Generosity and Grace
By: Deacon Mindy Bugaj
I’m so pleased to be here this morning. As a deacon in the Lutheran church, I serve as a called member of the clergy. My call to Bethlehem Lutheran and St. Andrew’s Episcopal churches, which began just two years ago, focuses on youth ministry. I’ve served in youth ministry for over 17 years. There is much to love about this area of ministry including the optimism, joy, compassion, and hope that I see in the young people I am blessed to work with.
Each year St Andrew’s and Bethlehem’s youth take a summer trip for service and learning. In years past, the trips included a border immersion program in El Paso, Texas and last year we worked on trail maintenance in Flagstaff and painted the hogan at the Navajo Mission in Rock Point, AZ.
This year, we traveled to the west and spent one week on the Hawai’ian Island of Maui. Maybe that sounds extravagant to some, but when I inquired with various members of Episcopal and Lutheran leadership who live and serve on Maui to find out if there was a need for young people to visit, work, and learn; the response was overwhelmingly positive. Maui wanted us.
The welcome we received everywhere we worked and visited was overwhelmingly warm and genuine. People were both surprised and appreciative that a group of students would choose to work on Maui and not just go there to vacation.
The education we received was personal and meaningful. We learned about the history of colonialism on the islands. About the immigrant communities that arrived there hundreds of years ago and are now deeply embedded in the unique genealogy and culture that is Hawai’i’s.
Hawai’i’s traditions and culture hold a deeply rooted sense of honor for the land, their communities, and families. The land, the islands, are sacred. The oceans too are sacred. Sacred because they hold the provisions necessary to care for the people – the families – the communities. All are interrelated and interdependent. This is a beautiful expression of appreciation for life and creation.
Appreciation for interdependence of life and creation are hallmarks of Christian living as well. Love for God shown through our care for creation and our care of others is what Christians are called to live. Sometimes life gets in the way and demonstrating our love for God and others, gets sidetracked by life and the expectations life puts on us.
We come to today’s gospel lesson as people living in a world where we are taught to set aside resources, i.e., money, for rainy days. The financial advice I’ve lived with, and I would guess most of you have too, is to have an emergency fund. To find secure incomes to provide for ourselves-to pay the bills. To create college savings accounts and retirement savings and investments. To be independent and self-sufficient in our financial endeavors. Our society, our culture, tells us from a very young age to strive for things. For personal possessions, for money, for accomplishments to be successful. It tells us too that the wealthy and powerful of the world have life all figured out and are happy because of their wealth and power.
It was the same for people in Jesus’ day. Wealth and power and the status each provided, are pointed to, in many of Luke’s writings as well as in the other Gospels. But this parable, of the foolish farmer appears only in Luke’s gospel. It was an important lesson for the people of that day. And, it is an important message for us as well. Failure to explore this passage beyond its surface may cause one to equate wealth and power with sin. But, that would leave us missing Jesus’ point.
Because we can find other stories in scripture where having wealth and storing up resources are acceptable. We read in Psalm 112 verses 3 and 9:
“Wealth and riches are in their houses, and their righteousness endures forever.
They have distributed freely; they have given to the poor; their righteousness endures forever.”
Storing up grain is the life-saving solution, in Genesis 41, when Joseph interprets the Pharoh’s dream so the people of Egypt can be provided for during the famine. Verse 36 says ”This food should be held in reserve for the country, to be used during the seven years of famine that will come upon Egypt, so that the country may not be ruined by the famine.” God was directing the people to store up grain.
The foolish man in today’s text is blessed with a bumper crop of grain. God has provided for him and for his community with a plentiful source of food. In the reading, the man says “ I have no place to store MY crops - I will pull down my small barns - I will build big barns – I will store MY grain and my goods – I will say to my soul, I have plenty for years – I will eat drink and be merry!” The man focuses only on what the grain means for him. How, with bigger barns for this grain, he can sit back and enjoy life with no worries or cares for the future or for others. Jesus’ parable ends with God cutting the man’s life short making irrelevant his extra-large barns and their contents.
Jesus isn’t saying that storing the grain is the man’s downfall, rather, it is the hoarding – the hoarding with concern only for himself – the GREED that consumes the man’s intentions leads to his hoarding the grain from the people in his community and demonstrates a lack of gratitude for God’s provision of the abundant crop.
The abundance of grain, the larger barns, his plan to live carefree leads him down a dangerous path. Wealth in itself isn’t the problem.
This parable invites us to ask ourselves, what are we building more barns for in our lives?
What are we allowing to take our focus off of our relationship with God and with our neighbors?
In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells the other man who was asking for his early inheritance, to “guard against ALL kinds of greed.”
Wealth isn’t the only thing people idolize. Greed for more power in families or communities can be someone’s idol. One could get greedy about how many followers they have on social media and go to great lengths to gain more. Maybe for some, it is the idol of success that is never fully satisfied. We can make an idol of our social status and work tirelessly to climb that ladder.
The idol of greed is also evident in how we misuse the God-given natural resources of our planet.
The history of the land lost by the Hawai’ian people over the last 200 hundred years is just one example of personal greed that turns God’s creation and provision into materialistic wealth for some and exploitation of others. The results of those lands being misused by people who focused on themselves and their power, remains evident in the ways the lands are now depleted of nutrient rich soil, native plants, and natural springs.
We’ve seen this happen all across the world and all throughout history. God’s creation, intended to provide for all people, is abused and hoarded by those with power and resources.
The foolish farmer likely had workers who contributed to building his barns and harvesting his grain. Yet, he doesn’t mention care or concern for them. We, as Christians, living into our God-given calls to care for all of God’s people and creation, need to be asking, what or who is being exploited or neglected to facilitate the personal gains of wealth or power? The same question must be asked within communities and nations also. What programs, which people are being impacted by the possible greed at the heart of some public policies – and where is Godly loving relationship in those policies?
Jesus commanded that we are to love God above all else and love our neighbors. That would mean that we are to be in relationships.
Both men in today’s Gospel put relationships at risk with their acts of greed. When greed becomes our idol, we are not in right relationships with our neighbors or with God.
Idols of greed are dangerous.
We can easily be lulled into complacency when we overlook the wealth that God has given us through creation and in all of the personal possessions, “the blessings”, we recognize as ours. Our gratitude for those abundant blessings should be endless. And as part of that gratitude, God’s people are called to ensure that those blessings are shared with our neighbors in acts of generosity. We are called to ensure that our communities are cared for.
Greed can lead one to put trust in the material world, and not in God. We are given a wealth of love through God’s grace. We can take that for granted at times. We forget how special it is that each of us possess a full measure of God’s loving grace. This is not just a little grace or not just enough for the day or for the moment. Whether we are materially rich or poor, successful or not, with full barns or no barns at all, none of us has more Grace than someone else. God gives us a wealth of Grace – an abundance of grace and we cannot earn extra to then hoard for ourselves. Each of us, each person created by God, holds the same abundant grace that is the undeserved, unearned gift of salvation through Christ.
Trusting in God’s love for each of us can lead us into right relationships. Jesus’ ministry taught people to trust just how loved we are. Jesus also taught that God’s love is to be shared with others creating communities that care for and look out for one another.
Siblings in Christ, our possessions, our status, our wealth will not add value to our relationship with God. We are called to share God’s blessings of creation and of life. All that we have is God’s. As we live more intentionally into our faith, may we continue to care for the world and others, all the while giving great thanks to God for opportunities to serve others in Jesus’ name. Amen.
