The Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost Hay is for Neighbors Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ! Amen. The point of today’s Gospel is not whether you have a large barn or something to fill it. The point of today’s Gospel is how you look at your barn, and how you feel about what’s inside it. Let your barn be your barn. Do not turn your barn into your god. And he [Jesus] 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?’ Dear Christian friends, Our Lord Jesus Christ has withheld nothing from us, neither from you nor from me. Jesus emptied Himself, and made Himself nothing, so that you and I may receive from Him all things in heaven and on earth. There is nothing Jesus has, that He has not given to you. · No one can forgive sins but God alone (Luke 5:21). Jesus is God, and He alone possesses the ability to forgive sins, on account of His death and resurrection. Jesus has also given His forgiveness to you. Jesus has given you so much of His forgiveness that you now have more than enough of Jesus’ forgiveness to share with your neighbor. · Jesus is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25). Jesus has given His resurrection and His life to you. As you heard in today’s Epistle, You have died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, you also will appear with Him in glory (Colossians 3:3-4). That is a pretty good promise, friends, and it is yours and it is not going to be taken away from you. · Jesus owns all the stuff that fills our planet. My shirt, your car, your neighbor’s hot tub: it all belongs to Jesus. Jesus is somewhat similar the rich man in today’s parable, in this one sense: Jesus has more stuff than He knows what to do with. UNLIKE the rich man in today’s parable, Jesus is not interested in keeping all His stuff in big piles all around Him. Jesus wants you to have His stuff and so He has doled it out to each of us, according to need and ability. I cannot tell you why I might have more stuff than one person, but less than another person. All I know is that all our stuff belongs to Jesus, He hands it out as He sees fit, and when we receive it He wants us to call it our daily bread and our manna from heaven. · Jesus has also given you His perfect righteousness and holiness. He has given you His body and His blood. Jesus has given you His perfect relationship with God the Father, His patience and forbearance toward other people, His endurance and strength, His courage in the face of evil and adversity, and even His love for your neighbor. If there is anything else that Jesus has, which I have neglected to mention, He has given that to you, too! This is what the Lord says: You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that thought He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you by His poverty might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). With these Words, God is telling you that it does not really matter whether you think yourself as rich, or as poor, or whether you describe yourself as in the middle class (along with every other person in the United States). You are a Christian. You have been baptized into the name of the Triune God, forgiven all your sins and guaranteed a bodily resurrection on the Last Day. That means you are rich. That means you do not need to care too much about what is in your barn. I repeat: our Lord Jesus Christ has withheld nothing from us, neither from you nor from me. Jesus emptied Himself, and made Himself nothing, so that you and I may receive from Him all things in heaven and on earth. There is nothing Jesus has, that He has not given to you. Why would Jesus do this for you? Jesus has given you all things in heaven and on earth so that you can relax and stop worrying. Jesus has given you all things so that you will not feel the need to protest the joyous news He declared in today’s Gospel, “Your life does not consist in the abundance of your possessions.” Jesus has given you all things in heaven and on earth so that you will look rightly upon the things that you have stored in your barn. 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?’ Do not be mistaken! Jesus in today’s Gospel does NOT forbid wealth or even accumulation. Jesus does not condemn the fact that the man in the parable was rich. Jesus does not forbid you to improve your possessions and income, He does not tell you that you cannot have a savings account or an insurance policy or a new RV, and He does not prevent you from enlarging your house or barn. Really, Jesus just wants you to change the Words you heard in today’s Gospel. The point of today’s Gospel is that you learn how to re-write the ending of our Lord’s parable when it plays itself out in your own life: The land of [INSERT YOUR NAME HERE] produced plentifully, and YOU thought to YOUSELF, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And YOU 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, “O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is good! His mercy endures forever. Now let me see… which of my neighbors can use some of this stuff? _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list [email protected] http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
