Be Faithful With All Things

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Luke 12:32-40

Today’s gospel lesson should strike a sensitive nerve for many Americans. We are among a small percentage of people in the world who possess an overwhelming percentage of the world’s goods. We have grown up in a society constantly bombarded by ads and fads and clever marketing designed to convince us that we need all kinds of things we never thought we needed --- and usually don’t.

The ‘pursuit of happiness’ to which our founding fathers believed we have a right has, in practice, become the purs= uit of more and more things that presumably will bring us the elusive happiness we are urged to pursue. In the language of today’s lesson f= rom Hebrews, the faith which seems = to assure many in our culture of havi= ng things hoped for is that, in the e= nd, whoever dies with the most toys wins!

It’s misleading, even blasphemous, that those = who presume --- and our mass media allows --- to speak for American Christianity these days focus their rabid concern on issues about which Jesus and the gospels say not a word! What Jesus did talk about more than any other subject is our relationship to money and material possessions because he kn= ew, indeed, that where our treasure is, there also will our hearts be centered.= It is the human heart --- the essence of our being which animates all else in = us --- that’s really the issue, not money or possessions.

Greed, anxiety over whether we can ever have enough = to be secure, lust for the power and influence money can buy . . . these are among the things that cause us to lose our very souls, Jesus warns in the “Parable of the Rich Fool” told earlier in Luke 12. “Soul” refers to something eternal in us. “Soul” is= something divinely given by virtue of our birth into the human family. The selfish us= e of possessions divides that family and foolishly splinters our soul.

It separates us into “haves” and “have-nots,” into “us” versus “them” --- and we reap the consequen= ces each day in abusive homes, unsafe city streets, young people returning from places like Iraq and <= st1:country-region w:st=3D"on">Afghanistan in body bags, schools and bridges falling apart and ice caps melting. The home= less who have been camping across the street in Bronson Park all summer remind us that local, state and federal budget priorities are ultimately moral issues having to do with what the biblical prophets call “justice.”

The lack of room at the inn when Jesus was first bor= n in Bethlehem is an arch-typical story of what happens in many of our hearts when Jesus seeks t= o be born again in us here and now. Our hearts are often so preoccupied seeking worldly treasure that little room is left for hosting eternal things . . . = like that kingdom today’s gospel says God takes good pleasure in giving us.

Jesus knows that our timid faith, our ultimate lack = of trust that God will provide for us as God provides for the ravens and lilies o= f the field --- inclines us to gather and hoard for ourselves possessions beyond our needs. Like the ‘rich young ruler’ who came to Jesus aware that his observance of religious law a= nd ritual still left him spiritually empty, we, too, often discover with regret --- or regret without discovering --- that our possessions can end up possessing us. Our pursuit of material things --- things that are visible, the writer of Hebrews calls them --- crowds out those things that are not visible but which turn out to be the source of wholeness in life. “Wholeness,” by the way, is one of the meanings of the Greek wo= rd for “salvation.” =

The disciples are given the same advice the ‘r= ich young ruler’ received f= rom Jesus: give your possessions away to the poor. He means for them not only to share what they have with others; he wants them to unburden themselves from= the anxiety of betting their lives on things that lose value over time or, at a most unexpected moment, can be snatched away from them as if by a thief in = the night.

The selfish use of possessions distorts our relation= ship with God. Where our treasure is, indeed, there will our hearts be also! Som= e of you were at Miller Auditorium Tuesday evening to hear Bishop Desmund Tutu reflect on the spiritual wisdom that helped lead his native South Africa to a largely peaceful reconciliation of whites and blacks after the dismantlin= g of Apartheid. The Nobel Peace Laureate’s deeply felt and faithfully lived theology was expressed very simply: God made us to live in community with o= ne another; we cannot be human alone; and our very survival as a human race depends upon our recognizing the image of God in one another and treating e= ach other accordingly.

How our material possessions are used --- selfishly = or unselfishly, hoarded anxiously when we have more than enough or shared generously with those in need – is a fundamental expression of our understanding who we are and who we are meant to be to one another. What we= do with our possessions is, finally, a matter of faith.

In a book entitled Some People Say That God Is No Laughing Matter, the novelist and playwright Julia Cameron observes:

“Faith= is a little like chocolate. A little is great, but there’s never enough, a= nd sooner or later you’re going to run dangerously low. . . . I just do things anyhow!

She goes on to say:‘I just do things anyhow’ is a pretty good definition of a working faith= . As in ‘I’m scared to death about actually committing to this marri= age . . . the new job . . . moving to L.A., but I just do it anyway.”

The author expands on that concept of faith by remin= ding us: “Most of the great saints= have been tremendous fools --- St. Joan, Mother Teresa, Cesar Chavez, and Martin Luther King, to name a few. They’ve undertaken missions based on listening to the still, small voice that egged them on. People thought they were crazy, and maybe they were. . . . Maybe they were much more secure tha= n the rest of us because they weren’t hedging their bets. . . . Saints comm= it. They practice the Nike ad: ‘Just do it.”

The writer of Hebrews presents us with the same kind= of people Julia Cameron mentioned as examples of faith. They are those whose hearts, perhaps, were initially more committed than their heads. They had the conviction of things not seen.

No one in their right mind, for example, would take = off from the comfort of a life-long home years after the retirement checks star= ted arriving to begin a long journey toward an unknown destination, guided only= by the barely discernable promise that he and an aged wife with whom he had ne= ver been able to have children would become the parents of a great nation and h= ave offspring as numerous as the stars in the sky or the grains of sand on the beach.

But Abraham had listened to that still, small voice = with his heart because he trusted the One whose voice he knew by faith. And even= if Abraham and Sarah, like Moses and the prophets, like Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, never reached the ‘Promised Land,̵= 7; they saw just enough of it from afar that their faith sustained them in the journey they had been called to take for others.

They just did it! And like the servants in todayR= 17;s gospel who are rewarded for their faithfulness in doing what their master h= ad asked of them, we’re told in the Hebrews passage that God himself prepared a dwelling place for Abraham and the others who had responded faithfully to God’s call.

What might such faith in God look like for us today = --- for where it is present, it is visible. How is a faith like Abraham’s calling us to live today --- for where such faith exists, t= he self-centeredness of the human heart is transformed to produce deeds of lov= e, kindness, justice, mercy, compassion and peace. What is the ‘still, s= mall voice’ of God saying to the heart --- and the hearts --- of this congregation as we contemplate the use of our resources --- material and otherwise --- for new journeys in mission, new engagements with the downtow= n, new programs to draw young people to our new spaces, new leadership in what Presbyterians call “the Ministry of Word and Sacrament?”

In his book Listening To Your Life, Frederick Buechner says: “God’s c= oming is always unforeseen, I think, and the reason, if I had to guess, is that i= f he gave us anything much in the way of advance warning, more often than not we would have made ourselves scarce long before he got there.” (p.25) The kingdom of heaven is always at hand, Jesus taught. But the time is now = in a special way for this congregation to discern how it is being called to exhi= bit that kingdom to the world in the years ahead. Luke tells us to be dressed for action and have our= lamps lit in preparation for the c= oming of that One who will lead the way.

Therefore, in simple faith that the Lord is near and= he will come, let us watch for signs of that One who seeks to be born again in= our hearts . . . and hopes we have room for him. Let us listen for his gracious calling to follow him . . . and then ‘just do it.’ “In many disguises he has come before,” Buechner says, “and in many disguises he will c= ome again before he comes finally, and once or twice I have even thought I recognized him.” (p.276)