A Sabbath Rest?

Sermon
Pentecost 13C
Sunday August 22, 2010.
Ocean Forest

Luke 13: 10-17/ Isaiah 58:9b-14
A Sabbath Rest?

I wrote a short comment for the school newsletter this week on this whole thing of rest with family, self and God. I had an interesting conversation with a mum of two teens as a result of that. I wrote…

“I see lots of people giving up rest in pursuit of endless work for endless gain for some driven goal to get some place “better”. I see parents really missing their kid’s life as they leave home before dark, get home after dark, and then do a million things on the weekend, and hardly ever take a holiday during the year – “because we can’t get away from work”.
I see children becoming young men and women with minimal reference to their parents and nearly all reference to the media and their peers – almost living parallel lives to their folks because their folks have given up on resting with the, just hanging out with them and having a conversation with their kids for the sake of having a conversation with their kids!
Come on, people. Is life lived ignoring regular down time – both in families but also for your own inner spiritual life really that needed or necessary?”

This mum said her and her husband had been thinking about this for the last couple of days. She said that where she works she is under constant pressure to work more hours – and work on the weekend. She is trying to protect her weekends to be with her family. She said she knows of other mums at her work who start at 6.00am who then get the school to which their child goes to call at 9.00am to confirm the child is at school. Mum and Dad are not there for breakfast lunch or after school. She hears stories of kids of the people she work with leaving school at 3.30 and seeing no need to go home, because the house is empty and no one will be home until 5.30-6.00pm anyway, So one kid she knows just rides his bike around and gets into building sites wherever he can for something to do….

We have some very lonely children in our community who have indeed been cut loose far too early. When grade four comes around, children seem to be entrusted with their own upbringing – which will come from their peers and the TV. We wonder why we have issues with families and parenting and marriage and family?!

It was quite amazing to spend some time in the Middle East some years ago and see a culture totally devoted to planned rest – with family, including God. The Sabbath day runs the week and the family rhythm. There are things everyone does on the Sabbath and things you don’t do on the Sabbath. Why is it that the Jewish culture is so resilient an instantly recognizable?

I don’t know if anyone around our community has much sense of planned rest – observance of a regular rest where nothing gets in the way of that rest. Maybe our annual holidays are about that. Maybe trying not to work too much is the best we do.

I see even less people who have much regard for religious observance of a Sabbath day. We play sport, shop, fix things, plan for the working week, just keep working and just about anything else on the weekend – but do we really rest?

We might see a great ally for our busyness in Jesus as Christians. There is no doubt Jesus sets the welfare of individuals above religious observances such as the Sabbath. He says, "the Sabbath was created for human beings, not human beings for the Sabbath”. “People come first, not religious observance”, we say. "So, do what you need to do when you need to do it and don’t worry too much about observance of any religious rite or practice”.

For us who are not much into religious observance like Jewish people or Muslim communities etc…, this particular gospel word may not be so confronting to us who keep religious observances to a bare minimum and value a much more relaxed, personally orientated religion and hate using the word, “religion” anyway!

But, there is more to this than we might think. If we listen to both the word from God in Isaiah and the gospel word, we might get confused…

See, the first word from Isaiah urges that God’s people not "trample the Sabbath," that is, ignore religious observances to pursue their own interests (business, shopping, recreation). God is calling his people to be quite “religious” in terms of observing his call to rest with family, self and Him. Worship, conversation, the rites of the church like absolution, holy communion, baptism, funerals….. These are religious observances that really count when they are needed.

And yet Jesus is also saying that the planned rest and time with God was created for the benefit of human beings, it was not created as a legalistic thing to turn them into robotic slaves of God.

So, to observe or not to observe, that is the question!

What I hear the Spirit saying to us is that what we are free to dispense with down time with God and each other for the sake of others, but we it is not good to dispense with time with God and others in rest for the sake of ourselves and our own well-being.

Yes, we would easily give up the observance of a special day dedicated to God to take a family member to hospital or help someone in need and know that this is what God would have us do, because that is the kind of God he is – a God who sends his Son to directly challenge the warped view that religious observance is to be done at all costs – even at the cost of heart, life and mercy.

But would we see the value of observing a day a week with the Lord in front of our heads and hearts as being very much over and above the income for the mortgage, the house look, sport, shopping and everything else we fill that day with at the drop of a hat?

I am hearing Jesus affirm us for our willingness to be flexible and other-orientated when it comes to trusting that this whole one Sabbath day rest or time with him in the week is to be given up at times for the sake of other people in whatever need. That is Jesus, the Good Samaritan style, living. That is what God is always on about throughout the Bible. Human beings were not created to religiously observe the Sabbath day.

But what I am also being challenged with is the other side of this. That special day of rest in the Lord was created by God for human beings!

Friends, are we throwing out too much planned, even ‘religious’ down time with the Lord alone, with our family and with his people these days?

Why did God rest on the “7th Day” and tell us all about it? Why did God consistently call people back to that special resting with God and family? Why does Jesus both challenge what the leaders of Israel had made it (a huge burden around people’s necks that kept them from knowing God as a kind and loving heavenly Father) and yet say “the Sabbath day was created for God’s creatures”?

Religiously protected and planned rest has to be good for us. God created us and it. He has created a rhythm of faith and life for us with him. Work and Rest. Doing and praying. Receiving and giving. Dying and rising.

I hear the Lord calling us to take responsibility for not “trampling the Sabbath”. We need to make some decisions about our week, our income, our direction and our time in our week – now, not later. God wants to spend some quality time with us alone and in our close circle. We need to spend some quality time with him – even a whole day per week.

And here’s the payoff for committing to God our time and rest within that time.

“If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day; if you call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the LORD honorable; if you honor it, not going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs; {14} then you shall take delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth…” Isaiah 58:13-14

Rest in God brings delight, a new joy to the relationships – just like rest with the kids or your partner or friends regularly. Rest makes for delight and the ability to enjoy life and do well in our relationships and work.

So, what will it be for us – will we be a family and a people in this community who clear space, even religiously, for rest with each other and more importantly, with the Lord in his Word and in his world – for more than an hour or two in a week – but 12 hours per week?
Hear God’s promise if we get quite “religious” or protective about this rest with him….
Isaiah 58:9b-14

The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. {12} Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in. Isaiah 58:11-12

And how these streets need to be repaired by joy-filled, life-giving, restful people of God!
Amen

The straw and the wheat

Sermon
Pentecost 11C
Sunday August 15, 2010.

The straw and the wheat
Fire and Hammer
Jeremiah 23:23-29

As you probably know, I am a bit of a “culture watcher”. As I read various people’s comments on how things are today in the spiritual arena of life, there is this unanimous opinion that we are living in times in which anything goes and it is very much about the individual.

God calls out to people seeking spiritual connection and declares that he is more than any human spiritual seeking or dreaming.

Am I a God nearby, says the LORD, and not a God far off?
Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the LORD. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the LORD.

God interrupts the human search for spiritual connection and meaning in all kinds of places these days, with a striking truth. He, the beginning of all things is very close and yet, in the same breath, very far beyond. He is minute and massive at the same time – intimately aware of me and yet far beyond me. (Jeremiah 23:23-24)

In the days of Jeremiah, when the nation was under the pump economically, politically and even militarily, the people who once believed that God was indeed beyond and close gave this up and satisfied their anxiety, doubt and fear by seeking other things. They sought the visions and dreams of each other, or of the people judged to be “spiritually connected” or wise or gifted in the mysterious world of dreaming and seeing things.

When you think about it, this is easier in a way. If I seek God, he might tell me what I don’t want to here. If I seek a dream or vision of a guru – even a Christian guru, then I can more easily take my pick among the dreamers and hear what I think I need and want to hear anyway.

The leaders of Israel were hearing the guru’s say that everything will be alright. Everything will be fine. We can get ourselves out of these troubled times ourselves. Do some deals. Make some relationships, take some shortcuts to power and even spiritual experience – consult a medium, see a seer – everything will be alright….

The cost of course was ‘minor’. Just a few Ashoreh poles to worship things of stone and wood. That is no big deal is it?

Jeremiah finds himself totally marginalized by proclaiming that faithfulness to the Lord’s word is the ONLY thing that matters, and the only thing that will keep the community united and strong.

And like now, that word was an unpopular word. God dares to suggest that the only way a human being can find the only spiritual connection that really counts and that can really make all the difference to ones present and future well-being is his speaking, not human striving or even dreaming.

I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, "I have dreamed, I have dreamed!"
Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let the one who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? says the LORD.
Is not my word like fire, says the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces? (Jeremiah 23:25-29)

The “weeds and the wheat”. The weeds which are here today and gone tomorrow with no lasting value to human beings are the dreams, visions, and mystic experiences of human beings. The wheat is the solid, already spoken word of God which is the lasting thing, the thing of great benefit to people because it is truth and it actually gives life to human beings.

We know this. We have heard it and thought about it countless times. For many reasons, not the least of which being that we are products of our own individualistic and “anything goes” culture, we don’t know how to hear God’s spoken word much or don’t actually think we need to.

For this reason God uses his Word like a hammer. God’s word is a hammer. It needs to be in order to crack open our stone hearts at times. Stone, because we are busy, we are focused on ourselves, because we are faithless at times.
We are unsure, wounded, angry, hurt, and a million other conditions! But maybe the worst “condition” we have is our self-righteousness. We have this ability to revel in our own goodness. As someone once said, it is not until we repent of pride in our own good deeds that we will experience the joy of Jesus’ forgiveness. We all expect to confess our bad bits, but what about our pride in our good bits? God speaks his word of Law to our stone hearts, says Luther…

Hence God says through Jeremiah (23:29): “My Word is a hammer which breaks the rock in pieces.” For as long as the presumption of righteousness remains in a man, there remain immense pride, self-trust, smugness, hate of God, contempt of grace and mercy, ignorance of the promises and of Christ. The proclamation of free grace and the forgiveness of sins does not enter his heart and understanding, because that huge rock and solid wall, namely, the presumption of righteousness by which the heart itself is surrounded, prevents this from happening.

Therefore this presumption of righteousness is a huge and a horrible monster. To break and crush it, God needs a large and powerful hammer, that is, the Law, which is the hammer of death, the thunder of hell, and the lightning of divine wrath. To what purpose? To attack the presumption of righteousness, which is a rebellious, stubborn, and stiff-necked beast. And so when the Law accuses and terrifies the conscience—“You must do this or that! You have not done so! Then the heart is crushed to the point of despair.

Therefore the Law is a hammer that crushes rocks, a fire, a wind, and a great and mighty earthquake that overturns mountains. (Luther's Works, vol 26, 19)

If anyone felt the crack of a hammer in the body and in the heart it was Jesus of Nazareth in his “baptism of fire”, as Luke records in the gospel word for today.
49"I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed! Luke 12:49

He was distressed and he completed it for you and me! The hammer of God’s law struck him and he bled, until enough human blood had been spilled. But it was not his self-righteousness and sin that was being struck. It was mine. It was yours. He took the hammer of God’s Law in full and the Law was completely fulfilled in the perfect and innocent human being – the close and yet mighty Son of God. As that beaten body rose in joy from the Law’s end – death, the harvest began and it still going.

“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few”, says Jesus the King. If this God is my God and this Jesus is the One that has taken the consequences of my self-righteousness and in its place given me a home where I belong, in God’s family and made God’s beloved friend, then I must know him.

The truth is that I can know him because his Word is here for me. It is the wheat. Speculation, dreams, visions, may be part of our journey, but nothing comes close to the Word of Jesus in that thing we have been gifted, the Bible.

It is him here and now. We could do a lot of seeking in the dreams, visions, opinions and lives of others and still only come up with an all together too small God, or an altogether too big God. Either way it would not be the only living God. We could, on the other hand, seek our spiritual connection where God promises to be heard – in the wheat, the hammer and the fire of his given word.

Let the hammer fall, O God. Break this stone heart of mine. Take my self-righteousness into yourself and grace ne with you love and kindness that I may live and move and have my being in you and find my rest in you. Amen.

Asylum Seekers

Sermon
Pentecost 11C
Sunday August 15, 2010
Ocean Forest
Asylum seekers
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

“Stop the boats” has become a central election slogan for both parties in this election campaign. That name “Asylum seeker” has come to be associated with negative things, like cheat, illegal, stupid, unfortunate, preyed upon, misled……

We hear the stories of people leaving their own country and being named, “Asylum seeker”, and wonder, what would you have to be hoping for to be an asylum seeker? What would you be certain of? How motivated by a hope would you need to be to trust some dodgy person with your life savings as you step on to a very rickety and severely cramped boat for a 2000km sea journey with your loved ones in tow? You would have to have a great hope of finding a better place – a place of asylum, safety, prosperity – life.

This word from the writer to the Hebrews speaks of God’s people in the past (before Jesus) seeking “a better country”, a better place – seeking asylum with God in the world.
“People are looking for a country of their own……they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them”.

Friends, are we seeking God’s asylum these days? Unlike the home country of people wanting to run the gauntlet and reach our shores because of poverty, oppression and hopelessness, we are happy to be here for the most part. Are we or should we be desperate enough to risk all for God’s new heavenly country called, “The Kingdom of God”, as Jesus named it?

Whether we are still seeking God’s new country as intensely as assylum seekers on boats, or have even a minimal interest in what God is offering, God is not ashamed of people looking for something – a better country, a heavenly country, a place of belonging. God is not ashamed of asylum seekers who seek his better place.
I got to thinking…….

What seen or unseen things am I absolutely certain about?
• I am alive right now.
• I will always pay tax.
• I will always be an Australian
• I have people in my life that love me, depend on me and will always do that.
• I have people around me that I will know for some time – short or long.
• I will experience conflict, hurt and pain of all kinds in the future.
• I will experience some good moments – achievements, places, mile stones of myself and my family.
• I will experience grief and loss in various ways – some very painful, some not so.
• I will die sometime – it could be any time.
• I don’t know where I will live or work in the future – maybe you do.
• I don’t know who I will work with in the future – maybe you do.
• I don’t know what will happen to me tomorrow or after that – I know you don’t know that for sure either – even if you have planned it out.

When we think like this two emotions might be near – One is exhilaration: The future is open. Good things can happen in our lives. We can see new things, live new experiences and find new people and joys. We can see God in new ways.

The second is deflating for the ego. We hit the realty that we don’t know much really. We hit the realty that we can’t see much and that we certainly cannot control much! I am not as big or as important or as good as I think I am.

As a modern person I tend to put my faith in technology and work. If I get the right stuff then I will create conditions for illusive happiness. If I work a lot and make a lot then I will be able to get a lot of the things I need to create the conditions for “happiness” for myself and my family and friends – maybe even the country or the world!

But when I hear this “Faith Hall of Fame” that the writer to the Hebrews speaks of, I hear nothing of working hard or buying technology or things. Obviously in the Creator’s scheme of things, his “better country”, has not much to do with either hard work or achievements or things.

He says our hope comes from a “faith that is being certain of the things we already hope for and certain of things we do not even see”.
So, what do we hope for and what don’t we see? Let’s think about that now…..
What am I really hoping for?

• To see more of God’s world.
• To enjoy life with family.
• To work in a role that fulfils my aspirations
• To contribute something good to the world
• To live a long time?
• To see the grandkids come along
• To ride my bike tomorrow.
• To witness another WC Eagles Premiership (wait a long time for that one!)
To……(your hopes….)
So it seems that we are all asylum seekers; small and great and God is not ashamed of us. In our pondering of life and the future and our certainties, we are actually seeking God and his presence. With the promises of God in our ears – the promise of belonging, community, life, forgiveness – we are actually all seeking his better country, his better city he has prepared for us. We have a deep longing inside of us to search for a find God’s certain hope of a better way, a better place, a better life in him.

All these people the writer to the Hebrews holds up as people who hoped for things unseen and who were certain of the things for which they hoped did so because they were in relationship to God. We need the same.

He goes so far as to say that all these people of faith only saw the better country from a distance because they were waiting for us to join them before entering it in full. They knew God’s power and grace. We know it more than them because the new country has come to us – Jesus has brought God’s heavenly country to us in person and it is there we live and move and have our being – with Jesus.

By the cross and the tomb, Jesus has opened up the new country for us and these OT witness of God’s grace. We are not just looking at the new country from a distance, we are in it already – in part, but soon, fully. By our baptism we entered it and by God’s sustaining word we are sustained in the heavenly country.

Friends, are you longing for this new country of God’s these days? Are you still seeking his all embracing love and acceptance in your very soul?. In your list of things hoped for, is God’s affirmation and love for you and his promises to keep you in his future for you there?

You may have given up on anything good in your future. You may have replaced God’s future with your own – thereby going it alone and “hoping for the best”.
God calls out to us today and invites us back into his future for us. He calls us to receive certainty of his presence, his enduring and broad love and kindness for each of us. He reminds us that we have a place at his table and share his family name and that we have one foot in the new country and one foot still on the journey to it with him.

A wonderful prayer by Thomas Merton goes well with this reading, and we can almost imagine the letter-writer including it as a closing: "My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone" (Thoughts in Solitude).
Amen.

To our "turned off church" community...

I read this Open Letter by Ron Rolheiser, a Romans Catholic writer, priest and commentator, and wondered if it might be what we would like to say to many people in our own community of Ocean Forest?

An Open Letter to those who don't go to Church
English | Spanish

2010-01-31


Dear Fellow Pilgrim:

I greet you as someone who is looking for meaning and happiness, as we all are. I know you're sincere or you wouldn't be reading this letter. Know this first of all: We miss you at church. There's not a Sunday goes by when your absence isn't felt. You're missed. Join us.

Yes, I know this isn't a simple thing. The heart has its reasons, Pascal said. Well the church too has its complexities. Perhaps it is precisely one of these complexities that make it difficult for you to walk regularly through a church door. So l won't try to sugarcoat the church. It is a far-from-perfect expression of God's love and mercy and it is a far-from-perfect expression of God's universal salvific will for everyone. Sometimes the church blocks God's love as much as it reveals it. It has been, and remains, a vehicle both of grace and sin. How do we get past its dark side?

Carlo Carretto, the renowned Italian spiritual writer, in his old age, wrote this Ode to the church:


How much I must criticize you, my church, and yet how much I love you!


You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe more to you than to anyone.


I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.


You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness.


Never in this world have I seen anything more compromised, more false, and yet I have never touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.


Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face-and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your sure arms!


No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you.


Then too-where would I go?


To build another church?


But I could not build one without the same defects, for they are my defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ's church.


No, I am old enough. I know better!


That's a mature description of the church, expressing both love and realism. It's an honest description too. The church has a long history, both of grace and of sin and we who make up the church on earth don't do God very well. Nobody does. We need to admit that.

I can only guess at your reasons for not coming to church regularly or for not coming to church at all: Perhaps you have been hurt by the church, by the institution itself or by one of its priests or ministers. Perhaps you have been one of those who have experienced it as callous, as insensitive, as denigrating you in some way. Or perhaps you are intellectually disenchanted with the church, unable to square its claims with your own sane grip on life and its mysteries. Or perhaps you have found what you are looking for elsewhere, outside the doors of the church you attended when you were little. Or perhaps you have just drifted away and don't think about church very much at all. Perhaps you don't feel a need for church in your life. Or, perhaps you are convinced that Jesus and his teachings are in fact tainted by the church, that Jesus never wanted to found a church, but wanted only that people take his teachings to heart and live in love and graciousness. There are many reasons why people don't go to church. I can only guess at yours.

But your reason for not going is not important for this letter. I don't want to defend the church here, make some kind of apologetics for it, or argue against any of the reasons that people give for not coming to church. And I don't want to try to show you reasons why, I think, it is important to go to church. This I not an apologetics, but a plea, an invitation:

Come back! Try us again! Or, if you have never belonged to the church, try us!

Maybe this time you will find life in the church and be able to drink in some of its graces. Maybe this time you will find it in you to forgive the church for its faults, see those faults are your own faults, and see why Jesus picked such an imperfect vehicle to carry on his presence. Maybe this time you will be able to see in the church what Jesus saw in it - an imperfect body made up of men and women like you and me, full of sin, full of ourselves, petty, small-hearted, less-than- sincere, miserly, and tainted, but also full of grace, full of Christ, big-hearted, sincere, generous, and pure, a group of men and women worth dying for - and belonging to. Come be with us!

A fellow pilgrim and a flawed church member.

Here today: Gone tomorrow

Sermon
Pentecost 9C
Sunday August 1, 2010.

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23, Luke 12:13-21
Here today: Gone tomorrow

Someone in the crowd of thousands calls out, “Hey Teacher, why don’t you tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me?” We might put it this way, “Hey Jesus, why don’t you make the right little plastic balls fall down the tube in the right order on Saturday Lotto for me? Jesus, make me win Lotto!? Give me more, God. Then I might be happy and fulfilled…”

It is a question that will betray the heart. Jesus identifies this question as one revealing a greedy heart. He warns against this greed. He tells a story about a wealthy man who cannot get enough and who is self-consumed and wealth consumed. Jesus names the greed and the folly of wanting more, more, more.

Throughout the little story, this man asks only himself his questions. He only ever tells himself of his own plans. His whole life is lived in himself, without reference or connection to others. He is a self-orientated person living in his own little world of more, more, more. “I am doing well. I will build bigger barns for the great crop I have grown he says (ignoring the reality that “the ground” produced the good crop for him!). In other words, God gifted the man with the crop. The man claimed it as his own and without reference to God’s gift, he decided on his own to do with it what he wants – to store it up, not share it with any other and continue on his self-indulgent, self-interested way.

Jesus calls this greedy self interested direction, folly; the greed is foolish.
So does the old Teacher in the Book of Ecclesiastes. He is a wise man in the city and he reflects on wealth and work and family and future and life’s purpose and meaning.
The Old teacher says;

I applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with.

I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity (vapour; ‘hevel’ in Hebrew – misty breath on a cold morning) and a chasing after wind (impossible to catch or succeed in).

I hated my work at which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me, and, who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I worked and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vapour.

So I turned and gave my heart up to despair concerning all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes one who has worked with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not work for it. This also is vapour and unfair!

So, what do human beings get from all the work and strain with which they toil under the sun?

Yes. What is the point of the work and the pain and the effort and the directions in life to which we apply our minds and hearts?

Jesus and the Wise man say that the accumulation of stuff for its own sake is greed and it is foolishness. Why?
A couple of reasons:
1. The wealth we set our heart on is fragile and easily lost.
Even if you hold on to it in your life time, it will more than likely be squandered in the next generation, or maybe the one after that. The first generation work for I, the second generation realizes that you worked for it and respect that and maybe even increase it. The third generation have no experience of the working for it and blow it all – that’s if the wealth for which you toiled makes it that far and a fire doesn’t burn down everything you own, illness doesn’t destroy your body, the financial markets collapse, someone steals your stuff or you get conned by a con –man who preys on your greed…..

2. Your wealth is not who you are and can never be you at your best.
Wealth and possessions cannot bear the weight of you seeking to be a whole and fulfilled person. Cash can’t give character. Money can’t buy you love nor the ability to love. A fortune cannot create forgiveness and so it goes…

That’s why Jesus calls the pursuit of possessions and wealth for their own sakes folly – It cannot deliver what we all really need – the love and kindness and power of God as given by God through Jesus working through other people.

Now and again, something happens that forces us to ask this very ancient and yet very “now” question.

Leanne’s story….

Talk about a nudge from God.
Late this last week I lost a friend to cancer. A friend with so many parallels to my own life: 40 years old with 2 children similar in age to my own. Her death came quickly towards the end and during this time it had me thinking.
What if that had been me? What would be going on in my head in those last days, what would be more important than anything else? It’s funny how obvious and simple the answer is when death becomes so real like this. All of a sudden I can so easily identify all the insignificant clutter I fill my life with. All the fuzziness becomes clear.
Instead of brushing off my kids with the usual old lines this week, I’ve thought of my dying friend and how she would have jumped at one last opportunity to do the very ordinary but so important things like cooking with her daughter or reading that extra story or 2 to her son.
I thank God for His nudge, because it brought me back to the basics, it’s given me an opportunity to let go of my baggage that’s been weighing me down and focus on what’s REALLY important!

So, what shall we do? When God forces us to cast an eye over our decisions, our directions, our beliefs about life (which are truly shown in the way we are living and what we are working for), why shall we do?

Many here have lived through a “nudge” of God, as Leanne put it. In my life and from this word from Jesus, what we can do to find meaning and love and fulfillment in life is to look elsewhere than wealth or possessions accumulation.

Surely his little story urges us to take our eyes off the stuff and the plans and the longing to get, get, get. As Paul puts it so well, it is wise to keep our eyes “on things above” – the things of God’s Spirit, the things of God’s kingdom in our world and our life.

With the heart and mind seeking Jesus’ direction we will find great gifts. In God’s committed and compassionate acceptance and love in Jesus, we could be a bricky and love laying bricks. We could live in a small rented flat and never own a home and be completely happy with that.

We could live on the pension and have enough to eat and be able to splurge a bit now and again and that would be fine for our life in Jesus.

We could live for now, not the grand retirement which may actually never happen – just ask a few people around here who have had the plans for their life program rudely interrupted! We could find God in our day and be very happy with that as we live and love with others under his care.

As Leanne has experienced, the gifts of the Lord are in the now – reading that extra story to the little guy, viewing that beautiful scene, cooking with her daughter. When the heart is re-focused on what is happening now and our values are re-set to be other-directed and Jesus’ directed, greed disappears and self-giving it will come out in the decisions we make in the moment – like saying “yes” to a daughter when she asks to cook with her mum. It is then we know that God’s “nudge” has put us in his better place.

“A person’s life does not consist of things” says Jesus, in the end. So what does my life really consist of then, Jesus?

Here’s what I am hearing…
My life consists of the crucified and risen God who knows my death, my aging, my anxiety, my dis-ease my hopes, my longing, who is loving me, caring for me, shaping me from within by his powerful word. He knows my loves – for my wife and my kids and my community and I hand them to him to be known and loved too.

My life consists of people. Close people, Christ filled people, Christ-less people (so they think), sent to me to make me whole, make life fulfilling, make work a full of God’s meaning and purpose for my little life – however long he wants it to last.

My life consists of Calling. Work is never just working for the weekend it God working in me and through me for the great feast in the kingdom that will one day occur. He calls me – foolish though I be, limited though I be, unlovely though I be. He calls me and sets my direction to be his presence for and with others - if I take it and do it.

My life is lived in one overarching power and meaning and place - our Heavenly Fathers affirmation. “Your Father in heaven has been pleased to give this life in his kingdom. His affirmation and love cannot be destroyed by fire, flood, wayward children, or even death itself, Jesus says.

The more we are affirmed by him for trusting him, loving him, receiving his love and strength for living, the more we build up an account of kindness, compassion, victory over greed and all other idolatries that is untouchable to any pain, grief, evil or person – it is managed and protected by God for us and will be fully reimbursed in us as we keep our eyes of the things above – the things of God – God in our life here and now.

So, what will it be? Maintain pursuit or break off pursuit and rest in God’s promises and life and power?

Amen.