What We Value Most

Isaiah 1:1, 1-20    Luke 12:32-40

Moving!  No one likes to move. As we’ve grown older, at least three of my friends have packed up and moved to new locations.  One of them made the decision to move to a lovely house in a retirement community, but it meant that she first had to sell the family home, a three-story Victorian, and before she could sell, she has to clear out not only her stuff, but the stuff her parents and grandparents had left there. For months I received emails as she tried to figure out what to sell, what to toss, what to keep. Several years later, and she’s still emailing about what she should not have sold and what she was foolish enough to take with her.

We get attached to our stuff, and we do this because in its way, it has become an extension of who we are.  In our minds and hearts, we connect it to family members, to those who have gone home to God, to our past, and like going through an old photo album, going through our stuff reminds us of and reinforces for us our identity. 

The trouble with stuff arises when we have to get rid of it, when we realize we don’t own it, it owns us.  We have held onto our history through our mementoes, and they have taken over.  We think we live in the present moment, until we have to face the way in which everything to which we’ve become so attached fills and blocks our way forward.  We discover we don’t really live totally in the present, and worse, we don’t want to let go of the familiar, comforting stuff we identify with.  It really hurts to empty things out.

The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem …

Today’s first reading, from the very beginning of the scroll of Isaiah, is filled with the words of an angry parent, God, to His children, Israel.  It is a father-child relationship, and the child has rebelled against the loving Heavenly Father, who has now had enough of this child’s sinful, errant ways.  The people go through the motions of worship, but, no matter what they tell themselves, there is no sincerity in what they do. 

Thoroughly fed up with their pretenses and their unfaithfulness, God tells them: When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.

But God does not want to be forever rid of these children He loves, and so He gives them a choice.  He offers them a way to make their worship once again acceptable in His sight. 

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.

The Children of Israel have become smug, self-centered, and satisfied with themselves and with all they have accomplished. If we’re honest, we all know that feeling of complacency. We’re proud of, and comfortable with, all we have and all we’ve done well. That is part of being human, but it is what we do with all we have and all we have become that matters to God.

God has given the Children of Isreal Ten Commandments, laws to live by.  God’s covenant specifies that their relationship with Him depends on the way in which they treat each other, that by serving others they honour God.  But this covenant is no longer the center of their lives,

no longer a top priority, because they think they’ve found an easier way to please God.  They go to temple and attend worship services, say their prayers, and make the required religious sacrifices.  They reason that, having done all this, in keeping with the first five commandments, how they treat others, as spelled out in the second five commandments, is their own business. 

What they do is build their lives on the backs of others, hoard their wealth, and strive for material security. In their society, as in ours, they live by the assumption that more is good and better is best, and this is what they want for themselves and their children. Worship has its place, but in their secular lives, serving others as the Law requires – that they ignore completely.

God has told them that this is not acceptable.  Worship alone is not enough, because God sees into their hearts, and knows their worship is empty.  He will not ignore the way they pursue worldly wealth and good fortune while ignoring the needs of others. They must change their ways entirely, cease pursuing the comfortable and familiar, take responsibility for each other, and embrace the way of righteousness.  It sounds reasonable, but, as we all know, changing their ways will be difficult, and it will hurt, but the choice is theirs.

If you are willing and obedient you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

If you think about our society today – that’s scary news!

And Jesus said, “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” 

“Fear not!”  When we hear the word “fear”, what does it mean to us?  There are nonthreatening fears, thrills, from horror movies to roller coaster rides – but then there are other far more serious fears that we hope never to encounter.  We see such fears on the news, violence, prejudice, pestilence, war, death.  We understand what these fears are, though we hope never to experience any of them personally.

But there is yet another fear, much closer to each of us, which we are all far more likely to experience, the one the Children of Israel did not want to face. Change! My mother always liked to tell me, when I was in the grips of this particular fear, “You’re just like your grandmother. She hated change.” Usually, Mum was commenting on something superficial, like discarding an old couch, but the fear of change can be something much deeper and more complex.  The fear of change involves the fear of letting go – and letting God. And in some ways, it embodies the fear of death.

Like the friends I mentioned earlier, we know from having had the experience of moving, or just downsizing, that there is little joy in change.  If something occurs in our lives, a fire, a robbery, which may separate us from our stuff and from life as usual, something that forces change upon us, we are not filled with relief and happiness. Change, voluntary or forced, is both unwelcome and frightening. Having to cope with loss, be it of possessions, or just our familiar daily routine, makes us feel empty.  This is because we hold onto the familiar.  This is why we amass stuff to begin with.  We want to feel both successful and safe, and we think we can accomplish this on our own. Jesus calls us to let go.

 Fear not, little flock 

Jesus really means it when He says, “Sell your possessions, and give alms.”   He wants us to serve Him, by helping others, and to stop attempting to acquire more and more.  He wants us to make room in our hearts and lives for Him.  This is why in the Rite I version of the Eucharist, we offer up “ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice to God.”

Being people of faith, really people of faith, not just Sunday worshipers, puts us out of step with modern standards.  In fact, the better we do at surrendering to Jesus, especially in our present social climate, the odder we appear.  We begin to value love and trust, kindness and thoughtfulness, humility, calm, peace, and surrender.  We value them over Amazon Prime Days, tax free weekends, and endless pleasurable activities.  We begin to care for others, to value and respect poverty, to understand that having little of this world to cling to, gives us the opportunity to turn to something much greater for support.

Then Jesus tells His disciples, and us, a parable.  In it, it is fairly clear that we are the ones who must be dressed for action, whose lamps must be lit, who must be ready for the Master of the house to return. There is no worldly wealth here, no distractions, just servants, slaves.  It is the Master who holds the wealth, but this master is different from the rich men of Jesus’ day, and ours.  This rich man will arrive home from a wedding banquet to find us opening the doors to welcome Him home, and then, instead of taking our service for granted he will fasten his belt and have [us] sit down to eat, and he will come and serve [us].

In our Holy Communion today, we see this same image, the Master feeding the servants as Jesus did with His friends at what we call “the Last Supper”. As we receive the Sacrament, grace will flood us in proportion to how empty we are - of attachments to the things and standards of this world. How much strength, love, peace, fills our hearts, depends entirely on how much room we have made to receive it.  We are to come to the holy table with open hearts, and a willingness to be changed into whoever it is God wants us to be. 

What do we value most?  We think we cannot manage without worldly treasure, but we are wrong.  Through Isiah, God tells the Children of Israel, and us, cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.

Jesus tells us, “Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. “

Let us pray:

O God of peace, who has taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength: By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray you, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.