Luke 12:22-34 · Do Not Worry
The Gift of the Kingdom
Luke 12:32-40
Sermon
by George Reed
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Don’t you just love gifts? I’m not talking about those hokey email scams where someone wants to give you $3.5 million if you will just send them all your private, financial information. I’m talking about real gifts whether they are wrapped up in ribbons or wrapped up in hugs. I don’t know about you but I love gifts. Jesus is telling us that God has a gift for us: the kingdom. This is not a gift that comes out of obligation but is given with God’s “good pleasure.”

And it is a surprise gift, as well. Sometimes gifts surprise us because we didn’t expect a gift at all but we get one, anyway. Other gifts surprise us because we were not expecting this particular gift. But there is another kind of surprise present where we keep discovering new things about the gift as time goes by. This is the kind of gift that Jesus tells us God is offering us.

That first surprise comes immediately after the announcement that we are receiving a gift. Jesus tells us to sell all that we have and help those who are in need. He tells us that there are two kinds of purses. There are those that wear out and whose contents can be destroyed or stolen, and there are those that last and cannot be lost. Jesus says that those in the realm of God carry the latter kind of purse. What kind of a gift has been given to us? Isn’t a gift supposed to be a good thing that adds to what we have? Why then does this gift seem to take things away from us? What kind of a kingdom does God run, anyway?

Jesus doesn’t leave us in the dark for long. He tells us that where we place our treasure, we will find our hearts. Whether we think of it as treasure, wealth, or just “our stuff.” Jesus is aware that the things in our lives have a way of becoming the center of our lives. We usually don’t mean for things to happen this way but the more we concentrate on something, the more important it becomes to us. The things that start out on the periphery of our lives have a way of working themselves onto center stage. We start looking after our retirement investments because that is the prudent thing to do and the next thing we know, we are checking the stock market reports on an hourly basis.

Jesus calls for us to sell what we have and give to those in need and that shocks us. We are taken back by such a demand and for good reason. Too often we have allowed the “stuff” of our lives to move too close to the center of our existence. We have given it too much power to determine our sense of worth. We begin to think of ourselves and others based on belongings and wealth instead of resting in our status as God’s children. We are pulled into a world of superficial judgment, envy, and greed. There always seems to be someone who has more than we do and we begin to lust after the things others have. All of this leads to a world where things rule and people and relationships take the back seat. This is not the kingdom that God calls us into. We need that shock to get us to take a look at what we are doing to ourselves and to others.

One of the best ways we can begin to see where our treasure and our heart are located is to look at our checkbook. Where do we spend most of our money? What is it we spend our hard earned money on month after month? Far too many of us spend too much of our resources paying off debt on things that are long gone or for entertainment that has long been forgotten. Does our spending reflect what we want to value in life?

Another place to look is at our calendar. Where do we spend our time? Of course, for most of us, large portions of our day are set for us as we work or attend school or take care of children. But what about the rest of the time? Are we as careful about our devotional time and attending worship as we are about watching sports? Where does our calendar say about our priorities?

Then after we take a look at these things, let’s invite God to take a look at them with us. Bring your Bible and your devotional guides to prayer time if you want but bring your checkbook and calendar as well! Open them up before God and ask to see what is in them as God sees. This is not a time to rationalize to God or ourselves why we do what we do. This is a time to be honest with God and ourselves about what we do. And about what we should be doing. If those two don’t coincide then we need to see what we can change and how we can change it.

Change is not easy and it sometimes takes a long time to get things the way they need to be. If we start rearranging our monetary priorities, the debt we have already piled up isn’t going to just go away. We are going to have to deal with it. The commitments of our time that we have already made will still be there and we will have to work out the changes. But if we are serious about our discipleship then we are going to have to make sure that our treasures lead our hearts to Jesus and not to the mall.

God’s gift to us is a big surprise and a wondrous gift. It calls us back to the reality of who we were created to be so that we can live out of that reality instead of the fantasy of material wealth. We are offered a place in God’s realm where we matter just because we do. God has said that we are precious and that makes it so. When we quit trying to earn our place in God’s world and just accept it as God’s gift, then we can begin to really live. We can know wholeness and joy that no one and nothing can ever take away.

CSS Publishing Co., Inc., Counting the cost: Cycle C sermons for proper 13 through proper 22: based on the gospel texts, by George Reed

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