended to demonstrate the latest techniques for saving souls and building bigger churches.   The strategy for this approach was to make cold calls in the community - door to door - seeking converts for Christ.  According to this technique, the evangelists were armed with two memorized questions, which sooner or later, were to be introduced into the conversation.  The first question to be asked was, "If you were to die tonight are you assured that you would go to heaven?" "Yes," "No," or "I don't know," would suffice as an answer. The second question, however, was the most important one, "On what does your assurance rest?" The only acceptable answer was faith in Jesus Christ.

Robert McClelland*,  tells of using this approach and going up to a door where a very gracious and charming couple were at home and invited us in.  After the pleasantries were exchanged, in which we learned that the husband was a professor of psychology at a large university, eventually, the first question - the one about dying and going to heaven - was introduced into the conversation. "If you died tonight would you go to heaven?" asked the evangelist.

"I don't know," replied the woman pleasantly, "and we don't really care." This is the kind of answer no evangelists every wants to hear.  Is didn’t fit the rehearsed answers.   All that was left for the expert to do was either accept the fact that the matter was a dead issue for our hosts, or to decide to argue with them, trying to convince them of its importance.  In any case, in that situation, they never got to second question.  Because the question of ‘eternity’ didn’t resonate with them, there was no good way talk about Jesus could have easily been inserted into the conversation.  The evangelists had to leave unsuccessful, wiping the ‘proverbial’ dust off of their feet.

Very often, we in the church have been preoccupied with getting to the next life, whereas most of the world has been preoccupied trying to survive long enough to get through this one.  For this reason, the major focus of most interpretations of this parable, has been about facing the reality of ‘hell’ or the future eternal judgment of standing before God.  The point being that:  Good guys will win; bad guys will lose!  Believers will be rewarded. Non-believers will be punished.  If you believe in and know Jesus, you’re on your way Heaven.  Know and trust in Jesus, and you know you’ll miss ‘hell’ for sure.

What people miss, in this parable, is that the focus is not on what happens after you die, but the focus is what you should be doing while you are alive.   In this story, human destiny is determined, not by trusting Jesus as your savior, but by having the kind of attitude Jesus was teaching about others. The rich man in Jesus story, whether he believed in or God or not, was not the issue; but that he walked right past poor Lazarus every day, having no compassion for him; that was the issue.  Lazarus' needs were obvious. The rich man’s obligation was also obvious.  But the rich man felt nothing.  He felt no sense of obligation in looking for Lazarus, for seeing Lazarus, nor for helping Lazarus.   

Again, it was not his lack of religion, nor his lack of faith in God that got his ticket punched to the wrong destination, but it was his lack of regard for Lazarus.  This person who had the wherewithal to help, didn’t do a single thing, and that’s what got him his ‘ticket’ to ‘torment’. This was the single point Jesus made: living in luxury while others suffer without what they need, and you not lifting a finger; will get the finger from God pointed straight back at you.

FEASTING LAVISHLY EVERY DAY (v. 19)

What we must see, first of all, is that the major point of the telling of this parable is about instruction on how to make it into the next life, but it is a story told about how to live in this one.  Jesus wants us to live in this world wisely, responsibly, and charitably.   He doesn’t want us to ‘waste’ the good we have made, or been given, only for ourselves and our own luxury.  We are gifted to be ‘givers’, not ‘takers’ only.

The issues that Jesus sets before us are larger than putting stars in our individual crowns. Human suffering is not a matter of indifference to God. Indeed, it is a matter of eternal importance. God's concern for the well-being of others here on earth follows us to the grave and beyond. Old Jonathon Edwards had it right! In the last analysis a person's business is with God.  But God is less concerned with our sinful bumps and warts than with changing our hearts and filling them with an understanding of the physical and spiritual needs of people around us. The question the Bible continually asks is, "What is the focus of your life?" Do we live for ourselves - our comfort, our security, our salvation - or for others? Micah, the prophet, prompts us with the correct answer. "He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8)." That demand did not change in all the years separating the Old from the New Testaments. Jesus merely gave it visibility and clarity when he told his followers to feed the hungry, visit the prisoner, and clothe the naked.  To love God is to love the neighbor.  Remember? The eternal question to be asked, here and hereafter, is simply, "How are the neighbors doing?" Their welfare must be of genuine concern to us because it is to God.

The question that the parable raises for us is, "What are we going to do with the struggles of people in our world? How are we going take part in shaping history? What legacy do we leave for the neighbors who come after us?" Dietrich Bonhoeffer argued that for Christians the only ethical question is, "How shall the next generation live?" We are stewards of our time and place in history, both globally or locally. We are not to live only for ourselves, but we are responsible for passing ‘life’ and ‘resources for life’ on to someone else.

HE LONGED TO BE FILLED…BUT… (v. 21)

The purpose of the parable, then, is to direct our attention to the serious business of living in this world, which determines what happens in the next.   This parable not only focuses on the rich man’s capacity to care, but it also focuses on the real need that is always there, right before our very eyes.  Here it was the ‘need’ of the poor man who ‘longed to be filled with good things’ and it was also the ‘need’ of this rich man to understand his obligation to care, to see, and to help.

Indeed, this parable warns about letting our attention wander too far away from what is really happening right around us; under our very noses.   Our lives are short.  And if you have ‘made it’ and you ‘have it made’, the time is even shorter to get you to see what you need to do with what you’ve been given.   None of us have all the time in the world to do something.    A sudden turn of events reminds us that we are not eternal. A serious accident. The discovery of a lump while taking a shower. Our lives are bounded by birth and then by death--- our death—your death. Soren Kirkegaard said the earnest thought of death can be life's greatest ally. When we begin to do the arithmetic of life, it brings a sense of urgency to take it seriously.  No matter how ‘rich we are’, when we realize how ‘poor’ we all are, and we feel the ‘longing’ for life, we get in touch with what is real and what is most urgent in his life.

A woman in the hospital was weeping after being told she was terminally ill with cancer. When a friend sought to console her she replied, "I'm not weeping because I'm dying. I'm weeping because I never lived."   It is this kind of ‘mature’ insight that the rich man needed, just as much as the poor man needed food.   It the lack of this kind of insight that keeps us following a culture that asks us to keep buying what we don’t really need, squandering our time and our treasures only upon ourselves.   But it is the kind of insight this ‘rich man’ had, that should also ‘shock us’ into feeling what other people are going through to realize our own obligation to help.  When we miss ‘feeling’ what “Lazarus” felt, we not only miss the ‘joy’ and ‘adventure’ of reaching out to someone,  but we also best of what life is about, and we may, like this rich man, miss the only chance we have, now and forever, to be the person God has created us to be.

In one of his novels, Nikos Kazantzakis speaks of the American friend of Zorba the Greek. He is reminded over and over of the adventurous life which has eluded him. He is both intrigued and threatened by Zorba's dances in the middle of the night. They lure him to leave the safe havens of caution and custom in order to depart on great voyages to another world. Yet he is unable to respond. He sits there motionless and shivering. He is ashamed. He has felt this shame before whenever he caught himself not daring to life into the sheer recklessness that life has called him to risk.  But never did he ever feel more ashamed than in the presence of Zorba. Ashamed and fearful! Two sides of the same coin.

It’s is certainly a ‘fearful thing’, as Scripture says, to ‘fall into the hands of a living God’, but it could be even worse to ‘fall into the hands of a dead one!’  Do you understand what I’m saying?  In this story we find a ‘poor’ man who needed help, and we have a ‘rich man’ who didn’t even notice.  We don’t know ‘why’ the rich man didn’t notice the poor at his door, but what we know that a living God will hold him accountable for doing something; and he didn’t.  We also know that a ‘dead god’ or having ‘no god’ holds you accountable for nothing; and that’s all there is too; after you die, there’s absolutely nothing.

And it’s easy, as a person of privilege, or a person of means, or a person who has made it, or who has everything they need, who can live isolated from the pain of the world, to live, like God is dead, only living for now, turning our eyes and constantly and continually looking the other way, being content at being thankful for what we have and doing nothing for others who hurt.  But Jesus will have nothing of this.  He says that a person who has everything they need can still be missing what qualifies as ‘really living’ in this world, and for certain, they also are missing what guarantees life and hope in God’s world to come.   Here, Jesus isn’t belittling having faith in God, but Jesus is explaining what having faith in Jesus Christ means: learning to feel what God feels, and to see what God sees, which will cause us to respond people who hurt, who hunger, and who are helplessly in need.  

To respond to a world where ‘the poor are always with us’ is a big calling; perhaps the greatest Christian calling of all---to preach to and to be good news ‘for the poor’.  This call to heal and to help is daunting, demanding, and it can be draining and difficult; especially for a rich person.  It not only asks something of what we have, it can also make us feel ‘ashamed’ we can’t do more, and make us ‘fearful’ that we haven’t done enough.  You are inviting ‘pain’ into your own life, when you follow Jesus and follow him into the ‘pain’ of the human need.   But following Jesus into the reality of human need is the only guarantee of a ‘future’, both in having faith and in gaining life.  It may be scary to have to ‘look’ into the eyes of a person who hurts, but it is even more tragic and scary, to look into the ‘eyes’ of people who have lost the ability to care.

When a young flying student was practicing takeoffs and landings, after one particularly rough landing, something on the order of a controlled crash, he commented to his instructor, "That was a terrible landing."  The instructor’s reply contained the wisdom of the ages:"It's always good landing if you can walk away from it."

God is not interested in the style of our landings.  When we stand before our Creator to render an accounting of our lives, God's concern will not be with our sins nor our shortcomings.  These are foregone conclusions. They are simply part of the cost of living the great adventure.  No, God's concern will be with our ability to walk away from the landing of our lives with a sense of having lived right, not just well; that we gave it our best shot and tried to leave the place a better world than when we came.  That’s what learning about Lazarus’ needs is all about.  Learning how to live, right.

BEING IN TORMENT… HE LOOKED UP… (v. 23)   (STOPPED)

In the end, this parable reminds us that life is serious business.  How we live, not just that we stay alive, is serious business, because we have only one life to live; one chance to land and to get it right.   As the very selfish, rich man, blinded by his own success, woefully found out, there are no second chances.   We only have a few years to life our best life, which includes seeing and responding to human need.   We have three score and 10 years, the Psalmist says, or even if by reason of strength (and the luck of the draw) we have four score, yet we are soon gone. We fly away like a sigh.

The lesson to be learned is that we can miss our future rest in the bosom of Abraham, not by being actively evil, but only by being inactively indifferent.  In other words, the rich man didn’t go to hell based on what he did wrong, but because of this one thing he didn’t do right.   He didn’t think about the hurting person at his own driveway.  He wasn’t supposed to live to get rich or stay rich, by kicking the person who was down; or by only step over him.   No, he missed what God had for him, because he wasted his life by only seeing his own wants and by only helping himself to what he had to give.

Jesus warned elsewhere, "If you save your life, you will lose it. Only if you give it away, will you find it."  You can debate the economics or logic of this teaching, but we the paradox is always true.  As a person who lives and dies, you only get to ‘keep’ what you actually give away.   What you ‘give’ is all you can ‘take’ with you.

The cross of Christ reminds us that he chose to die. He was not a victim of circumstances, nor was he a tragic hero. He could have died in bed of old age. But instead, Jesus chose to live by giving and by ‘dying to himself’ every step of the way. "My hour has not yet come," he kept saying during the days leading up to his final journey to Jerusalem.  Finally, during the last meal with his disciples, Jesus uttered the words that must have popped their eyes open, "The hour has come (John 17:1)." The words burst forth, not as a death knell, but the glorious climax to a life intentionally lived to help others.  When Jesus invites us to take up our cross and follow him he also invites us to live for something big and to die for a reason. We only go around once, and Martin Luther King Jr. put it well when he said, "Until we are willing to die for something, we're not fit to live for anything."

Kurt Vonnegut has written some superb lines which catch the amazement and delight of life's miracle.  "God made mud ...God got lonesome ...So God said to some mud, 'Sit up! ...See all I've made,' said God, 'the hills,the sea, the sky, the stars.' ...And I was some of the mud that got to sit upand look around ...'Lucky me, lucky mud.' "  But with our the gift of life comes the responsibility and opportunity to live right. God does not call us to right living to just to make us feel guilty and to get us into heaven; but God calls us to live life right, so we can have life; now and forever.  Guilt for the sake of guilt is ‘sick guilt, and it immobilizes us.’ It is what Archibald MacLeish calls "the sick scent of dung under our fingernails."  But healthy guilt comes from realizing what we need to do to take life seriously. The cup of opportunity that life hands me to drink is, of course, different from the one that it hands you. Lazarus was not sitting at your door or mine but someone else is sitting there!  There are things we need to see and hurts we need to respond to, to live the kind of life God calls us to live.   True guilt, healthy guilt, motivates us rather than incapacitates us. It comes, not from comparing cups, whether we are rich or poor, but from the realization that we need to accept the cup that is ours.

"But heaven! What about heaven?" someone is probably asking.  In Jesus' view, heaven projects us forward, into God's time and space, and is flows out of a life lived wisely, responsibly, charitably, and faithfully, here and now.   How we live in this world does impact what happens to us in the next.   What we believe is not just about what’s in our heads, but it’s about what’s in our hearts, and how we live outwardly from what comes from deep inside. 

Apparently, if we take Jesus’ parable literally, self-consciousness survives death and we live either with regrets or with joy at responding to the opportunities offered us.  “To whom much is given, much will be expected.” That point was most graphically made by Jesus in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30). To one person ten talents are given, to another five, and to another one. The distribution is not equal, yet each is expected to invest in responding to the needs of the world out of their own resources , so that the Landlord will benefit.   Those who do what is right, good, and needed, are put in charge of greater wealth. The one who fails in his stewardship of life and others, by hiding his wealth, (or by wasting it too), will discover what will is taken from him. The good news is that if God will entrust responsible people with even greater responsibilities in the world that is still to come.

It would be nice if we could finally say,  "And they all lived happily ever after."  It would be nice, if I could say “God’s love wins, in the end, and everyone gets in, so that we all finally be changed by God’s love.   But Jesus - always the realist - was not in the business of telling fairy tales or giving all his parables happy endings. He knew that we live by the choices we make. The ending of the story, therefore, is ours to write. Jesus simply said, "Those who have ears to hear, let them hear!"   Amen.

(* I owe much of this message to ideas given to me by Robert McClelland).

“Your Brother Is Here…!”

A sermon based upon Luke 15: 11-32  CSB

By Rev. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership, 

October 27th, 2019

"Amazing Grace" is one of America’s favorite hymns. It is an old one too. It goes back to the 18th century, written by John Newton, who was on the sea from the time he was a little boy. When he was a young man he became the captain of his own ship, a ship that brought African slaves to the colonies to work the plantations.

Back in England, between voyages, he went to hear George Whitefield preach and was converted. He realized the evil of his occupation, left it, and became a pastor in the Church of England and served the rest of his life as the rector of a little church in a town called Olney. Newton wrote a number of hymns which were printed in a collection called the "Olney Hymns," which is one of the classic collections of hymns in the Church, and "Amazing Grace" was one of them.

It is astounding, this song’s popularity. Back in the 1960's Joan Baez sang it. During one of her concerts, she held her audience captive, tears coming down the faces of so many people, as she stood there on the bare stage, in her bare feet, with the light on her, hands at her side, standing there quietly, singing all the verses of this plaintive, Appalachian tune, "Amazing Grace." For those present, it was a stunning moment.

It’s also amazing, this song’s popularity. It often appears in movies, or at public events that are not even church events.  For even people who are not members of churches, and those who do not profess faith, find something in this hymn that connects with them.  This hymn is over two hundred years old. It is uncompromisingly Christian in its language. It is evangelical in its message, reflecting John Newton's experience of being found. "I once was lost, but now am found."   Some say,  the key to this songs  popularity, is because it defines the most basic Christian understanding of our relationship with God: God seeks us.

Of course, God is experienced in different ways in different religions. In some religions God's majesty and God's sovereignty are emphasized.  In others religions it is God's righteousness that is emphasized.  In still others, it is God's hiddenness and the mystery of God's being that are emphasized.  In the Christian faith, it is God's love that is  emphasized:  “For God so loved the world….”.  Other religions also understand that God calls us to love, but what is most unique in Christianity is that God is seeking us.

As Hugh Montefiore, a Jewish biblical scholar and an Englishman, said this is what makes Christianity different from Judaism.   “Most of what Jesus taught, was taught before him by the prophets, especially in their the ethical teachings.  Much of what Christians believe is shared by people elsewhere in world, as most religious teachings are universal.  But in Christianity, the one affirmation that is most unique, is the proclamation that God seeks after us (M MARK TROTTER).

FATHER, GIVE ME….  (v. 12)

But being sought by God has it most intentional Jesus’ most famous parable, we call ‘The Prodigal Son’.   Here, Jesus not only pictures that God seeks us like a Shepherd seeking one lost sheep, or a woman frantically searching for one lost coin, but he Jesus also understands that God is like loving Father, who is waiting for his children to come back home, where they belong.  God is a waiting Father.  God is waiting, because in life, we are free, to go and to live as we please. 

Freedom is both a wonderful and dangerous thing.  Freedom is wonderful because as we grow into adulthood, we get choose to live our own lives the way we want.  We get to choose our own path, use our own talents, and make our own life out of our own decisions and hard work.  This kind of ‘freedom’ can make you glad to be alive and proud of your own accomplishments. 

But this kind freedom can also be dangerous too.  It can be dangerous because we can make bad choices in life.  We can make bad choices that take us to dead ends and leave us nowhere.  We can end up nowhere because we have listened to bad advice, or we got lost in wayward desires, or we can get devoured by forces stronger than our own.   Freedom invites to a wonderful, but also a wild world.  By ‘wild’ we mean untamed, unpredictable, and often deadly, as in a ‘dog eat dog’ world.

This is what happened to the ‘prodigal Son’.  As he grew up, he decided he would live better, if he would leave to go out on his own.  He thinks he would enjoy his life better without his current responsibilities.  He wants everything now.  Like so many who have had life ‘handed to them’, he has come to believe that ‘the grass will be greener on the other side’.  He hopes that living by his ‘own’ choices, without the burden of life’s responsibilities, would be a better choice.  He desires freedom---freedom from his father, freedom from his family, and freedom from the responsibilities that have been passed down to him.  He is ready to strike out on his own.  He wants all of life, especially the fun, now.  He decides that he doesn’t have to work and wait, but he can live lavishly and luxuriously today, living out all his wants and desires.  This is why the ‘prodigal’ goes to his Father and says, ‘give me my share of the estate I have coming to me… (v.12). His idea of life, is ‘I WANT IT NOW!’

The point that Jesus makes, is a point very much worth making in a ‘free country’ like ours.  Freedom is good, and it can be our best friend in life, but freedom can also be dangerous, and it can become our worst enemy.   Because we are free, we can become our own worst enemy.   This is at the heart of Jesus’ parable of this ‘lost son’.

HIS FATHER…FILLED WITH COMPASSION (v 20)

Into this world where we are ‘born free’, come a God who seeks to save us.  Jesus understands God just as this ‘waiting’ and ‘worrying’, and finally ‘joyful’ Father who has compassion and full forgiveness for his wayward child who comes home. 

Again, what is most unique about Christianity is not that God saves sinners, for most all religions have a view of salvation, but the good news of the gospel is that God himself came into the world ‘to seek and to save the lost’.  God doesn’t wait for sinners to shape up before he came.   This is the gospel ‘point’ that the Apostle Paul couldn’t get over .   It stopped him in his tracks.   Paul understood, as a ‘Pharisee of the Pharisees’ that he could, by being good enough, and working hard enough, that he could find his way to God.  

But the great surprise, which was the surprise of the gospel, is that Paul finally came to realize that even his ‘good was not good enough’.  It was when he became humiliated by his own ‘lostness’ that the true God was revealed to him.  When this true, loving, seeking, and calling God came to him, Paul found his true self and his true calling in life.  So ever since Paul met the searching, seeking, and calling Jesus on the Damascus road,  this became his message to preach to the world: God has come to seek and save us; not just from the wildness of the world, or our lostness in the world, but this God has come to save us from the ‘lostness’ within ourselves.  This is the gospel. That is the good news.

And ever since Paul since this message came to Paul, he made it his mission in life to help people to understand not only what happened to him, but he also wanted people to know what could happen to them.  This can happen to you, especially when we realize that we have become lost, and are not worthy of God’s attention, or that God never could ever speak their name. God would never know me. This could never happen to me.  But it can, it did.  It still does.

There is a wonderful story about Maya Angelou, the great writer who ended her career teaching at Wake Forest University. She was an active member of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco. She wrote that years earlier when she first came to San Francisco as a young woman she became sophisticated. She said that was what you were supposed to do when you go to San Francisco, you become sophisticated. And for that reason she said she became agnostic. She thought the two went together. She said that it wasn’t that she stopped believing in God, just that God no longer frequented the neighborhoods that she frequented.

She was taking voice lessons at the time. Her teacher gave her an exercise where she was to read out of some religious pamphlet. The reading ended with these words: “God loves me.” She finished the reading, put the pamphlet down. The teacher said, “I want you to read that last sentence again.” So she picked it up, read it again, this time somewhat sarcastically, then put it down again. The teacher said, “Read it again.” She read it again. Then she described what happened. “After about the seventh repetition I began to sense there might be some truth in this statement. That there was a possibility that God really loves me, Maya Angelou. I suddenly began to cry at the grandness of it all. I knew if God loved me, I could do wonderful things. I could do great things. I could learn anything. I could achieve anything. For what could stand against me with God, since one person, any person, with God form a majority now.”

There are many people who are just like that. They think it is unbelievable that God would know me, that God would love me, that God would know my name. Just the grandness of it, as Maya Angelou says, that God would really love me. But that is the gospel. He seeks you until he finds you. She found that God found her, in San Francisco.

Jurgen Moltmann, a famous German theologian, was in the German army during World War II. He was captured by the British and placed in a prisoner of war camp in Scotland. It was there that God found him. It happened through two incidents. The first was in reading scripture. The chaplain of the camp gave Bibles to the prisoners. Moltmann said they were hoping to get cigarettes, but they got Bibles instead. He read the Bible, and he read the psalms. He said, “I was dumbfounded.” He was like Paul on the Damascus Road, dumbfounded, knocked down. He said, “The words of the psalms were the words of my own heart, `Hear my prayer O Lord, and give ear to my cry. Hold not thy peace at my tears, for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as my fathers before me.’”

Then he turned to the New Testament and read of the passion of our Lord, “My God, why hast thou forsaken me.” He wrote, “I knew with certainty this is someone who understands me. I began to understand Christ because I realized Christ understood me. And I began to summon up the courage to go on living.”

The second incident came when some Christians visited the prison camp. Paul was knocked down on the Damascus Road, dumfounded, then led to Damascus. There the Christians came to Paul and ministered to him. I believe it was through their love that God changed the life of Paul. So Moltmann, after being dumbfounded by grace in the scripture, was visited by Christians who asked to see the German prisoners.

They were from Holland. Moltmann said, “I was afraid to go see them because I had fought in Holland. I was there at the battle for the Arnheim Bridge.” The Dutch students said to the German prisoners, “We are here because Christ has sent us here. We will tell you that without Christ we wouldn’t even be talking to you.” Then they told of the Gestapo terror, of their homes being destroyed, of losing their Jewish friends. Then they said this. “Christ has built a bridge from us to you, and we come across it to greet you. Now you come across and confess your guilt and seek reconciliation.”

Which they did. They all embraced. Moltmann wrote, “It was a richly blessed time. We were given what we did not deserve, and received the fullness of Christ, grace upon grace.”  Amazing grace! How sweet the sound  That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see.

OLDER SON… BECAME ANGRY… (V. 28)

There is so much to rejoice about in this great parable, but you’ll never fully understand this great story Jesus told, until you understand that it doesn’t have a completely happening ending.  The whole reason Jesus told his story was because ‘religious’ and ‘righteous’ people where grumbling about Jesus spending too much time ‘welcoming and eating with sinners’ (15:2).  Jesus ends his story with the grumbling, complaining elder brother, who is upset because his ‘brother’, has a ‘party’ thrown for him, while he has done all the work, and like Rodney Dangerfield, ‘gets no respect’.  Why would Jesus focus his ministry on sinners, rather than focusing on those who are doing all the work?

Here’s a question that brings this parable home to us ‘church folks’.  We think the church is about us, but God wants the church to be about them.   Jesus came for them, ‘not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance’.   ‘Those who are well, don’t need a physician.  I have come to those who are ill, sick, and hurting!  These are words we read throughout the gospel of Luke, especially.  The work of Jesus is not about us, but it’s about us, caring, waiting, working, and seeking ‘them’. 

One of the major issues in church life today, is ‘how can we survive?’   It’s hard for a church to survive, when we focus on ourselves, because we are a ‘dying breed’.  But if we ever learn to focus on them, there will always be someone, somewhere, lost, in need, hurting, needing help, needing to be found, and needing to find someone who cares about them, as a person, not because of what they did or didn’t do.   Can we learn to care about ‘them’?

Evidently, Jesus believes that not only sinners can change, but Jesus believes that religious, righteous people can change too.   What will it take for someone to care about them?  Well, Jesus also taught us, that it will probably take a ‘dead body’.  When we survey what is happening around our world, with all the rising suicides, the school shootings, mass massacres, and the increase awareness of mental illness, and person pain and brokenness in our world, we see all kinds of ‘dying’, ‘hurting’ and ‘dead bodies’.  This is what it took for some Jews to finally get it, and become followers of Jesus to seek and save the lost. 

I wonder sometimes, if we’ve seen enough, to know that ‘lostness’ is right here, ready for us, not just to criticize and complain about, whether we’ve seen in these ‘dead bodies’ the same kinds of needs and hurts that Jesus saw: that the God of love is a ‘seeking’ and ‘saving’ love; and that now, in this world, in our time, and this moment, God has brought his saving mission right up to our own door step, so that we can open our hearts to love someone who has lost their way?

Our world, in it’s freedom, is increasingly losing its way.  There’s no doubt about this.  But what caused Jesus doubt, and me too, sometimes, is whether there is enough love in us religious, righteous, established types, to be the kind of ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ who joins God on his mission to ‘seek and to save’ and will get excited about a lost child coming home. 

What you will feel, think, and do, can make a difference.   Sir Arthur Keith (1866-1955), of the Royal College of Surgeons, claimed that if 300 individuals were taken out of human history, we would still be living in the Stone Age. But it is also true that if you add to history a handful of people and let get what they wanted, like Hitler, or Stalin, or Osama bin Laden, we would find ourselves back living in the Stone Age.

We live in the age of ‘Me’; no doubt about that.  Our world and the world markets established upon making people rich, happy, successful, so you, the individual, can have what you want.   But what we often forget, is that unless there is a “WE”, there really can’t be a “ME”.   Just as the idea of being free to live and choose as a ‘me’ is born out of the hard work of people pulling together and working hard as “WE”,  in the same way the ability to continue to live ‘free’ as we “ME”, still depends on us being ‘WE”.   Without living with the sense of “WE”, we lose the ability to be a “ME”.

Biblical faith insists on living on a two-way street, a ME/WE highway: faith is individual, but faith is also communal.  Faith is about us, but faith following Jesus requires a team of people working together.   Let me end with an example of how following Jesus to ‘seek and save’ the lost means becoming both a ME and a WE people.   This is really what the story of the Prodigal Son is about.  That lost son could have survived without the ME of those who ‘loved him back’; and that elder son, would never learn what love means, unless he learned to be someone who loved, just for the sake of loving. 

The ME/WE story I want to end with, goes back to one of the biggest one-time gifts in the history of US philanthropy: the 1.7 billion gift of Joan Kroc (1928-2003), the wife of the founder of McDonald’s, Ray Kroc, which was given to the Salvation Army  (This story and final idea comes from a sermon by Len Sweet). 

When Joan was a small child, her father abandoned the family and left her mother to figure out how to feed the family. In Joan’s memory, these were difficult, dark days. But she remembers one beacon of light in the midst of those difficult times. Every Friday night an officer from the downtown Salvation Army would visit their inner-city home, carrying in his arms two bags of groceries. Sometimes he would come in and play with the kids, giving them a father figure to relate to as well. Without that one Salvation Army officer showing up with those groceries, she doesn’t know how they would have made it each week.

So when it came to decide how best to invest the billions left her by her husband, she remembered that Salvation Army officer and his faithfulness to a needy family. And before she died she handed a billion dollar check to Salvation Army General Linda Bond. Today you are seeing in the poorest parts of town beautiful “Kroc Centers” going up to bring health and happiness to needy kids because of one person who was faithful to his mission.

 By the way, when that Salvation Army officer died, he had no idea what he had done. When that Salvation Army officer died, he thought he had just had an ordinary ministry and been an ordinary officer. He didn’t think he had done anything special as a Salvation Army officer.

Sometimes the greatest blessings of your life you will never know about. Sometimes the greatest impact of your life will not be revealed in your lifetime. Sometimes your faithfulness will bear fruit long after you and I are gone.

It’s not about recognition and reward. It’s only about serving Jesus as an individual ME in the context of a communal WE.  This communal kind of “ME/WE” love is what Jesus was trying to teach about in his parable.  It’s the kind of seeking love of WE that can save the ME that gets lost, for whatever reason.  But it is also the kind of seeking love can also save the ME, who is lost in his own heart, not because he did something wrong, but because he did everything right, and missed the greatest party of life, which is the party of celebrating God’s saving, seeking, love.   Surely, we don’t want to miss a party like this.  It’s a party that accepts God’s invitation,  hearing God’s call to mission with these words:  “YOUR BROTHER, or SISTER is here….”    Amen.

…YOU FOOL!”

A sermon based upon Luke 12: 13-21

By Rev. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership, 

October 20th, 2019

My mother warned me not to call anyone a ‘fool’.

Jesus said ‘if anyone called their brother a fool they’d be in danger of hell fire. (Matt. 5:23). Yikes!  I’ve never called anyone a fool since.  But it’s not because I’ve haven’t wanted to. 

People can do some really stupid, foolish things. Can’t they?  An old story in Reader's Digest told of a man who flew his own plane on vacation, but got tired of the long auto trip from the airport to his country place situated on a lovely lake. So he equipped his plane with pontoons so he could land right in front of his cottage. However, on his first trip up to the country with his newly-equipped plane, he headed for a landing at the airport just as he always had done in the past.  I guess you could say, old habits are hard to break.

But just as he was going in for the landing it dawned on his wife what was happening and she hollered, "What do you think you're doing? You can't land this thing on the runway. You don't have any wheels, you've got pontoons on it!"

Fortunately, her warning shout was in time and he pulled up from his landing pattern, swung the airplane around, and headed the plane for a landing on the lake. After the plane landed safely on the lake he heaved a really big sigh of relief, turned to his wife and said, "That's about the stupidest thing I've ever done!"  And then he opened the door, stepped out and fell directly into the lake."

Haven’t you done something really stupid?  I know I have.  Who will admit it?  Come on now, I’m not the only one. 

Someone has made a list of "Politically Correct Ways of Indicating Stupidity." Perhaps you have heard some of these. They're quite creative. Speaking of someone who has done something really dumb, we might say:

He's a few clowns short of a circus . . .

A few fries short of a Happy Meal . . .

A few peas short of a casserole . . .

He doesn't have all his corn flakes in one box . . .

The wheel's spinning, but the hamster's dead . . .

His antenna doesn't pick up all the channels . . .

His belt doesn't go through all the loops . . .

The elevator doesn't go all the way to the top floor . . .

He is several cards short of a full deck . . .

If he had another brain, it would be lonely . . .

Missing a few buttons on his remote control . . .

The lights are on, but nobody's home . . .

All these are just polite ways of saying that sometimes, people do really dumb things.

In our text today, which gives us Jesus’ Parable of the Rich Fool,  a wealthy man who does something really foolish.  It is God who calls that man a ‘fool’, or a moron, if you want to get technical about it.  Moran is simply the Greek word for fool.  Although my mother said not to call anyone a fool, God can. He’s God.  My mother told me that too.  But for God to do something he tells us not to do, must be pretty serious, don’t you think? Why on earth did God dare call a man who had everything a fool? 

BE ON GUARD AGAINST GREED….

One of the oldest stories about a wealthy man dying was told about Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher.  After the richest man in the world died, people where standing around talking about how much money he left behind.  One fellow, overhearing the conversation declared that he knew exactly how much money Aristotle left behind.  He said: ‘everything’.  Sobering thought.  There are no uhaul’s behind hearses.

One of the reasons, the man is Jesus story was called “fool”, was exactly because he did not understand this; that we can leave and loose everything a lot faster than we get it, and besides that, we actually can hold on to nothing.  This man in Jesus parable didn’t seem to understand this most basic reality: that we can take nothing with us.  But, he’s just a fictional person in a story Jesus told.  The parable pointed to another foolish person in real life.  His actions motivated Jesus to tell this story in the first place.

It all happened right after Jesus had been teaching a crowd of thousands, when a man approached him seeking an answer about money.  Obviously money and the love of money was an issue in Jesus’ day just as it is in ours.   The Bible contains around 500 verses on prayer, 200 verses on faith, and about 2000 verses on money. This biblical attention on money and wealth reveals the importance of money in our lives.

But Jesus hadn’t been teaching about money, at first.  He called was warning about coming tribulations when a certain man interrupted him.   Our text says in, verse 13, “Someone from the crowd” wanted Jesus “tell (his) brother to divide the inheritance with (him).”  Jesus responded negatively to his request: “Dude, what does this have to do with me” (V.14).  Jesus then used this moment to teach about the dangers of money and acquired wealth:  Watch out and be on guard against all greed…” Like so many people, this man was so distracted by his concerns for money the he didn’t pay attention to what Jesus had been teaching.  He didn’t really come to learn from Jesus, or to do something for Jesus, but he only wanted Jesus to do something for him.   

The overarching issue Jesus addresses is human greed.  In a recently movie, entitled Wall Street, the main character, a Financial Broker, in a speech to all his partners says,  “Greed, for the lack of a better word, is good!”  Here, however, Jesus sees ‘greed’ very differently.  The word Jesus uses here, means the ‘desire to have more’.  The real problem with desiring more, is that it leads to never having enough.  Jesus illustrates this with a parable: a story told beside the real story so we can see it.  This story is about this wealthy man who already had enough, but still didn’t have enough.  He built ‘bigger barns’, not because he needed money, or to keep his business going, but only because he wanted it.  He wanted to feel safe, and establish security with money.  Like the person thinks they can buy happiness, this man thought money was all he needed to be safe and secure.

The point Jesus was making is that this man was already more secure than most, but he still needed more.  The issue hear is that wealthy people struggle with greed too; just like many people do, even when they already have more than they’ll ever need. Having money doesn’t make you less greedy.  In fact, wanting more and more is seldom connected to material need, but it’s often points to a spiritual, emotional deficiency—a spiritual hurt that shows up a obsessive need and demand for more and more, so that enough is never enough.   

Jesus defined true success security by pointing out that it can’t be achieved with one’s possessions.   Jesus wants this fellow and everyone to know, that having money will not solve all your problems.  Of corse, Some money might solve a few problems, and cover up a lot a problems, but normally, money makes more problems than it solves.   

Jesus emphasized this by giving this strong warning using the phrases “Watch out” and “Be on your guard.” He did this to reveal the underlying danger of giving into greed, like this person who never has enough. The world measures a person’s worth by his wealth; God views a person’s worth very differently.

The big question in this story is not the story, but whether the man struggling with his sibling over the inheritance would see himself in the story. Jesus told parables not necessarily to make things easier, but to invite the person into the story, not just to illustrate a point; but to confront people with the truth they were too blind to see.  It was a truth that could save lives, both now and forever.  It was to keep people from being ‘stupid’ with the only life they have to live, with the people they have to live life with.

I’LL BUILD BIGGER BARNS!

16“Then He told them a parable:  “A rich  man’s land was very productive. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What should I do, since I don’t have anywhere to store my crops? 18 I will do this,’ he said. ‘I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones and store all my grain and my goods there. 19 Then I’ll say to myself, “You  have many goods stored up for many years. Take it easy;  eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.” ’

Did you get what this guy did that was so stupid?  He said: “I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones and store all my grain and my goods there”.   In much of the business world today, this is the right approach.  Take care of the business, look after yourself, and ‘the heck with the other guy’.   That’s competition.  That’s business.  That’s what it takes to survive in the ‘dog eat dog world’.  But what the world calls good business, Jesus called foolish.   Rather than finding ways to share his abundance to help others, he focused on hoarding more and more of the harvest only for himself.   The economy in the area depended on farmers selling or sharing their crops. His decision affected a lot of people, not just him. He only cared about his needs.  He didn’t care about the needs of others. He was only looking out for ‘numero uno’.  And he thought he could do this with money alone.

So, there are two ways money and wealth can turn us into fools.  Are you ready?

One main problem with money is that it promises to give what only God can give. In addition, love of money take the place of loving God with our lives. When money becomes a god it will lead to greed. Greed lies to us, it blinds us, and it ultimately destroys us. It is interesting to note Jesus did not give the man a name in the story. His riches defined him.   Jesus also called attention to the fact that the man’s wealth came from the ground; it was not something he could boast about, God provided his abundance. The man showed his lack of gratitude to God by wanting to keep it all for his own. The man revealed his attitude toward his blessing by repeating the words “I” and “my.” He had no sense of obligation to anyone else.

Jesus portrayed too, how the man constantly thought to himself and talked to himself. He did not consult any another person. Luke consistently used a person’s selfishness to portray that person in a negative light.  Notice how many times he uses the word, ‘I’.  Other examples of this can be found in Luke 2:35, 5:21-22; 6:8; and 9:46-47.   Only thinking for himself, and about himself, this farmer never considered that his feasting would likely lead to famine for others. All he wanted to do was take an early retirement and take life easy. That was his big plan. He had won the lottery and he depended on his windfall to make him happy. His motto was “Eat, drink, and be merry.” He forgot the part about “for tomorrow we may die.”

WHOSE WILL THEY BE?

God called this man a fool.   ‘You fool!  This very night your life is demanded of you. And the things you have prepared—whose will they be?’  “That’s how it is with the one who stores up treasure  for himself and is not rich toward God.”

Again, this is rare. In the Old Testament only a person who says there is no God is a fool.   Here is the only other person in Scripture named a fool by God.  Why was he called a fool?  This fool made plenty of provision for retirement, but made no provision for eternity.  He made no plans for presenting his soul to God. 

Just the other day, a man, who was still working in his 70’s, told me that all his friends who stopped working, when they retired, died.   My neighbor in, Mr. Roy Austin, stopped working at the mill at age 65 and went home only to die in a couple of days.   To die before you plan to, outer in a way you didn’t plan, happens to most everybody, doesn’t it?  And if you make plans, you will still be surprised when it happens, or when you learn it will happen. 

And even if you can’t plan when or how you will die, if you’re not making plans to die (before you know it), you’re being foolish too.  In the parable, this man’s life was demanded of him, whether he was ready for it or not. The word demanded means to something on loan that had to be returned.  Life is like that.  We have a life, but it’s never really ours.   Now, it was required of him to pay for a debt and he hadn’t planned on paying back.  In other words, this man had invested in the wrong stock.  Now, after telling him his time was up, and that his money or wealth wouldn’t buy even one more day, one more hour, or one more minute, or second:  God looks at all his barns, all his money and wealth and asks,.  “Who gets all this, now?”  

Now, don’t misunderstand, Jesus was not condemning this man’s success or even his material possessions. He condemned the man because he invested only in his own life to the detriment of others.   Jesus doesn’t express that God has a problem with people possessing wealth, but he’s saying there’s great peril in being possessed by wealth.  

When people are defined by what they own, what they own ends up owning them.  My Dad used to tell me, “Son, it’s one thing to want something, but it’s another thing to get it, and have to take care of it.”  One way possessions can own people is by demanding our time and effort. If a person is constantly afraid to lose their possessions, that person can become obsessed defending and protecting those possessions.

Jesus closed the story by calling attention to people who are rich in possessions but who are not rich in the things of God.  The real issue here is priorities.  It is the question of what matters most.  It is a question that constantly stays with each of us, everyday, all the way down to the final stretch of our lives. 

Because we are mortal, and because our lives are full, free, but short, we can all see our own faces in this story. We all struggle between storing up treasures here on earth; doing things that matter now, verses storing treasures in heaven; doing things that make an impact on others, our families and the world after we are gone.  The only way most people to learn to deal with the dilemma of wealth, is to have something happen to us, to remind us what really matters before we die.  Fortunately, you don’t have to wait to learn what it means to be ‘smart’ with the only life you have.  The Holy Spirit is in the reality business.  To hear the Spirit, you must learn from what Jesus is saying.

One way to ‘get real’ in the Spirit, is to experience the goodness, grace and generosity of God, so that you can learn what really matters in life.   When you understand what ‘good’ really is, and that ‘good’ is more about ‘who’ than ‘what’, you are beginning to learn about what is most valuable in life.  And When you experience this kind of spiritual intelligence, the kind Jesus was teaching about, it’s becomes easier, to stop just ‘taking’ and to start becoming a ‘giver’ with you life.  Teresa told me recently about her hair dresser, a lady in her 40’s who was getting excited about going to the Prom.  Yes, you heard me.  She was going to the special prom they were having for special needs kids at Western Avenue Baptist Church, and she was taking a young special needs child, who loved to ‘dance’. He was excited too, but he said he didn’t want to have to wear a tux.  He just wanted to move, even though he could only shuffle his feet.  And what a joy, she said it would be, to get to take him to take him to the prom.

Giving to others in need, is the best, biblical way to store up treasures in heaven. John 3:16 says “For God so loved he gave . . .” This is what love does, it gives.

On the news recently, an was the author of the new book, “Happy Money.”  The writer was also a TED Talks contributor, who said that it wasn’t enough to ‘give’ generally, but that the happiest givers were those who gave specifically, who had special interests and concerns and wanted to stay in touch with who, what and where, their money helped.  That author also said, according statistics, money doesn’t make people happy, unless they are helping someone with it.  Jesus told us that in this story a long, long time who.  And it wasn’t because he was smart.  He was God in human flesh (CBS This Morning, April 26, 2019). 

Now, don’t you wonder whatever happened to the man who wanted Jesus to settle his inheritance?  I wonder if he got the message, or if he, like so many, just let it go over his head, instead of letting it sink deep into his heart?  How about you?  Amen.