A man in the crowd said to Jesus,
Master,
Tell my brother to give me a share of our inheritance.
My friend,
He replied,
Who appointed me your judge or the arbitrator of your claims?
Then he said to them,
Watch and be on your guard against avarice of any kind,
For a man's life is not made secure by what he owns,
Even when he has more than he needs.
Then he told them a parable.
There was once a rich man who,
Having had a good harvest from his land,
Thought to himself,
What am I to do?
I have not enough room to store my crops.
Then he said,
This is what I will do.
I will pull down my barns and build bigger ones,
And store all my grain and my goods in them.
And I will say to my soul,
My soul,
You have plenty of good things laid by for many years to come.
Make things easy,
Eat,
Drink,
Have a good time.
But God said to him,
Fool,
This very night the demand will be made for your soul,
And this hoard of yours,
Whose will it be then?
So it is when a man stores up treasure for himself in place of making himself rich in the sight of God.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you,
Lord Jesus Christ.
Why do we live?
Why do we have,
As human beings,
This drive to collect things?
To collect money?
To collect fame?
Degrees?
Knowledge?
Worldly possessions?
Why do we have this inherent drive to want?
We see in the readings today that even though we can have things,
We can lose them so quickly and so easily.
As soon as we pass away,
Who gets what we have accumulated here on earth?
Who gets my knowledge?
Who gets my money?
Yes,
We have our beneficiaries hopefully listed in our worlds.
Have your worlds drawn up so that there's no fighting about things that other people in any case don't deserve.
But what happens when I die?
What happens to my knowledge?
What happens to my money?
What happens to my house?
What happens to anything that I own?
Vanity,
It is all in vain.
So then why do we live if all we do is in vain?
Jesus tells this parable,
And let's be honest,
There's not a lot we can say on this parable because it is so direct.
Make yourself rich in the sight of God.
Now I struggle,
This is a personal thing.
I really struggle to connect with the concept of prosperity churches.
I really struggle with that idea that the riches should be earthly.
And like I said,
That is my personal thing.
I'm not saying that it is wrong to have money and to have things.
Not at all.
But how is what I have making myself rich in the sight of God?
I think the answer to this is to be found in what we do with what we have.
When I die,
I hope that everything that I have,
All that I am,
Will be Christ's,
Will be God's.
And in order for me to do that,
I need to start.
Now,
I need to start today.
I need to start.
You don't have to do anything.
I know I need to start giving all to God,
Giving all to Christ.
What I am is Christ's.
Because Christ is everything.
There is nothing on this planet,
In this universe that is not God.
There is nothing.
So how can I want to keep things for myself?
How can I want to then gather things for myself and try and keep it if it's already God,
If it's already God's?
And this is where the message comes in so strongly.
Christ is in everything and Christ is everything.
So I don't own anything.
What do I own?
If in the end,
I am not this body.
In the end,
This configuration of atoms that for now is being kept together by the miracle of God's grace is not mine.
Because who am I?
What am I?
When I die,
This will become part of the earth,
Part of just another feeding scheme for plants and worms.
And then what this body has done also becomes nothing.
But for what it has done in the eyes of God,
Compassion,
Love,
Those are the two things that I think that God loves to see.
Those are the riches that I believe that we need to start getting together.
The awareness of God's love and sharing that awareness of God.
And let's take it a step further.
Let's take the awareness that God is everything into our daily lives.
And that's quite scary because there are some times that I do things that I don't want God to see.
Sometimes there are things that I feel so sad about that I don't realize that God is there.
God is in that very moment because God is that moment.
Let us remember,
Let us try and remember that.
Even in our deepest,
Darkest moments,
Even in our most heart-wrenching moments when we are faced with the loss of a loved one,
When we are faced with a loved one who is about to let go of the body,
To enter into full union with God,
When we are faced with those challenges and those heart-wrenching moments,
Let us remember that God is there and God is that moment too.
There's nothing that God isn't.
That brings me some hope,
That brings me some peace,
That whatever I go through,
It is God.
That I won't ever do anything alone.
And in this earthly incarnation,
That this isn't it,
This isn't the end for me,
This isn't the end for any of us,
Because this isn't all we are.
We are so much more.
We are just here now to live and learn these lessons that God intends us to learn.
But this is just the school.
And death is our graduation into life.
Amen.
