God indeed has a sense of humour.
When I woke up this morning,
I saw a message from a friend hearing how a church group,
A local church group in Pretoria,
Started telling the congregation to do exactly what Jesus said.
And I had to laugh at the timing of reading the article and the message of today because people listened and they gave up everything that they had.
Because that is what the pastor said Christ wanted from them.
And in the past they enriched themselves,
Them and their disciples.
And I was just hit again by how often we forget to read the whole sentence.
How often we get excited about something and we don't sit down and think about the outcome completely.
Here we see people who in faith,
In beautiful faith,
Gave up their livelihoods in a time where we can ill afford to do so.
And then to know how they got their riches,
Got to the poor,
Got to those in need and then themselves ending up needing help,
Needing financial support and not getting that from their church.
Can we sit with a bit of a conundrum because we live in a world where we do need to earn an income?
And is it wrong?
Can we all give up everything for Christ?
Can we pack up everything and just live for God?
Maybe some can.
I think this story and the Gospel reading today where Christ asked the man to give up all he had is not necessarily something that needs to be taken literally.
We know that we go to the afterlife with none of the riches that we had gathered on earth.
And yet,
What if we use those riches to promote and share the Gospel and not the fire and brimstone Gospel,
The Gospel of you have to convert?
What if we share the Gospel of Christ in the form of love?
We share the love of Christ.
What if we can do so while being filthy rich?
And that to me is where the difference comes in.
And to me is where we then look at what I think Jesus meant.
Instead of giving everything away,
What if we can dedicate everything to the Lord?
What if we can say that everything I have is not mine?
So God,
Use it.
Use me.
My life isn't mine.
My life is yours,
Lord.
If my life is yours,
Then everything I own is yours.
And then we can start dissociating ourselves and we can start lifting ourselves out of a materialistic world.
And then it doesn't matter if I am filthy rich,
If I dedicate all my riches to the Lord and I do so with love,
Then the blessings follow.
And the blessings do not necessarily follow in the form of riches.
Our lives are finite.
We know that we are going to die at some stage.
And our lives are just a blink of an eye in the greater scheme of things.
In fact,
Our lives might never even have been.
We might just be living in the pretense of separation,
Where time is a construct where for us to be able to sort through the experiences.
So then is it worth amassing wealth for the next generation or for ourselves?
Or is it worth dedicating all we are to God?
We say God is everything.
Does that not mean that every single atom is a part of God?
Are we not made up of those very atoms?
Star dust I read the other day.
That's a beautiful thing.
We are made of star dust.
Kept together by a form of consciousness coming from the Lord.
It's one of the great mysteries.
Being able to stand here,
Being able to have a body made up of minerals and star dust.
So if everything I am made up is already God's,
Then I believe that everything I own is already God's as well.
We must just maybe open our hearts to that.
We must just maybe open our eyes.
And then it doesn't matter if I give all that I own to the church.
A good friend of mine has an immense belief in the power of tithing.
That's beautiful.
Because you get that energy exchange.
And what I'm talking about now is not that.
It's not the tithing.
It is where you are asked to empty your bank account for God so that you can amass riches in heaven.
Because we read it in the Bible.
We just read it in the Gospel.
But Jesus didn't say give everything to the church.
Jesus said sell and give to the poor.
And in my mind today,
There is nothing wrong to speak to God and say,
God,
Here's my life.
Here is everything I have.
Use it.
Make me your instrument every day,
Every moment of every day.
Because when we can do that,
And we give all we have,
And if we focus on loving each other and loving those who I need,
Then those beautiful gifts in heaven that Christ spoke about are ours already.
So when we go into this week,
I'm going to ask each one of you to take some time and spend some time with the Lord in silence.
And tell the Lord,
Before you go into this beautiful sacred silence,
Here I am,
Lord.
Take everything I have.
Take me.
And let your love,
Unconditional,
Shine through me to those who need it most.
May God place us all in that.
Amen.
