August 3: The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Years ago, when I was a newly minted priest, an older woman from my parish invited me over to her house. She said she needed to talk and get some stuff she’d been thinking about off her chest. As she realized she wasn’t getting any younger, she started looking back at her life, and about how she wanted to spend her final days.
“Okay,” I said, a little worried about how this would go. I hadn’t been around these types of conversations much back then, but I made it sound like I knew what I was doing and went to her house.

She brought me into her living room, offered me a lemonade and she had me sit across from her on the couch. And she began to tell me about her life, and mostly, one major regret. She told me that she hadn’t spoken with her kids in years. Something had come between them, words were said, feelings were hurt, and trenches were dug. She didn’t know what to do, but she couldn’t let herself go one more day, couldn’t let herself get closer to her death, without trying to make things right.

So, she turned to me after telling about all that had gone down with her kids over the years, over the decades, and she said, “So, how do I fix it?”
I about spit out my lemonade. The ink on my ordination papers was still a bit wet and she’s asking me how to fix years, decades, of hurt, anger, regret, and sadness. Me? Fix it? I had no clue how to fix it. Thankfully, I don’t remember saying much, besides this was between her and her kids. So I suggested that she reach out to them. If a phone call was too much, then she could write them a letter.

To tell them how she felt. To tell them that she loved them. To tell them what she wished she could have said all those years ago, but for many reasons just couldn’t. To start the conversation with them in real life that she’s had with them in her head all these past years. And see where it goes. We talked some more, shared some laughs, and I finished my lemonade.
As I was walking out the front door, she stopped me and said, “I am going to write those letters. I think I’m going to write those letters.”

“I hope you do,” I responded, and left to drive back to the church.

In today’s Gospel lesson, someone from the crowd interrupts Jesus during his teaching. “Teacher,” he calls to Jesus, “tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” There was a big crowd standing around. Luke tells us, thousands of folks were standing there. Jesus was talking to his disciples about God’s care for them and this person breaks in with his family dispute. This man wants his fair share of the inheritance, and he wants Jesus to tell his brother to give it. But Jesus doesn’t agree to the demand.

And I think he refuses to do so for a few reasons. First, as he says, he’s not the judge or arbitrator over the siblings. He’s not the lawyer and he won’t be dragged into their fight. He doesn’t want to be triangulated.

And second, and more importantly, is that Jesus doesn’t get into their squabble because Jesus wants this man to see the larger picture. Jesus doesn’t step in between them not because he doesn’t care about their relationship or because he doesn’t care about their money. Jesus does care about their relationship. And he does care about their money. But he refuses to get into this discussion on the man’s terms.

I know in polite society I am not supposed to talk about money. But I need to this morning. And I’m blaming Jesus for it. So, get mad with him, not me. It’s there in the Bible.

These brothers were fighting. They were fighting over what they were due, not because of wages that were owed to them or a business dispute. They were fighting over their inheritance. Meaning, they were fighting over what was theirs after their dad had died. Their dad had died, and this is what was on their mind: what was due to them.

To be fair, grief causes us to do many things. For some, it causes us to shut down, to turn off, and hide away. For others, it puts us into overdrive. We go go go, do do do, and we keep ourselves extra busy in order to fend off the tough feelings grief invites us into. Still, others lash out. We are angry, hurt, frustrated, and the ones who take the brunt of our grief are those closest to us. Grief can push us far from our best behavior.

Most of us, when grief hits, we will go through seasons of all of these reactions. And these are all understandable. Our emotions, our bodies are flooded with all the things and we’re just trying to get through the best we can. So I have sympathy for the man, and his brother, who just lost their dad, and I think Jesus does too. Because in response to the man’s question, while Jesus doesn’t engage in what the man asks, he warns him of the path he’s starting to walk.

“Take care!” he warns him. “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” It’s as if Jesus is holding up a mirror to him, reminding him, “you have just lost your dad. Your brother has lost his dad as well. And that’s hard for both of you. So watch out for greed, because in trying to find some sort of control of the situation, your grief might have grabbed onto greed as a sort of life preserver. And there are bigger things in life, at this moment in your life, there are more important things to attend to right now, than what is due you.”

Jesus is redirecting him. He’s warning him. Don’t let your possessions get in the way of what finally matters in this life.

And then Jesus tells them a parable. The land of a rich man produced abundantly, and he got worried about what to do with all the crops. “I know,” he told himself, “I’ll tear down the barns I have now and build bigger ones. That will solve my worries! I’ll then be able to relax, eat, drink, and be merry!”

The man is rich, Jesus tells us. He has plenty. He’s a successful farmer who has made it good on what he currently has, using the barns he already owns. And this season, his farm produced more than he could store, and his first thought is not to his neighbors, it’s not to God, it’s not to those in need, it’s to how to store even more for himself.

And God shows up to him. “You fool!” God calls him, “This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

I won’t dare to speak for you all, but I can imagine some of you have heard this from God like I have. We’ve dreamed of an amount of money and status and having that next thing in our grasp, and these markers carried the promise of rest and of fulfillment and maybe a sense of security. …But when we got it, it proved empty. It didn’t provide us the peace we thought it would. And looking back we might see a trail of pain and regret of the things we’ve neglected or torn down in order to reach the supposed promised land. And we’ve also learned that diseases, illnesses, accidents, death, well they don’t care how much money is in our bank account, or what sort of car we drive, or what sort of title is on our door.

That’s why we have gathered here, to bring our hurts, our longings, our griefs to the one who is the great shepherd of the sheep, who is the prince of peace, and who is the healer of our souls.
We come here because we’ve found that our God is the only one who can fully offer our souls that which we most crave, to be known and loved. And so we pray, like we prayed last week in the words of St.
Chrysostom, “Fulfill now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of thy servants as may be best for us; granting us in this world knowledge of thy truth, and in the world to come life everlasting.”

We come here to praise Jesus, to hear his most holy word, meaning we are here to be held, to be healed. We come here with the risk of hearing Jesus… of hearing Jesus’ warning that any preoccupation with our money, our status, even our grudges, can hinder us from a life full of the riches God has for us. We are here because the words of Jesus give us the push we need, gently challenging us to find out what we might need to change in our lives so that we might be rich toward God, whose currency is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

I don’t know if that woman ever wrote the letters. I hope she took the risk though, and sent them off. And I hope we do too, whatever that might look like for us, asking ourselves, …what hurts need to be healed? What bridges need rebuilt? What tears need to be shed? What help do we need to ask for? What grief needs to be felt and held with grace?

Our God wants us to have a rich life. May his love continue to show us how. Amen.

The Rev. Daniel Reeves