Luke 12:13-21
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull 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, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
A couple of weeks ago we heard the story about God and Abraham standing on the road outside of Sodom while God contemplated what to do with that grotesquely inhospitable city. There, in the middle of the street, Abraham asked if God would stay true to Their Divine Character, even when dealing with this obscenely inhospitable city. Would God continue act out of Hesed… out of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness… even when facing something so genuinely awful?
Both of todays lessons ask of us, the very same question Abraham asked of God. Will we stay true to reflecting the Divine Character of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness even in our most challenging times… even when life presents us with things that are heartbreakingly horrible?
It was looking into the rabidly inhospitable city of Sodom that presented this question to God. It was royal-level wealth, an inheritance worth arguing about, and a billionaire farmer’s bumper crop that presented this question to the characters in today’s stories. But what asks the question is not meant to be our focus. The question could have just as easily been asked by the loss of a loved one, a devastating diagnosis, a chronic illness, or even by a spouse’s return to rehab.
The questioner isn’t important. The question is. Will we, EVEN in life’s most devastatingly difficult moments, be true and reflect the Divine Character of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness no matter what? In those horrible times will we continue to move our lives TOWARD our loved ones, our neighbor, toward our community, the stranger, the foreigner, and toward those who the world calls the least, the lost and the last… Because when we live TOWARD the other, putting their needs before ours… this lesson, this parable, and honestly, a HUGE chunk of Scripture… both Old and New Testaments… all make it clear that when we walk our lives in THAT direction… when we stay true to reflecting the Divine Character of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness… we will find ourselves walking in the fullness and abundance of life even as we encounter the most horrible things imaginable. When we walk in that direction… when we go with the Divine Flow… when we stay true to our calling to reflect the Divine Character of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness… we find life to be abundant and never ending, no matter what.
If, however, in those horrible times we are drawn away from reflecting the Divine Character of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness… If we start pushing against the Divine Flow, and walking away from our neighbors, away from our community, away from the stranger, the foreigner, and those the world calls the least, the lost and the last… this lesson and this parable, and honestly a HUGE chunk of Scripture… both Old and New Testaments… all make it clear that when we stop reflecting the Divine Character of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness, when we go against the Divine Flow, when we walk our lives AWAY from our neighbor, we end up with a life that is filled with a fear, shame, defensiveness, hatred and anger that sucks the life we’ve been given right out of us.
The first lesson catches the king in that realization. It’s not his money, work, or power that are his problem… it’s that his vanity has led him to stop reflecting God’s Steadfast Love and Faithfulness into the world. His vanity has him swimming against the Divine Flow. His Vanity has led him to walk deeper into himself and away from his neighbor and THAT is what has left him sliding ever deeper into despair.
Likewise in the parable, bumper crops aren’t the problem. Rather its the direction the man is now living as he obsesses about his barns. His obsession has distracted him from reflecting Steadfast Love and Faithfulness toward his neighbors. Walking into his worries and AWAY from the other… walking AWAY from his neighbors drains the life right out of him to the point where “that very night”, he walks himself right out of the last bit of the life he’s been given.
You and I are called by God to live our lives reflecting the Divine Character of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness into the world, walking the Jesus Way, or Going with the Divine Flow. We are called to live that way NOT out of a fear that God will GET US if we don’t. God doesn’t work that way! That wouldn’t be true to God’s true character of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness, would it? No, God calls us to live this way OUT OF God’s true character of Steadfast Love and faithfulness! God calls us to walk the Jesus Way toward the other, live our lives going with the Divine Flow so that we might live into an abundance of life that no horribleness we could ever encounter could ever take it away.
Honestly, that’s the entire take home message, not just of these lessons but of a whole giant chunk of Scripture. Put your ego on a shelf, haul down your defenses, open yourself up to God’s unconditional gift of Steadfast Love and Faithfulness and begin to walk this life you’ve been given as a reflection of that same Divine Steadfast Love. Walk this life you’ve been given the Jesus Way… toward your neighbor… toward the other and the King in Ecclesiastes would tell you, THAT is real wisdom… Walking your life THAT way, Jesus would tell you, is the WAY. Walking your life THAT way you will experience this life as this life was intended to be lived… filled with abundance, peace, love and joy no matter what horribleness we inevitably encounter along the way. Amen.
