Sermon for Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, "Treasured," Luke 12:32-40 (Proper 14C, Ordinary 19C)

Sermon 8/7/16

Luke 12:32-40

Treasured

            Last week many of you had the pleasure of hearing someone’s first sermon, as Amber shared with you in leading worship. It’s a special experience, the first sermon. Last week also happened to be the 18^th anniversary of the first time I ever preached, a sermon I gave at my home church in Rome, NY. I had used the lectionary text from the gospel for the week, and because it was my first sermon, that scripture passage has been forever burned on my mind, and I find myself thinking of it often. It happened to be the same lectionary year as we are in right now, and so the text I preached on came just before the one we just heard this morning from the gospel of Luke, chapter 12. In the text, a man who is part of a gathered crowd asks Jesus to make his brother divide the family inheritance with him. Jesus sensibly wonders why on earth this man would think it Jesus’ job to arbitrate this kind of dispute. Still though, the man with the request probably gets more than he wanted from Jesus, because Jesus tells him a parable about a man who had so much stuff that he couldn’t fit it into his barns anymore. So he tore them down and built even bigger barns, and rejoiced to himself that he could now eat, drink, and be merry. But God says to the man, “You fool! This very night your life will be required of you. And these things you have stored up? Whose will they be?” Jesus says, “One’s life does not consist of the abundance of possessions,” and chastises: “So it will be with those who store up treasure for themselves, but are not rich towards God.” Oof. These words have really stayed with me, as I’ve tried to ask myself the twin questions through the years: What am I storing up for myself? And am I being rich toward God?

Have you ever had to answer one of those scenario questions like, “If you could only save one thing from your house, if you had to leave your house forever and you could only take one thing, what would it be?” Assuming, of course, that you already have all your people and pets from the house, what would be that one thing that you’d want to take? For me, it’s my journals. In this scenario I cheat and count them as one thing, when in actuality, it’s like 4 hefty boxes full of the journals I have been keeping since 5^th grade! Most of the time, when people answer a question like this, the answer reveals that the most valued things we have are not the most expensive things we own, but rather the things that are most tied up with emotional value. Things that represent who we love. Things that are from our most cherished life experiences. If we only got to keep one thing, that’s what we’d choose.

            The thing is, though, rarely are we in situations where we really have to choose one thing, the most important thing. And so I wonder – what are we really storing up? Our text for today comes just a bit later in this same chapter of Luke, and continues on the same theme. Jesus has talked to the gathered crowd about not being full of worry. He urges them not to strive for the things that the rest of the world strives for, the things God already knows we need. Instead, says Jesus, strive first for God’s kingdom. With that aim first, everything else can come after. Jesus says it is God’s “good pleasure” to give us God’s kingdom. That’s a double positive, a strong emphasis – God’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom of God. Sell your possessions, Jesus says! Give to the poor! Seek unfailing heavenly treasure. Because “where you treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  

“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” I’ve always loved thinking about this verse, not just because of what it says, but because of what it doesn’t say. What it doesn’t say is: Where your heart is, that’s where you treasure is. No, but rather where your treasure is, there you will find what you really love. I think the order matters. Jesus is telling us that it is the evidence that determines where our hearts are, not whatever we pay lip service to. So, if we claim our hearts are with our families, for example, but what we “store up,” what we spend our time thinking about and worrying about and spend the bulk of our time doing is making sure we have enough money or stuff or status or power or security or whatever – well, what we “treasure” is actually where our heart is, no matter what we say, and not the other way around. So what do you treasure? What do you store up? What takes all of your time and energy? What are you giving your life to? What do you treasure?

When I think about treasuring something, two images pop into my head: First, I think of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings, obsessed with, consumed by the One Ring – “my precious.” That’s treasuring something – the ring is the only Master Gollum serves, and indeed, his heart is with the ring, no matter how much he struggles to put his heart elsewhere. And, although maybe it seems a bit out of season on this beautiful August day, I think about my favorite line in the Christmas story, the story of Jesus’ birth: When Jesus is born, and the shepherds hear the angels and arrive to greet the baby and they tell Mary and Joseph all that had happened to them, we read, “Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart.” What Mary treasures in that moment is every precious word and experience and part of the process that has brought her child – God’s child – God-in-the-flesh – God’s hope for us in human form – into the world. And so indeed, because of what she treasures, her heart is full of love. What do you treasure?

            Jesus tells us that what it is God’s good pleasure to give us is God’s kingdom. We’ll talk more and more and more about what Jesus means by “the kingdom of God.” But in essence God’s kingdom, God’s reign on earth is the realizing of God’s hope, God’s plan for our right relationships with God and one another, God’s dreams made real in the here and now. And it is God’s good pleasure, God’s deepest desire that we would experience this – the joy of living fully into God’s kingdom, now and for eternity. Jesus seeks to share that vision with us. He tells us about God’s reign, God’s kingdom, in story after story, in parable after parable. And Jesus says it is this – God’s kingdom, God’s reign, God’s vision for the earth, for us, for you and for me – this is what we should strive after. This is what we should treasure. What does God want us to treasure? Our relationship with God, and our relationships with each other, and making real and concrete God’s vision for the world. Building up God’s kingdom now and for eternity.

            Our text closes with Jesus talking about a household that is ready for God’s kingdom. “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit,” says Jesus. Be like the servants of the household who are ready to open the door for the master as soon as the master arrives. And then Jesus says something astonishing. Jesus says that the master will be so pleased at the readiness of the household that the master will serve the servants! All the hearers would have known this was NOT true. No master would really do this, not in real life. No master but one. Jesus would. God would. Because that’s what the kingdom of God is like – where the master is willing to serve the slave, where the centers of power are flipped upside down, where an enemy is beloved, where the humbled are exalted, where the last are first. Friends, God has put us in charge of one of God’s treasured possessions – this world, and God’s vision for this world. God has made us responsible for carrying it out, living into it, building up God’s kingdom, God’s reign, with God’s help. We are the staff of God’s household – only the way God runs things? God is delighted, indeed, it is God’s good pleasure to give us the whole thing. What a treasure indeed! Imagine if we invested all of our time, and all of our energy, and all of our heart and soul into God’s household? Let’s get dressed for action. Let’s make sure our lamps are lit. And let’s make sure we know exactly what we’re working for. Amen.

Sermon for Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, "The Old Rugged Cross"

Sermon 8/15/10

Luke 12:49-56

The Old Rugged Cross

            You can see crosses everywhere these days – the symbols of the Christian faith. You can find cross tattoos or cross jewelry – I certainly have necklaces with a cross. Churches are adorned with crosses, some simple, but some quite ornate. Crosses on bumper stickers and billboards, crosses made out of every imaginable material. There’s a certain poignancy, irony, that the cross is portrayed in so many ways when it was actually an instrument of execution. That was the primary purpose of the cross, of course – it was used to put people to death, including Jesus, the Christ. But our understanding of resurrection, our understanding of Jesus’ victory over that very death with life leads us to see the cross transformed – not a symbol of execution, but a symbol of forgiveness, salvation, and re-creation. Still, sometimes I wonder if our frequent use of the symbol of the cross leads us to forget the impact of its meaning. Do we lose sight of the cross by our very frequent use of it? This fear, fear of losing sight of the meaning of the cross, was actually what motivated George Bennard to write The Old Rugged Cross in 1913.

According to the Christian History Institute, George Bennard was struggling with personal problems that were causing him a great deal of trouble and anguish. In his suffering, his mind returned again and again to Christ's anguish on the cross. This, he thought, was the heart of the gospel! The cross he pictured was not ornate, or pretty, or gold or silver. It was "a rough, splintery thing, stained with gore." "I saw the Christ of the Cross as if I were seeing John 3:16 leave the printed page, take form and act out the meaning of redemption," he said.

Bennard wanted to put this theme, these thoughts, to music. The History Institute writes that, "In a room in Albion, Michigan, Bennard sat down and wrote a tune. But the only words that would come to him were "I'll cherish the old rugged cross." He struggled for weeks to set words to the melody he had written.

As a Methodist evangelist, Bennard was scheduled to preach a series of messages in New York. He found himself focusing on the cross. The theme of the cross grew increasingly more urgent to him. Back in Albion, Michigan, he sat down and tried again to put together the words. This time the lines came. He later shared, "I sat down and immediately was able to rewrite the stanzas of the song without so much as one word failing to fall into place. I called in my wife, took out my guitar, and sang the completed song to her. She was thrilled!"

On June 7, 1913, according to his own account, George Bennard introduced the new hymn in a revival meeting he was conducting in Pokagon, Michigan. "The Old Rugged Cross," soon became one of the top ten most popular hymns of the twentieth century." (1) In our congregation, this hymn tied for first place on our top ten list.

            My images, memories of this hymn don’t seem to connect with the challenging gospel lesson we have today, the troublesome words from Jesus that we have to deal with eventually. This hymn was one of my grandfather’s favorites. Normally I naturally love anything he loved, but I just never could love this hymn. I can picture singing it, the little choir singing it at the country church in Westernville where I grew up – each stanza slower than the one before, warbling voices singing a sweet golden-oldie hymn, for it was certainly a golden-oldie to me even when I was little. How can such a sweet little hymn have anything to do with the angry-sounding Jesus we confront in today’s lesson from Luke?  

“Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” Nothing sweet in this passage, is there? This doesn’t sound like our Jesus, does it? Jesus doesn’t come to bring peace, but division? Turning households against each other? Is that why Jesus, who we call the Prince of Peace, came to earth? To pit us against one another? We’ve been studying hymns all summer long, and in a couple weeks, we’ll be talking about Let There Be Peace on Earth. How can we talk about that, when Jesus insists on making these troubling statements? “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”

Our temptation whenever we read words like this from Jesus is to try to find a way to soften their blow, mute their impact so it doesn’t seem as bad as it sounds. But in this case, I think that’s exactly what Jesus is warning against. Do you think I come to make things easy, Jesus asks? Nope – I come to make them more and more challenging. That’s my paraphrase at least. Listen to the verse just before today’s passage: Jesus says, “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.” In other words – we’ve received a lot – God’s blessings, God’s love, God’s unfailing grace, limitless second chances. But God expects a lot from us, too. And foremost, what God expects, what Jesus expects, is that if we choose to follow Jesus, we actually follow Jesus. It’s both that simple of a request and that hard of a request. Because following Jesus means choosing one path and not the other, and we’re very much a people who want to have our cake and eat it too. We want to take the path of Jesus, but we also want to make our own choices, choose our own way, and go our own direction when it suits us. Jesus says that he comes and shows a way to follow that we must either choose or not choose.

One of my blogging friends, Shane Raynor, recently wrote a column responding to an article he’d read about why teens don’t attend church that appeared in USAToday. The article, reporting on some study results, implied that teens don’t attend church because they are too busy, have too many other things to do. But Shane offered up some different ideas, including this one: “Unchurched teens see no significant difference between church kids and everyone else.” That’s a reason they don’t attend church, he said. He continues, “This issue is bigger than you think. I’ve run into it over and over again. Put yourself in a teenager’s shoes– if one of the reasons they might go to church is to become a better person, what does it say to them when the church kids cuss [do the same things] as all the other kids? Suppose you were thinking about joining a diet program where the participants never lost any weight? Or a gym where no one ever showed any physical progress? Or a karate school where no one ever got a black belt? You’d see it as a waste of time. A lot of kids see church as a waste of time for the exact same reason. Most teenagers aren’t expecting church people to be perfect, but they do want some kind of assurance that church is going to make a difference in their lives or they figure, why bother? (2)

That’s exactly what Jesus wants to know, too. If you want to follow me, but have following me not impact your life in any way, why bother? If you want to follow me, but not follow me, why bother? Jesus brings division because Jesus asks us to make choices, decisions, ones that really effect how we live. What difference has following Jesus made in your life? Choosing to follow Jesus Christ should not have as little or even less impact on our lives as choosing what outfit to wear or what restaurant to pick for dinner. Being a Jesus-follower ought to have some tangible, real result, real impact on us and those around us. What is the point of following Jesus if no one can tell, if nothing about me or the way I live changes as a result, what’s the point? Not peace, but division.

Poet Marianne Williamson writes, "When you ask God into your life, you think God is going to come into your psychic house, look around, and see that you just need a new floor or better furniture, and that everything needs just a little cleaning - and so you go along for the first six months thinking how nice life is now that God is there. Then you look out the window one day and you see that there's a wrecking ball outside. It turns out that God actually thinks your whole foundation is shot and you're going to have to start over from scratch." (2) Being a Christ-follower, we declare that we are ready to open our lives up to God, to be examined thoroughly by God's probing eyes, to rid our lives of sin, and wrong-doing, injustice, and failure to love God and neighbor. We make a decision. Make a choice. Choose this path against all other paths.

It is in this way that our hymn for today, the Old Rugged Cross, ties perfectly to our gospel lesson, and brings the message home to us in a beloved song. George Bennard didn't want a pretty cross, a soft and delicate cross, because he didn't want to lose sight of what the cross signified. Jesus told us that to follow him, we must take up the cross, the cross which symbolizes the difficult, life-sacrificing journey that Jesus ultimately had to make to be faithful to God's call. The Old Rugged Cross is a reminder to us that the faith we claim is more than a tradition into which we are born, more than a gathering of friends once a week. The life we choose is one that sets us apart if we are faithful to Jesus' teachings.

But in the choosing, as Bennard penned in his tune, our life as in Christ is rewarding beyond our imagination, as we experience the love and grace of God that knows no boundaries, and learn how to share this love that gives life with others. So we cherish this old rugged cross - the symbol of peace, the symbol of division, the symbol of glory, the symbol of humility, the symbol of the life we choose in Jesus Christ. Amen.

(1) Christian History Institute, http://www.gospelcom.net/chi/DAILYF/2002/06/daily-06-07-2002.shtml

(2) Shane Raynor, “5 Reasons Teens Are Avoiding Church,”

http://www.faithexperience.com/2010/08/5reasons/

(3) Williamson, Marianne, as quoted in Pulpit Resources, William Willimon, for August 15th, 2004, pg 30.