Parables and Place

Sunday, August 29th, 2004
13th Sunday after Pentecost
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Luke 14:1, 7-14

1On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath, they were watching him closely. 2Just then, in front of him, there was a man who had dropsy. 3And Jesus asked the lawyers and Pharisees, ‘is it lawful to cure people on the Sabbath, or not?’ 4But they were silent. So Jesus took him and healed him, and sent him away. 5Then he said to them, ‘If one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a Sabbath day?’ 6And they could not reply to this. 7 When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. 8‘When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; 9and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, “Give this person your place,” and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. 10But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, “Friend, move up higher”; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. 11For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’ 12He said also to the one who had invited him, ‘When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. 13But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. 14And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’

(Close eyes, point to different parts of the sanctuary and name who is sitting there …or who WOULD be, if they were here)… (Helen Schools, John and Marylou, Jay, Jim and Mary, Florence, Jean, Sam and Annie Mae, Kitty (Hardwick & Lewis), Herbert (& Hilda), Tommy, Ramey, Helen and David, Barbara & Elwood (but they are in the Outer Banks this week), Leslie, Sue, George, William Franklin, William Harrison, Janet and Frankie, Jonathan and Anthony, Ruth, Arlene, Shirley, Allene, Hunter and Gwen … Leslie, and when they’re visiting, Donald and Angela).

As far back as I can remember, if I’ve spent any amount of time attending a given church, there’s a point at which you know where you can expect to see folks on a Sunday morning. And you get to the point where you have a preferred spot to sit. For many years now, our preferred spot to sit when we enter a sanctuary is towards the front on the left side, always to the left (just kidding, Jay).

In the best case scenario, people sit in the expected place simply out of habit – with no particular agenda; it’s just where they always sit.

In the worst-case scenario, it can take an ugly turn… at the age of 64, singer John Charles Thomas, embarked on a three year survey on hospitality or the lack thereof in churches. Two years into the survey, he wrote that of the 195 churches he’d visited, he was spoken to in only one by someone other than an official greeter, and that was to ask him to move his feet.

There seems to be something more along the lines of the second instance going on at this feast to which Jesus has been invited. On first reading, this actually seems to be something like a Ms. Manners column – Jesus as host-educator, teaching his listeners what to do and what not to do when throwing a dinner party. It seems that seating arrangements were as important in first-century Palestine as they are at the next big wedding extravaganza.

We may smile at those people who always insist on sitting in the same pews or seats in church. But in the ancient world, place was guarded by most even more jealously. Society was strongly hierarchical. There was a place on the ladder. For many it was a matter of survival to make sure they either stayed where they were or climbed higher. Position was not just a matter of individual achievement. It was a community value. It was in some sense given by the group. Your value was inseparable from what others thought about you. Most to be feared was to lose your place, to be embarrassed, to be publicly humiliated by having to take a lower place. Losing face could not be shrugged off as easily as for many of us who have grown up in a strongly individualistic culture. Losing face was almost like losing one’s life.

Are we today that far removed from the dynamics of that first-century feast? Do we play the “who is sitting where and what does that mean?” game beyond junior high and high school? From what I remember in church youth group, there was still an element of “who do I need to be sitting with and who do I need to be staying away from” present even there - not that different from the dynamics I found when I walked into the cafeteria at school.

Can we take the passage at face value? Assume a humble approach; let others discover how wonderful you are?

The best seats are those nearest the host. It is so yet today. The boss sits at the head of the table, flanked by top lieutenants. Key staff sits at the table, and lesser staff sits at the back of the room or around the perimeter. A savvy person can walk into the room and determine the rank of participants simply by observing where they sit.

At sporting events, the best seats are closest to the action – or in comfortable boxes elevated above and separated from the crowd. A person with the right connections can always get a good ticket. A person without connections might not be able to purchase a ticket at any price.

We like the best seats. The view is better, but the appeal goes beyond the view. Sitting in the best seats, we feel superior. Our seating tells the crowd of our superior status.

Luke characterizes Jesus' remarks as a parable, cueing us that Jesus is speaking of kingdom issues rather than offering advice about self-promotion. Jesus' advice not to sit uninvited in the place of honor is a restatement of Proverbs 25:6-7. It makes a certain amount of sense, because assertiveness puts one at risk of embarrassment. However, we have seen ambitious people grab the place of honor and hang onto it through thick and thin, bringing into doubt the wisdom of Jesus' advice. Aggressiveness has its risks, but it also has its rewards.

Verse 11, however, makes it clear that Jesus' advice has to do, not with worldly self-promotion, but with life in the kingdom of God. "For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted." This is a polar reversal, which flip-flops our familiar world, opening up a world in which the rules are very different. "God is at the root of this polar reversal, a theme Luke will not let the readers forget (for example, 1:51-53; 6:20-26; 13:30)" (Cousar, et. al., 495).

By alerting us to this impending reversal, Jesus helps to prepare us for life in God's kingdom, a place that seems at once strange and wonderful and threatening. Just as we would prepare ourselves for life in a foreign land by learning the language and customs, so we can prepare ourselves for the kingdom of God by following Kingdom Rules now. Indeed, the kingdom of God becomes a present reality, not just a future hope, when we acknowledge God as king and live by Kingdom Rules.

The danger is that we might misinterpret Jesus' words, not as a call to humble discipleship, but as a backdoor strategy for self-promotion. "This entire message becomes a cartoon if there is a mad, competitive rush for the lowest place, with ears cocked toward the host, waiting for the call to ascend" (Craddock, Interpretation, 177). God, who will implement the reversal, is not deceived. God knows our hearts, and raises up the humble heart. "Lowliness springs from reverence…. Lowliness springs from knowledge of sins forgiven…. Such lowliness God honors" (Buttrick, 253).

12He said also to the one who had invited him, "When you
give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your
relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you
would be repaid. 13But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled,
the lame, and the blind. 14And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay
you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

Now Jesus turns his attention to the host, who is tempted to use the dinner party to curry favor from powerful people. Jesus warns us not to invite the four groups of people (friends, brothers, relatives, or rich neighbors) that we would most like to invite, and tells us to invite the four groups of people (the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind) that we would least like to invite. Note that the crippled, lame and blind were forbidden to serve as priests because of their physical imperfections (Lev 21:17-23).


How can we read this passage and apply it to us in today’s world? What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

Jesus does not encourage remote charity that only sends a check, but calls us to invite the poor and disenfranchised to sit at our table, the second-most intimate place in our home. By doing so, we provide not only food for the body but food for the soul. "Through such activity these marginalized people become members of the group. Symbolically they are no longer outside the circle of power" (Cousar, et. al., 496).

Jesus was invited to eat at the home of a Pharisee on the Sabbath, and a person who needed healing was present. They were watching him again! But Jesus was also watching them. He took note of how they scrambled for position, seeking the best seats at their frequent banquets while neglecting the poor and the sick people in their midst.

The parable about place is a cautionary one – Jesus is telling us to never lose sight of what it REALLY means to be a part of the Kingdom – it’s not about where you’re sitting, it’s about who you are serving.

Let’s pray.


Gilmour, S. MacLean, and Buttrick, George A. George A., The Interpreter's Bible, Volume 8. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1952)

Cousar, Charles B.; Gaventa, Beverly R.; and Newsome, James D., Texts for Preaching: A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV–Year C (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994)

Craddock, Fred B., "Luke," Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox Press,(1990)

Jesus Caught …


Sunday, August 22nd, 2004
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Matt 14:22-33

22 Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. 23 And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, 24 but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. 25 And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. 26 But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, "It is a ghost!" And they cried out in fear. 27 But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid." 28 Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water." 29 He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. 30 But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" 31 Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" 32 When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. 33 And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God."

Be kind. Be gentle. Be truthful. Be patient. Be understanding. Be forgiving. Be aware of God’s grace and presence – and leading.

As I understand it, following Christ – being a Christian - doesn’t mean simply accepting that his teachings and his example were honorable and lofty, worthy of attention and good for society. It doesn’t mean agreeing in theory. It means giving yourself to Christ. I can’t say this simply enough or often enough. Becoming a Christ-follower means, in Jesus’ own words,

"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23)

It means leaving behind what you think is best for your life, and learning – and doing - what is best for others, and for the Kingdom of God.

It means taking Christ at his word when he said the things he said about himself. Most notably, to his critics:

‘He who has seen me has seen the Father.’

What was so unsettling about that? Most of us bear some resemblance to our parents – sometimes more to one than the other, but doesn’t it seem odd that people would get upset about Jesus telling them that he looked like his father?

It was, of course, because he wasn’t speaking about Joseph, but about God.

The great mystery – and the great challenge – of the Christian faith is that we are called to be like Christ. That we even have the ability to contemplate that as a possibility is in itself an act of the Holy Spirit, but that we have the actual potential is nothing less than the amazing and free gift of God.

We find in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life and ministry example after example of miracles that Christ performed.

If we are called to be like Christ – to be his presence here on earth, are we called to step out into the turbulent waters of the world and follow him there? What sort of miracles might we be capable of ourselves?

Should we really take our cue from Peter, who proved himself to be, more often than not, a little less than brave, a little less than truthful, a little more than convenience-minded.

Let’s look at the story. Jesus has just finished feeding over 5,000 men, plus women and children, with 5 loaves and 2 fish. That’s a pretty convincing miracle, however you interpret the events. As soon as they were done eating, Jesus tells the disciples to get into the boat and head on across the Sea of Galilee, and dismisses the crowds. Can you imagine having been a witness and even a participant in the feeding of the 5,000 and then being dismissed? I would hope that I’d at least make an attempt to stay around Jesus, maybe just to say ‘thanks; I was hungry, now I’m not’, or something like that. Jesus ends up by himself and spends some serious time in prayer up on the mountain. Evening comes, and with it, a storm breaks out on the sea. Jesus walks out toward the boat. His disciples are in the boat, and not only are they terrified by the waves and the wind, they now have to deal with the specter of someone or something coming at them across the water. Matthew says they thought it was a ghost.

But Jesus called out to them and told them it was him – and to not be afraid.

How many times have we been guilty of mistaking someone walking into our lives for a ghost – or a ghoul of some kind, only to find that they turn out to be Jesus walking toward us? How often are we so wrapped up in expecting to see Jesus’ movement in our lives through a particular set of circumstances – a particular group of people – a particular place, even, only to be hit up beside the head by the reality that Jesus is going to move where HE wants to move and not where we expect him to move? That was the biggest obstacle Jesus’ very existence presented to the religious leaders of the day. He did not come in the expected fashion, in the standard religiously accepted format.

Peter calls out a challenge. There is an element of faith in the call, but before you get to the faith part you have to get through the doubt part:

"Lord, if it is you …”

The biggest two-letter word in the English language: IF.

Paul Tillich, a German theologian wrote that doubt is an element of faith, not the opposite of it. The opposite of faith is certainty. That makes sense. Faith lives with doubt, and doubt informs faith. The conversation goes something like this: faith says ‘I believe the sun will rise tomorrow.’ Doubt says ‘Maybe. Tomorrow hasn’t come yet. We could be hit by a meteor tonight and the world could be destroyed.’ Faith says ‘True, it could happen, but if it doesn’t, I still believe the sun will rise tomorrow.’ Certainty leaves no room for disagreement, no room to breathe, as it were. Certainty doesn’t require faith. It only requires blind unquestioning obedience.

Peter was willing to accept for the moment that it was Christ walking towards them where no one should be walking. But he was also willing to test that hypothesis. He asks Jesus to command him to walk on water as well. It’s a neat idea. Test the hypothesis and get a really cool experience out of the test to boot. How many of us can say that we have actually, literally, walked on water? (Hold that thought)

Jesus meets Peter’s challenge. He says one word: “Come.” So Peter’s bluff is called, and he steps out of the boat onto the water.

A few weeks ago I got to go tubing for the first time in my life. First of all, I loved it. I had a blast. A few times during the ride the way the tube was hitting the water and the way the water was hitting me, it really DID seem like the water would have been able to support my weight, had I stepped off the tube – going the same speed I was going. The illusion disappeared as soon as we slowed down and stopped. Peter stepped out of a boat that was not going anywhere near 25 miles per hour.

It must have been an incredible feeling. I can imagine Peter not taking his eyes off Jesus as he took those first steps. Jesus would have been the only thing he was seeing at that point. But he was intent on one thing: doing what Jesus was doing.

With all his faults and shortcomings, with all his volatility, Peter was still the only one who took the chance to step out of the boat. For however brief a moment, he was duplicating Christ.

Then life sets in. The wind and the waves got to him. How often do we let that happen to us? How often do we catch a vision for where it is God wants us to go, what it is Christ wants us to do, and we start out in that direction, and begin second-guessing ourselves, giving heed to our doubts and fears, forgetting that what we are doing is not from us, but from God? If the first miracle in the story is that Jesus walked on water, then the second is surely that Peter did too.

We can do wonderful and incredible things, when we have our eyes set on Jesus, and don’t become distracted by the pettiness, the superficiality, the spitefulness that is the standard operating procedure for the world in which we live.

The story continues: Peter becomes afraid, and turns away from Jesus and begins to focus on his own circumstances: He’s standing on water. The waves are splashing up on HIM. HE can feel the wind trying to blow HIM over. In other words, he begins to focus not on Christ but on himself. And he begins to sink. That self-indulgent streak got to him. He lost sight of why he was doing what he was doing – he wanted to be doing what Jesus was doing, and then began to view it from the point of view of what he was doing instead.

In order to walk on water, we must overcome at least two things: our fears, and our selfishness. We must be willing to forget who WE are in order to focus on who CHRIST is.

To Peter’s credit, he knew who to call on when he DID start to sink:

"Lord, save me!"

And here is the third miracle of the story. “Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

In those two sentences, we have a vivid portrayal of the act of Salvation. It is from this passage that we get the first words to the hymn Love Lifted Me –

I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore,
Very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more,
But the master of the sea heard my despairing cry,
From the waters lifted me now safe am I!
Love lifted me, Love lifted me,
When nothing else could help, love lifted me …”

So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

This is going to be something that we will each need to work out and understand for ourselves individually. What miracles are you capable of following Christ into? What doubts and fears, what sins assail you, hold you back, stunt your growth? What are we as a congregation capable of doing for the Kingdom? Can we present an example of the Kingdom that will stun and amaze the rest of the Northern Neck, and Virginia, and the world? Can we truly live out the values of the Kingdom in that way? I believe, with Christ’s help, we can. Do you?

When Jesus caught us by the hand and pulled us up out of the water, he was saying that he believed in US as much as we believe in him.

Let’s pray.

The Unexpected Kingdom
Or, Expecting the Unexpected

Sunday, August 8th, 2004
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton
Luke 12:32-40

32 "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. "Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; 36 be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. 37 Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. 38 If he comes during the middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves. 39 "But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. 40 You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour."

The first call came in shortly after 11:30. Nancy was over at Loretta’s trying to get her into her car so she could take her down to the hospital in Kilmarnock. Loretta had fallen for the second time that day, and for the 5th time in 3 days. I walked over and helped get Loretta down the steps, out of the house, and into the car.

Part of being in ministry, part of being a part of a family of faith like Jerusalem Baptist Church, means that, inasmuch as possible, you make yourself available for emergencies.

We’ve only been faced with a few such calls in our time here, and they’ve not all been late at night. The first was the call to let me know of Fox School’s death, just over a year ago. The second was to let me know of Charlotte Lewis’ passing a few months later. Both of those calls came in the middle of the day.
Most recently, Angelica’s call at 6 in the morning was a similar call, asking one of us to help take her to the hospital to welcome her baby, Cristal Esmeralda, into the world.

There is something different in a late- or middle-of-the-night phone call. Sometimes they’re expected, but generally, they are not. There is a jarring, an unsettling of the routine, when the night, which is usually reserved for relatively quiet sleep, is interrupted by either an unexpected knock on the door, the ring of the doorbell, or the ringing of the telephone.

There was something different about the way Jesus presented the kingdom to the people he spoke to. It caught them just as off-guard as a late-night phone call or knock on the door. Why would Jesus tell his listeners to not be afraid of the coming of the kingdom? It occurs to me that he was presenting them with a kingdom they weren’t looking for. They were looking for an earthly kingdom where they would, after centuries of being the vanquished, be the victors, in very specific physical and literal ways. That was what caused so much consternation among the leaders of the day. Jesus’ redefinition of what the TRUE kingdom of heaven was like went completely against the grain of what they’d been led to believe would be the reality of the kingdom by human standards. Jesus presented them with what is called a paradigm shift. That is when the very basic elements of what you have founded yourself in are flipped on end, and you have to learn to look at the world from an entirely different perspective. It comes out in Christ’s telling the disciples ‘the first shall be last and the last shall be first.” It comes through in Jesus’ telling the Pharisees ‘give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

A couple of weeks ago, we went over the parable of the Good Samaritan. In telling the parable, Jesus was not ONLY identifying who one’s neighbor REALLY is, but he was also painting a picture for his listeners of what the kingdom will be like. “The kingdom of God will be like having your sworn enemy be your best friend.” Have you noticed that when Jesus speaks of the Kingdom, he speaks in terms of relationships and values, not streets of Gold or wings and harps?

That may be why I find myself shying away from speaking of Heaven – in the way John speaks of Heaven in the book of Revelation. Heaven is the Kingdom of God fully realized. “Fully realized” means that everyone and everything is as God intended it to be. We will be fully human – the ‘whole people’ God wants us to be - in the Kingdom. We will live in a place where there is no more war, illness, sorrow, no more drug abuse, child abuse, and injustice, a world where we won’t open the paper to the obituaries to find out who’s lost whom. That by definition excludes it from being completed in our present reality.

That DOES NOT mean that IN our present reality, we won’t see parts of it. Jesus said ‘the Kingdom of God is within you”. We catch glimpses of the kingdom – Friday night at the game, we got whupped. however you look at it, by the 5th inning, we were just playing to be out on the field, it stopped being about trying to beat the other team. there was some grumbling and gloomy faces, but then something really cool happened.

Farnham (the other team) started to relax, laugh and smile, and so did we. The grandson of one of the players, who was decked out in his uniform, came out to swing his bat ... RJ, our pitcher, came up to within a few feet of home plate, and gently tossed the ball to the little boy. He was a little overwhelmed by the attention, and would have rather buried his face in his pappy's leg than swing again, but he did give it a try. With his grandfather's help, he did swing about 3 or 4 times. Then an older boy, probably 9 or 10, came up to bat. He got a base hit.
When it was our turn to come up to bat again, Leslie, who'd been cheering the team on, got a chance to bat and ALSO made a base hit. It turned into a relaxing evening. There were still some bruises and pulled muscles, and even, I’m afraid, one broken thumb. (Sorry Jay!)

The cool thing was this –

EVERYONE WAS CHEERING.

It wasn't about us and them anymore.

You could probably make a plausible argument for the fact that it stopped being about us and them when them's were the ones who had too many points for us to catch up, but looking at it another way, we could have stopped the game once we'd reached the point of no return - and emptied the field, made room for the other teams, and gone about our business. But somewhere around the 5th inning it started being about just being together.

It stopped being about the competition. About who’s going to get there first. It stopped being about base hits, tagging the runners, and catching fly balls, RBI’s and strategy, or knowing who to throw the ball to if and when it came to you. It started being about what Jesus was talking about. It started being about what we have in common, what we find joy in, what we have to share. It started being about treasuring each other as the wonderful, precious gifts of God that we are, about respecting and honoring each other even though we are on different sides of the field, about looking the other people on the field in the face and seeing the laughter of Jesus Christ himself reflected there.

"Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; 36 be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. 37 Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.

Can you imagine yourself being found by God in the middle of performing an unthinking act of … selfishness? A small thing … a cutting remark, a cold retort, a closing of the door to a person in need … God’s love for you is no different.

Now, can you picture it, being found by God in the middle of an act born from God’s own heart - a welcoming openness, an extravagant gesture of kindness, an irrepressibly warm and loving hug, a church with an average attendance of around 55 people serving meals to 80 or more people in the community on a routine basis, or delivering clothes, or much needed furniture? Again, God’s love does not change. It is now about how we respond to the kingdom.

Where would you rather be found?

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

The kingdom of God is like …

The second call, came shortly before 2 AM. It woke me out of a dead sleep. I keep 2 phones beside the bed at night – the cell phone and the home line. I was asleep enough that it took me a couple of rings to wake up, and by the time I picked up the cell phone and saw that IT wasn’t ringing, the landline had stopped ringing. We have caller ID, and I was able to view the number from which the call had come, but didn’t recognize it. I tried to call it back, but the line was busy. After a few minutes, I heard Buster barking, and sat up and looked out the front bedroom window. There was a trooper’s car pulled in over at Loretta’s, so I jumped up, threw some clothes on, and walked over. When I got there, Nancy and the trooper were trying to get Loretta up the steps and into the house. The call that I’d missed was Nancy calling me to ask for help – in trying to get Loretta from the car into the house, they’d both fallen, and Loretta’s back was soaked from having lain down in the wet grass. We got her inside the house, and we helped as best we could while Nancy helped Loretta out of the wet clothes and into a dry gown.

May we here, as part of this family of faith, be found ready. ALWAYS ready. May that be our character, our mind, and our heart.

Let’s pray.

Rich Toward God
Or, IT’S NOT ABOUT THE MONEY

Sunday, August 1st, 2004
Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA
Luke 12:13-21 (crf Matthew 6:19)

13Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." 14 But he said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" 15 And he said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." 16 Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17 And he thought to himself, 'What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' 18 Then he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' 20 But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' 21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."

I’m a science fiction buff. The first book I read that made a lasting impression on me was ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’, by Robert Heinlein. I was probably in the 10th grade when I read it. It was one of those two-inch thick paperbacks that was crammed full of witty dialogue, vast scenarios of world-altering events, and a narrator that kept you interested in the story and kept you turning the pages until the wee hours of the morning, when I should have been asleep.

It is the story of Valentine Michael Smith, the sole survivor of the first manned expedition to Mars, he is raised by Martians, and is returned to Earth by the second manned expedition to Mars. To make a very long story short - and my apologies to those who might want a more extensive synopsis here - what stuck with me from the story for these last 24 years is this: Smith ends up becoming a Messianic figure, based on his otherworldly outlook on life on Earth.

Heinlein himself never intended the book to be anything other than a satirical look at life and human conceits – marriage, love, and, in his view at least, religion. While I was saddened by the fact that Heinlein was an Atheist, his thought process reflected in his writing always had an appeal to me – there is a strictness to it, and bare-bones essentialness to his outlook on life – born from the belief that there ISN’T anything else besides the here and now, that was in a way refreshing, and more than a little challenging to an 8th grader who was in the very early stages of discovering what it meant to have faith and to live by that faith.

A couple of nights ago I tuned into the Science Fiction Channel and watched an episode of Stargate Atlantis. One scene caught my attention. In the story, several people are confronted with the possibility that they will die in exactly 38 minutes. One of the people is from an alien culture, and when HER fellow citizens hear of what is happening, they prepare to hold a ceremony with the woman through the communication system – through which they can still talk to each other, to mark the event of her death – before it happens. The commanding officer, who is from earth, nixes the idea completely, saying that “humans don’t welcome death; we do everything we can to stave it off.” The point of the group that was coming for the ceremony was that it was as unusual an event for THEM as it is for US to know the time and place of our death – the difference was that they had developed a ritual to mark the occasion, an intentional preparation for passing from this life into the next.

As some of you know from Wednesday night and an email update I sent out Friday, my Aunt Kate, who served with her husband Uncle Bill Carter as missionaries to Chile for … close to 40 years, underwent triple bypass surgery after having suffered a mild heart attack LAST week.

The update I got on her condition on Friday evening was from a fellow MK who is now serving with HER husband as a missionary to Chile herself. MaryJo spoke to Aunt Kate Thursday evening, and in her words,

“She actually told me that she was getting excited thinking that this might be her last day and she'd go see Jesus, her Mother, Bill and friends! But she was just waiting to see what the Lord wanted to do.”

The parable of the Rich Fool is one of the old ones, in my memory, probably because as a child, we had a Bible story book that told this parable, along with the parable of the man who built his house on the rock and the one who built his house on the sand, I saw the same book series still for sale at the Cokesbury bookstore in Richmond a few weeks ago, and almost picked the whole set up. The illustrations in the pages had the vibrancy and color and boldness that attracts the eye of the young, and the illustration I remember most from this story was the one of the man sleeping in a room on top of his granaries. Through the window the night sky is a deep indigo color – blue almost going to purple. Below the picture is the caption –

'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?'

That has always stayed with me. For years I took it to mean to literally seek to stay away from wealth. At times that’s been easy, at others, not so much. I think we all go through phases where we can do without and are ok with it, and at others … well, it’s more of a challenge.

An example: I bought my little black Mazda in February of 1990, after my previous car, a 1980 Nissan 510, gave up the ghost somewhere on the Western Kentucky Parkway, with Jimmy my brother, trying to come back from visiting in Paducah. At the time, economics dictated much of the transaction, but I was also going through a ‘support voluntary simplicity’ phase. I didn’t want an automatic transmission, I would have liked a radio, but it was not a deal breaker, and for some reason I was going through an anti-Freon phase, and was ok with the fact that the car had no air conditioning. Those first few months after I bought the car I felt really good driving down the road, in silence, with no distractions from the primary task at hand – getting from point A to point B. I would pull up next to some loaded-with features sedan and smirk at the waste and wasteful use of energy that it represented. Remember, I bought the car in February.

Then summer hit. Summer in Louisville is like summer here, only worse. Where I was working and most of my driving meant I spent a lot of time in stop and go traffic. I quickly began to search through automotive catalogues and started pricing Air conditioners and how much it would cost to install it.

Its funny how principles can so quickly become … overwhelmed by the basic human ability to rationalize just about anything we want, but may not necessarily need. I grew up without air conditioning, but I also grew up in a country where summers did not come with 98% humidity, but with 20%, if that.

Back to the text: It was common practice in first-century Palestine for a teacher, as Jesus is addressed in the beginning of the passage, to serve not only as instructor, but also to serve as community leader and to resolve legal and other disputes among the people of the town in which they lived. There was nothing unusual about the request from the man in the crowd for Jesus to settle the issue he has with his brother regarding their inheritance.

It does strike me as odd, initially, at least, to hear Jesus answer: "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" My initial reaction to Jesus’ statement is “who BETTER to serve as judge? Isn’t that what Jesus came to DO??

But what Jesus was doing, once again, was cutting to the heart of the matter – he saw the root of the question and addressed IT, instead of letting the whole point get lost by answering the superficial question. The root of the dispute was greed, and in addressing THAT issue, Jesus not only answered the brothers’ question, but also the question of everyone in the surrounding audience. We can so easily write off a question if the face-value issues don’t fit our profile – “I’m not in that business”, “I wouldn’t DO business with someone like that anyway,” or “I’m glad I don’t have to worry about that” … they’re all ways we can squeeze out of the need to actually stop and think for ourselves – what’s the underlying issue here? And with questions like that, we can usually find where we intersect with others on many, many different levels.

Let’s turn to the last verse in the text. At the conclusion of the parable, after Jesus reveals that the rich fool will die and his worldly goods will do him no good. The question he poses is “whose will they be?”

The final admonition to the Rich Fool echoes and reinforces Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew, chapter 6, verse 19:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Jesus is asking his listeners what is most important in life. We know, I trust, that the point of the parable is that wealth is not what is most important. Security of any kind on this plane of existence is ultimately shaky at best, and therefore not secure by definition. We’ve been reminded of that in our own community. I’m sure Dale Clark had plans for lunch on Wednesday, and probably was looking forward to the weekend with his family.

So what does that mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?

This afternoon we will be gathering and observing the baptism of our sister Jackie Stevens. She made her public profession of faith several months ago, but had expressed the desire to be baptized in the river. That time has now come. As a form of obedience, a step of faith, and as a public statement, baptism is a powerfully symbolic gesture. Through it, Jackie is staking her claim – not on what this world can give her, but on what she can give to God. In going down into the ‘waters of baptism’, the affirmation of faith – from the earliest 1st century Christians, is ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’. That is a loaded statement. The believer is saying by that that though it may not look like it now, and I may not always ACT like it, but Jesus Christ is Lord – no qualifiers – Lord of my life, my thoughts, my actions, my reactions, and Lord of my possessions, whether I have any or not. Ultimately, it is a statement that will last for eternity.

Jesus is Lord.

Let’s pray.