Luke 12:13–21

10th Sunday After Pentecost

¹³Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me." ¹⁴Jesus replied, "Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?" ¹⁵Then he said to them, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." ¹⁶And he told them this parable: "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. ¹⁷He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.' ¹⁸"Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry." ' ²⁰"But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?' ²¹"This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God."

It’s a warm summer weekend and you’re out watering your lawn in your worn-out shorts and flip-flops. Then you notice your neighbors, standing at the door, clad in Armani designer cloths, opening the door for their caterers. They’ve ordered trays of gourmet food, bottles of expensive drinks and a huge tent for what appears to be a midsummer night’s dream party in their manicured backyard. As you glance over at their silver BMW convertible on the driveway and their new family room addition, you think to yourself: “How can they afford that? What am I doing wrong?” You become “green with envy.”

Keeping up with the Joneses can be challenging at times. Failure to do so is perceived as a sign of inferiority. Its envy sets us off on our own personal adventure into covetousness; an adventure that starts at our next-door neighbors. However, keeping up with the Joneses is a way of life in our culture and it is blatantly obvious to anyone with a TV. Both TV ads and programs bring right into our homes images of Lexuses and Rolexes, designer cosmetics, driveways filled with two or three cars, at least one being a sports car. We begin to think that having these things is a necessity of life. Americans are on a consumer escalator, an uphill pursuit of material abundance that stresses us out to the point that even though we enjoy widespread wealth and unprecedented affluence, we aren’t content with our lives. We measure our self-worth by what we own or possess or how much money we have. Our philosophy of life is: “He who dies with the most things, wins.”

This is nothing new nor is it a uniquely American phenomenon. The desire for material and monetary wealth is deeply ingrained in our human nature. Covetousness and greed are part of our sinful, fallen humanity.

When a man from the crowd called out to Jesus asking him to settle a dispute with his brother over their inheritance, Jesus warned the crowd: “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.” Our desire to get more things and hoard them for ourselves; our need to compete with our neighbor is simply greed and covetousness. It is sin that deserves the punishment of God like all other sin.

Moreover, in our twisted way of thinking, we believe that we are the ones who provide for our own needs. We think that by our own hard work, our talents, our study, and our intelligence we provide for ourselves and obtain the riches of this world. We think that we are personally responsible for making our way in this world and that leads us to imagine that if we have more than the Joneses it is because we are somehow better.

This too is sin. It is in essence turning ourselves into our own gods. Let me illustrate this. Take, for instance, your television. We see many people in the TV. We hear talking and music come from the TV. We might say, “Oh, look! There’s so-and-so on TV.” We say that there is a show on our TV. But this is only a half truth. When I was a little boy, out of curiosity, I took apart the family TV just to see what was inside. Nowhere could I find any little people running around in there. No cars were racing up and down any little streets and no policemen with tiny little guns shooting at them. It was a major disappointment!

The people we see on TV are not in there. The shows are not made by the TV. It is only an instrument that receives TV signals and turns them into visible images for people to see. The real source of the programs is the studio at the TV station or in the production company.

In a sense, we are like TVs. We don’t provide for our needs. We only receive from God. God merely uses our work and our talents as his instruments through which he provides for our needs and the needs of others. The real source is God himself. So when we believe that we are the ones who provide for ourselves, when we store up our goods and possessions and think that now we are secure and can eat, drink and be merry for the rest of our lives, we are in fact turning ourselves into gods. We are usurping the authority of our creator and wanting to replace him with ourselves. We are opposing God and deserve his eternal wrath and punishment.

Yet God in his love and mercy not only overcomes our sin and greed, he gives us his riches and makes us wealthy toward him. Jesus makes us rich toward God.

Notice the last verse in our text where Jesus says; “such are those who store up things for himself but are not rich toward God.” He sets up these two things in opposition: greed and richness toward God. They are opposites. They are mutually exclusive. You cannot be greedy and rich toward God. Trying to keep up with the Joneses is the opposite of being rich toward God. Accumulating wealth and possessions for yourself without sharing them with others is not being rich toward God. Trusting your wealth and possessions for you future security is not being rich toward God. Thinking that you are the one who provides for your own needs and secures your future with your learning, work and talents, is not being rich toward God.

But Jesus overcame our greed and He makes us rich toward God. How does he do this?

First of all by by forgiving our sins. Jesus makes us rich toward God by forgiving our sin of greed. The sin of accumulating riches of this world solely for ourselves; the sin to keeping up with the Joneses in order to feel respected are forgiven by Christ on the cross. They were washed away by his blood.

Jesus made us rich by becoming poor for us. He became poor when he became a man. By humbling himself and stepping down from his throne of glory into the deepest humility he exalted us. He lived a life of utter poverty in this world, so that we might be rich in God. He suffered the rejection of men; their scorn and laughter. He suffered the pain of their whip, the crown of thorns, the nails of the cross all in order to make us rich. He suffered the poverty of being rejected even by his own Father in heaven, in order to win for us the riches of his Father’s favor. By his poverty he makes us rich.

He bore our sins with great patience in order to make us the objects of God’s mercy. He made himself poor by taking our sins upon himself. Then He paid for our sins on the cross. He shed his blood to wash away our guilt; the guilt of our greed, the guilt of our covetousness, the guilt of our selfishness. In him we have redemption through his blood. He gave us the riches of God’s grace: the forgiveness of sins. Jesus gives us true riches. He gives us God’s kindness, tolerance, love and patience. He gives us the riches of his glory.

These riches, forgiveness and grace, he gives us through his Word and Sacrament. In our worship Jesus bestows upon us his forgiveness. In worship our cup overflows with the riches of God. Through the words of absolution and the preaching of the gospel he makes us rich toward God. In baptism he makes us rich toward God by making us God’s children and in the Lord’s Supper he increases our wealth. These riches we receive not by sight. We do not see them in our luxurious home, or in the shining sports car in our drive way. They are not found in our bank account or in the size or our pay check. They are seen and acquired only by faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior from sin; faith that comes through word and sacrament. He whose greed and avarice is forgiven is the one who is truly rich; rich toward God.

Second, Jesus overcomes our greed and makes us rich toward God by earning the riches of God for us. There is no way we humans can earn heavenly wealth by our work, or our talents, or our intelligence. The true riches of God are his mercy and love. Jesus earned them for us by his death on the cross. Jesus earned God’s favor by his obedience and death and gives it to us. Jesus earned the blessing of God and then shares that blessing with all who are baptized into him. Jesus earned eternal life for us by his death and resurrection. Jesus earned God’s love for us.

In his kind, tender, Fatherly heart God makes us his very own children, because his only begotten Son purchased us for the Father. In Christ we become the beloved children of God. Jesus earned that status for us.

The only begotten Son of God purchased us for his Father from all nations and tribes and languages and peoples and made us son of his Father. Then he shared his inheritance with us. Remember the man who called out to Jesus to settle a dispute with his brother about the inheritance? He was greedy and didn’t want to share the inheritance. Unlike him, Jesus earned the inheritance of the Father and then gave it to us. He made us God’s heirs.

Finally Jesus overcomes our greed and makes us rich toward God by showering his abundance on us. He keeps us in times of trouble and is with us time of need. He says to call upon him in every trouble and he will deliver us. He is our Shepherd who provides all for us so that we shall not be wanting anything in this life. He promises to supply us with our daily bread, providing for all our physical needs in this life.

Learn the lesson of the 5000 men whom Jesus fed with five loaves of bread and 2 fish. Do you believe this miracle? But by this miracle Jesus teaches us that he alone provides for all our needs. From God alone come all good things. He alone satisfies our every desire. The Lord opens his hand and satisfies the desire of every living thing. In sickness, poverty, sorrow and grief God will sustain us. Even in death he is with us and keeps us in his hands. In Christ, we are rich toward God because “neither hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword shall separate us from the love of Christ. In all these things we are more than conquerors…Neither death nor life, nor angels or demons nor the present or the future can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Instead of being greedy and hoarding them for ourselves, we share the abundance of his riches of grace with those around us. We share by witnessing to them with the gospel of Christ. We share the forgiveness of sins with the world by proclaiming forgiveness to the world and by taking the word and sacraments to all peoples. He made us rich in compassion, kindness, and mercy so we can have compassion, kindness and mercy on others. He has given us abundance so that we can bring our offerings to the altar to support the work of the church and send workers into the harvest of souls. He gives us abundance so that we can share God’s abundance with those less fortunate. For it is through the abundance he gives us that he provides for the physical and material needs of our neighbor. Instead of grabbing all we can to keep for ourselves so we can eat, drink and be merry, God provides for us and gives to us so that we can give to others.

We are like TVs. What we receive from the air waves of God’s grace and abundance, we pass on to those around us. For Jesus has made us rich toward God so that we can pass on the wealth to others.

Amen.