Posts Tagged ‘trust in God’

Giving it all away – what must I do to inherit the kingdom?

October 25, 2025

Pentecost 20 – 2025

Luke 18:15-30

Marian Free

In the name of God, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer and Life-giver. Amen.

The Gospel of Luke differs from Mark and Matthew in a number of significant ways. Among other things, Luke demonstrates a particular interest in the Holy Spirit and in prayer – Jesus is often to be found praying in this gospel. Another way in which Luke differs from Mark and Matthew – one which is evident in today’s gospel – is wealth: its power to seduce and its false assurance of security.

Some parables are found only in Luke and some of these specifically target the wealthy. The parable of the barn builder exposes the folly of holding on to excess wealth. You will remember that after a particularly good harvest, a rich man thinks that he will store up his wealth for himself and will “eat, drink and be merry.”  That very night he dies. His wealth has not been able to protect him, nor has he benefitted from it.

In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man is convinced that he is justly rich and that Lazarus deservedly poor. Even though Lazarus lies at his door, the rich man does nothing to alleviate his hunger. Finally, the rich man dies and finds himself in Hades, looking up at Lazarus who is in the arms of Abraham. The chasm that divided them in life has been reversed in death and it is too late now to change anything. In life the rich man’s wealth might have given him all that he needed, in death no amount of wealth will serve to quench his thirst.

That said, Luke doesn’t seem to have a problem with wealth per se, but with a person’s attitude to it. As best we can tell, Theophilus was an educated, and possibly comfortably well-off Greek and the parable of the steward who makes provision for his future supports the view that Luke doesn’t advocate that to follow Christ all of us need to give everything away.

In Luke’s mind, the problem with wealth is at least three-fold. In the first instance, Luke can see that wealth often gives to those who have it a sense of entitlement and that this has the potential to blind the rich to the suffering of others. Secondly, Luke understands that those who possess wealth tend to become dependent on their standard of living and unwilling to make do with less. They do all that they can to preserve their wealth because they don’t want to experience the sacrifices endured by poor.  Thirdly, Luke observes that wealth has the ability to seduce the one who possesses it such that he or she can believe that enough money and sufficient possessions will be able to protect them from the vicissitudes of life. Those who are rich are tempted to place their trust in their possessions rather than in God.

Unlike the barn-builder and the rich man who ignores Lazarus, the certain ruler in today’s gospel is a real person, a man who, as his query implies, is seeking to faithfully practice his beliefs. It is possible that his query is sincere. He seems to have a sense that something is missing, that despite his observance of the rules, something is not quite right.

It is equally possible that he is trying to justify or reassure himself – after all the language he uses – that of inheritance – suggests a degree of entitlement.  

Jesus’ response is to tell the ruler to obey just five of the commandments which, in and of itself, should tell us something. Intriguingly, Jesus omits reference to the two commandments that elsewhere he insists are the most important – love of God and love of neighbour. Instead, he refers to the commandments that flow from those two: “you shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honour your father and mother.” Why these five? My best guess is that Jesus has already discerned the problem – the ruler is good at obeying the law, but not so good at trusting God. Of all the commandments, these five are the easiest, they are those that even non-believers can subscribe to. What is more is that these five are measurable, evidence based. The ruler can (as can we), hand on heart say: I have never committed adultery, I have never murdered anyone, I do not steal or lie, and I give my parents the honour due to them. I obey the law in every respect.

More difficult to keep, and almost impossible to measure, are the two great commandments: to love God with all one’s heart and all one’s mind and all one’s soul, and one’s neighbour as oneself – to put all one’s trust in God and to live in such a way that one’s life benefits rather than harms another.

Jesus’ radical solution to the ruler’s problem is twofold. First, that he should sell all that he has and give the proceeds to the poor.  Second, that he follow Jesus. Only in this way, Jesus claims, will the ruler find the peace he is seeking and the treasure that is above all his worldly goods. Only by selling all that he has and giving it away will he be able to demonstrate his love for his neighbour. Only by following Jesus will he be able to demonstrate that he loves God with his whole being and trusts God with his life.

In this dialogue Jesus is directly responding to the ruler’s question. The answer for the ruler is clear.

As for us, it is only by listening to and responding to Jesus that we will fully understand what is demanded of us. In the meantime it is clear that belonging to the kingdom does not mean blindly following a set of  rules that anyone can follow but rather that belonging to the kingdom means aligning ourselves body,  mind and soul to the one God who created heaven and earth, who sent Jesus to redeem a sinful humanity and who continues to guide and strengthen us through the Holy Spirit. And if that means giving up all that we have then that is what it takes.

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Sowing seeds, heedless of where they will fall

July 15, 2023

Pentecost 7 – 2023 (Thoughts)
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23
Marian Free

In the name of God who brought all things from nothing. Amen.

A fear that has accompanied (but not dominated) me for most of my faith life is that the church is going to die. It is going to die because we (the churchgoers) do not do enough. To be explicit: apparently we don’t make worship attractive enough, we don’t sing the right hymns, we don’t offer morning tea, we don’t have enough entry points (craft groups, sports associations etc), or we don’t have a drum kit – the list is endless. From my mid-teens on, I have been party to discussions as to what has caused people to leave the church in droves and what it is that we who remain can do to make the church grow.

People of my generation and upwards are worried about church growth (or lack of it) in part because we have come from a place of complacency and privilege, a place in which church was a part of the social fabric of people’s lives. In the 1950’s and 60’s e7uuen those who were not regular attenders had some sort of connection to the church. They were baptised, married, and buried from a church. They were members of the Guild, took part in working bees, made cakes or cooked sausages for fetes and they sent their children to Sunday School. The wider community upheld a belief in the sacredness of Sundays which meant that there was no competition for people’s time on a Sunday morning.

A lot has changed and, tempted as I am to rehearse all those changes, I will leave it to you to revise all the arguments that have been made on the subject during the last 50 years.

Whatever the reason, we cannot argue with the fact that once full churches are sadly depleted. Churches have been closed, some can only afford part-time priests and some parishes have no priest at all but have combined with a neighbouring parish for priestly oversight.

As our numbers have declined, so our obsession with the situation has grown. Yet, for all our navel gazing and problem solving nothing has substantially changed. If anything, the situation has got worse and, with fewer people in our churches, there are fewer people to address the problem – at least if there is a problem.

By that I mean, that what to us is an issue, might not be an issue at all, that our worry might be misplaced and that our time could be better spent. I say this because it occurs to me that our collective response to decreasing congregations says a great deal about us and what it says is not good. Indeed, our anxiety about the state of the church reveals a deep-seated anxiety that without structures and institutions, God’s ability to act in the lives of those around us is impeded and that without churches to proclaim the gospel there will be no way for people to encounter the living God.

In other words, our fixation with the survival of the church exposes a belief that we feel that we are responsible for God’s presence in the world that we have come to think that without us (without the Church), God will somehow sink into oblivion. How could we be so arrogant, so self-assured, to have convinced ourselves that God’s survival depends on us! What an extraordinary idea! Over the centuries we have come to believe that the Church represents God’s presence in the world and therefore, without the Church God’s efficacy will be severely hampered. Somehow, we have come to the conclusion that God needs our help to exist, that God relies on us to such an extent that our keeping the Church alive (in its present state) is an absolute imperative?

I believe that the parable of the Sower speaks to this situation, relieves us of our sense of responsibility and helps to place things in perspective. Often, when we read the parable (and its explanation) we focus on the fate of the seed and worry about the way in which the word is received according to where the seed falls. However, if we focus on the Sower (whom we take to be God), we can see that the parable asks us to place our trust where it belongs – in God and not in ourselves. In the parable the Sower tosses the precious seed with wild abandon heedless of where it will fall. This Sower is not concerned where the seed will land or whether or not it will take root. The Sower is not troubled by such things as permanency, nor is the Sower trying to build something that will last for millennia. The Sower is simply anxious to spread the seed as widely and generously and possible – confident that what does take root will bear fruit.

In all this the Sower does not ask for help – in the sowing, the nurturing or the harvesting. The Sower does not seem to be concerned about locking in a fixed and unchanging future, but rather is confident that something will happen and relaxed as to how it will happen.

I wonder what would happen if we were able to let go of the burden of maintaining our churches – physical and otherwise – open ourselves to God’s careless abandon, and to see in what new ways God is being revealed in the world today.

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Trusting God with our present and our future

October 26, 2013

Pentecost 23 – 2013

Luke 18:15-30

Marian Free 

In the name of God who loves us with an everlasting love and asks us only to place all our trust in him. Amen.

This morning I’d like to begin with two stories. They are both true, both autobiographical. The first is told by a Paul Villard who reports that when he was quite young, his family had one of the first telephones in their neighbourhood. He was too little to reach the telephone, but used to listen with fascination when his mother talked to it. Once she lifted him up to speak to my father, who was away on business. Magic!

He discovered that somewhere inside that wonderful device lived an amazing person: whose name was “Information Please” and there was nothing she did not know – someone’s phone number, the correct time. His first experience with this amazing person came one day while his mother was out. Amusing himself at the tool bench in the basement, he whacked his finger with a hammer. Though the pain was terrible, there didn’t seem to be any point in crying because there was no one to offer sympathy. He was walking around the house sucking he throbbing finger, when he saw the phone.

He grabbed a stool, climbed up, unhooked the receiver and held it to his ear. “Information Please” he said.

A click or two, then a small, clear voice spoke. “Information.”

“I hurt my fingerrr-“ he wailed into the phone. The tears came now that he had an audience.

“Isn’t your mother home?”

“Nobody’s home but me,”

“Are you bleeding?”

“No,” he replied. “I hit it with the hammer and it hurts.”

“Can you open the icebox?” she asked. “Yes.”

“Then take a piece of ice and hold it on your finger. That will stop the hurt.”

After that, Paul called Information Please for everything – help with geography and with arithmetic. He even called her when his pet canary died. Information Please listened and said all the things grown-ups say to soothe child, but he remained unconsoled. Sensing that, she said quietly, “Paul, always remember that there are other worlds to sing in.”

Thereafter, in moments of doubt and perplexity he would recall the serene sense of security he had when he knew that he could call Information Please and get the right answer[1].” (If you’d like to know the rest of the story, you can find it on-line.)

Unfortunately I didn’t record the author of the second story. I think it was American writer Charles Bayer[2]. He describes his visit to Mount Athos in Greece. There are no roads, only treacherous mountain footpaths. Even the sea route is fraught with danger so he set out over the mountains for the monastery of Stavranikita. It was a blazing hot day and carried all the things North Americans “need” for such an undertaking – several changes of clothes, camera, toiletries, extra shoes, books, paper, alarm clock and at least 5 kilos of other junk he never travelled without.

When he neared his destination, he was observed by a monk who had noted his state and burst into gales of laughter. He was so weary he was barely able to walk, but he made out a few words through the avalanche of merriment. “Baggage, baggage, look at the silly American with all that baggage! Why don’t you throw it in the sea? You are weighted down with all your impediments.”

Two very different stories about trust, or lack of trust. With the innocence of a child, Paul implicitly trusted “Information Please”, the adult on his way to the monastery, was afraid to trust that he could manage without his suitcase filled with life’s “necessities”.

In last week’s gospel Jesus told two parables about how to pray in the in-between time. In that time after he has come and before the world is perfected, Jesus urges us to persevere in prayer. This week, the theme of life in the in-between time continues with two stories which illustrate the attitude towards God that we are called to adopt while we wait. The attitude towards God that will allow us to receive the kingdom and will see us through to eternal life is one of complete dependence, one that does not allow anything to stand between ourselves and God.

For this reason, Jesus encourages us to develop the same sort of innocence, the same level of trust that the child Paul showed towards “Information Please”. Terrifyingly, this means abandoning our outer shell of independence and resourcefulness that has helped us to deal with a world and a society that is untrustworthy and that is not universally safe or secure. We spend so much of our lives trying to be grown up, to prove that we can look after ourselves, that we lose sight of the gifts of childhood – innocence, wonder and trust – gifts that along the way we willingly gave up. In this world that seems so little changed by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, it is imperative that we continue to pray but also that we learn to trust or unlearn our suspicion. In both today’s world and that of Jesus, Jesus turns the social order upside down, It is not the old, the wise, the learned, or the experienced whose example we are to follow, but it is the young, the innocent, the untaught and the inexperienced who teach us not to trust in ourselves, but rather to place all our trust in God.

It is in this context that we have to understand the story of the ruler. It appears that the ruler is seeking something – he has come to Jesus. Despite his upright living, he is not satisfied, he is not confident that his relationship with God is all that it could be. Something has unsettled his quiet, obedient existence. Perhaps he has come to see that in the end, obeying the law is empty without relationship or perhaps he has been moved by Jesus’ teaching, Jesus’ freedom and he wants to know more about this different relationship with God. Jesus recognises his longing and identifies the one thing that he needs to do – he must give up his possessions. At the present moment the ruler needs his possessions more than he needs God. He is tied to life in this world more than he is drawn to eternal life. It is only if he can let go to the things that tie him down to this life that he will be truly free to inherit the life to come. He must again become like a child and trust in God to provide all that he needs.

The story of the ruler has little to do with money and everything to do with trust in God. Can we receive the kingdom of God as a little child or do we build up barriers and prevent God from breaking through our defenses? Does our security lie in God and the things that last forever, or do we rely on other, more ephemeral, more temporal things?

In this in-between time, this time of uncertainty, this time of longing for the kingdom to come, God is with us. Jesus assures us that in good times and in bad, God will never abandon us. All we need to do is to throw caution to the wind and toss our lot in with him, to become like a child and to trust God with our present and our future.

[1] The full story can be found at http://www.telephonetribute.com

[2] The book in which the account can be found is called A Guide to Liberation Theology.

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