Sermon: Pentecost 8, Luke 12:13-21

August 3, 2025 
Faith-La Fe Lutheran Church
Pastor Jonathan Linman

My maternal grandmother died when I was a freshman in college. I was young and naïve enough to be baffled by the squabbles among my mother’s sisters about who would get what possessions of their late mother. Now I know that conflicts and jealousies related to inheritance are all too human. You likely can tell similar stories from your own family experiences…. 

We see this very human reality manifest itself in today’s Gospel reading from Luke. Someone in the crowd called out to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” 

But Jesus refuses to get drawn in to such triangulation in a family feud: “Friend,” Jesus replied, “who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” 

Ultimately, fights over inheritance are about greed. Jesus uses this encounter with the person in the crowd to warn about the dangers of greed. “Take care!” Jesus exclaimed, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Indeed!

In Paul’s list of sins recounted in today’s reading from Colossians, greed is named. And Paul calls greed idolatry, one of the most grievous of sins. 

We live in a time when greed is extolled as a virtue. Remember the movie, “Wall Street” from 1987 when Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, proclaimed, “Greed is good” – remember that? Now we have leaders of the country who proudly and shamelessly parade their greediness as a great thing to be emulated.

But here’s the thing: greed is a trap. Greed tends to be insatiable. You always want more. Or as a friend of mine has said, “greed is when even wretched excess is not enough….” And like an addiction the energies of greed take their toll on us, weigh us down, make us miserable, and sometimes destroy lives. When greed destroys lives, it’s  not just the greedy ones, but more often the lives of sometimes millions of people who are victims of other people’s insatiable appetites for more, more, more. 

The author of the book of Ecclesiastes says it well, as we heard this morning: “What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also in vanity” (Ecclesiastes 2:22-23) Sound familiar?

The Apostle Paul talks about the ill side effects of greed and sin when he instructs the Colossians to get rid of “anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language.” (Colossians 3:8) This list of words captures well the wicked spirit of our age in this country when so many are at each other’s throats. And indeed, so many of our ills go back to greedy people incessantly striving to get ever richer which makes everyone one else all the poorer.

The acquisitive striving of the spirit of our age in this country stands in stark contrast to what I experienced in Sweden and Norway where I had the palpable sense that people there were much more laid-back and not so driven to acquire more and more status and things. 

When it’s all said and done, the anxious pursuits that we endure in our nation are ultimately vanity, and a chasing after the wind. The authors of Ecclesiastes are not being cynical. They are being truthful!

And here’s another truth. We can’t take our possessions with us. As I’m fond of saying, you don’t see U-Haul trailers attached to hearses. This truth, that we come into this world naked and leave it in the same condition, is at the heart of the parable Jesus told about the rich man who had accumulated so much that he was going to tear down his barns to build bigger ones to store all his stuff. But this is how the story ends, as we heard in today’s gospel reading: “‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” That’s some hard reality therapy. 

But what does it mean to be rich toward God? We get a sense of the answer to this question in today’s reading from Colossians where Paul describes our new life in Christ. To paraphrase Paul, this is what he says: “…You have been raised with Christ, [and so you] seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. [You] set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Christ in glory” (cf. Colossians 3:1-4) 

It is in fact in baptism where we are given a share in God’s riches. For we are raised with Christ, having died with Christ, drowned in the sacramental waters. When we come up out of those waters, that’s when we share in Christ’s resurrection and begin to reach for the heavens, seeking the things of God, having renounced that which separates us from God, like our greed for material things. In short, being baptized into Christ we become rich toward God. There’s no greater wealth than life in Christ.

Furthermore, we also become rich toward God when we dwell with God’s word of scripture. Each and every sacred word becomes a precious, priceless little gemstone for us. 

And there’s more! We also come to this table of grace where we eat a little morsel of bread and have a sip of the fruit of the vine. And in this seemingly meager meal, we receive the abundance of the riches of Christ, all that God in Christ has to offer: lavish grace, life, light, truth, eternity, love, mercy, forgiveness, courage, hopefulness, and more. 

When it comes to being rich toward God, it’s all about less is more, where gifts of things like tiny mustard seeds contain everything needed to grow into life-giving abundance. 

Thanks be to God, then, for those occasions of reality therapy when we come to see the folly of our greed and our pursuit of material comforts beyond what is needed for the day. Thanks be to God for those occasions in our lives, worn out, burned out, when we come to our senses by the gift of the Spirit working in us, and we conclude like the author of Ecclesiastes that so many of our pursuits have been vain, compared to the riches of God. And we realize that we’ve spent so much time in our lives chasing after the wind.

But then the winds of the Holy Spirit catch up with us, and Christ finds us in these low times, like the times we’re enduring in this nation, and Christ restores us to sanity. 

That is to say, here in this place, when we dwell with God’s word and remember and give thanks for our baptism, and share in the sacramental meal, our faith is restored, and our trust in God is deepened and we become more confident that God will indeed provide all that we will ultimately need. And this renewed faith frees us from the idolatry of our greed.

And in the newfound freedom of faith, we are liberated to give ourselves and our stuff away in loving service to our neighbors in need, ever seeking God’s justice for those most oppressed. 

In short, Christ and his riches, which are lavishly bestowed on us, are the cure for the sickness of the anxious, greedy spirit of our age when so much is vanity and a chasing after the wind. So…. Come, Lord Jesus, fill us with the abundance of your love, mercy and grace, for the healing of people, nations, and the whole cosmos. Come, Lord Jesus, Come. Amen.