Exodus 16:16-21; Luke 12:15-21
Sermon by Dr. John Kuykendall 

Our New Testament lesson drives home a nail that your congregation’s theme passage for this season from Exodus strikes at an oblique but unforgettable fashion.

I reckon that the point is pretty clear:  The Bible offers precious little comfort to folks who are preoccupied with the task of accumulating material comfort.  Indeed, it says, if you take more than one day’s portion of manna, it will stink to high heaven!

There’s a wealth of such passages, Old Testament and New, which remind us both of God’s abundant care for us, and our responsibility to share what we have with others.  Some might want to say that that’s sad but true.  It may be “sad” because it clearly goes against our natural instincts; because we humans tend almost by intuition to squirrel away things for our later life or our posterity.  We tend to accumulate, don’t we?  And one prime measurement of success, according to such standards, is the sort of legacy or estate we can fashion in a lifetime to stand as a monument—be it liquid or real—to the value or significance of our having been here.

Is that supposed to be a problem?  Surely it’s only “natural,” if not especially “spiritual,” to want to build a tidy surplus of this world’s goods.   And you could even argue, I suppose, that a person really is a fool if he or she lets the years pass without providing for the prospects of illness and old age and death—even, perhaps, of the implosion of Social Security or the lack of any remedy for our health care dilemma.

But when you come right down to cases, it’s not so easy to reconcile our natural instincts and inclinations with what the Bible has to say about material things.  We read, for example, that the rich will weep and wail (older version said “howl”) at the miseries that will come upon them.  We read that the one who snatches crumbs from dogs below table may ultimately be better off than the host at the banquet.  We read today that the one who tears down barns to build bigger ones, who has more goods than he can use or even count, who says to his soul in his opulence, “Soul, relax!  Eat, drink, enjoy yourself!”—that the one who does those things is the one God calls “Fool!” 

So let’s agree that it may be sad but true. There is not much support for our acquisitive instincts in the Bible; and those of us here who mean to take discipleship seriously should be wary of hearing only those things from scripture we would like to hear when it comes to our material blessings. This is a lesson, I know, that many of you in this place have already learned; but I want to suggest a “refresher course” for this morning’s task. I suggest that we try to hear a few basic things from the biblical witness concerning what we do with what we have. I shall suggest five basic things; doubtless there are many more, but let these do for a start.

Number one:

The Bible says that one thing necessary to a proper understanding of the things we have is a sense of the temporary and contingent nature of human life. We are all sojourners—transients, if you will—“temps” in this world.  We are here today and (quite literally) gone tomorrow.  It’s folk wisdom:  “Man’s life is vapor—and woman’s, too.”

(The writer of the Book of James made that observation long before Stephen Foster set it to music.)  And you surely know some other homespun corollaries:  “You live and learn; then you die and forget it all;” or “You can’t take it with you;” or “There are no pockets in a shroud;” and so it goes.  Almost too trite to warrant repetition, aren’t they? But they are true; and we likely need to hear them ever and again because we would much prefer not to have to play by those rules.

Every one of us has a certain difficulty with the idea that the time will come when we will not be. Perhaps you have read the poignant passage in Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych in which Ivan Ilych, approaching his own death, ponders the syllogism learned long before in school: “Caius is a man; men are mortal; therefore Caius is mortal.”

Caius is mortal; ergo, Caius must go the way of all flesh; Caius must die. “But,”says our hero,“Caius was not Ivan Ilych.  Not a me! Not one who had a mama, and a papa, and a nurse, and toys, and a striped leather ball. Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my thoughts and emotions,

 it is altogether a different matter.  It cannot be that I ought to die; that would be too terrible.”

Well, “terrible,” indeed; but certainly not “different.”  Somewhere, sometime, somehow; each of us and all of us learn of our own mortality.  We were born; we are living; we shall die.  We don’t have to be here; and things will continue to go along in our absence, thanks very much.  And that’s the truth!  So you plan ahead, to be sure; but always you entertain the possibility that “this night your soul is required of you.”

Thus point one:  the place to begin, painful though it is, is the recognition that we are not immortal.

Number Two:

And a second insight stands hard by the first.  It is this:  We should therefore never be too confident or content with any claim to the “ownership” of things.

“Things” don’t last that long; we all know that.  “Moth and rust corrupt; thieves break through and steal.”

But more to the point:  Because we are mortal, we hold no titles “forever and a day.”—even so-called “permanent” things: That house you’ve paid a mortgage on?

Somebody else is going to live there, soon or late, if they don’t tear it down to build something “better”—whatever the current meaning of that word may be.  Nothing you have is ever really “safe,” in that sense, is it?  Never was, really; though there used to be more subtlety about it, back when land and wealth and status passed more predictably through the generations.

But now, weal or woe, the pattern is clearer:  nothing ever really belongs to anyone in perpetuity.  We are not immortal; neither are our claims to what we have.  That’s why the Bible suggests in a variety of ways that “ownership” is really always “stewardship”—our temporary control of God’s things to be used in ways compatible with God’s will for life.

Our pretensions to what we have are merely that: really only “squatter’s rights,” to have and to use for now on loan, it says, from God.  That’s insight number two.

Number Three:

And from that perception, there proceeds a third word of guidance as we consider what we should do with what we have.  The Bible actually encourages faithful people

to develop a healthy double-mindedness toward the material world:  on one hand, a wholehearted and sincere appreciation of things as significant aspects of God’s created order; and on the other, an equally sincere disparagement of those things as potential sources of ultimate value in life.

Let’s go through that again: the first part is not so hard for most of us.  We know how to appreciate the beauty and the worth of things we have, and, at our best at least, we are grateful for them as earnests of God’s goodness and grace.  That’s why we say—or should say—thanks each day for what we have.  We receive these things undeserved from God’s bounty; and it is a part of our chief end, in vocation as in catechism, to “enjoy” both God and what God has done in creation.  We should be profoundly and eternally grateful, for sure.

But the other side of that particular coin is the apt reminder that such enjoyment has its limits.  The Bible commends a studied indifference concerning possessions:

Have things as though you have them not.  And the favored cliché is trite but true: It’s not necessarily a sin for you to have things; but it is a sin for them to have you.  There’s one question which always serves as litmus test:  Are you willing to walk away from what you have?  Jesus asked that question of the Rich Young Ruler, and he failed the test imposed by the burden of his wealth.  The camel failed to pass through the needle’s eye;

and no surprise there, if you know human nature.

Whereupon we are obliged to take the test in our own lives:  Say nothing for the moment about any sentiment which is attached to your possessions; or about your desire to share with loved ones the treasures of your life; or about their gratitude to you for sharing your life with them; the question still remains: Would it be possible for you to give them up?  Is it possible for you to have things as though you have them not?

If not, you may have real problems with the rest of what I have to say; because after we acknowledge that we are mortal, and that we hold our material possessions only for a season, and that we need to appreciate but not idolize our possessions….

Number Four:

…a fourth bit of biblical counsel points us toward the place of “benevolence” in our lives:  The Bible says that a proper attitude toward wealth includes a willingness to share what we have with other people.

A while ago I saw an ad on a student bulletin board that tickled both my funny-bone and my imagination.  It said something like this:  Wanted:  Christian to share apartment for fall semester.  Then, underlined:  Must have own car.  Leave aside the fact that there was no stipulation of gender or habits or denomination.  It’s a new day, I suppose; or reasoning may have been that if said roommate were really Christian, it wouldn’t matter (or so some say).  But the real irony I perceived was that the faithful advertiser meant to make it clear in advance that he/she was unwilling to share wheels—even with a compatible and consenting co-religionist.  And they say that charity begins at home!

But let’s go on from ridiculous to profound:  The Bible seems to insist upon caritas— “charity” in its fullness— that is, “caring;” caring enough to be giving; and charity may begin at home; but if it ends there, too, it isn’t charity at all.  It’s only camouflaged selfishness.  Real charity reaches out; it cares for those whom it does not know and might not like.  What was it that Jesus said?  If your enemy demands your coat,  let him have your cloak as well.

Giving away stuff you value yourself is basic to being Christian.  There is no way in the world you can be thankful to God and refuse to give generously to others.  There is no possible warrant for a faithful person to say thanks to God for manifold and manifest blessings, and then spend it all upon selfish desires and designs.  I don’t know what you do with your money and why; and I really don’t care to know; and despite all my unwarranted pushiness this morning, it really is your business.

But here’s what I do know:  lots of times you can get a good idea whether people are Christian or not just by looking at their check stubs.  And I do know that a Christian is a person who actively tries to see where in the world his or her material possessions can fill a need or make a difference, and then heedless of personal likes and dislikes, puts money in place of mouth in doing good there.  And I do know that Christian stewardship is nothing more or less than an attempt to answer the question:  What shall I do with everything that I have now that I have said, “I believe….”  What would God have me to do with what I have?  (Have you seen the bumper sticker, by the way?  “If you love Jesus, tithe; any fool can honk.”

There are few vices that are further from the spirit of Christianity than the unholy alliance of stinginess and lack of charity with a blindness to the needs of other children of God.  The proper attitude toward what you have entails a willingness—an eagerness indeed—to share what you have with others.  That’s a fourth bit of essential insight we find in scripture.

Number Five:

And then there is one more thing—fifth and last, and also in sequence to those before:  The Bible asserts in unmistakable terms that ultimately your legacy—and your worth—is not going to be tallied up in dollars and cents, in houses and barns, in stocks and bonds.  God has little use (this much is clear) for estates piled up “where moth and rust corrupt and thieves break through and steal.”  And if that is to be sum and substance of your eventual legacy, then by biblical standards you haven’t amounted to much.

The real testimony to your personal worth will be assessed in terms of what you have done with what you had.  Another passage I might have read to you, but didn’t, has to do with what happens in that last awe-full day when humanity stands to taw for deeds and misdeeds:  sheep to the right, goats to the left.  And the question there, to the distress of many, is not to be “What did you have?” or even “What did you believe?”  It will be “What did you do with the things you had?”  It is painfully clear, good Christian friends:

Your ultimate value will not be reckoned in what you have left behind.  It will be determined by the ways in which you have used your treasures to serve God’s children along the way.  You might say it’s the final exam in the curriculum of discipleship.

Well, let me stop (I’m sure you will!).  I have suggested a handful of insights from biblical sources as you come again to the question of what to do with what you have.  Remember that you are mortal; and remember that what you have is yours on loan from God.   Remember that you must at once appreciate and disregard possessions:  God’s gifts, for you to possess, but not for them to possess you.  Remember that the essence of the Christian ethic of things is sharing; and remember that your ultimate value in God’s eyes will never be reckoned in dollars and cents.

Now that you have heard all this, you still have alternatives to be worked out,

and I leave you to the workings of conscience and character.  Again the definition:  Stewardship is quite simply the effort to answer the question, “What shall I do with what I have?” after you have said, “I believe.”

Now if that sort of faith is not for you just now an option, forgive my intrusion upon your time this day.  Another day’s sermon will likely be more suited to your needs;

indeed, this one probably didn’t make much sense to you.  But if you are somewhere on the fringes of Christian commitment, take it seriously—or at least be warned—because here you have some rough approximation of what sincere discipleship might mean

in terms of your possessions.  Or yet again, if you are seriously, devoutly, genuinely consecrated—captivated by Christ and committed to his church—perhaps all you need to do just now is simply rejoice,  because it’s likely that you already know what to do with what you have.