Sunday, August 4, 2019 | 4:00 p.m.

A Love That Can’t Be Lost

Nanette Sawyer
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 49
Luke 12:13–21

It’s so wonderful to be together here outside, gathered around the fountain, taking in the beautiful expansive sky, hearing the loud summer chirping of the birds. Even the city sounds are a reflection of the energy and liveliness of our human experience as part of God’s great creation.

Here we see vibrancy, vitality, abundant life. It’s good to pause and think about how we are all connected to all of this, how we are all connected to each other, and how we are all connected to God.

Our Gospel reading today sets us up to reflect on this as well. Immediately after the story I just read, we get the well-known verses about considering the lilies. Jesus goes on to say to the disciples,

“Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even King Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.” (Luke 12:24–27)

This scripture reflects the idea that God takes care of us and all creation, that God is thoroughly present with us, caring for us, loving us. Even our idea of who God is, God as a Trinity, as three-in-one, reflects this thinking of relationship.

When we talk about the Trinity, we call God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or God the Parent, Child, Spirit. Or we can use different words and talk about God the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sustainer who sanctifies and supports us. Whatever titles or descriptors we use to talk about God, the Trinity shows us that God is always in relationship and that God is present with us in our relationships, too.

There is One God, but this One God is a parent and a child. This One God is a spiritual presence but is also tangible, immanent in this world.

The Trinity becomes a metaphor for how interdependent and connected we are to all of creation. But sometimes we deny or undermine that deep connection between us, God, our neighbors, and God’s creation. We see that disconnection in our Gospel reading today.

Today’s story is often called the Parable of the Rich Fool. But why does God, through Jesus, call this man a fool?

In this parable we see a man who seems to have everything all worked out. He has so much grain and goods, so many possessions and provisions, that he no longer has to worry about working. He can just relax. He no longer has to worry about food. He can just eat and drink and be merry. No worries. But something is missing.

Jesus gives us a clue by his question to the man. He does not ask “How did you get this wealth?” He doesn’t chastise the man as though he had been unethical in any way in building up his wealth. The problem isn’t the wealth. The question Jesus asks is about the man’s relationships. When you die, he asks, “the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”

Whenever Jesus asks a question, we know there is something Jesus wants to point out. We suspect the foolish man will have a difficult time answering that question.

There are other clues in the story that suggest why this might be a difficult question for the man. We don’t know who might inherit from the man, because nowhere in the story does he give any indication that he has relationships of any kind.

He talks to himself about himself and makes his plans for himself, now and in the future: “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops? . . . I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”

But the only “you” in his inner dialogue is really himself—not a “you” at all, but really just “me.”

As a landowner, he surely had laborers who did the work of farming his land, but he has no words of concern for them, no gratitude for the wealth they have built for him. He has no words of care for any family, no mention of them. He doesn’t think of the community where he lives.

Here is a man isolated with his wealth. “The things you have prepared,” Jesus asks, “whose will they be?” If the man could answer that question it wouldn’t be the zinger that it is. The question would not be a punch line in the parable if he could say, “It will belong to my son,” or “it will go to my wife and children,” or “it will belong to my brother.” He doesn’t seem about to say “I’m leaving it to the community center” or “to those who are without barns or homes, so that they too might live.”

Here is a man whose primary relationship seems to be with his possessions, and what does that say about his relationship with God? Jesus calls this man a fool and ends his parable by saying, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.”

In saying this, Jesus presents an alternative to the life and understanding of the foolish man. There is a way, he suggests, to be rich toward God and not be foolish.

What could Jesus mean by that—to be rich toward God? For insight, I turned to the Apostle Paul.

In 2 Corinthians, Paul is writing to the church in Corinth about how the churches in Macedonia were making offerings to the other churches. They were pooling their resources to support the work of all. To inspire them, he wrote about the grace that Jesus extended to all: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9).

Paul uses an economic metaphor about poverty and wealth to describe grace and the relationship of Jesus to those who followed Jesus’ Way.

Filling out this economic metaphor, Paul went on to say, “Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality, as it is written: ‘The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little’” (2 Corinthians 8:13–15, NIV).

This describes a relationship based on mutuality, reciprocity, trust, care, and commitment. As one scholar has said, “In the context of this passage, becoming poor means recognizing, claiming, and taking one’s place within a larger community and refusing to be diminished by or to diminish the value of others” (Elizabeth I. Hinson-Hasty, The Problem of Wealth: A Christian Response to a Culture of Affluence). In other words, becoming poor in this context led to a wealth of relationship and interconnected belonging.

There is something very rich about abundant relationships of reciprocity, trust and commitment in which people are cared for because people care for each other.

That love and care is reflected in community relationships, but it’s also reflected in the human-divine relationship. In one of my favorite verses in the Bible, Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39).

This is a promise that carries a lot of power. To me it says that even when we have the illusion, or possibly the delusion, that we are separated from God and from love, in fact there is still connection to God, whose love is steadfast and enduring.

It reminds me of the lyrics in Abbey Lincoln’s song “Throw It Away.” She writes about how you can never lose a thing if it belongs to you, so you don’t have to cling to things out of fear. You can have an open heart, an open hand, even though life makes us feel so vulnerable at times—even though we may feel as breakable as clay pots. She writes:

I think about the life I live
A figure made of clay
And think about the things I lost
The things I gave away
And when I’m in a certain mood
I search the house and look
One night I found these magic words
In a magic book
Throw it away
Throw it away
Give your love, live your life
Each and every day
And keep your hand wide open
Let the sun shine through
’Cause you can never lose a thing
If it belongs to you.

The source of our security and dignity is not in perishable things but in our imperishable relationship with the God of love. Abbey Lincoln reflects on the challenge but also the liberation that comes when we give freely and exuberantly of our love, our life, or any other thing that we have held carefully close to us out of fear of loss. It turns out that there is something bigger than ourselves of which we are a part, and there is someone bigger than us who is holding and supporting us more than we sometimes know. Her lyrics continue. She writes:

There’s a hand to rock the cradle
And a hand to help us stand
With a gentle kind of motion
As it moves across the land
And the hand’s unclenched and open
Gifts of life and love it brings
So keep your hand wide open
If you’re needing anything

Friends, there is one thing that belongs to each of us that can never be lost. And that is God’s love. It has been given freely to us and nothing can ever separate us from that love.

That is the foundation of our dignity and our security. And that love is imperishable and indestructible. That love belongs to you. Receive it, and share it. Amen.