A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Someone, somebody in the crowd said to Jesus, teacher, tell my brother to give me my share of our inheritance. Christ replied, friend, who has set me as your judge or your arbiter? And he said to the crowd, avoid greed in all its forms. A man may be wealthy, but his possessions do not guarantee him life.
Then Jesus told them a parable. There was a rich man who had a very good harvest, and he asked himself, what shall I do? I have no place to store my harvest. And then he said, I know what I'll do. I'll pull down my old grain bins, and I'll build new and larger ones.
All my grain and all my goods will go there, very secure, plenty of everything under wraps. Then I will say to myself, you have blessings in reserve for years and years to come. Relax, enjoy, eat heartily, drink well, enjoy yourself. But god said to the man, you fool. This very night, your life shall be required of you.
To whom will all this piled up wealth of yours yours go? That is the way it works with a man now listen. These are very important words. That is the way it works with a man who grows rich for himself instead of growing rich in the sight of god. And this is the gospel, the good news of the lord.
And they have been grossly misapprehended down the years. In the name of the father and of the son and the holy spirit. Amen. There's a certain segment of our society who has nothing but disapproval for what they call wealth. We have heard a great deal about the church's option for the poor, as if it was the exclusive responsibility of Christ Church to save the poor.
We have heard a great deal and are still hearing it, how money is downgraded. And yet in some instance, the various people who downgrade money are out begging for it, for their good works, of course. Now if there's one thing that's perfectly clear in our lord's own words and beyond dispute, at least two things are perfectly clear perfectly clear. He never once condemned money. He never once condemned wealth.
As a matter of fact, if you read the four gospels carefully well, I don't mean even careful, but just keeping one thing in mind, that's a very interesting thing to do. Just for the just for the joy of a pursuit is to take one of the gospels and just read it for one thing in mind. Just skim through it and just pick out on sir on a topic of your choice. You'll you'll be amazed what happens to your appreciation of the gospel. Just one of them won't take you more than about thirty minutes at the most.
What our lord keeps hammering at is the love of money, the love of wealth, to put your confidence and security in things. He never said a word about having wealth. You just read the gospels. Where did he go into the house of a poor man and take a meal? He didn't.
We think of the of the first apostles, a bunch of poor men. They weren't poor men. They were capitalists. They were men who owned their boat. They owned their nets, they owned their homes up there on the Lake Of Galilee.
Our lord cultivated it of the rich, the affluent, the powerful in many ways. He dined with a with a publican. He was not only a wealthy man, but he was a he was a a castaway from society, the Jewish society. He dined with the Pharisees, the the the absolute cream of the cream of society. But what our lord hammers at is the first commandment.
That's what it boils down to. The first commandment is you put God first and everything else secondary. And that's what he's saying. When he did what he says is is the lust for money, the greed for money, the false security, and by money we mean things, wealth, possession. Remember, a wealthy person in our lord's time didn't have a bank account.
They had their their barns, their stables, their grand their granaries. They had their flocks, their herds, their wines, their and all of that, their vineyards. They had things, real estate, real, things that are real. And what our lord hammers at is when you make those things your god as we're doing in this country for the most part for the most part. See, when you call it when you call the culture, when you call it materialistic, your what you're saying is that here is a person, here is a culture, or what have you, a nation that puts material first.
It's their god. Because what you put first is is your absolute. And this is what our lord is hammering at. Take that last sentence. He isn't he does not he does not at all condemn or blame or find fault with or criticize the man for acquiring a good harvest.
After all, he didn't create the harvest. He only harvest it. He reaped it. He doesn't blame him for putting up the new buildings in order to secure his property. What he does blame him for is putting his security in it, putting it above the first commandment, I am the lord your god, and you better not have any gods before me.
That's the first commandment. That's all our lord is saying. Don't what he's saying is don't be a don't be crazy. Don't be absurd. Don't put your trust in a soap bubble.
Don't put your life and all your efforts into something completely unworthy of. That's what our lord is saying. But notice, he our lord does not emphasize usually the negative. What he's saying is, put your confidence where it will bring you plenty of dividends. And that is in God first.
Living for God, doing for God, thinking remember, the first commandment says not only that you must push God first, but we're not no. It's not that's not taken from in the New Testament. Of course, I don't have to tell you that. Our Lord is simply quoting the Old Testament. I am the Lord your God, and I demand your heart, your soul, your mind, everything you are.
Everything you are. Are you a father, a mother, a maiden aunt, a maiden uncle, unmarried, married, religious, non religious. Notice I didn't say irreligious. But even if you're irreligious, god demands everything we are. And don't you dare try to put something in its place.
If you do, you're not only committing idolatry, but remember idolatry is an absurdity. I'll give you two instances of what can happen. The first one was a very good friend of mine. He was a public Well, he was a lobbyist. He had a fancy name for it, but that's what he was, and a very influential one.
But his one ambition to work was to be a teacher. He wanted to get on some university campus, smoke his pipe, have a nice sports jacket, you know, and fill out his life. And he accomplished it. He left Washington with a full road road, with enough money to see him through. He had a job on a campus in Texas.
Everything was fine. En route, he had a severe heart attack. They took him off the plane in New Orleans and then gave him some kind of a injection which nearly killed him because he got a very bad infection from the injection. He got to Texas but he died very shortly afterwards. Most of you will not remember when my late dear friend FDR closed the banks.
But I met a gentleman on Christmas Eve who had retired, put all his savings in the bank, and lost every penny of it. That was his Christmas gift. And these are just two instances. You can duplicate them. You see how silly it is, how absurd, how irrational you use for us to put our confidence in things, in things.
It's absurd. And remember, we're not talking about quantity. Keep that in mind. You can be poorest of the poor and still have your heart in things. What our lord is saying, give me your heart, and all the rest of the things will be in proper order.
That's all our our lord is asking. Use the things of that migrant. Use the good things of this life. There is nothing wrong in being rich. What's wrong is making riches your god, and that's idolatry.
And we can all be guilty of it, more or less. May the good lord save us. In the name of the father, the son, the holy spirit. Amen.