Sermon Title: "Where Your Treasure Is"
Date: August 8, 2010
Minister:  The Rev. Charles Ensley

Lesson:  Luke 12:32-40

When I was growing up, my mother’s five sisters lived back in Pennsylvania, so my closest and favorite aunt was my dad’s only sister, who lived in Los Angeles.  Aunt Jewell did not marry until later in life, so our family was her only family.  She was born in 1908, and around 1930 began to work for AT&T, first as an operator, eventually moving up to supervisor of a department.  She began to buy stock during the Depression, and her AT&T shares split many times over the decades.

Aunt Jewell was generous, much like the character Auntie Mame.  When we lived in Canada during my elementary school days, she flew up one Christmas with a suitcase full of white-wrapped boxes of See’s Candy!  After we moved back here and money was tight as my parents bought a new house and had three young children, she embarrassed my dad one Christmas by buying him a suit, which he probably would not have gone out and spent money on himself.  She always wanted my mother to go to Hawaii with her, but raising young children, Mother declined.  My aunt planned to travel after her retirement.

My dear Aunt Jewell died unexpectedly in her sleep one night at the age of 59 when I was in college.  My father inherited all her shares of AT&T stock, and I received enough money to pay cash for my first car.  She never got to go to Hawaii, so my parents ordered a blanket of red anthurium to cover her casket.

I have thought about my aunt this week and where she might fit in with relation to Jesus’ sayings last Sunday and today.  Unlike the Rich Fool, the wealthy farmer who tore down his barns and built even larger ones to store his abundant yield of crops, and then died that very night, my aunt had a plan for her estate.  As far as how generous she was to others or charities, or “rich toward God,” I do not know.  If she entrusted her treasures to her family in her will, I guess that was where her heart was.  While my aunt was active in the Eastern Star when I was born, I did not experience her to have been outwardly religious.  I do not know if she was at peace with God and ready to meet her Maker when she suddenly died that January night in 1968.

In today’s passage from Luke unfolds a series of sayings relating to discipleship.  The first refers to the listeners as “little flock,” a term used sparingly in the New Testament.  The sense is that the followers of Christ or the people of the church need tending by a caring shepherd.  In this instance, the shepherd is Jesus himself.

In the midst of telling his “flock” not to fear, Jesus offers a word of encouragement; namely, the kingdom of heaven is not the burden of any single individual.  We are to join with others doing the faithful work that God calls us to.  In the text, Jesus speaks to a group of disciples.  The “flock” is not a single sheep.  The writer Luke speaks to a church of first-century disciples who are a growing flock of believers.  And, when we read this text, we know that we too are individual members of a large flock of faithful disciples who seek to live as citizens of the kingdom of heaven.  In other words, the work we do is never ours alone to accomplish.  We do our part and trust that God will send others who will join us, and take over for us when we are too weary to continue, or no longer here on this Earth.  None of us are capable of being God’s only servant or being the church all by ourselves.

If we are glad to be part of the “flock,” the next saying is harder for us to adopt.  If God has given God’s children the kingdom, then all earthly items are ultimately unnecessary.  They can be sold or given away.  Earthly treasures are always subject to loss or destruction anyway.  Only the unfailing treasure of heaven is worth clinging to.  If that is what the disciple treasures, then a glad and dedicated heart will follow.

I know full well none of us live in a commune or kibbutz.  There is no way we are going to give up all we have.  We need it for our livelihood, our shelter, our comfort, the well-being of our family.  But none of us are going to be able to take it with us at life’s end.  What matters is what we do with it in the between times—how much we keep and how much we give away.

This past week it was announced that two of the world’s richest men, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, have agreed to leave half of their estates to charities instead of all to their heirs.  Their families encouraged them in this.  They are appealing to 150 others of like means, and so far over 80 have agreed.

And well they might afford to do that, you’re thinking.  The half they’re giving away is more than all of us combined will ever have.  So what would responsible living look like in the kingdom of God for the rest of us?  Jesus said we should give alms.  But how much?  Novelist and lay theologian C. S. Lewis had this thoughtful answer:

“Charity—giving to the poor—is an essential part of Christian morality. . . . I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give.  I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare.  In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little.  If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small.  There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.”          (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book III, MacMillan, 1952, pp 81-82.)

Next, Jesus turns to a series of analogies that relate faithfulness to the watchful preparation of people who serve a master returning from a wedding banquet, and an unfortunate homeowner whose house was robbed because he was not prepared for a thief. 

All of this apocalyptic imagery may be foreign to us in that some twenty centuries have passed and Jesus has not yet returned for the Final Judgment.  But we must remember the context in which it was written.  To the first century Christian, his return was eminent, anticipated within their lifetimes, soon to come.  The imagery refers to Jesus as the coming “Son of Man,” a term he preferred to use over “Son of God.”  Jesus warns his audience to be ready.  From earlier teachings, the reader may assume that readiness means trust in God as a heavenly Father, putting away all hypocrisy, handling ones material possessions faithfully, obeying the ethic of the kingdom, and making life a matter of constant prayer.

Is anything less required of us in the 21st century?  Shouldn’t we avoid hypocrisy, handle our possessions thoughtfully as the treasures they are, live a faithful Christian life, and practice the power of prayer?

We talk about the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven.  Yet are not we alone responsible for ensuring that the kingdom of God comes here and now, on Earth? 

The sayings we heard this morning exhort the listeners to watchfulness, which means living in such a consistently moral and obedient way that we would be ready at any time to give an account to God of how we have lived.  Using the imagery of servants and master, the servants need to be devoted to their tasks, refusing to let anything divert them from their duties.  What their master has asked them to do must be their highest obligation and their greatest concern.

For us today, these first century teachings provide modern readers with a model, a measure of complete devotion to Jesus and the kingdom tasks he has given his followers.  We are exhorted to be as faithful to Jesus as devoted slaves were to their masters back then.  Be as concerned with making the kingdom of God exist right here and now on Earth as a servant left to watch the door of the master’s house until he returns.

In a time of societal permissiveness and daily reminders of the pervasiveness of immorality in the financial, political and entertainment worlds and, regrettably, even within the church, these parables of Jesus can still serve to remind, exhort, and warn Christians of the seriousness of our moral commitments.  If much has changed since the first century, some things have changed hardly at all.