What's In Your Storehouse?

Luke 12: 13-21
Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.’ But he said to him, ‘Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?’ And he said to them, ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’ Then he told them a parable: ‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” Then he said, “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 God said to him, “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 towards God.’

Shocking!

Jesus was not only saying his mission was not to take sides in conflicts of who is right and who is wrong, he was also telling those listening to him that the possession of an abundance of material goods did not guarantee salvation and didn’t mean that anyone who was rich was necessarily favored by God. That would have been scandalously upsetting for his audience who had been taught that material abundance indicated God’s approval and blessing.

We all need to sit up and pay attention here. This isn’t really about whether we should have money or not; it’s about what spiritual laws and ideas we perceive are critical to our own spiritual health. If Jesus walked into your parish next Sunday, in what way could he upset your carved in stone ideas about what God wants from his people? Could Jesus totally shock you? I don’t mean just make you feel a little guilty because there are areas where you fail to do what you know is right. I’m talking about him saying something that would rock your foundations and maybe even make you angry and question his authority?

The problem that Jesus was pointing out in this week’s Gospel was not that someone desired what he felt was his rightful share or that the man in the parable had lots of money. It was that in both cases, the crux of the Kingdom of God was missing: love and trust. In one instance there was a question of what could perhaps be called a moral right and in the other, Jesus gave an illustration of someone actually living and acting according to a completely accepted spiritual precept of the day. In both cases, Jesus implied there was such a lack of awareness of what he deemed critical to life that he even brought one fellow’s salvation into question. Time and time again throughout the Gospels, Jesus openly told the people that laws and precepts are not what open the doors of the Kingdom to us. They’re not what saves us. It is love and trust. It is caring for the needs, spiritual, emotional and material, of others before we care for our own needs and trusting in God to give us everything we need when we need it.

And here we are two thousand years later still struggling with those concepts, especially the idea of what it means to love. We are still a people that fall into rights and laws. We keep forgetting what Jesus taught. How we do this so easily and then feel totally justified I don’t know - but we do.

For instance, read this quote from Pope Francis:

"In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don't baptize the children of single mothers because they weren't conceived in the sanctity of marriage. These are today's hypocrites. Those who clericalize the church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation. And this poor girl who, rather than returning the child to sender, had the courage to carry it into the world, must wander from parish to parish so that it's baptized!"

We honestly don’t have to look too far to know that we have observed injustices performed in the name of Church law. We probably don’t have to struggle too much to remember times when we personally felt obligated to follow a spiritual law rather than offer complete acceptance, respect, love and support to someone who was definitely on the wrong side of that law. There have been times when we operated out of our ‘full storehouse’ of the law and felt justified.

Jesus actually taught by his words and actions that he wasn’t terribly concerned about morality and legality in the way the authorities had come to interpret morality and legality. I believe that as a Christian people we have come a long way in the journey of becoming a people who base acceptance of other people on love rather than on legality or morality. I think we’re starting to ‘get it’ but it’s still so easy to fall into the trap.

It feels a bit dangerous to us to simply love and accept rather than make sure the transgressor knows our righteous stands about everything and knows that we disapprove. You don’t think this is a common struggle? Talk to any parent of older teenagers and young adults. There’s at least one child in almost every family who in some way completely challenges the parents’ sensibility of moral and spiritual rightness. And most parents I know who have come through this difficult period have come out with the understanding that love is far more important than legalistic stances. Legality shatters the fragile heart. Love mends it. At the same time, love mends the egotistical hardness, brittleness and selfishness of our own hearts. It creates in us a fuller awareness of how God loves us. The more we know how loved we are, the more we learn to trust deeply in God’s provision for our needs rather than trusting in our own scrambling to stock up and maintain our own impoverished storehouses.

If there ever comes a time when God asks us about our pilgrimage here on earth, he won’t ask if we were morally or legally correct. No, he won’t. He will ask, “Did you love her? Did you respect him? Did you open your door and welcome them in with love and laughter? Or did you grudgingly allow them into your space and make sure they knew you weren’t comfortable with their lifestyles, their failures, their struggles, their dreams and ambitions? Did you have to make sure they understood that they were mistaken?”

It’s not just material wealth that can lull us into thinking we are secure. A certain kind of spiritual wealth can do the same. Remember the parable of the Pharisee and the publican? The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’  He did not go home justified. This was a man with a full religious storehouse but it meant nothing to God. He had no love.

Listen! Jesus doesn’t care if you are totally right. He doesn’t care if your storehouse is overflowing with righteous deeds. He only cares that you love.

If we all really understood that, the whole church would be turned upside down. It would cease to be a storehouse and become what it was always meant to be:

Sanctuary.