August 3, 2025 · Rev. Derek van Gulden · Luke 12:13-21; Colossians 3:1-11
Jesus' parable of the rich man who builds bigger barns, and Mary's song of the hungry filled and the rich sent away empty, speak loudly in a time of hunger at home and in Gaza. The congregation answers what it means to be rich toward God: prayer, listening, kindness, gratitude, sharing. Even Joseph stored grain, Rev. Derek van Gulden points out, so that all could eat.
Transcript
People of God. Would you join me in a moment of prayer? Gracious and holy God, this morning I ask you to move the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts by your love, and help each of us this day not to be the instrument of our own or anyone else's oppression. To be an instrument of peace in every step, in every breath. In every moment of every day. Amen.
Today's scripture from Luke. I always enjoy reading and hearing because. It hearkens back to his mother. Jesus is telling this rich man who has stored up all. He has, all the fruits of his labor and others labors the gifts from God. He stored them up not to share with others, but so that he can have riches and wealth, and he can go on and do all those things that he wants to do. And I always forget those. Party. I'm doing it in today's vernacular. Do whatever you wish. Rest. Have fun. But nowhere in there does it say and give back.
We hear Jesus saying, don't store up and keep things here on earth. What are they going to get you? You never know when your day is coming. And he talks to this man and God tells this man, guess what? Today's the day. All those things you've stored up aren't going to do you any good in heaven.
And we hear this different times throughout Scripture. There's a little passage that we hear in advent, usually the third Sunday of Advent, and it's called the Magnificat, Mary's Song of Praise. It's Luke chapter one, verses forty six through fifty five. But I just want to read you fifty two to fifty four and he has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.
These words of Mary and of her son Jesus, speak loudly right now, loudly as we can even stand even louder for what's going on in our world today, in our own country we have starvation. We have food insecurity. The number of people that are homeless is increasing, and yet they're being pushed out of cities. So people don't see them. Out into the countryside or into suburbs. We don't spend time looking at the root causes of such things. We spend more time saying we don't want them in our neighborhood. They're going to disrupt us. We all give food to each other. We need to continue that. But the rich are getting richer. God only knows what they need all the money for. Well, I could list many things, but you know what's going on. And the starvation that's happening in Gaza and different parts of the world. And the saddest part is these people starve in abundance before they even meet the criteria to consider that starvation.
Why do we hoard? Why do we keep things to ourselves? And what does Jesus mean when he says, be rich in what you give to God? Or be rich in God? Anybody have an answer? It's an honest question from me. How would you be rich in God? Prayer, prayer. Prayer is amazing. And last week. Come to think of it, thirty two of you wrote messages to me about prayer and I was supposed to put them all together. You will hear those. Katie and I will read those to you during our prayer session.
How else can you be rich in God sharing Wealth. Wealth in food. Wealth in space. Wealth in time. Anything else? What was that? Perfect answer. Listening. Listening to God. That's a great one. Listening to each other. As I say, truly listening. Which means. And I do this all the time. When somebody's talking to me, I'm thinking, well, how am I going to respond to this? Is there anything I can relate to? What can I do? Listening is just being quiet in your person and listening.
Anything else? Sharing kindness. Sharing kindness. Beautiful. What else can we share? Volunteering. Volunteering. Smiling. Smiling. Which is also a way to start. What? Peace. Mother Teresa always said, I don't know if she always said it, but she is quoted as saying, peace begins with a smile and it becomes infectious. Anything else?
Gratitude. Showing gratitude. Gratitude to God. Gratitude to each other. One another. One other.
One that we don't often think of because it's very hard to comprehend. Helping those who oppress people by holding back things. By hoarding things. To learn to overcome their oppressive behavior so that they are freed from oppression. So in this light, it would be showing people with immense wealth, which is. Unimaginable to me what that means how to do good things with that wealth. Not a little bit. But with the bulk of it. Think of the things that they could change in this world.
All those are amazing ways. To give to God, to share with each other instead of storing up wealth or hoarding food.
You've heard me say this often. The early church, the very early church, never met in a building like this. Well, they could have. I guess it would have been more Romanesque, but they met in people's homes so that no one else knew they were meeting because they were doing that against Roman rule. They read Scripture, which would have been the first testament that we call the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible. And they then went out and took food to people in the neighborhoods and would read scripture to them. And that was worship for them. I don't even know if they called it worship, but that's how the church started the very beginning. I keep thinking it'd be fun to do that. We already do that in many ways. But then, well, these things are important things to do.
But there is also some people would say so God doesn't say you have to save stuff up for the future. No, God does not say that. If we go back to the Hebrew Bible, there's this amazing story that's been made into a a musical, Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat. So Joseph Predicted that there was supposed to be a great famine coming, or a great. Time when their crops would fail due to droughts and other things. And he talked to Pharaoh about it and said, we need to build more places to store grain to save it. And they did. And they saved it. And when the time came, it was shared with everybody. So even during this great time of drought, they still had food because they saved it up for all, not just for one. And the musical is pretty good too. I saw the version with Donny Osmond. Well. Maybe forty years ago.
But when we think of these things and we think about what we do, and we look around our homes, and I know we all do this because through different parts of the year, the old sloop fair, how much stuff people bring in and how much of that stuff finds new homes. Things that we no longer need, things we pass on. We do it the same when we do the rummage sale. Are we having the rummage sale this year? Yes. So I'm already doing it. I have well, I have a little big bag of stuff I don't wear anymore for many reasons. And we bring it in and people that come and shop at the rummage sale, including most of us, find new things, things that are broken in. So we don't have to do that. And it's a great gift, a way of sharing. These two are being wealthy in God. May we continue to hear that word. May we continue to do what we've done and strive to do more in any way we can think. Amen.