All Things
Proper 13C
Hosea 11:1-11; Col. 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21
8/1/10
Lorraine Ljunggren

        “All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee.” Or put in a more contemporary way, “All things come from you, [O Lord] and of your own have we given you.” (1 Chron. 29:14b)

        I remember hearing those words the first time I ever attended an Episcopal Church early in the fall of my freshman year of college. A new acquaintance had invited me and I was curious having tried out various churches in high school but not having found a place to land my seeking spirit.

        That church's worship building is a very large stone edifice, built in a Spanish Gothic style complete with soaring bell tower. From the outside and inside one feels as if visiting a very old cathedral. The stained glass windows are very impressive, the lighting is dim, and huge stone pillars hold up the massive vaulted ceiling. One has to be careful, though, not to sit behind one of those pillars if you want to see the service unfold. The church sits only a hundred yards from the Atlantic Ocean and beautiful palm trees flank the doors.

        I remember the ushers, who were all men then, in their white slacks and navy blazers, bringing up the offering plates, the acolyte taking those shiny brass basins up to the priest at the high altar – which at that point in history was against the wall — and the priest raising the alms basins saying, “All things come of thee, O Lord,” and the congregation responding, “and of thine own have we given thee.”

        Now, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool contemporary language person when it comes to worship. But, on reflection, I believe we've lost something in omitting that versicle and response when the hard-earned money of God's people is offered back to God in the Eucharist. We are missing a reminder that God is the source of all good things that we have including material things. That awareness is missing from the man's attitude in the parable Jesus tells in today's Gospel.

        Responding to a person in the crowd who wants Jesus to settle a family dispute over a brother's inheritance, Jesus cautions those listening, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” (Lk. 12:15)

        In the parable which follows, a man's hard work and good planning pays off. His lands are blessed with a harvest so bountiful – breathtakingly bountiful – so abundant that the man's regular barns won't hold the harvest. So he sets about planning to build bigger and better barns – an early retirement plan, if you will.

        Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with the man wanting to preserve an abundant harvest. To waste the earth's bounty would be wrong. We can call Joseph advising Pharaoh to store up grain from seven years of amazing harvests. The difference is that Joseph's plan is to insure the people of Egypt don't starve during seven lean years when famine will threaten all of Egypt.

        In the parable at hand, the man with the great harvest never mentions even the possibility of benefiting another human being. Very pleased, the man says to himself, “And I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years: relax, eat, drink, be merry.'” (Lk. 12:19) How many of us in this day and age wouldn't like to have a future secured by bountiful financial reserves so that we could kick back and just enjoy life, maybe reducing our stress levels along the way? Very few people would turn down an opportunity like that.

        But, Jesus is trying to demonstrate to the listeners that surrounding ourselves with an abundance of possessions is actually a form of greed. In the parable God shares with the man that his earthly life will end that night and so asks the man, “And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (Lk. 12:20b) Those possessions will shortly belong to someone else and we don't even know from the story if the man has any family at all. I'm afraid the old saying is true, 'you can't take it with you.'

        Jesus is always concerned when our accumulation of wealth, in its various forms, is ours either at the expense of others or whenever we don't take into account the needs of others.

        The man in the parable never acknowledges that what he has comes from God. It appears the man has no connection to the Creator of All That Is nor to other people, to his neighbors. In every age we have a responsibility, yes, to be wise when it comes to issues of money and possessions. But alongside comes the responsibility for what we do with them. There are few human beings immune to the temptation of thinking that surrounding ourselves with stuff or having large well-insured bank balances is the way to go! There are many in this day and age preaching a so-called 'prosperity Gospel' which says if we can accumulate the most money and most things, we win and, they say, it means God loves us more than those who scrape by and have no idea if they'll have a meal tomorrow or not.

        I look at my own life and know ultimately I can't avoid the question, 'when is enough enough?'

        When is enough enough? When do we have enough clothes or electronic gadgets, enough cars or food, enough power or money, enough profit or rate of return?

        We have become a nation of people unsatisfied with modest returns on our investments – we want double digit growth even if it means becoming a nation of consumers instead of producers, even if it means exporting jobs to places in which paying lower wages and getting rid of benefits is said to be okay. We want the latest in electronic wizardry even if it means shipping it from half a world away and ignoring the related carbon footprint. We want clothing which is inexpensive even if it is made in a sweat shop where workers toil in conditions reminiscent of the early Industrial Revolution. We aren't satisfied to eat local food, grown by local farmers, so we buy food grown by corporate conglomerates that have displaced family farms and use tons of chemicals; and we are in such a hurry all the time that we're willing to consume all manner of processed foods filled with preservatives and salt and fat and… well, we get the picture.

        When is enough enough? And how do we avoid falling into these easy-to-fall-into-traps ourselves? How do we both set an example for our children, and the generations to come, and for our neighbors that there is another way? How do we muster our own personal fortitude to help change society's attitudes towards goods and services, towards the importance of how we earn profits and how we treat the earth and how to honor the dignity of every human being in the process?

         Perhaps we begin as simply as examining our lives and the ways in which we exercise stewardship of our money and possessions. We can remember to pause and consider how our decisions impact the lives of the unseen people behind all the things we possess. We can remember those people in our prayers each day, giving thanks for their labors. We can consider how we demonstrate love of God and of neighbor whenever we make a purchase or invest our money. And most importantly, we can remind ourselves to whom we are to give thanks. We can stop to ponder the true source behind who we are, what we have, and what we do with it all.

        Because underneath it all…I hope and pray that, at some inner or deep level, we give God credit for who we are as well as for what we have. Even if we are still seekers after God, even if we are new to the journey of faith, even if we've been on this journey all our lives, I hope and pray there is something inside of us which says there is God – that God is wrapped up in the whole created order – wrapped up in us – wrapped up in each and every decision we make and even every dollar we spend.

        May we take to heart both the wisdom of Jesus' parable and the wisdom of the writer of 1^st Chronicles who reminds us, “All things come of you, O Lord, and of your own have we given you.” (29:14b) Amen.

©2010 Lorraine Ljunggren