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Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
St. Stephen's Anglican Church
The Rev. Jeffrey O. Cerar, August 4, 2013


The Good Life: Sharing God's Abundance


Text: Luke 12:13-21

One morning this week I was out walking. It was just before sunrise, and the light was enough to see by. Suddenly, I heard a sound I have never heard in our neighborhood: the call of a loon. I stopped to listen in fascination. Then I heard another loon respond. I walked on, and right around the bend I came upon two deer. They were standing alert, listening to the unfamiliar sound. They were both very curious. And then both turned and looked at me. They didn't run. They just stood there looking into my face, as if asking me to explain what this new sound was all about.

The moment was like a parable from God, reminding me once again of the message He gave me last week for my sermon: that we are to share with the world the wisdom He gives us As His people who love and serve Him, it is our job to interpret the world for those who do not know Him.

As I have preached these past several weeks on the Good Life, I am increasingly touched by just how much of the Good Life of the Christian is in sharing:

Today, I'm going to add one more week to this series on the Good Life, and talk about sharing God's abundance.

In the process of creating us, and now in redeeming us, God has done a miraculous thing. He has created a reality in which the more we give away the more we are blessed. The miracle is that God blesses us by giving to us, then asks us to share what He gives us with others, and then multiplies the blessing in our giving it away.

And so we stand always on the verge of the Good Life at every moment when we have a choice to make about sharing God's treasures with others. Every moment we have a chance to pass on His love; every chance we have to pass on His wisdom; every chance we have to share our abundance with someone else, we are standing at a door. In the Book of Malachi, God is rebuking the Hebrew people for not giving Him the tithe that He had asked of them. And He says,

10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this," says the Lord Almighty, "and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. [Malachi 3:10]

When we trust God and share His abundance, He opens those doors, and His wonders are ours. And yet, most of us hesitate over and over to go through those doors.

When we go through those doors, we are being what Jesus called "rich toward God." He said it in the parable we read this morning. This parable is about a farmer who had an amazing year. He had a huge harvest. It was more than he could ever use or sell. Seeing how rich he was, he built barns to store it all, and sat on his porch to enjoy what he thought was the good life. What did he do wrong? Wouldn't his actions be considered prudent by any farmer you know? Doesn't it make sense to prepare for lean years when things are fat? Jesus leaves those questions up in the air. He doesn't let us attack this parable analytically. Instead, He tells us that this farmer died that same night, and God asked the farmer, "Now who will get what you have prepared for yourself?" Jesus goes on to sum up the story by saying, "This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God."

He's making two points, isn't he? One is that we think we know the future, but only God knows how much time we have left. And second, He is saying that this man's piling up of wealth for himself was a symptom of his priorities. He wasn't making his relationship with God a priority. He wasn't rich toward God. So now he has nothing. There is no roof rack on the hearse that carries him to the cemetery. And he has no relationship with the God who gave him all that wealth.

Isn't it interesting how this parable echoes what King Solomon said a thousand years earlier? We read that passage this morning from Ecclesiastes. Solomon was the richest man of his day. He had a fabulous fortune. He had palaces and armies and 700 wives and 300 concubines. But what he discovered was that in the end, none of that mattered—he was going to die and leave it to someone after him.

Solomon did not offer the solution to the depression he was feeling. Jesus did not conclude His parable by telling us what the farmer might have done to be richer toward God. They didn't have to, because the Word of God is very clear on the matter.

God has told us that everything we have comes from Him. Even though that is obvious, we cannot keep it in mind. God told the Hebrew people to go and build an altar and make a sacrifice, and to offer the firstfruits of the Promised Land to Him. He told them to offer the firstborn of all their flocks and herds back to Him. Why? He told them why: it was because when they got to the Promised Land and enjoyed the abundance He was going to give them, they would say to themselves:

"My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me." But remember the Lord your God, [He said], for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today. [Dueteronomy 8:17-18]

How can you be rich toward God when you forget that He is the one who gave you all the blessings of this life? How can you be rich toward God when your focus is on yourself? That is why Jesus said, by way of introducing the parable of the rich farmer, "... life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." (Luke 12:15) You can have all the possessions in the world and be miserable, like Solomon. Or you can have next to nothing and be rich toward God, and you will have the Good Life.

One day in 1982 I was sitting in my office in Washington, D.C. I had just been made a partner in my law firm, and word had trickled out to the financial managers and stockbrokers. My phone rang. It was a cold call from a guy who handled people's personal wealth, and he wanted to become my financial advisor. I told him I didn't need his services. He said, "I can help you get the most out of your money."

I answered, "That's not important to me. I don't particularly care whether I make the most out of my money."

He was shocked to hear a young professional speak that way. He ended up lecturing me about being irresponsible about money, and I had to hang up on him. But I thought about it for a few weeks, and then I called somebody else and made an appointment to find out how he could help me make the most out of my money.

There is great pressure in our culture to be totally devoted to the pursuit of money. And when money is that important to you, it becomes an idol. And it gets in the way of a rich relationship with God. When I was in that mode of thinking, I was chintzy with my money, and I was not happy.

It wasn't until I gave my life to Jesus that my idol began to shrink. And it was when Lynne and I began to tithe that my whole attitude toward money changed. We didn't tithe out of duty. We did it because we had been persuaded it was important to our spiritual life. And once we made that change, God opened new doors to blessings. Even when I was in seminary and had two daughters in college, we didn't feel poor. We didn't agonize over how we were going to get by. In seminary, we met priests from Uganda and Sudan who lived on pennies a day, but were filled with the Holy Spirit and with the joy of serving the Lord. In India, we met people who were willing to share their last cup of tea with us, because we were brothers and sisters in Christ.

The Lord provided for all of us. And He provided us opportunities to share what we had with others. And that made it abundant. And it filled our lives with joy.

Now, I want to identify something in the way human beings think, which is a part of our fallen condition. When we hear God say to bring offerings, when we hear Him say to give Him a tithe, when we hear Jesus tell us to care for the sick, visit the prisoner, feed the hungry—what we hear is

If that is how we hear God's Word, we are way off track. Don't forget, we're talking about a God who saved us because we couldn't save ourselves. And don't forget that the Bible tells us we who are in Christ have been freed from the law. We are no longer in bondage to its demands. (See, e.g. Galatians 3:23-25). But when we do the things God tells us to do, we become rich toward God, and He blesses our life deeply.

That is where that miracle comes in that I pointed out earlier. The miracle is that the more we give away the more we are blessed. God blesses us by giving to us, then asks us to share it with others, and then multiplies the blessing in our giving it away.

It is true in every aspect of life. Take Jesus' parable about the Good Samaritan. Two upstanding religious officials walked by the wounded man lying in the ditch and left him to die. They were busy. They were worried about ritual cleanness. A Samaritan came by and bound up the man's wounds, took him to an inn, stayed by his side overnight, and left money for the man's care. If you were that Good Samaritan, how would you feel? Well, you might feel good about yourself for being such a compassionate person. But a Christian who loves Jesus would feel a whole lot more. You would feel as if you had connected with the Lord you love. You would have shared His love with another person whom He loves. And you would be blessed by the significance of that. Jesus said, "As you did it for one of the least of these my brothers, you did it for me." (Matthew 25:40)

Or consider the time you finally overcame your fear and talked to your friend about your faith. Maybe she listened politely for a while and changed the subject. Or maybe you touched a nerve, and she opened up about how lonely she had been and wondered what life is all about. How did you feel afterward? Were you glad you could check off a box of things you ought to do? Or were you blessed to have opened up an opportunity in her life that can have eternal consequences? And were you blessed by realizing that you've just been talking about someone you love more than anything in the world?

Or think about our capital campaign last fall. I am sure you remember how our campaign chair encouraged us to give sacrificially. He gave out cards and asked us to write on one side an amount we thought we could give. And then he asked us to think about an amount we would really like to give if we could find a way, and to write that one the other side of the card. Now, why would we want to give more than the easy amount? Isn't it because we want to be a significant part of what God is doing? God has been doing an amazing work in our midst over these past ten years. He has been calling us to big things, difficult things. He has asked us to give up some things. He has shown us new possibilities. He has provided for us. He has given us a vision. And part of all that is the church home He is going to build on that piece of land over on Route 360. He is going to provide what we need. And He is inviting us to join Him. It is exciting to be part of His answer to how that is going to be funded.

God does fascinating things when we are rich toward Him. An Anglican priest told me about a woman named Sarah who lived in Texas. She had a friend who wanted to open a shop and fulfill a dream. Sarah gave her friend a lot of money to support the project. The shop never became successful. One night, her friend skipped town, and she never heard from her again. Of course Sarah lost her investment.

Twenty years later, Sarah's congregation was building a church. She was excited and wanted to make a generous contribution, but she didn't know how she could. She prayed about it and decided to pledge $50,000. She hoped to find a way. A few weeks later, she got a letter in the mail. It was from her former friend, who apologized profusely for having abused their friendship all those years earlier. She wrote, "Here is your money back with interest." Enclosed was a check for $60,000.

I have heard dozens of stories like that. In fact, I have had more than a few similar stories in my own life. It doesn't surprise me anymore, for the way God does things is unique and miraculous.

For all the growth, all the greatness, all the abundance comes from God's inexhaustible storehouses. And when we are rich toward God and share His abundance with others, he pours out so much blessing we can't build enough barns to contain it.

©The Rev. Jeffrey O. Cerar, 2013

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