August 5, 2001
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Taxing Inheritance Prayer: God of all our lives, thank you for the love that will not let us go. Center us now so that we may concentrate on you and your grace in our lives. Open our hearts and our minds so that we may this day make the commitment one more time, to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with you. Amen. We join Jesus in the middle of a lesson in which he is teaching his disciples to watch out that they do not get caught up in the hypocrisy of some of their critics. He tells them that there really is no way to hide what we do, especially in the church. So be careful, Jesus says. Watch what you do because somebody is watching you. What ever you say and do in the dark will find its way into the light. In other words, your private actions need to match up with your public proclamations, or your hypocrisy will be exposed. “Live with integrity, not hypocrisy”, Jesus says. Hypocrisy is on full view when the one who sets the highest rules for everyone else is revealed to live according to his or her own low standards. It happens every time a “family values” politician is discovered to have carried on an illicit relationship. We see it when the valued bookkeeper, the one who is most stringent about record keeping, turns out to be an embezzler. We see when we profess to love Jesus Christ, but refuse to acknowledge that his life, death, or resurrection have any connection to the way we live our lives especially in relationship to how we treat other people. While Jesus is talking to his disciples, he is overheard by the gathered
crowd. In the crowd is a young man concerned about his inheritance. In Jesus’
day, inheritance laws were well established.
For instance, “the laws of inheritance stipulated that the elder
brother would receive a double portion of the inheritance (Deuteronomy 21.7). If
the father had no sons, his possessions were to be divided among his daughters
(Numbers 27.1-11), but his daughters were then required to marry within their
father’s tribe so that his possessions would not leave the tribe. [The
New Interpreter’s Bible, “Luke” p. 255].
In a time when polygamy was legal, and a man might have more than one wife, the
law was clear about how the inheritance was to be distributed among their
children. Deuteronomy 21.15-17 says: “If
a man has two wives, one of them loved and the other disliked, and if both the
loved and the disliked have borne him sons, the firstborn being the son of the
one who is disliked, then on the day when he wills his possessions to his sons,
he is not permitted to treat the son of the loved as the firstborn in preference
to the son of the disliked, who is the firstborn. He must acknowledge as
firstborn the son of the one who is disliked, giving him a double portion of all
that he has; since he is the first issue of his virility, the right of the
firstborn is his.” In normal, functional families, inheritance brings mixed emotions. We may
be glad for what has been left to us. What ever it is that is left to us, money,
a house, a heirloom, a business, has great value to us. I am proud to wear the
ring we got for my mother one mother’s day long ago. It has the birthstones of
my parents, my sisters and me, and it links me to them, as does my parent’s
hope chest and china cabinet. But we know that the inheritance has come to us at
the high price of the passing from this life of one who meant something to us,
and to whom we meant enough that they left us a tangible memory of themselves.
In nonfunctional families, inheritance can bring fighting and feuding that can
last for generations. ”Jesus, tell my selfish, older, keeping too much of it
to himself brother to divide fairly our inheritance with me. He has tried to
deprive me of what is rightfully mine, and he has done it in secret. He already
has the double portion, why should he get some of my share too?” The young man probably didn’t like the way Jesus responded to him. After all, there he is yelling out his frustration, all he wants is for Jesus to settle this dispute. But he will not. First Jesus just declines to tell big brother anything. “I am not the arbitrator or mediator for family court. It is not my job to determine how much or what you inherit.” But then he goes on, “but since you asked, don’t get so caught up in greed that you lose sight of what is important.” We know that greed is one of the seven deadly sins and it can do serious damage to our relationships and to our spirits. It gets all tangled up with envy: “I should have the money that she has,” It wraps itself around jealousy: “He knows that heirloom rightfully belongs to me.” Greed satisfies only for a moment, but its appetite can be insatiable: “if I only had more money, more prestige, more influence, more expensive clothes, greater sex appeal, I would be happy.” When we are caught up in greed, too much is never enough. If you saw the movie, “Wall Street” you know that one of the pivotal moments in the film occurs when the character Gordon Gecko stands before the executives and stockholders of a company he is trying to takeover and announces to them that “greed is good.” “Jesus rejects the man’s request because he will not participate in
satisfying the greed that he senses had prompted it. Instead of helping the man
to get his inheritance, he points the man to a different understanding of life.
Life is not to be valued or measured in terms of wealth or possessions. One may
gain the whole world, and lose one' soul (Luke 9.25). On the other hand, true
blessing comes to those who hear the Word of God and do it (8.21; 11.28 p. 255).
Don’t get caught up in stuff, Jesus says. Enjoy it, praise God for it,
but don’t bet your soul on it. Think about the young man who petitions Jesus. All he wanted was for Jesus to help him get what was coming to him. Instead Jesus tells him that he is probably greedy. Then like the relative in every family I know, he tells him a story. We know it as a parable, a story told to make a larger point. We can almost hear Jesus asking, “did you ever hear the story of the rich fool?" The weather was perfect in the planting season. The rain and the sunshine offered themselves in the soil in just the right proportions in the growing season. All that was necessary for an abundant crop came together. When the time came, the harvest was so big that the barns on the property were not large enough to hold all the grain and goods. “What shall I do?” the farmer thought. It does not occur to him to share any with the neighbors. He does not load up the wagon and take the extra to the local homeless shelter. He does not give 10% to the church, nor does he establish a foundation and education trust fund for the children in the community. Instead, he thinks that the solution is to tear down his current barns and build bigger ones. “His plans push confidently into the future tense: “I will do this; I
will pull down my barns and will build larger ones, and there I will store all
my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul. At the same time, his
presumption and self-centeredness are reflected in the frequency of the
possessive pronoun in his thoughts: my crops, my barns, my grain, my goods, and
finally, my soul (New Interpreters, p.256). He is pleased with himself, he is at ease planning to eat, drink, be merry, travel the world for the rest of his life. But then he discovers that the rest of his life was a moment ago. This is the moment his life will be demanded of him, this is the night of his death. We never know when that moment is coming, so keep your priorities straight Jesus said. Keep focused on the gifts and graces of God. You hear Jesus say, “you and your brother can sort out your dispute with your brother. If you can’t, call a family law attorney. My point is this. Pay attention to what makes you rich toward God.” The passage from Hosea speaks to God’s love in the face of disappointment with people who despite God’s love, the love of a self-sacrificing parent or a faithful spouse. The people forgot they were wealthy in God. Jesus is not saying that it is wrong to remodel and expand. He is not against comfort or success indeed, both can be signs of hard work, faithfulness and a perspective that puts God first. The truth is that our possessions serve us well in this life. They bring us joy and comfort, they help us to have a certain quality of life, they can enable us to share our resources generously. They are fun. But they mean nothing in eternity. What matters into eternity is how rich we are in the things we possess with God. In other words, how we possess and hold on to our faithfulness to God which manifests itself in relations to others. Remember the sin here is not wealth and abundance, it is his self-absorption and that is not about income. What possesses us? What is that we want to possess? Some people have an
idea of what we need to have. If you haven’t received your tax refund already,
have you noticed that there are people who are trying to separate you from it?
Already there are appeals from stores wanting to claim it. One says, come spend
it with us, investment companies say give it to us, we will take care of it.
Charitable institutions, including some church based groups are saying don’t
just give us ten percent of it, we need all of the $300, or $500, or $1500 we
have coming to us. Housing developers are building bigger houses, with large basements, and three car garages for all of our possessions and stuff. Still we need a shed for our garden supplies and rented storage space for the stuff we have no room for in our homes. Easton Town Center is about to open a store called The Container Store. It will be a store filled with stuff to hold our stuff. This night our soul may be required of us, and then who will possess our
possessions. What will happen to our stuff we have held and hoarded? The fate of the rich man need not be ours, if we focus not only on what we have but on what we will do with it to the glory of God. In the end, we don’t really know what the young man did after hearing the story of the rich fool. We do know that we are called by Jesus to look at what matters and to live in the full richness of God. The truth is that our lives are always demanded of
us. God through Jesus Christ has already claimed us and our spiritual barns are
filling up with the good things God has given us. What shall we do? We can
answer that question foolishly and horde the good things of God, take our ease
in the congregation and be satisfied that this is as good as it gets. Or, we can answer wisely, and say to ourselves, “we know, we will take
what God has given to us and do the best possible ministry with it. Dream with
me for a minute. Dream with me of a day when because we did horde our resources,
our budgets are in surplus and we can bear witness to the love of God from this
place as we do some extraordinary things around here. Dream of a day when in the richness of God, all that we do here is
offered in joy and excellence as we bask in the love of God for us; a love that
makes us rich in faith and ministry. Dream with me of a day when we do not tear down anything but build up and build upon the great inheritance that God has through Jesus Christ given us. It is an inheritance of love, justice, and compassion. We are called to use our richness in God to be reconciled to God and to each other, to show hospitality, to mourn and rejoice with one another. We are called to give witness to the good news that our lives belong to God. Come with me and let’s walk boldly into the light of God’s proclaiming as we go that we are not possessed by our possessions. Instead we are possessed by the One who from the great richness that is his, gives us life in all the abundance our hearts and souls can hold. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
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Broad
Street Christian Church
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