Monday Morning in the Preacher’s Study
First thoughts about next Sunday’s sermon
(12th Sunday after Pentecost, August
11, 2013)
Frank Logue
Jesus follows last
week’s parable of the rich man who wanted to build more and bigger barns with
teaching skipped over by the Revised Common Lectionary in our in-course
reading. We missed Jesus telling his disciples not to worry about their lives
and comparing how God cares for the ravens who have neither storeroom or barn.
Just before our pericope begins Jesus has said not to worry about what we eat
and drink, “instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to
you as well.”
This helps set the
tone for Jesus telling us to look to the future not with fear, but with trust
in God. We are to store treasure not in earthly barns but in the heavenly
realm, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
In this sentence,
Jesus describes the way humans are hard wired to work. In some ideal world perhaps
it might be, “Where your heart is, there will your treasure be also.” But that
is not how life works for us. We don’t always live out even our deeply held
values in ways noticeable to others. Jesus describes the truth that as we come
to ascribe value, and store up that value, we direct our hearts.
When our faith in God
as revealed in Jesus the Christ fails to provoke change in our daily lives,
then we are probably storing up our treasure closer to home. As Verna Dozier
succinctly put it, “The important question to ask is not, ‘What do you
believe?’ but ‘What difference does it make that you believe?’” In the same
book, The Dream of God, Dozier states,
“The urgent task for us in the closing years of this turbulent century is to
reclaim our identity as the people of God and live into our high calling as the
baptized community.”
Claiming baptismal
identity rings out to me through this text in which Jesus calls his disciples
away from worry and into trust as they consider what they treasure. This call could
not be more antithetical to a consumer economy driven by the anxiety that comes
with a desire for more and better rather than lasting and true.
I know where I want
my heart to be, but is that where I am really placing my treasure? What do I
value? How do I show my values in my daily life? What difference does it make
that I believe? This is what I am pondering as I journey toward Sunday.
Frank Logue is a member of the APLM
Council having served previously as its secretary. He worked as a church planter,
founding King of Peace, Kingsland, in the decade before his current call as
Canon to the Ordinary of the Diocese of Georgia.
Photo by Frank Logue.
No comments:
Post a Comment