Luke 12:13-21 Pentecost 8 C
Pastor Ron Koehler
Grace-Tucson, AZ
July 31, 2022
Good morning, rich people! “Wait a minute, that’s not the way he’s supposed to start a sermon. Also, he’s going to talk about money—not a big fan of that in church.” If you’re thinking anything like that, I’m going to ask you to hear me out. More importantly, I’ll ask you to pay attention because it is Jesus who has the story you want to hear. The thing is, I can begin by calling you all rich because you are. We are all rich. You may not think so, but we are. We may be rich in terms of earthly wealth and possessions. What is rich though? Americans feel that if your net worth is $774,000, you are financially comfortable, but their opinion of what it takes for a person to be wealthy, rich, is a net worth of $2.2 million—$2.7 million if you live in Phoenix (2022 Charles Schwab Modern Wealth Survey). But I would guess that most of us might label as rich someone who has far less than $2.2 million. And ask people in the rest of the world to assess your life, and many, many of them would call you rich, no question about it. We may be rich when it comes to God. If you’re sitting here today with an understanding of God’s grace, his undeserved love shown to us in Jesus—and you trust in him as your Savior—you are spiritually rich. Most, if not all of us, are rich one way or the other. And some of us might be both. The real issue though is a matter of the heart: what kind of riches do you depend on? I think I know what our answer to that question is. After all, here we are in God’s house. But we need to think more deeply about this. As we listen to Jesus’ story, think about this: Which Type of Rich Person Are You? 1. The One Who Depends on Earthly Things 2. The One Who Depends on God Out of a large crowd came a man who had a request to make of the Teacher whom I’m sure he saw as wise and authoritative. He told Jesus to step into a family disagreement about their inheritance. One of the brothers was clutching the family’s money and possessions when he should have divided it with his brother. Jesus sharply responded: “Man, who appointed me to be a judge or an arbitrator over you?” Jesus had not been elected or appointed to some government position like a judge that would allow him to step in. He wasn’t a third-party mediator assigned to settle disputes over the division of assets. Jesus had been appointed to a position, but it wasn’t the one this man was looking for. Jesus was appointed by his Father to come into the world to be its Savior, to show that with his life and teach people the way to heaven by faith in him.