Pentecost 10

Needs and Greeds


Pentecost 10

Luke 12: 13-21


Let's start where we were a few weeks back: a man asked Jesus what he had to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus threw the question back at him and he quoted the Scripture - love God with all your heart soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbour as your- self. But wanting to justify himself, as we all do, he asked Jesus "who is my neighbour?" Jesus tells a story and it has a twist to it for the story doesn't answer the question about who is neighbour is, rather it is "who are you going to be a neighbour to". This sequence of stories in Luke are all about our BEING and DOING.

Our being a neighbour arises out of our primary relationship, our first
love: God. To underscore this Luke puts this BEING and DOING in juxtoposition with each other in the story of Mary and Martha and it raises the contradiction within us. It is not that we are either a Mary or a Martha type person but that we struggle always between our sitting at the feet of Jesus and learning from him, discerning what is needful. It is in this context that Luke places Jesus' teaching about prayer - connecting with God concerning our needs and the needs of the world in which we live. In our reflections we also came across a word "oxymoron": the meeting place of two opposites - found most graphically in the cross where the vertical and perpendicular planes meet. The centre of the cross where love of God and love of neighbour are bound together in love. The cross of Jesus where Jesus, Son of God, Son of Man in love, died for us.

BEING and DOING. This morning, the title "rich fool' is almost another such contradiction. No one in their right mind would think that it is foolish to be rich - especially the many people who come in weekly to the Asylum Seeker Centre or to Pete['s Patch. People who have restricted resources, who drive unregistered vehicles because they have to channel limited funds to the essentials of food and warmth in a protracted winter. Some may have made poor choices, tragically some sell their bodies in order to support a drug habit. As they move around they see flash cars, good houses being pulled down and bigger, more expensive ones built. They listen to the news and hear the burgeoning rich mining magnates fight a tax on the resources that they are taking from the ground of the Commonwealth not wanting for their wealth to be shared as part of the common wealth. We deny justice to the needy, while politicians argue not about refugee Determination Centres but where an off-shore Detention Centre will be. The needful are treated as criminals who need to be punished.

Ours is a society of self-justification whose eyes and minds are blinded by self-delusion. Needs are greeds. The parable of the rich fool is a challenge to look at our priorities as well as the consequences of what often can be self-centred choices To examine our lives against an objective godly standard. To stop for a time, even if for one hour a week, our endless tiring slog on the treadmill to ask a question: Am I really funding my needs or my greeds?"

The situation of our Congregation at this time provides us as with further opportunity and challenges us to address this question as a church. To hear the words "Tell my brother to divide the property our father has left us? is an invitation to ponder how well we do when we argue about how to divide the property or riches that our parents in faith have left us. The parable may
read:

"There was once a rich church with much property and investments which bore excellent dividends They told themselves Lucky church! You have all the good things you need for many years. Take life easy, eat, drink, and enjoy yourselves!" But God said to the Church, "You fools! You think you are alive but you are dead. You think you are hot, but you are cold. You have lost your first love and are relying on your good works."

This leads us to ask some pointed and disturbing questions:
To what extent are we a church which is rich in God's sight?
To what extent are we rich in receiving God's love?
How are we rich in celebrating Gods love in worship?
Are we rich in sharing God's love in Word and Deed?
To what extent are we, individually or collectively rich fools?

To be pre-occupied with getting and having is to end up with nothing for eventually our possessions end up possessing us.

The rich man was a fool. The stupidity of his thinking was the self assurance he had that the future was in his control. The battle- field of Australian economics is littered with fools. Glorious names of the 1980's were strewn ignominiously across the law courts of the 1990's - and we have learned little as a consequence.

We are fools if God is not at the centre of our thinking, being and doing, for no matter how successful we are, it all stops at the moment of death.
And then? Nothing but an eternity in hell. I came across a delightful description of hell by someone who saw hell as "the enjoyment of our own way forever." That's a deep one - think about it carefully - the enjoyment of our own way - forever. Meanwhile, our children are left to argue over our estate.

Foolishness is not to do with a lack of education or of missed opportunities. Rather foolishness is to be gripped by the mistaken idea that we can draw life from some source other than God.

As we gather around the table of our Lord this morning we are challenged to examine ourselves, our relationship with God and our relationship with our neighbour. May we ask ourselves how rich we are toward He who emptied himself of all his riches to be come like us, so that we might become like him; that we may be reconciled with God. Come to the table today knowing that in Christ our needs will be fulfilled and our greeds will be transformed. Let us come together to the table knowing that we will be met, forgiven loved and freed. Amen.