You Can't Take It With You: Sermon Luke 12:13-21

Dear God, take our minds and think through them; take our hands and feet and work through them; take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire for you. Amen

I was on a trip to Washington DC about 15 years ago and on our way up there we stopped at a pottery and gift shop. While my mom and aunt and grandmother looked at the pottery I looked at postcards and shot glasses which I collect. I was looking for a postcard to send back home and I found one that caught my eye. It was a black and white picture of a hearse in a cemetery with a U-haul trailer hitched to the back. This was strange and so I flipped it over and the caption read “Who says you can’t take it with you when you go?”

We have heard that saying a lot, “you can’t take it with you”. However, our society acts as if the opposite is true. We work and work and save and save and buy and buy and collect and collect until we have a house, basement, garage, and storage until full of stuff. America is the land of stuff, gadgets and gizmos. If you are ever up late at night and watch the infomercials or turn to the home shopping channels you can buy anything from a flat screen TV to a motorized fishing pole and charge it to you credit card with 5 easy payments. We love stuff and we do not want to save and pay for it, we want it now. Luckily enough for us there are hundreds of banks and credit companies willing to send you a nice plastic card with your choice of football team, NASCAR driver, forest scene, or puppy dog on it. How many of us have credit cards? As a whole Americans owe $880 Billion dollars in credit card debt according to the Federal Reserve Bank. One in ten of those who have credit cards have more than 10 credit cards. About half of those who have credit card debt only pay the minimum monthly payment and one in 50 Americans have more than $20,000 in credit card debt. Over 40% of Americans spend more than they make in a year. Amazing statistics aren’t they? Why do we do this to ourselves? We have become a society that focuses on things rather than people. We look at the rich and famous with their champagne wishes and caviar dreams and we wish we could be like that. We imagine what we could buy if we won the lottery. There is a lot of greed in the world. Greed occurs when our love of money and things outweighs our love for anything else, even God.

Jesus warns us about greed in our story today. Jesus is speaking to a crowd and all of a sudden a man runs up to him and says “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” Jesus responds by saying who made a judge or an arbitrator over you. The man was not far off by coming to Jesus because in those days a rabbi, which most of the people thought of Jesus as, would be the one to settle family financial disputes. Instead, Jesus uses this moment to teach and warn the people about greed, the love of possessions above the love of people and of God. “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” One’s life does not consist of possessions. You are not who you wear, or what you drive, or how big your house is. It does not make you a better person; it does not make you a worse person. The problem occurs when the obsession over things and money becomes so great that it breaks your relationships with not only your family but also with God.

Jesus tells a story to illustrate his warning. A man has an abundance of harvest, so much that he does not have room to store it all. He has a decision to make, he could give it to the needy, or he could give it to a neighbor whose crops might not have done as well. Instead he decides to tear down the existing barns and build bigger ones and so we won’t have to work for many years but just live off of the abundance of his harvest. There are two problems with this man’s decision.

First, at no point does this man give God thanks for the abundance of his harvest. He does not acknowledge that God is the source of his blessings. He has put his things about God and does not give credit where credit is due. He does not understand that what he has is not his own and so he becomes greedy, he becomes uncaring about other people. I worked hard for this harvest and I should be able to enjoy it myself and if these other people are too lazy to work hard then that is just too bad for them. How many times have we said something like that? When the homeless man asks for some spare change? When the Salvation Army volunteer is ringing the bell at Christmas? I think we have all said it from time to time. The truth is however, the house we live in, the car we drive, the clothes that are on our back, the TV we watch, the gadgets and gizmos that light up for us are not our own. The money in our bank accounts are not our own. Everything that we had, have now, and will have in the future comes from God. It is God’s. The harvest the man reaped in abundance is God’s not his. Everything that we have down to the bacon and eggs in our bellies is thanks to God Almighty and we should praise him all day long for the blessing in our lives. If you are educated and know how to read, then you are more blessed that over two billion people in the world that cannot read anything at all. If you woke up this morning with more health than illness, you are more blessed than the million who won’t survive the week. If you have food in your refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof over your head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of this world. If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change lying in a dish, you are among the top 8% of the worlds wealthy. We are blessed beyond words to describe it. Let us remember to thank God every day for it.

The second mistake he made was that he gave no thought to other people. He could have fed many people with his abundance. God’s law required that the farmer only go over the field once so to leave what is left for the widows and orphans, but this man had more than enough to feed his family, but decided to horde it up instead of helping out. Is it wrong to save money? No. Is it wrong to save food and supplies? No. The problem occurs when our focus is on the savings and not on those who need help. It always amazes me that when people die they give their church a large sum of money and I always think they could have given that money while they were alive and seen it put to good use. Why wait until it is too late?

You never see a U-haul behind a hearse do you? Why, because you can’t take it with you. The man is Jesus’ story thought he was set, ready to rock and roll, and live the good life, free and easy. He did not expect that his life would be cut short; it was demanded of him that very night. All the stuff you have collected, whose will it be now? You can’t take your TV, or Ipod, or brand new car with you when to meet God, you do take your deeds. God will ask you what you did with what he gave you. You better have a good answer and that answer better not be, “It’s sitting in First National Bank”. We are called to use the resources that God has given us to serve all of his people. God won’t ask you what your IRA portfolio looks like, God won’t look at your bank ledger or your CD statement. Instead God will ask, “How many people did you help?” “How many of the naked did you clothe?” “How many of the hungry did you feed?” “How many of the homeless did you shelter?” Those are the statistics that God is interested in.

Is it wrong to save money? No. Is it wrong to leave something behind for your kids and grandkids? No. Is it wrong to leave something for your church? No. Remember that everything that you and I have is thanks to God and we are called to use those resources that we have be so blessed with to help others who don’t have as much. John Wesley earned millions of dollars in today’s money and died with less than $10 to his name. He broke even and used the blessings to help others. We are so blessed in the United States and we should thank and praise God each day for it. You can’t take it with you when you go, so why not use it to help the world today.

Let us pray…

Grant, O Lord,

that what has been said with our lips we may believe in our hearts,

and that what we believe in our hearts we may practice in our lives;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.