Live in Christ

Being invited to a meal can be a pleasure or a necessity depending on who we are sharing it with. So imagine getting an invitation that reads: You are invited to a meal with Jesus. Would we be excited by this strange request or daunted and hurriedly ring a friend to come with us. What might we say? What conversations might we expect to have? Today, we’ll look at the tensions we face living in difficult times where we are tempted to live very differently; and we will look at how we might ‘live in Christ’ and what that means today in 2022. All of this linked to how do we relate with those we love.

Who wants to make more money? : Luke 12:13-21

 Prior to this the disciples have noticed that the crowds are increasing big time. Jesus has been teaching about not to worry so much and now this. We have someone who wants to discuss a particular legal point about inheritance. Notice though that the individual is telling Jesus to tell someone else what to do. It’s used often in society when we want to get around someone difficult, or when we want to coerce another person to do something. It’s called triangulation, typified by sayings such as “What till your Dad gets home!” Why might we do this?

• We seek support for our own view, possibly due to a lack of confidence in our own emotions and views
• We might wish to avoid conflict, using another person as a deflection
• We seek support as a way of demonstrating to the other party the correctness of our views
• We attempt to heighten emotion against another person from a social group so we can retain control.

Mary & Martha were at it, trying to get Jesus to make the decision for them. When we see or hear of this, we might wish to step back a bit, and consider the motivation. 

Jesus told them a parable, something thrown down alongside the argument to help shed light on the matter. Think of it as one of those incandescent light strips suddenly coming on and illuminating the scene. The rich man speaks of where to store all of ‘my’ crops. Notice the frequency of “I have”, “I will” – what did they say? .

We not me (this is mentioned before)

Perhaps at times like this we do need to catch our breath, and stand back and pause. Our reaction may be to rationally consider the facts – as we see them. However, we might need to consider the other perspective; we also might wish to use other methods of discerning the way forward: that is we could be with God and seek where God is leading us. If we believe in God, isn’t this a way forward? It is to know the mind of Christ – to ‘live in Christ’.

And God says ‘check out the bigger picture’

We are not called to save and become wealthy, but as with Joseph: save up because there’s a famine; as with Boaz: allow others to eat from your fields; as with that wee laddie on the hillside with his loaves of bread: give extraordinarily so that all can be fed (4000/5000). This isn’t about wealth but what you do with it. Storing it up in barns isn’t part of the kin_dom, it’s being generous and transforming lives which matters. 

Perhaps in our society today we can see that desire for people to make huge sums of money, to become millionaires, even billionaires, when many are trapped in poverty. As a body of people, we worship our God: we declare the worth ship of God, for God is worthy of our praise. And individually we are all worthy as part of the kin_dom. It is in that understanding that we, yes you, me, everybody, are worthy, can share in God’s love that we may not wish to seek that we are worthy in terms of material goods, money and power.

So what now? As a body of people what is our most valuable possession?…

How does our individual church show this in its work? Hey, what might happen if we were to give it away? Just think of our community if we were to be able to transform an individual’s life through what we can provide. Don’t immediately think of money, but ponder upon what gifts we can release. This passage doesn’t say store up everything for a rainy day, so we might keep dry; it speaks of being able to provide as best we can, to transform the lives of others. It also asks us to look back at ourselves, as a body of people: do our lives show that there is a God, through our sharing of God’s love, ‘to demonstrate that we ‘live in Christ’; or that there is no God, as we seek to focus upon ourselves?