C, Post-Pentecost 8 Proper 13 - Luke 12:13-21 "The Rich Merry Fool"

Luke 12:13–21 (ESV) Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”  But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?”  And 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.”  And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully,  and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’  And 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.  And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” ’  But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’  So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

When someone in the crowd says to Jesus, “Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”  Let’s say Jesus says, “Okay!  I will.”  And they go, so Jesus can tell the enquirer’s brother to divide the inheritance.  The inheritance is divided, what then.  Does everyone live happily ever after?  Maybe, but most likely not!

What type of relationship do you think the two brothers had, after Jesus intervened in the dispute?  If the two could not settle their differences beforehand, there is a very good chance the relationship would have deteriorated even further after the fact. 

What would the two brothers’ opinions be of Jesus?  Both would have been wrong!  One brother would have been bitter and resentful for Jesus doing what he did, and the other although he may have been pleased with Jesus’ intervention, would have believed the wrong things about Jesus’ purpose for coming into the world.

But no!  Jesus is not a divider of inheritances, and nor is he a divider of relationships.  He came to be a reconciler, resolving each person’s relationship with God the Father.  And only in our reconciliation with God, can a person expect to have a God-pleasing settlement with another person.

Jesus does not name the person in the crowd, nor does he call him friend.  Rather, he impersonally and abruptly says, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” (Luke 12:14 ESV)

Jesus cannot be a friend of covetousness, justifying and mediating a person’s greed for riches that don’t allow God the Father to be first.

He says to the man and the crowd, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”  (Luke 12:15 ESV)

Possessions here are literally, “things under which you submit first”, or the things you serve as your gods. 

These things we call goods.  But the problem with making these goods our gods, they destroy human relationships and ultimately our relationship with God the Father.

Jesus tells a parable to demonstrate to the crowd, what happens when we make gods out of his gifts by conserving them, trusting them for our security.  Or liberally using them, to extravagantly serve ourselves in pleasure.

If Jesus had helped the man to get his share of the inheritance, Jesus would have helped him become like the rich man in the parable.

Notice in Jesus’ parable to whom the rich man speaks…

“The land of a rich man produced plentifully,  and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’  And 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.  And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’” (Luke 12:16–19 ESV)

Who does he talk to? No one!  In the culture of Jesus’ day this would have immediately stood out for the listeners.  Not so much for us today!  Which says something in itself for us who perhaps are more like the rich man than we would like to admit. 

In the middle eastern culture of the day, the rich man would  have discussed with his contemporaries, what he might do. 

Here though however, he only has himself to talk to.  No children, no brothers, no parents, no community, no one!

It’s here we begin to understand why Jesus does not do one’s bidding, telling the brother to divide the inheritance.  A lot more than the inheritance would have been divided if Jesus followed the wishes of the one whose life consisted in the abundance of possessions.  Jesus does not serve the sinful self in its sin.  Rather he serves the sinner in being freed from the power of death, freeing the sinner from the deeds and desires of sin.

The rich man in the parable has possessions and property,  but he is all alone.  The wealth he received from his land producing plentifully, reveals the poverty of his position in life.  He has made himself god of his dominion.  The rich man has taken the place of God, forgetting God the Father, and also fails to remember the problem humanity has, when it takes God’s place.

Because we are not God, we fear losing our identity as top dog, and to protect our position in life,  rid ourselves of the competition, and find our self only with our self for company.  As the saying goes, “it’s lonely being at the top!”  Humans were never created to be God or to be alone.

However, in our wealth-based society that’s exactly what’s happening.  The greater our wealth grows, the more we withdraw from our neighbours, the higher the fences and walls become around us.  Time is spent submitting to and serving our wealth, and in the fullness of time we find ourselves alone separated from God and from our neighbours.

The rich man finds himself alone talking to himself, focused on himself.  Self, I have my crops, my barns, my grain, my goods, with my soul.  But are they really his?  Are the goods you have really yours?  Can you have your cake and eat it too?

It seems Jesus is pointing us to Solomon’s deliberations written in Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.”  But unfortunately, the rich man in the parable and perhaps us too, when we are presumptuously consumed by our possessions, overlook the next but most important part of the verse which continues, “This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?” (Ecclesiastes 2:24-25 ESV)

But really, is the rich man content?  When I observe my goods to which I attribute worth and wealth, it’s not long before the mirage of “satisfied desires” moves and I am unsatisfied once again.  Our goods as gods cannot give us the peace which is only found in God.

Early church father Augustine, rightly says of God the Father, “My soul is restless until it finds its rest in you.”   When wealth and property control us, we get so easily caught up in the belief that our restlessness will stop once we have an overabundance of food and drink.  But it doesn’t.

Jesus knows this.  In fact, in the flesh of a human, he experienced the temptation in which we are tempted and fail.  But, although tempted, Jesus does not succumb to temptation as we do, but faithfully followed our Heavenly Father.

The rich man talking to himself is like a person who chases one’s own steamy breath that vanishes in a moment on a cold  frosty morning. 

“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities!  All is vanity.  I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.” (Ecclesiastes 1:2,14 ESV)

To put it in today’s vernacular, “The rich man is full of hot air, and not much else!”  At the end of the day, he doesn’t even realise his own life is not his own.  Life is not a right but a gift to us – on loan from God.

The rich man puts his feet up in relaxation, eating and drinking in merriment.  Here Jesus uses a play on words.  The words “merry” and “fool” in Greek are both related to the word “diaphragm”.  We might say to be in a good frame of mind.  But diaphragm here suggests a good gut feeling in the torso or midriff.  Think of a relaxing sigh or breath when one has a contented tummy and is in a good frame of mind.

But in the parable God says, “Fool!”  “You, rich man, are hot air and deluded in your comfort.” When God says, “Fool”, Jesus is literally saying the rich man has no diaphragm. He doesn’t have a good frame of mind.  His gut feeling of security is vanity and a chasing after the wind since his goods and possessions are but a breath.  So too is his life!

The Psalmist says, “the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough — that one should live on forever and not see decay.”  (Psalm 49:8–9 NIV)

Our lives are on loan from God.  He is the source of life.  Our life sees decay and death because of sin.  But, despite this, God gives life through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.  Jesus is our daily bread.  He is today’s bread, and he is our tomorrow eternal bread too.

Saint Paul tells the Colossians, “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices  and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”(Colossians 3:9–10 ESV)

Jesus gives you your new self, the Holy Spirit comes to see the old self put off, destroy your false gods, and renew you in the knowledge of your new self, Jesus Christ the new Adam, in the image of your Creator, our Father in Heaven.  Amen.

C, Post-Pentecost 7 Proper 12 - Colossians 2:6–15, 18–19 Luke 11:13 "Pray for the Holy Spirit"

Colossians 2:6–15, 18–19 (ESV) Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him,  rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.  See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.  For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,  and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.  In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ,  having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.  And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses,  by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.  He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.  Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind,  and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.

Luke 11:13 (ESV) (Jesus says to his disciples.) If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

Does God punish?  Does he test his people?  What is the reality of God’s discipline, for you and me? 

Christians suffer just as much as the next person does. 

When is our suffering a result of our disobedience, and when does our suffering occur because of following Christ?

Now that Christ has come and died for us, why do we still suffer?  If God is a God of love, why do we encounter evil?

A myriad of questions come to the fore when we examine God’s work of punishment because of sin and evil.

Jesus prays and his disciples ask him to teach them to pray as John the Baptist taught his disciples.  The disciples of Jesus did not fully understand and know that Jesus was the Son of God, but if they had they may have asked Jesus, “If you are the Son of God, why do you pray?”

We know Jesus is the Son of God, we know he was born as the Messiah, the Christ, or the anointed one.  He was born as a human being and anointed to die for our sin, yet he was without sin.  He was the Son of God and the Son of man sent to save humanity from itself.  So why does he pray?

Surely, being the eternal Son of God, he could speak the Word of God with omnipotent power and control whatever or whoever he chose.  But no, so often Jesus is found in a quiet place of prayer. 

Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray by teaching them to pray to their Father.  Just as Jesus prays to his Heavenly Father, he teaches them, and us, to do the same.  He does so for one and the same reason.  Our weakness and the weakness he assumed by being born in the flesh of a human.

At the heart of Jesus’ prayer is a prayer for the Holy Spirit.  This also might seem strange since he is the Son of God and that he has already received the Holy Spirit in his baptism.  But Jesus teaches them what he is doing.  He is praying to his Father in Heaven to continually send the Holy Spirit to him.

In his human weakness he continually bangs on God’s door for help.  Jesus’ help comes in the name of his Lord and God who made heaven and earth, who sends the Holy Spirit.  And so too for us!

“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him,  rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.  See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.  For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,  and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.”  (Colossians 2:6–11 ESV)

We deceive ourselves when we stop praying to God our Father.  We take ourselves out of the cycle of confession and forgiveness when we stop praying.  Like a young child learning to walk we reject help from our Heavenly Father, and soon enough there is a buster and suffering follows.

On the other hand, Jesus still hangs on to the hand of his Father, all the way to the cross.  In doing so, the Holy Spirit guides him in the human weakness he bears.  Although he is not evil, he bears the flesh of Adam, he endures in the evil of human flesh without succumbing to the evil.

Jesus trusts in the overwhelming steadfast love of our Heavenly Father, and, bearing all the suffering that goes with the Son of God giving up his divinity and dwelling in the flesh of his own creation, Jesus teaches us to do the same.

As Paul says to the Colossians,  “Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind,  and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.” (Colossians 2:18–19 ESV)

As Christians we get our identity from Jesus Christ.  But when we fail to pray in our weakness for his help, we disqualify ourselves by puffing up our human spirit in favour over the Holy Spirit.  And this is where our suffering can begin.  We let go of God’s hand and take the hand of fellowship with our visions of delusion, reasoning of the human spirit, and our own desires of worship which turn us in on ourselves and results in pain and suffering.

God tests us, and the punishment we receive is not so much what God does to us, but that he withdraws from us and leaves us to our own devices.  “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives, he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.” (Hebrews 12:6,10b ESV)

What is happening here, is we as Christians believe in Jesus Christ for our help.  But once that help comes, we mistake the Holy Spirit for our own spirit, and on doing this, lose site of Jesus.  We fall out of the cycle of salvation that God has placed us in at baptism. 

It’s as if having been buried with him in baptism, we stop allowing the Holy Spirit to raise us with Jesus through faith.  The powerful working of God in the Holy Spirit is replaced with death; that death is trusting the human spirit. 

Jesus teaches us to pray, to join in with him, to receive the Holy Spirit, as he received the Holy Spirit, and needed to, while he was incarnate in flesh  and was led to his death and resurrection by the power of the same Holy Spirit.

Although God disciplines us, and we suffer, “Nevertheless, he looks upon our distress, when he hears our cry.  For our sake he remembered his covenant, and relented according to the abundance of his steadfast love.” (adapted from Psalm 106:44–45)

The covenant God sees is his covenant with Jesus Christ.  When God sees you, he sees Jesus.  As God allows us to suffer as a result of our sin, he wills us to see our sin in the suffering of Jesus.  He allows the Holy Spirit to return us back to trust in Jesus Christ, and this gives us peace with him, our Father in heaven.

While Jesus dwelt amongst us in plain sight, he taught us to pray.  Now that he is out of sight, how much more do we need to pray for the Holy Spirit?  We are reassured he is still with us only through faith, given only by the Holy Spirit.

We dwell in times where we need to constantly cry out in prayer to our Father for ourselves, each other and for the society in which we live.  The temptations to worship the self in the desires of one’s pleasure; physically in our achievements, sexually through unauthorised homosexual and heterosexual acts,  emotionally through the instant gratification of what we want to look at and consume, individually as we are led away from fellowship to faith in one’s own will.  When we are overcome in these temptations, they might seem pleasing to the eye but under the surface they ooze with death.

God in his steadfast love and mercy allows markers to appear that certainly do shock us from time to time.  Tsunamis, bushfires, Covid-19, war, or economic collapse may or may not occur as a result of our individual deeds, but they are a call to pray, to pester God as did Abraham when he questioned God about saving Sodom and Gomorrah, and as Jesus encourages us to, in his parable of the imprudent fellow who pesters his neighbour to get bread to feed a guest.

God the Father wants us to bother him in prayer, just as Jesus did.  He wants your trust and your prayers, he wants to help you in your sinfulness, to save you and sustain you.  When you pray to Jesus for the Holy Spirit, the Heavenly Father is pleased to oblige.  Amen.