What’s Your Rate of
Return?
By Rev Steven R
Mitchell
Mountain View
United Church, Aurora, CO 6/9/2013
Based on Luke
12:13-21
Most of the time this morning’s text is
used in relationship
to stewardship messages and generally making
us feel poorly about the material things that we have accumulated, and urges us
to evaluate what we have, and where we have really received them from. It’s easy to do, after all the story tells us
that a farmer had become so successful in his production of crops that he
needed to build bigger barns in which to store these bummer crops. In fact, he had so much that he felt he could
finally retire, relax, and enjoy what he had reaped. Of course, the oil in the ointment comes when
God says, “Look at you, you think now you can rest. I’ll show you rest. You’ll rest from now on, for tonight you
die.”
This
story can be a downer for most of us in this country, for we judge our quality
of life by our possessions. Of what we
have or don’t have, not so much in relationship to our needs, but rather based
on what we see others possessing. To
compound the matter, we are constantly told that we do not have enough and that
more is better. We also receive messages
everyday of our lives say, “the only person you can truly rely upon is yourself.”
One of the ways that
we exercise this belief is in our saving for our retirement years. Yet if we believe that God truly does provide for
us, is not our saving money for our retirement year’s kind of saying, “I really don’t think God is able to provide for
my needs when I’m old, so I will have to make sure that ‘I’ take care of ‘me’ ‘myself’
Most of us would argue,
“if I don’t save up for my retirement, how am I supposed to survive in my senior
years?” It only seems logical for us to
save up our excesses or even be frugal during our working years so that we will
have something to live on in those years that we are not working. Right!
Surely God would want us to be fiscally responsible through saving so we
are not a burden on someone else! After all
Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dream of 7 fat cows and 7 skinny cows as a need to
safe for those years when draught would come.
But if you examine
why Jesus was telling this story it becomes clear that Jesus wasn’t speaking
about the accumulation of wealth in and of it’s self. There was a man in the crowd who wanted Jesus
to intervene and mediate a dispute between he and his brother about the
division of their inheritance. Jesus uses
today’s store to tell the man about “greed”.
Now there’s something that we can all relate to.
Last week the
largest Powerball lottery to date, $600 million was won by one person who is 86
years old. Chances are good that she
personally probably will never live long enough to spend all that she has just
won. Yet there are studies that show,
most lottery winners have spent all the money within just a few years of when
they win it. Now, what makes the
difference in a person’s spending habits prior to winning verses after they
have won? That is the real
question. It’s a mindset that has
plagued humanity from our onset.
We call it by many
names but most often we use the word greed.
The result of this is seen in the action of accumulation. The more that we possess the greater the
desire becomes to accumulate more. For
most of us, when our standard of living rises, so does our desire for more
stuff. The reality is that greed is
actually rooted in “scarcity.” When we
have more, somehow our brains start to think that we don’t have enough, which
leads us to concentrating on acquiring more.
This is what the issue in scripture is trying to tell us. It’s our focus that is being called into
examination!
This morning’s
scripture says, “Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.” Vs. 15 The issue with scarcity thinking is that it
“distracts” us from God. The farmer had
a dilemma with this great harvest. “What
shall I do?”, “I have no room.”, “My crops” are what the farmer says to
himself. His resolutions sound like
this: “I will do…”, “I will build…”, “I will store up…”, “I will say to my
soul…”. There was no thought
about what God has provided, no thought about how these crops might benefit the
community, no thought about anyone except toward himself.
Within our
confession this morning we were using words such as: not loving you with whole heart,
loved ourselves at expense of others, ignored the cries of the poor, turned
away from needs of others, shunned those who are different, abused and
exploited each other and the world,. Why do we say these things? It’s because, deep down we recognize that
more often than not, we are distracted from God as we live life.
This weekend, the
Rocky Mountain UCC had its annual meeting.
The theme was “Becoming a New Story”.
This is a timely theme, as the conference is moving into a new chapter
of its life with the retirement of the Conference Minister, Tom Rehling as of
August 31st of this year.
This means several years of living with an interim Conference Minister
before we are able to call our next. You
know how this feels, you here at Mountain View went through a similar process
between Craig Peterson’s leaving and my coming.
With my arrival we
have started our own new story. This
particular gathering of delegates was asked to do some story telling about who
we are as a conference and what we envision ourselves five years down the road,
very much the same type of work that a few of us did a few weeks ago at our
“Walking Toward Tomorrow” workshop. As I
was thinking about what I personally was taking away from this particular
conference, I was amazed at how similar the stories and the desired future parallel
at both the conference level and of those who attended our process here at
Mountain View.
As I was mulling
over what I experienced at the conference, at our workshop, and with this
morning’s scripture, I was reminded of the word “Gift.” When we stop to think about the fact that
what the farmer failed to remember was the Gift that God had given him, that
the crops didn’t happen just because of his toil but with God’s help, I started
wondering, “What does it mean to be rich toward God?” This question isn’t only about those things
that we actually acknowledge coming from God, but also, what do we do with
those gifts? Do we build larger store
rooms in which to hold onto these gifts, or do we use these gifts so other’s
benefit as well?
When I attend
various workshops, conferences, small meetings, it doesn’t matter if it’s with
the UCC, or the Presbytery, or with the United Methodist; when I am here at
Mountain View or visiting another congregation, what I see is the gift of
God. When I am with my family, or with
friends, or in the middle of a crowd of people that I don’t know, I am seeing, and
receiving the gift of God.
Do you see
yourselves as the gift of God? This
isn’t a trick question, but the most earnest of questions. Do you see yourself as a gift of God, and if
so, how are you using that gift? Do you
see Mountain View as a gift of God? Like
the farmer, we can become side tracked with being who we are and forgetting
what we are – the gift of God. We have a
serious task before us, it is the task of making sure the gift of God is
distributed to everyone, not locked up in a store house. What is our rate of return on God’s gift?
Amen
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