God Demands Life

Sermon

The scripture today comes from Luke 12:13-21, and it’s often known as the parable of the rich fool. This is a parable Jesus tells to a crowd of thousands, and often told more than once to more crowds of thousands, and so, reflects what Jesus was not only saying, but doing and living out throughout the ministry…and gathering crowds of thousands.

This specific parable is followed by a rare explanation from Jesus that helps reveal just how subversive Jesus was, and why he needed to be—because as soon as they did finally figure it out, we know they killed him, which means they never figured it out because the whole point was that you’d never be able to kill the Spirit living through the Word.

Jesus explains, “Therefore, do not worry about your life…life is more than food and body and clothing. God feeds you, nourishes you, clothes you, and shelters you.”

So then, this parable is Jesus cautioning us against greed over money and worry over possessions.

This passage is actually one of the first passages I ever gave a message on, and earnestly it is one of those memories that makes me cringe so much but not because it was a terrible message.

I was 15 years old; it was 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning. We were at skid row in Los Angeles, and there were a few hundred unhoused people waiting in line for some food.

And I delivered one of my first sermons full of enthusiasm and theater-kid energy with the greatly insightful message: Be careful about greed; you don’t have to worry about your life, or what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear, for life is more than food and the body more than clothing.

To a crowd of hundreds of people who had been more than likely forced into their situation, to a group of people who our society deems not worthy of even the most basics of food and shelter, to a group of individuals whose stories and lives I could not possibly understand—I said to all of them: you don’t have to worry about any of that because your life is more than that. Your treasure is with God. Have faith.

Many people who came by went out of their way to thank me for speaking. I shook hands with as many people as I could. One person shared a poem they had written, another the art he had drawn on his shoes. Wow, do I remember feeling good about that.

But I can’t help but cringe when I think back to that because I absolutely know that 15-year-old boy had no idea what he was talking about. My Facebook post from that morning makes that obvious: “Please pray for me as I deliver my first sermon to homeless people in the streets of LA.”

I also know I had little idea what I was talking about because our family, though we weren’t by any means wealthy, or even close to wealthy, we also were rarely ever without—we had consistent power, water, sewage, shelter, clothing, food, and even a handful of extracurriculars every so often.

I was lucky to have things that shouldn’t have to be based on luck. But because I was lucky, and because I was a 15-year-old teenager who happened to be lucky, I thankfully had no idea what the lived experience of “homeless people in the streets of L.A.” was actually like. I didn’t know the true consequences of greed; I didn’t know the worries and anxieties that made just getting food and water a daily challenge.

So, even though I know that that message was ultimately received well by the community that day, I know it had absolutely nothing to do with me, and everything to do with Jesus; it’s also exactly how this call to a new life attracted thousands and thousands of people, and how it has survived through generations of cultures, tragedies, and histories from then through today.

This passage is jarring on first read. Someone in the crowd makes a reasonable request to Jesus; he’s had his inheritance withheld from him and wants Jesus’ help in righting this wrong, something that would be pretty consistent with who everyone’s come to know as Jesus. But rather than help or even politely refuse, Jesus instead responds: be on guard against all kinds of greed, don’t worry about your life, or food, or money, or possessions.

I cringe because I now know why this is jarring, because this message was not for me.

If we look at this parable and read from it the call to gratitude, a call to be fiscally responsible, a call to be modest, a call to place our life in God rather than our possessions, that is an absolutely correct takeaway from this passage for our lives. But this message for us is made real only when we are able to understand Jesus’ message and who it really was for.

Because for this crowd, who had more than likely been forced into their situation, to a group of people who society had no longer deemed worthy of even the most basics of food and shelter, to a group of individuals whose stories and lives privileged leaders could never understand, the parable of the rich fool was not a spiritual lesson.

This parable is a parable of prophetic hope. Like Amos and Micah and Isaiah, Jesus is a prophet, but the crowds have come to witness what John the Baptist knew: Jesus is not just truth-telling, not only seeing and naming the truths in the world, but truth-making.

With the full authority of God, Jesus tells crowds and crowds of thousands of people who had come to Jesus from the margins: that brother who won’t divide his inheritance, that land owner that keeps hoarding his wealth, everyone who tries to take away everything from you, who tries to keep you from being able to survive and live, everyone who is unable to see you as a human, unable to see you as God’s beloved, everyone who claims you’re not worthy or deserving because of one reason or another—it doesn’t matter how much money, how much wealth, how many possessions they have—their souls are impoverished and empty, their lives full of anxieties and worries about things that do not matter.

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for God’s kin-dom belongs to you.”

The crowds heard this and understood, and they followed.

The communities Jesus ministered to, the authorities Jesus challenged, the individuals healed, those who experienced even just a brief moment of God’s love—they all came to fully believe in the kin-dom of heaven because Jesus was actively making it a reality with them.

I cringe because I know that 15-year-old Jun could not grasp the weight of the hope Jesus’ words held.

For people who are told each day that their lives do not matter … who society has normalized hatred and discrimination against … whose lives have been deemed as less valuable…for people who have had every basic human right stripped away from them… for those who have been literally shoved into the darkest corners of the world… for those being treated inhumanely…left to die with ailments and diseases that are perfectly curable…left to die with plenty of food, shelter, and wealth available. For people whose basic human rights are actively being denied, whose conditions are impossible to ignore…it is not nothing when people are able to fully trust that none of it is what God wants for the world. It is not nothing to know that the Creator of the entire universe cares about every individual. It is not nothing to learn that they are far more beloved than they have been made to believe.

In fact, it is everything.

Jesus came into a world ensnared by greed, oppression of others, a mindset of scarcity, and self-preservation, and he gave those who felt trapped underneath the weight of all of this a true hope that the way it was, was not the way it should be.

That is this parable’s primary purpose: to give hope to those whose God-given, God-crafted lives have been deemed less than, in a dehumanizing society based on merit, wealth, capacity, ability, ethnicity, religious identity, nationality; the hope of the kin-dom of heaven where there is no poverty, homelessness, no racism or genocide, no hatred and evil.

This hope is one that we know has been fully made real through Jesus Christ, is one we can fully trust, is one that mobilized thousands and thousands of people, and is the hope that has sustained the life and love of Jesus Christ through even today.

It is this radically real and unfathomable hope that gave Harriet Tubman the faith to risk her life for the freedom of others. It is the radical belief trusting that the way it is is not the way it should be that drove Nat Turner to lead a resistance effort. And it is this hope that Nat Turner and other resistance leaders brought to women like Charlotte, Ester, and Lucy, who did not know what was possible until they saw it, and then immediately supported any rebel efforts.

More and more each day, it does feel like we need this kind of unfathomable hope revealed and made real to us. With how much we can see and know this is not the way it should be, it can also feel overwhelming and powerless if we do not know what it is we need to do.

And, it is not as simple as us putting our faith in God that everything will work out.

The crowds at the time knew that wasn’t the case, and so did the crowds that morning in L.A. It’s that they knew and believed that God was working to work everything out.

Knowing that God’s message to us is made real by understanding God’s message for the marginalized gives us in this community with our privileges and luck a much different role in the kin-dom, but one that is just as necessary, bringing hope and assurance to every woman and person who is forced to directly fight for their lives and their neighbors’.

Dr. Orit Kamir, a scholar and professor currently living in Jerusalem, recently wrote to her community, and frankly, ours.

“You who presume to lead, in various ways, the sane public—but are careful not to say “controversial” things that might upset someone: shame on you. If children dying of hunger don’t disturb you enough to cry out without political calculations, what alternative are you offering? What leadership?

Where are the nurses? Professional associations—of psychologists, sociologists, lawyers, social workers? Where are the student organizations? When children become Muselmänner and die in agony because of us—don’t you think it’s your duty to cry out until the horror stops? So what are you here for?

If a million Israeli women and men took to the streets, as one person, with an uncompromising demand to end the war immediately—this horror would end. Even a monstrous and disconnected government cannot ignore the entire public.”

In the face of a monstrous and disconnected government, Jesus came and mobilized the entire public, beginning with those who the monster had harmed most. The disciples who continued the ministry did the same, taking the skills they had gained in their trades, the access they had based on their ethnicity, status, or race, leveraging their privileges and wealth to continue spreading the radically mobilizing and hope-filling message of Christ.

The Church has survived thousands of years and thousands of people attempting to sully Christ’s name because of millions of women and men and people who have refused time and time again that the message of Christ is anything but life.

Institutions, empires, civilizations, they will all fall, but the community of Church has survived and will survive.

Each of your voices, everyone in this room carries with them, the authority of Jesus, an authority rooted in radical hope. Each of your voices carries with it the capacity to bring life for another person. In all the spaces you inhabit, know you have the capacity for change, for hope, to bring life, and to sustain the Church for future generations.