GotToHaveItness
A sermon brought forth from Exodus 20:17-21 and Luke 12:13-21 preached on July 3, 2022
That last sentence of our first reading: “The people remained at a distance.” God doesn’t want distance. He wants His people close. When the people of Israel kept their distance they failed in their faith, they could not walk closer. There was a gap between where they were and where God was, and they could not close it because they distrusted.
We’ve talked about how the 10 Commandments are more like vows or commitments we make with God as we enter covenant life with Him. God is a fully committed groom, but Israel is a bride who won’t walk up the aisle. Saying “I do” means they’ll know full relationship with God, which is what we’re all made for and what God intends for us. From the very beginning, He made us for that. But the people trembled at the base of the mountain when they should have climbed it.
God was offering His entire self to them, and they couldn’t accept, because they were too afraid of full relationship. They said, “I don’t.” Saying Yes to life on God’s terms sets us free, rids us of our fear, and delivers us from our self-imposed limitations. The people of Israel couldn’t believe that. Commitment sometimes seems confining. Why is it so hard to trust in enough?
This story and the parable within it challenge us to remove all other priorities until Jesus is our singular and trustworthy Lord and Savior. For centuries, Rabbis like Jesus had been arbitrating financial disputes just like the one this man is having with his brother. This man may have been seeking a fair resolution to this matter between him and his brother, but Jesus’s response suggests otherwise. Jesus knows that this man’s desires are off.
I’d warn you before getting into a conversation with Jesus. Most likely, He’ll take whatever you bring and turn it back around on you. He’s forever trying to change the subject. Like the man in this story, we tend to think that the problem that needs solving has to do with how others are acting, but Jesus knows it’s never that cut and dry.
This man wants to use Jesus to justify his stance. He’s convinced he’s right, and he wants Jesus to back him up, to support his argument. But that’s not what happens. Jesus sees right through the presenting problem to the truth of the matter and the ugly motivation underneath. Jesus sees that this man’s greed has twisted him out of shape. He placed his ultimate trust and his personal security in the wrong things. Greed is a distorted, misdirected reliance upon possessions. Greed is a preoccupation with externals that steers our attention, energy, and loyalties away from the single-minded obedience that Jesus requires.
The man in the story faithlessly assumes that he has primary control over his future. He accumulates not for the better of serving others out of love for God but to finance his own leisure. What he fails to see is that he does not control this journey he’s on. God does. The dependence we place on money should only be placed on God. The last of the 10 Vows offers us a word for that kind of category mistake: “covet.”
I love old cartoons. The Warner Brothers ones from the ’50s and ’60s are my favorites. Tom chasing Jerry, Bugs Bunny effortlessly outwitting Elmer Fudd, the sarcastic wisdom of Foghorn Leghorn. But if you ask me, nothing compares to the endless saga of Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner. The Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner chases is a cartoon that keeps on going.
Wile E. Coyote is a thoroughly worn-out creature who spends his sad existence trying to catch a bird. The Roadrunner is much too fast for Wile E. Coyote, and it frustrates the coyote to no end that this bird is so easily able to avoid all his pin-headed attempts to capture it. With every failure to catch what my college poetry professor, Tim Seibles, called “that pin-headed feather duster,”
Wile E. Coyote becomes increasingly fixated with snagging the Roadrunner. He buys birdseed and thousands of dollars worth of dynamite and traps of every sort. He runs off the sides of canyons, blows himself up, and gets caught in his own devices. But the Roadrunner effortlessly eludes him. The Roadrunner is that thing Wile E. Coyote wants but cannot have.
Wile E. Coyote’s anxious pursuit of the Roadrunner takes over his life. Catching this bird becomes the coyote’s ultimate purpose. He covets that bird. Getting his hands around it is his idea of ultimate fulfillment and satisfaction. His chasing after it becomes a sickness, an out-of-control desire for fulfillment that even the Coyote doesn’t understand.
The chases of Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner are fun but they’re also a haunting example of our own endless and crazed pursuit for more. In one episode, Wyle E. Coyote again fails to catch the Roadrunner, and he holds up a sign that says, “In heaven’s name, what am I doing?”
Idolatry is a big word, but it comes down to how we so often chase after what cannot satisfy. “What in heaven’s name are we doing?” That’s a Gospel question. Why is it so hard to trust in enough?
Hoping this man has what it takes to see the truth about himself, Jesus offers a parable about a farmer who loses himself in unreasonable self-concern. This farmer does not know the peace that comes with trust; he only knows compulsion. It’s an abundant harvest that makes this farmer a “fool.” He loses his perspective. He forgets his need to trust God, and in his self-determination, he forgets that his life and breath are not his to own or manage. Pastor Eugene Peterson writes,
“The man in the parable fills his barns with Self and not with God.”
He’s forgotten His creator and is now arranging his well-being on his own. He’s scrounging for more out of an assumption that his true security lies in accumulation. The farmer’s mistake isn’t that he’s yielded a huge crop. It isn’t that he’s rich—Jesus doesn’t speak against that. How many times does the farmer reference himself in verses 17-19? I counted 11 times. 11 times in 8 sentences. This farmer is single-minded and self-focused. It doesn’t occur to him that an abundant crop isn’t something earned but is a gift. This is a special sort of soul suffering. It’s only when we crave what we do not have that we become poor. What if you awoke tomorrow with only what you gave thanks for today? Wouldn’t that be just fine?
At this communion table we find where our true security lies. This is where all our insecure chases come to an end. At this Table, we trust in enough.
All Praises to the One who made it all and finds it beautiful! Alleluia! Amen.