Preached Sunday August 1, 2010
Luke 12:13-21
John Selby Spong writes in his monograph, This Rabbi Lord, “The key…I believe is our ability to distinguish between Jesus and the Christ. They are not the same. Jesus was a person; Christ is a title, a theological principle. Jesus was of history. Christ is beyond history. Jesus was human, finite, limited; Christ is power that is divine, infinite, unlimited. Jesus had a mother and a father, an ancestry, a human heritage. He was born. He died. Christ is a principle beyond the capacity of the mind to embrace or human origins to explain. The name of our Lord was not Jesus Christ, as so many of us suppose. He was Jesus of Nazareth about whom people made the startling and revolutionary claim: “You are the Christ!”
Spong goes one: “In Jesus of Nazareth, men and women saw the fullness of life being lived, the depth of love being shared, the courage to be being revealed. To them Jesus made known the full meaning of life, and love and being. He revealed God, and whenever God was seen in human life, that power is called Christ. “Your are the Christ, Jesus!” That was the claim. “You are the Christ, for in your life, we have seen the meaning of all life. In your love we have seen the source of all love. In your being we have seen the ground of all being.”
In a lighter vein, Rev. Bill Wall, from the United Church of Canada said in April: “What makes Christian’s distinct? One word: Jesus....But that answer is just the start of the debate. A friend told me recently, “My Jesus and my sister’s Jesus aren’t even distant cousins.”
We know that the Jesus we talk about in our church is very different from the Jesus that James Dobson and Focus on the Family talk about. Their Jesus doesn’t like you and me. I do hope that our Jesus likes them, though. I’d like to think that the Jesus you and I are in relationship with would want to be in relationship with them also.
People often come to Jesus thinking that they already know him and that they can therefore expect from Jesus just what they want out of him. It was no different in Biblical times. So today’s passage from Luke begins with a man coming to Jesus to settle a family feud. In that time it wasn’t uncommon for those in the midst of a feud to turn to a respected rabbi who would listen to both parties involved in the disagreement and then render a wise decision on how to handle the problem. Perhaps it would have been wiser of this man to have selected a different rabbi.
Jesus appeared ready to turn ordinary situations into teaching moments. He took the stuff that life is made of, human interactions, human relationships, and turned those events into lessons of great importance.
I have a feeling that the crowds gathered around Jesus would have been very earthy, very human crowds, with lots of teasing and joking going on, not at all like a worship service. Being earthy isn’t sinful. Lots of earthly things are needed and important. Jesus was a very earthy kind of man and his stories reflect his earthiness and his humanness.
Inheritance usually involved the handing down of real estate to one child in the family, usually the eldest son, so that the entire family farm would stay in the family and not be divided up into smaller lots. I heard in the news two weeks ago about tribes of people in Asia where several brothers marry one woman in order to keep the family farm intact and in the family. In Jesus’ day one might pay off your siblings financially to buy out any interest they might have in the property. But you never sold the family farm. Instead of answering the man, Jesus tells a story that goes to the real heart of the matter: greed.
He tells the story of the Rich Fool as the Parable has come to be known. At first glance the man doesn’t seem to be much of a fool. He is running a successful farming business and has ample barns to store up his produce to sell off during the year to bring in a constant stream of money. He’s not a bad guy. In fact, he has done such a good job of managing his business that with the blessing of good weather and abundant rain at just the right time he has reaped a bumper crop this year. With far too much product on hand he decides to tear down his barns which aren’t big enough to hold the harvest and build bigger, newer barns in which to store his grain.
This decision on his part would have brought to mind in Jesus’ hearer’s the story of Joseph from the Old Testament who interpreted the Pharaoh’s dream about 7 years of abundance followed by 7 years of famine. The Pharaoh ordered storage facilities to be built and the grain to be stored during the 7 years of abundance so it would be available in the 7 years of famine to feed the people. Joseph was appointed the overseer of this project and was able to save his own family from the famine. So this seems to be a wise and prudent decision on the part of the farmer.
But did you notice that in this man’s discussion with himself he never refers to anyone else, not even to God. Jesus’ audience that day would have noticed this, and they would have noticed some things that Jesus’ story doesn’t mention, but which were part of the social and religious customs of the day.
First of all, implied within Jesus’ story is the concept that this man should have first thanked God for the blessings that have been bestowed upon him and taken an offering of the first fruits of his labor to the Temple and given it to God. But that’s not what he did.
Secondly, as we see in so many of the parables of Jesus the expected action when sudden abundance comes upon you is to gather your family and friends and hold a celebration feast so that together they could all give thanks to God for God’s blessings and share in your joy. But that’s not what he did.
Thirdly, out of his abundance he should have set aside some of it to give to the poor, the needy, the widows and the orphans as the religious law required. But that’s not what he did.
He only thinks about himself. Nowhere do we read of any actions or statements about his relationships with God and others. Instead he decides that he will eat and drink and be merry for his own good fortune. But as Jesus puts it, he doesn’t get a chance to enjoy his lonely celebration because his number comes up and his life is over. What about his great fortune now? If he had no family, as this story implies, it now belongs to the tax collectors.
In contrast to this we have the story about a revolutionary war hero General Lafayette who after the war in America went back to his home in France where he had a large estate. One year his estate has a bumper crop of grain while the country as a whole has a crop failure. His advisors tell him that because of the scarcity of grain he should raise his prices and reap a financial reward. Lafayette instead told his advisors it wasn’t the time to sell, but time to give away his bounty to others in need.
Jesus is trying to tell us that being greedy, trying to get things for ourselves and only for ourselves, is not the way that we should think and act as citizens of the New Community of God. Instead we should be building up treasures for ourselves in heaven. What does that mean?
Building up treasurers for yourselves in heaven doesn’t mean that some day when you do get to heaven there’s going to be a big house full of lots of goodies waiting for you, all of the things that you didn’t get in this life. As the old spiritual song says when you get to heaven you won’t get beautiful clothing to wear, wings on your back, shoes on your feet, rings on your finger, nor will you get a crown encrusted with jewels to put on your head. My relatives used to say when they did an especially nice thing for someone else, “I guess I just got a diamond in my crown.” That’s pretty simplistic, child-like, literal thinking. It’s time we grew up and really paid attention to what Jesus is trying to teach us.
Jesus is telling us in so many different ways and demonstrating by his actions what he means: caring for the weak, the poor, the ill, the widows, the orphans, the rejected and ejected, the down and out, and even for the up and out like the farmer in the story. We need to pay attention to the relationships we have with other persons and make sure that we are honoring those relationships in healthy, life-giving ways. That’s what the apostle Paul is talking about in the Colossians passage this morning.
Max Lucado tells the story of Bob, who was born into the land of coats! His mother loved the color blue and made Bob's first cost a lovely shade of blue. Every time she noticed her son in his lovely blue coat, she cheered, "Yes, Bob!" He felt good in his blue coat, but Bob had to grow up and go to work. So he put on his best blue coat and slipped out of the house, going to his new job.
The people on the street saw him and began to yell, "Yuk, Yuk!" Their coats were yellow and they hated blue. Into a store ducked Bob and bought a yellow coat, put it over his blue coat and continued on his way to work. The people cheered, "Yea! Bob!" Bob felt good in his yellow coat over his blue coat.
He stepped into his boss’ office to get his assignment for that first day, who came in, looked at him and yelled, "Yuk!" So Bob jumped up, took off the yellow coat and stood waiting for approval in his blue coat. The boss yelled, "Double Yuk! Bob. Here at work we wear green coats!" With that, Bob slipped back on the yellow coat, over the blue coat and put the green coat on top. "Yea! Bob!" said the boss. As he left for work, Bob felt good.
After work, Bob slipped off the green coat, put it under the yellow coat and walked proudly home. He opened the door, went inside, as his mother looked at him with a "Yuk" on her lips. Bob quickly changed coats, putting the lovely blue one on top. Mom whispered, "Yea! Bob!"
Bob got so good at changing coats until he became a popular man around town. He changed coats so swiftly until he had folks fooled into believing that whatever coat they had on, he had it on too. Bob loved hearing the crowd say, "Yea! Bob!" He couldn't stand hearing "Yuk" Bob was elected mayor of the Town of Coats and had a faithful constituency.
One day he heard a noise outside of his window and then heard a pounding on his door. The Yellow Coats brought in a man wearing no coat. "Kill him!" they cried, "he doesn't fit in!" In his yellow coat, Bob said, "Leave him to me."
"Man, where is your coat?" he asked. The man said, "I wear no coat." Bob replied, "everybody wears a coat. What color do you choose?" The man responded the second time, "I wear no coat."
By then the Green Coats had gathered under Bob's window. Running to the window, his green coat on top, Bob yelled down to them, "I have it under control." The Green Coats shouted, "Kill him!"
At this time his mother entered into the room, and Bob slipped his blue coat on top. "Bob, where is his blue coat?" Mother asked, The Man replied, "I don't wear a coat." "Kill him," said Mother as she left Bob and the man alone.
"Man”, said Bob, “you have to wear a coat or they are going to kill you." "Bob," said the man, "you need to decide to stop wearing your different coats. Take them off, take them all off and let the world see who you truly are." "Take them off? Take them all off?" asked an incredulous Bob. The man said again, "Bob, you have to make a choice."
As the crowd kept crying, "Kill him!" Bob washed his hands, opened the door and marched the man toward sure death. The man looked at Bob, with one final word, "Choose." Bob was left alone with his three coats and the questions ringing in his mind, "Take them off? Take them all off?"
We’ve got to stop worrying about what coat we should put on and instead worry about what kind of relationships we are building with God and with others in our lives.
Paul writes to the people of Colossia from the letter to the Colossians. Apparently, they are wrestling with theological questions and philosophical debates around the centrality of Jesus. Was this Jesus just a wonderful human teacher, or was he truly the Divine Son of God or some combination of the two? That is still a question we ask ourselves today. False teachings, trying to combine human intellect, Greek wisdom, and strains of Judaism with Christian truth, have all embroiled the Christian Church in arguments over this issue for two thousand years.
So, Paul writes to deal with the divinity, death and resurrection of Jesus, and explains how the world's teachings are empty when compared with God's plan for us in Jesus Christ. Then, he moves into describing how Christians ought to think and behave because of our relationship with God.
Let me reread a portion of the scripture from Collosians to you from Petersons translation The Message:
You are done with that old life. It's like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you've stripped off and put in the fire. Now you're dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom made by the Creator. It has the ultimate Designer label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, inside and outsider, civilized and uncouth, slave and free mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ. Everyone is included in Christ. So, dressed by God for this new life of love, put on the wardrobe God picked out for you."
Paul is telling us to "Take off all the old and put on the new." It's about taking off the politically correct, the socially right, and morally expedient coats we have been wearing and standing naked before Christ in order to be fitted with the appropriate Christian garb. It's time to stand up for Jesus Christ.
This passage says that deceiving ourselves and trying to fool others is not sufficient for life in the New Community of God. This passage comes and declares that there are some things we can no longer do and call ourselves Christ-like. We have to take off that quick anger and that filthy temper. We have to take off that meanness which allows us to do three snaps when someone insults us, or a flip of the third finger, when someone cuts us off on the highway. We have to take off that dirty language that just slips out. We have to take off telling those nasty jokes which make fun of God's people who don't look or act like us. We have to take off lying, which we claim like children caught with their hands in the cookie jar, "everybody does it." All of those things belong to the outdated, outmoded wardrobe of our lives Before Christ!
When Christ comes into our lives there is a difference. When Christ comes into our lives there is a newness. When Christ comes into our lives we will change. We can stand naked before the One who knows us intimately and who loves us just the same.
Tell me, what color coat are you wearing right now? Most of us, like Bob, keep changing coats, which are dependent upon where we happen to be and who we happen to be with because we can't stand to hear other people say, "Yuk!"
Jesus speaks one word for all of us today--choose! Choose by making the decision for Christ today. No more coat changing for me. I choose to stand naked before Christ and to allow him to dress me with his own Ultimate Designer Label clothing. All that I have comes from God. God loves me just as I am! God sent Jesus into my life so that I might rise up above all the turmoil and strife and live the resurrected life in Christ. I don’t have to wait until some day in the distant future to enjoy heaven, for the real heaven, the New Community of God exists already in the here and now. You and I are living in that New Community right now.
The call is clear. No more blue politically correct coats. "Yuk!" No more yellow socially acceptable coats. "Yuk!" No more green morally expedient coats. "Double yuk!"
When we give our lives to Jesus, we can stand naked and ready to be used by God, knowing that we are loved and accepted exactly as we are. We recognize that Jesus, our Savior, came and stood naked before all the world. He lived a transparent life and allowed the disciples to see him at his best and even at his worst. He was completely human. He allowed himself to be vulnerable and let the world watch him die a victim's death.
But God said, that’s not the end of this story and clothed in majesty and victory, Christ rose with a new wardrobe in his hands for you and me. He rose to dress us with right living, with compassion for others, and with the power to live in victory over anything that keeps us away from God.
I have decided to let Jesus come into my life and redesign it for me. I'm taking it off. I'm taking it all off. I want to be dressed by the One who is the Ultimate Designer for me. Today, dear friends, I also invite you to choose Jesus as your own Ultimate Designer!
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