Sermon

ch ch the so if the purpose be the new testament lesson is found in the gospel according to saint luke the twelfth chapter thirty two of the thirty first versus it's b

one of the multitude said dejesus teacher bit my brother divide the inheritance with me the jesus said to him man who made me a judge or a divider over you and he said to them take heat and beware of all covetousness for once life does not consist in the abundance of one's possessions and he told them a parable saying the landowner richman brought forth plentifully and he thought to himself what shall i do for i have nowhere to store my crops and he said i would do this i will pull down my barns and build larger ones and there i will store all migraine and buy goods and i will say to my soul soul you have ample goods laid up for many years take your yeast eat drink and be merry but god said to him for this night your soul was required of you and things

you have prepared who is will they be so is he lays a treasure for himself and has not reached toward god and he said to his disciples therefore i tell you do not be anxious about your life what you should eat more about your body what you show put on for life is more than food and the body is more than clothing consider the ravens they neither so nor reed they have neither storehouse nor barn and yet god feeds them how much more value are you that the birds and what's your view by being anxious can add a cubic to his span of life if you then are not able to do a small thing is that why are you anxious about the arrest consider the lilies how they grow at the toil nor spin and yet i tell you even solomon in all his glory is not a raid like one of these but it got so close the grass which

is alive in the field today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven how much more will he close you all ye of little faith and do not seek what you were to eat and what you wear to drink more be of anxious mind for all the nations of the world seek these things and god knows that you need them instead to see god's kingdom and all these things shall be yours as well your ends the new testament lesson our preacher this morning is the distinguished professor of old testament at columbia seminary in decatur georgia has been with us as many of you know this weekend as the keynote speaker for an important conference on the land that has been sponsored partly by riverside student justice program he's done such a wonderful service for us that i'm sorry to

apologize that we have misspelled his name in the calendar and with great apologies but great pleasure at the same time i present to you dr walker bro the man will give us a sermon for mornings but this bill gray's peace and mercy from abroad and we have come to know decisive way in jesus of nazareth of course i am delighted to be with you as is anyone who has invited to riverside and i am grateful as are so many of us for the great ministry of your church wherever jesus went he evoked questions and wonder months sometimes he offered assurances more often he plays people increases

this story we have on our hands this morning is about a man who came up to him with a serious question i imagine it is the more serious question is not a question about whether the bible is infallible or whether there is life after death or a debate about economic theory it is a simple straightforward request make my brother give me milan make him divide the inheritance the hardest questions of human persons and human families are questions about land they are the hardest question for rural families allow the next generation will subtly a stage and if you grew up like i did in a rural community you know that if that isn't done right families do not speak to each other for the next three generations but the land the question is not confined to farmers and children of

farmers is everywhere around us it is the question in northern ireland that in lebanon and in israel and in south africa it is the debate that is going on between the vatican and the church and some doll and the question crops up every day omar last like who gets which courses in the curriculum or which kid gets the car or where shall the national headquarters of the church the overall i am questions and we think we ought to have our share so that there's nothing especially spiritual or theological or romantic just divide up the land jesus is no dummy jesus knows that to be a probate judge is the hardest trickiest work you can do certainly not to please everyone likely to please no one he knows that the

man was a lot of land even at the expense of his brother because he has figured out as we all i am that if they get enough land you can be self sufficient and you don't have to deal with anybody except on your own terms so there is a drive in this man to become self sufficient and safe jesus starts the conversation with a terse little announcement that your life does not consist in what you can get because you can't get enough to be safe the man must have been exasperated because jesus wouldn't engage helmet and then jesus like jeez is always says as i will not administer your estate but i will tell you a story that will help you think differently and you know the story but we will linger over it because it is our story

is about a man a rich man who had landed and he wasn't thinking about dividing it up he kept it and he worked it and he worked it very well and it produced more than he expected and more than he could use and here's problem which is the problem so for so many of us was not production but storage it wasn't distribution it was story which probably he tried to sell it to the russians but they were buying and nobody wanted and so he hoarded it encountered it and store it he had a surplus and israel was known never sense the story of the man that you mustn't have a surplus so the man's energy is used in taking care of his surplus of the surplus is the main problem in the story he discovered that he was utterly

self sufficient he could live life on his own terms but he discovered something else because of his surplus he was utterly alone quite isolated what strikes me about his situation is that he never talked to any body there's nobody in this story but he mr so the taxes he said to himself the sea anemone conversation barbers and he prepares to hold a party by himself which of like the democratic party in new hampshire and he says to himself to eat and drink and be merry because you as much a surplus surplus had calls the isolation he thought he could be security thought he could be happy or waldman

and this is the story of our surplus and isolation and then late in the story late in his life just when he imagined he added all arranged for partying all night there comes as other voice he was surprised to hear any voices he was particularly surprised to hear the hard auden voice of god because he thought he had made himself a newman he thought that god's voice would never have to penetrate is overextended well guarded life and then he discovered that he was not so safe not so our promise not so self sufficient not immune from the penetrating voice of god we may imagine that early on when

he had a chance to trust god and be dependent on god and be grateful to god he had a chance but he didn't that he'd never done all this surplus for himself but because he did not heed god's friendly voice at the beginning and now he had to listen to god's adversarial voice at the end now god speaks and the man grows silent indeed he grows so silent that he never speaks again in the story he loses his voice but the story is about the song run voice of broader that

will cut through our show bush the man who called himself or so he said so all eat drink in the marais and god cancer and changes his name is as you're not us all your foe you're gonna center the government foe your fool because you have bet your life when your food and your land and your surplus and now you get to die because you cannot escape god's voice and you cannot escape god's rule and if you will not deal with god and obedience you can deal with god in a breezy of mass and then god asks the great unanswered question though all the greedy

won was and all that stuff which you got what you gonna do with it now and visas and as the story with his wonderful throwaway line you're really be rich toward gotten an outward yourself and then are you will be so fearful and so mama and so did tell a story and that leaves office to think about how we will respond to this story that is the truth of our life i could think of for people that need to respond to this story forrest wonders the first there's the guy in the story was either

a sorrel food and we don't know how he responded he just kind of faded away any of wealth the story handel's him roughly andy disappeared but you don't have to worry about him because he's simply a literary fiction anyway that that you might want a watch him suddenly there's the manning came to jesus with the question and for a stranger we don't hear from him again either but you wonder what he thought when jesus said all the stuff he got what he can do with it why they may be sent all i say i think all even now maybe he wished he and masked the question about land

maybe was such a wheeler dealer but he was trying to get land didn't belong to him one house may be heard the story and went back and doctor years brother whose land he was trying to get maybe he was left with a question that he had to think about the rest of his life as do we the third people who have to respond or the disciples there like many students one grand rounds and they follow jesus around and they watch and they listen but they don't very often get it right they have committed their life to jesus but every time he's a strand that something they say oh this is all

moot us so jesus is a good teacher and he never misses that teachable moment so after the guy leaves he turns to his disciples and he says you know what that story just means that i just told you it means don't be so anxious that means don't spend your life on food and clothing and well being and security and landed an arms and stuff because if you spend your life on that you wind up very lonely you may wind up in the un voting alone except for luxembourg what jesus says to his disciples is that this is not an empty neutral world where nothing matters but it is a

world that is governed by god and god will not finely tolerate self sufficiency that he's gotten at the cost of a neighbor so jesus says to his disciples get your life focused on trust and all morning one justice and not self sufficiency on compassion and not isolation and then he says watch where you put a treasure because your heart will be far behind and watch how much stuff you get it if you get too much in kenya the fourth listener you know it would be at us and we have to

think about how we decide about this story because it is a story of our life it is a story about cutting and being anxious and having a little faith and be isolated and being a full and dying it is a story about faith and about justice and about being rich toward blog it is a story about a hard choice between north american face and asking for lambert and we mostly are like the first man who came to jesus we really our land askers

we americans bankers as lambda of farmers and farmers ask land of each other and government asks land of farmers in the form of taxes and mortgages and big nations asked landed from a little nations and powerful than people ask landed from a helpless hopeless mortgaged peasants and we are a land of transacting community so we take all weekend and we call it a policy or if you're a metaphor make or you can call it an opportunity but it is not opportunity and it is not policy is greed driven by our anxiety and when we get too much

land and control to much of the world that rightfully belongs to our brother mr sister then we are astonished but people without land as jackie i'm hostile ways so perhaps most important evan jellicoe question for north americans to be asking is how do we get the land and how much are we the helm and what happens to it when we have too much in what are we going to protect it and what about those who don't have any and ken jennings it haunted the man who asked the question and it haunts everybody who comes to jesus the question for so many

of us is why do i have so much and why am i so alone bland questions are all around us you most of the troubled spots in the world in our society in our families because everybody was more land and more turf and more power and more eating and drinking until we die now this story is not addressed to those who have no land and wants armor it is addressed to those of us who have too much and want more and we're going to die because of it i find this text

for me and if you're like me for you relate to me as a statement of our double minded mass because we really are folks whose so much want to trust god's gifts and we would assume that his innocently as birds and flowers and sparrows and lilies and yet we are so frightened and we are strong enough to want bread and land and food on our own terms and we all double minded and the problem is so acute because were so fluid and so aggressive we are double minded because we're children of faith and we want to be self sufficient and because we are baptized we are haunted as where the disciples by the fact that we have made a play oji

to trust the promises of god and to live by god's good gifts swallow people near the story the rich man in it the man who asked the question the disciples loss we are asked questions about hoarding and gathering and controlling and amassing it and intimidating it until we are safe harbor hah that all this getting a real economic policy and arms policy odd that it all makes us more in secure and frightened and we are cut off from god and we are cut off from

our neighbor and the story saying news an alternative to us saying a possibility about trust and righteousness and being rich or god isn't a mind boggling to think what would happen to consumer goods into the arms race and the foreclosures if we were released from our terrible passion for self security the news that jesus offers to us to the disciples to the man in the story to the farmers to the bankers to the policymakers to the war planners to the tax lawyers to

us is that security comes from the day gift of bread from the god given off for all of us to be wise instead of a flume is to quit hoarding the cement that we rich satiated americans were caught in a terrible place and we are our way to a wretched death together we're not the only ones that we are on our way and if i read this story rightly it announces that is very late and we are very close to death but we couldn't it

really notice that our heavenly father gives us what we need in our innocence we could notice that our mother who watches over us invites us to a more excellent way we could watch the healing it began it is promised and when the healing begins we will begin to know the coming of god's kingdom water rose parade today we stand at the abyss and to stare across

we stare across the lot because we have so much we stare at their hunger and our food and we yearn to reach across but we are so frightened we are so frightened that we imagine the abyss is our final destination we're so close to falling into it that we pray that you should be a bridge be a bridge between our affluence and the despair of the poor be a bridge between us and the peasants be a bridge between loss and the landless terrorists b a breads that keeps us all so frightened and so

isolated and so alienated be a bridge and by your mercy and by your power and by you're liberating imagination grant that we shall be the bridge to bridge the very abyss that we have created what are yearning be transformed to dangerous bridging actions of justice and mercy and caring we pray in the name of jesus by union have reached across the terrible britain abyss and given us access to safe land amen