Dangerous Treasures - Luke 12:13-21

I have read today’s Gospel passage countless times, but rarely have I given it a second thought. I will never have a barnful of treasure, I told myself, so this parable is not for me. To be clear, I still don’t have a literal barnful of treasure. But my brothers and I inherited our father’s house this year, which has been a big responsibility to clean out and prepare to sell. This unexpected adventure caused me to give today’s passage from Luke a second thought…and maybe a third.

Over the past few months, we have rifled through boxes and photos and drawers and found all kinds of mementos from our childhood, and from our parents’ lives before we came along. We’ve all taken home treasures and have sent our friends and family home with gifts as well. In fact, the mantra these days is, “if you come over to my dad’s house, you have to take something with you when you leave!” For the most part, it has been a joyful project, but today, it feels like Jesus is telling me that our treasures might be spiritually dangerous.

I’ll warn you now, I don’t have an easy answer to this conundrum, and grappling with it wears me down like it would anyone else. Much to my chagrin, seminary doesn’t magically erase our human propensity to make an idol out of money. And while there are many issues in holy scripture that require careful study and nuanced interpretation to engage with faithfully, wealth is not one of them. The Bible is very clear that wealth is not good for our souls.

The New Testament is straightforward. Matthew, Mark and Luke all report that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. And the Old Testament appears to agree. At first, it seems that King Solomon’s goodness and wisdom are enhanced by his wealth. But in the end, his sins led to the loss of most of his kingdom and all his treasures could not save him.

We have no shortage of King Solomons in our present world, but that may be a sermon for another day. I think today’s Gospel passage is speaking to average, everyday folks, who are perhaps neither billionaires nor impoverished, and it calls us to consider the relationship between our material lives and our faith lives.

This week, I wondered with some colleagues who are also preaching today, about why it is so much easier to trust that money will protect us than that God will protect us. We decided that one reason might simply be visibility. We can see tangible evidence of what money can do for us. Plus, money can also serve a preventative measure, easing anxiety about potential future problems. But God’s providence, the way God is at work in the world to help us thrive, is often only apparent in hindsight.

This is something the ancient Israelites knew all too well. Our readings from the prophet Hosea and Psalm 107 both offer a litany of examples of God’s saving deeds. God tells Hosea, “they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love.” The Psalmist reports that God’s people "were hungry and thirsty; their spirits languished within them. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.”

I had my own experience with clear hindsight this weekend. With the break in the heat, my brother and I decided to recruit a few of our nearest and dearest to help out with garage sale prep. At first everything went smoothly. We listened to music and chatted as we sorted items into categories and filled up trash bags of things to throw away. But we also started little piles of treasures for ourselves.

Later it became apparent that as these personal piles grew throughout the day, so did our frustrations. We began arguing over everything from an item’s rightful owner to someone’s speed - or lack thereof - in organizing. The more attached we got to the material stuff, the more we lost sight of our mission and started measuring the day's success by the size of our piles and our efforts compared to that of others. After leaving the house for the day and showering off all the dust, I could see the difference between my cheerful mindset at the beginning of the day and my grumpiness at the end.

This is how quickly the accumulation of treasures can start to infect our hearts. What are we going to do about it? We’ve all heard the stories of people who sold or gave away all their property to live off the land or donate to charity or become dependent on the generosity of others, and who, in the process, discovered a closeness with God they’d never imagined possible. I love these stories, but it’s hard to wrap my mind around what it might look like in my own life or those close to me.

If this kind of extreme, St. Francis-style move is something you’re discerning, I would love to talk to you about it. But for those of us without sufficient wilderness skills, I think our scriptures are showing us another option. Episcopalians are a people for whom prayer and practice shapes what we think and believe. Our ancestors in the faith teach us that retelling the story of our salvation is vital. It is a spiritual practice that hones our skill in trusting in God above all else to save us. Essentially, if God isn’t in our sights, this is one way to make God more visible.

In the parable of the rich fool, Jesus challenges us to look closely at the dangerous effects our earthly treasures have on us. And our Old Testament lessons invite us to engage in the spiritual practices that will protect us from these dangers. In order to loosen the grip that physical resources have on us, we must take action in worship and in prayer. We must recite to ourselves and one another God’s saving deeds in our lives and the life of our community. We must practice, really practice, placing our trust there.

As you can see, I am clearly not the exemplar in this practice. But I am working on it. And I take a lot of strength from my Christ Church community. When things get squirrely around here, as Kate likes to say, I rarely hear people comment that we’ll be okay because we have an endowment, or that we’ll be okay because we’ve got this stunning building. What I hear, over and over again in this place, is stories of how we’ve always stuck together and come through both the good times and the bad. We tell the stories of how God has seen us through, and that’s what gives us hope for the future. That faith is why our capital campaign and master plan will be so successful.

As my brothers and I keep trucking along, I’ll try to keep you guys updated on our barn full of treasures. If anyone is interested in any second-hand weightlifting equipment or mismatched silverware for the low, low price of free, let me know. Because I’ve learned that the trouble with treasure barns is that we can’t see around them, they block our vision of the glory of God. And so it’s up to us to retrain our focus and our trust in God. My spiritual task for this next season feels clear, and thankfully, I get to practice it in this beautiful place, which is absolutely spilling over with stories of God’s saving deeds. Amen.