Palm Sunday - March 20, 2005

The Rich Fool – “Rich Towards God”

Luke 12: 13 – 34; Mathew 21: 1 – 11

Christopher Edmonston – Howard Memorial Presbyterian Church

I.

“Hosanna in the highest!” That is what they shouted.[1] But instead of saying it in worship they shouted it to Jesus -- they celebrated him. They praised the promise that seemed to be all around him. In your typical fairy tale, your typical Hollywood movie, Palm Sunday would be the end: the promised savior, Messiah, Lord, King entering the city to universal praise and glorious affirmation.

In one light I think it is safe to say that Jesus is having a great day here; maybe his best day. If Jesus was ever tempted to see the world with rose-colored glasses, Palm Sunday would have been the day. The crowd is lavish with its praise. The crowd is rich with its hope. The people are wealthy with the anticipation that they have long stored up.

II.

In another light, though, I am afraid that Palm Sunday just might have been Jesus’ most lonely day. By the time we arrive at Palm Sunday, Jesus has already told us, at Luke 9:22 (and other places): "The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised." He knows their praise is lacking in sincerity. He understands that they shout to him because they long for a new political order while he has come to introduce to them and to the world a new spiritual kingdom. He knows that the fickle tide of public opinion will turn against him and that eventually he will drown.

How lonely must it be to be the only one who knows that the party will end; that the courtship is over and no marriage is in the offing; that the praise will soon turn into a deathly silence? How could the crowd so rich in praise on Sunday be so poor in commitment by Friday? There is the Good Friday hymn, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” which is not just about witnessing the death of Jesus; it is really about his abandonment. Imagine that tragedy for a moment – the Savior of the world, the life giver of life givers dying alone?

III.

One of the great challenges of human living and Christian discipleship consists in the deciding upon whom we will give our loyalty – in other words, who are we going to follow?

Some of you are Republicans. Some of you are Democrats. In another country you might be a Royalist, or an Autocrat. Regardless of what you are, though, you made a choice at some point, and in making your choice you conferred allegiance and maybe a vote to that system of thought or to such a candidate. Behind this choice that people make are all sorts of values and outcomes questions – for example, what do I hope to get from following this leader?; will this leader or this party represent what is important to my world-view?

IV.

So what did they value? If they are like us today in any way at all, then I think that they probably valued security. They valued not having to worry so much about tomorrow that they couldn’t sleep tonight. They valued knowing that the crops were abundant, that the bills could be paid, and that they would do well for their kids. Basic human value reflected in providing for basic human need.

Scholar Darrell Guder has called this the human problem – namely that human beings though created in the image of God are nonetheless finite creatures. We need economies. We need to trade. We need heat, water, and food to survive. God has created economies for the ordering of the world. But, as he writes, “Whenever the good news of God’s reality is made known, the bad news of our own reality is also revealed.”[2] This is to say that our great intellects are easily distracted, they quickly turn from Godly pursuits to overly simple plans for acquisition. Or to put this frankly, too quickly for the human animal want uproots and supplants need.

V.

I was recently reminded of this when my friend Andrew Richardson shared with me a sermon he recently delivered. This Lent he has been preaching on the seven deadly sins, and three weeks ago he got to the sin of avarice – the sin of greed.

In the movie Wall Street, capitalist Gordon Gecko delivers “a sermon” to the shareholders of a failing company. He says: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all its forms-greed for life, for money, for love, for knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind, and greed, you mark my words, will not only save [this company], but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.”

How quickly, in the human heart does need become want and want become greed? Like Andrew preached to his congregation in Moncton, Canada: “Gordon Gecko’s words are much more popular than the words of Jesus: ‘Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’ (Luke 12: 32 – 34).”

VI.

One of the mistakes that is made by ministers and teachers of scripture is in purveying the idea that Christian discipleship somehow means that life will get easier. In pulpits all over this nation each and every Sunday a gospel is preached that suggests that if a person just accepts Jesus Christ as Lord and savior suddenly life will get easier, challenges and temptations will subside, and the problems of human living will vanish. For this gospel as it is preached, faith in God means prosperity in spirit and in relationship and in financial matters.

But the truth about Christian discipleship is that it always cost something. It makes demands. For those original 12 disciples just as for the apostle Paul life did not get easier because of their allegiance to Jesus Christ, it became more difficult. In becoming more difficult, though, it became more full because they were living for God and not themselves. It was Saint Francis who prayed “It is giving that we receive.”

VII.

I think the crowd senses this in Jesus. I know that they are going to hear him say it once he ascends the Mount of Olives, visits the temple, and delivers his final sermons. While he does not say this, I think it is what the crowd must have heard: “I am not here to make everything easy. I am here to call you to faithfulness and discipleship. I am not here to bring you power, I am here to give you life.” They wanted him to give them power and influence and wealth while the whole time he was asking them to sacrifice. Thus, Jesus must have been sad that day. The glory of Jesus is that he went to the cross in spite of their, and our own, misunderstanding of his mission.

Do we worship to receive or to give?

Do we give to be faithful or to be rewarded? Do we want an easy life or a faithful life, whether that is easy or not?

From where does our real joy come – the want and need and greed that pervades so much of our thinking, or from the Lord who made heaven and earth?

What do we know more about – the funds that we either have, or do not have access to, or the person and mission of Jesus Christ?

Are we willing to be rich toward God before we are rich toward ourselves?

VIII.

If we are going to sing loud Hosannas, if we are going to wave and hold palms, if we are going to be part of the crowd who offers kingship and praise to Jesus, then we had better be willing to ask these questions, even if we are struggling to answer even one of them. Discipleship is not easy; but the calling is to allow Jesus to be the Lord of our lives just as he is the Saviour of our souls. This is, I think, the great challenge before the church today, and the great challenge to our discipleship and it is, I think the final of Luke lessons about wealth and faith.

IX.

Take for example the Rich Fool. His crops produce abundantly. Abundant crops are good things. His mistake is the sin of our age – greed. The Greek word, the New Testament word for his attitude is pleonexia and for Luke, and the letters of Paul (especially Colossians), greed, pleonexia, is a terrible attribute and behaviour.

For my own part I have asked myself many times, when I have wanted something so badly, desired something, some object, some item, some luxury, when I have thought about it day or night – say a golf club, or an expensive flat screen high definition TV, or a new suit, or a new car, or say tickets to the Masters golf tournament – has desiring that thing brought me any closer to God?

When I have thought that having that thing, whatever it is, will make me happy or fill an emptiness inside of me, has that thought made me any better or any more whole than I am today?

Do I know Jesus any better if I desire all of these things on equal terms with my desire for Him?

The Rich Fool’s sin is not having abundant crops. It is being so self-focused on what he wants, what he desires, what he thinks he ought to have that in the five verses that he commands in Luke’s 12^th Chapter he uses the word “I” six times. Greed is being so focused on self, so focused on personal desire that we loose sight of the grand vision that God has for every human life. It’s like being in a fog where everywhere we look we only see ourselves and vision that we ought to have becomes cloudy and limited.

X.

This text, the parable of the Rich Fool and following, exposes to light what I call the paradox of possessions. Jesus said, “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” And the paradox of possessions brings this question home in our culture gone mad with possessions: when we finally are only working to pay for the things we supposedly already own, all the while longing for the next whatever and envious of those people around us that we assume have more than we do, when we only live to service our possessions, do we possess them, or do they possess us?

XI.

That crowd on the first Palm Sunday, do they possesses Jesus, or does He possess Him? They are greedy for his Lordship, but when the Lordship turns out to cost them something instead of paying abundant and automatic dividends they are nowhere to be found. Like the Rich Fool, they are too focused on “I,” and by the end of Holy Week they are still filling their barns, storing up for the future, while God is being crucified.

The crowd that day was rich with praise but poor in commitment. Every day that I live I am called to find my place in that crowd. I suspect that we all are. Thus, the question is on this Palm Sunday: what kind of crowd are we? Are we focused on the barns, rich toward ourselves? Or, are we paying witness and tribute to our Lord – rich toward God and having treasure stored for us in heaven as we work in the kingdom today?

XII.

In the end, no barn, no investment, no TV, no ticket to the Masters golf tournament, no dollar is able to love us back. They return no devotion. They do not greet us at the gates of heaven. That is why God, in the parable, calls the man a fool.

We are rich towards God when we realize that the calling of discipleship is not to equate a day’s work with a day’s pay; that the calling of Jesus is to give as freely as we receive; that the life of the Spirit means praying for others to live abundantly as we live; that instead of storing all that we have as a means of securing the future, we store just as much as we need and pray about what to do with the great abundance left over; it means instead of only praying about the poor around us, being involved in projects and efforts to end poverty; it means abandoning categories like us and them seeing the world in terms of we; it means, if you have a good month or if they strike oil in your backyard, asking “how much do we have to share” instead of “how much are going to be able to deposit.”

XIII.

I pray that I might be part of the crowd that is rich with devotion no matter the cost and not only rich in a hope that asks nothing of me.

It is not easy to follow Jesus to the cross. It is not easy to give in order that others might receive and take joy in their reception.

But, it is the way of God who gave all in order that we might live and live abundantly through him.

Psalm 150 says, “Let everything with breath praise the Lord.” Let us not only praise with our voices, but with our lives; lives that are full of the hope of salvation and life everlasting; lives that come to the roadside and climb into trees to get a glimpse of the savior; lives that are full of blessings; lives that share what we have been given; lives that are rich towards God.

Amen.

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[1] They were used to saying this – at least any religious Jews were used to saying this as part of worship. Hosanna means, “save us.” See Psalm 118: 24 – 26.

[2] I am of course, grossly simplifying this. Guder is much more thorough than I. He makes this point well on pages 37 and 38 (quote from 38) in his The Continuing Conversion of the Church, Eerdmans, 2000.