Preached at Canadochly Lutheran on August 11, 2013
Scripture Texts: Genesis 15:1-6, Hebrews 11:1-16, Luke 12:32-48
We’ve all played this game at least once in our lives. “If you were stranded on a deserted island...” is how it begins. What usually follows demands that we list a small number of something we would wish to have with us. If you were...what 3 albums would you want to listen to? What five books would you want? What two people would you want stranded with you? And so forth. It’s a thought exercise, one that makes us prioritize what our favorites are or what is most important to us and why. It asks the question, if all else in life were stripped away, what would want to keep most?
In other words, what is your treasure? What matters most to you? The people who are most important...the music you love the most...the ideas (and the books that contain them) that inspire you the most. Our lives are filled with treasures, but what are the most valuable among them? That can be tricky to figure out sometimes, particularly when we realize just how rich we really are. Rich in ideas, rich in love, rich in beauty.
If you think it difficult at times for us to make these sorts of decisions, even for a hypothetical exercise like the desert island, imagine for a moment an even harder one. If God were stranded on a desert island, what of his treasures would he want most?
If the wholeness of our life experience can seem daunting, what about God’s? He has the whole universe before him. Uncounted worlds, the beauty of places human eyes will never look upon. The thoughts, ideas, feelings, and the wondrous creativity of billions of life forms on this planet alone (let alone what else might be out there amidst the stars). It’s daunting to think about.
Yet, despite all that, the answer to the question is rather easy. What matters most to God? What is his treasure? If Scripture is any guide at all, the answer is “us.” We are God’s treasure.
Our Scripture texts for today bear this out. Our Old Testament lesson on the surface doesn’t seem to be anything special. It’s pretty innocuous, or at least as innocuous as a conversation between a mortal and the Almighty can be. Abram’s all depressed, since it seems that he’s not going to have children after all. But God has already made a promise to Abram that from him and his descendants will come a blessing for the whole world. It won’t do for there to be no descendants, so God intervenes. He gives Abram a vision of that vast creation that we only see a small speck of. “Look at what I can do.” God seems to boast. “Do not fear. Your descendants will number as the stars you see before you.”
If Abram didn’t matter, God would not have bothered. If we didn’t matter, God would have had no reason to honor his promises. Who are we in the vast scheme of the universe? Nothing really, except to God. We do matter and God does bother and God does keep his promises.
Which is the very point the author of Hebrews makes. “Look,” he seems to say, “if you want to know about God’s faithfulness, look at Abraham. Thousands of years ago, he was childless. His wife barren, and yet God intervened to make sure his promise came to pass. And the evidence of that is all around us (he is writing to Hebrews after all.) As if that was not enough, there is also Christ, that blessing-that-was-promised, in whom we’ve all come to believe.”
And that brings us to Jesus. Those two other texts are good background for us, because they give us evidence that when Jesus says “do not fear” it’s more than just words. Behind them is a God who will take care of us, who has promised life to us, and who treasures us beyond price. Treasures us enough to send his son into this world to live, to die, and to rise again FOR US.
What then is there to fear? As St. Paul writes, if God is for us, who can be against us?
But Jesus isn’t finished with his instruction in our Gospel. He moves into some metaphorical language about servants being ready for the master’s return. Amidst some of their other duties, a servant is tasked with taking care of the master’s treasure. If our master is God and we are the servants, then what treasure are we meant to care for?
Alright, that was an easy one. Each other of course. We spend a lot of energy trying to figure out what Jesus means when he talks about his Second Coming, his return and how to be ready for it. But this isn’t complicated. If we of God’s creation, made in his image, are his greatest treasure, then we make ready for Christ’s return by taking care of one another.
But when we look out at the state of the world we see what a terrible job we’ve done at that. The master’s household, to use the metaphor, is real mess. People sleep on the streets, without a home or a job to give them worth. Many are ill and we give them no care. Children are hungry. Our aged struggle. And we rationalize our neglect by saying it costs too much.
It costs too much. But what is the value of a human life? God has answered that question on the cross.
That homeless vet on the street. Christ died for him. That family of four in the ghetto that can barely make ends meet. Christ died for them. The old widow who each month must decide between her medicine and her rent. Christ died for her. They are worth more to God than his very life, but we write them off and we do it out of fear.
We talked about greed last week, but what greed really is is fear. Fear of not having enough. Yet we’ve seen God’s promises fulfilled all around us. We’ve seen the lengths he goes to care for us. We seen the treasure he’s showered upon us and yet we doubt his faithfulness. There is no need! Jesus speaks the truth, “Fear not! It is the Father’s pleasure to give us the kingdom.” Even death does not stop God, his as Easter proves or our own. If God is there for us in all things, giving life even in the midst of death, then we can be there for each other and for the whole human race.
This isn’t complicated. The master is coming home to his treasure. Can we be ready? Amen.
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