WELCOME ANNOUNCEMENT –

Generosity and the faithful stewardship of “our” resources – which we understand actually to be God’s resources entrusted to our care – are basic to the Christian approach to life. It’s an everyday reality lived out 365 days of the year. It’s something to remind ourselves of that throughout the year. But we especially highlight stewardship and Christian generosity in the fall of each year. We take at least four Sundays in October/November to talk about what Jesus talked about most according to the Gospels – how our relationship with God defines our relationship to wealth and material things. Today is the culmination of this year’s stewardship emphasis, called “Breaking Free.”

We’ve been using an excellent resource written by Pastor Tom Berlin with the title, Defying Gravity. He uses gravity as a metaphor for the pull of our culture and our possessions and, like the message of Scripture and our Methodist tradition, he insists that we can defy this gravity and stay tethered to God.

If you happen to be a guest today, I want you to relax and receive whatever gifts of blessing our worship and this congregation may have for you today. No, we don’t always talk about money in the church! But we don’t ignore the subject either, because in the hands of the faithful, money is as powerful tool through which good is done and people are be blessed.

For the rest of us, it is Consecration Sunday. At the end of the service, we invited will present as an act of worship our estimates of giving to support the church’s missions and ministries in 2017. And, as an act of worship, these estimates are “consecrated,” that is, identified as something holy and dedicated to the purposes of a generous God and the blessings God’s kingdom. If you’ve forgotten, misplaced, or never received your card in the mail, raise your hand and an usher will provide you one right now so you’ll have time to complete it for the presentation.

November 13, 2016BREAKING FREE: 4. When We Get It Right

Luke 12:13-21

Preface to the Word

Qin Shi Huang (CHIN SHE HWONG) was the first emperor of China. He ruled at a time when various provinces in China were at war with oneanother.Being a great military leader, he conquered province after province and created one nation, inaugurating the Qin dynasty, for which China (Chin-a) probably was named.

Qin Shi Huang had a large vision for his country.His public works projects included linking together the diverse regional walls around the country into whatlater became theGreat Wall of China, and he developed a massive new national road system, to boot.

But of all the concernsof the emperor, of all his priorities, one that got a lot of his attention and resources was his own death. He searched long and hard for thatelusive magical elixir of immortality, which he never found.Finally coming to terms with the fact that one day he was going die, he used his wealth and power to build a city-sized mausoleum for himself. Craftsmen created alife-sized terracotta army to guard it. The purpose of the warriors, cavalry, soldiers, and horses was to protect the emperor in his afterlife. And that army took years and years to build.

Ever heard of the great terracotta army? By the time Qin Shi Huang died in the year 210b.c., his mausoleum was surrounded by more than 8,000 soldiers, along withchariots andhorses. It’s mind-boggling the extent to which China’s first emperor focused his massive resources on himself and his presumed experience of the afterlife.

Two hundred years later and 4,000 miles away, there arose a Jewish rabbi named Jesus of Nazareth, who began teaching people about another kingdom he called “the kingdom of God.” Like Qin Shi Huang, Jesus also brought people together, but not into a nation of physical boundaries or a dynasty based on birthright.Jesus welcomed people into a kingdom that would extend over every national boundary and he would unite people across culture and time.

Rather than teaching people to amass fortune and power in this life, or creating a false sense of security for the afterlife, Jesus expected his followers to be generous… generous with love, generous withforgiveness, and generous with kindness. In fact,he taught them to be aware of and careful about the intense gravity of money, wealth, and possessions that would hold them back and draw them away from God’s kingdom.

So it is, this Jesus of Nazareth told a story about a man who had an unusually large harvest.And the man, rather than sharing any of hisabundant harvest, decided to build a bigger barn to hold it all, so he could sit back andeat, drink, and be merry!

He wasn’t about to share his blessings. He built the bigger barn.

Let’s listen to how Luke recorded this parable that Jesus told…

Scripture Reading: Luke 12:13-21

SermonI.

  1. In the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Jesus drives home the point of the parable with these words:

But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves, but are not rich toward God. (Luke 12:20-21 NRSV)

  1. And in so many ways, this touches on therootof Jesus’ teaching, this bit about beingrich toward God. Both Qin Shi Huang and Jesus revealed their understanding of the afterlife.One of them built the ultimate “bigger barn,” a palace mausoleum guarded by 8,000 terracotta warriors he thought would support him in eternity, but were eventually covered over with dirt and slowly started decomposing.

The other one,Jesus, would have none of that.He told people to be rich toward God and, according toMatthew’s Gospel,specifically said:

Stop collecting treasures for your own benefit on earth, where moth and rust eat them and where thieves break in and steal them. Instead, collect treasures for yourselves in heaven, where moth and rust don’t eat them and where thieves don’t break in and steal them. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21CEB)

  1. Why would the one we believe is God’s Son teachsuch things?

Because he knew that the One who sent him wanted the best for our lives and because he wanted us to fulfill our lives with the awareness that we are already in the kingdom of heaven…Now…As we live and breathe today. We don’t have to fret what awaits us at death because God’s Kingdom is not some place in a three-story Platonic universe where there is heaven, earth, and hell.The kingdom of heaven is not some far-off land to which “some glad morning when this life is o’er, I’ll fly away!”

The kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, (two terms, by the way, that are used interchangeably in the Gospels),that kingdom is here, that kingdom is now, whenever our lives are tetheredto God’s purposes and we allow God’s Spirit take the lead.Unlike the great Qin Shi Huang, we are not obsessedwith wait awaits us beyond because theat-one-ment(atonement) with God we find through Jesus, once it’s received and experienced for the gift that it is, secures our lives to the graceand care of God.

  1. Jesus told us to live a life that’s generous in every way because we are a people of faith, confident that both now and forever we are held in God’s embrace,awed by the significance of –grateful for the goodness in – the life we live here and now.

II.

  1. I’m convinced there was also a second reason Jesus taught his followers to be generous –it’s because we are the children of God, and the nature of God is to bless others.So that’s what we do, because we are God’s children. The way God often blesses others is through God’s children.
  2. Rather than hoardour resources for ourselves, Jesus wants us to be a “launch pad” for others.This is what I mean, watch this …

(Show Video: “Blob.”)

This video was taken at a camp called,“Summer’s Best Two Weeks.”The inflated raft-looking thingin the pool is the “blob.”One person sits on the end of the blob, and it’s not that much fun until a second person jumps off the diving platform onto the other end of the blob.When the second person lands in the blob, the first person is catapulted forward. Everyone is enjoying launching and being launched.

Here’s Tony.Tony understands the concept, but he’s not wild about heights.He’s hesitant to jump.He’s like a lot of people with generosity.He gets the concept, but doesn’t want to take the risk.

Look at the other people.They’re jumping and launching others.Soon they’re getting launched themselves.Everyone is having a good time.

ButTony, he’s not sure about this.Then finally, reluctantly, Tony takes the risk.He jumps and launches someone else.Then he’s able to get to a place where he is launched into the air.Look at his face. That expression is a lot more joyful than when he was hesitating up there on the platform.

  1. When we are generous with our church, we bless people.After all, that’s what we say we’re here to do with our Engaging Faith discipleship process. We launch others into a new, deeper, generous and compassionate faith by engaging God together, engaging one another in Christian love, and engaging life around us, sharing God’s blessings.

You realize, don’t you, our place of worship and service is now a 7-day a week church. We connect with the community through our accessible, well maintained and equipped facility. Persons with addictions gather here for 12 step programs. Nutritious, warm meals are prepared 5-days a week in our church kitchen and delivered by the Meals on Wheels program to seniors throughout the community and served in the Friendly Kitchen to persons gathered in our Fellowship Hall for both food and conversation. We engage the lives of those in our community by sponsoring a large community garden behind the church where people have space and sunshine to grow food for their own tables or to share with programs around town. If people can’t make the $20 donation, they can still have a plot, complete with water, soil supplements, garden tools and friendly advice. If it’s on a Saturday, you’ll find the community gathered in our parking lot or in our Fellowship Hall for the Umpqua Valley Farmers Market. Local farmers and artisans connect with local residents and the community thrives not only by the commerce but by the conversation. I know that God is present in the laughter and the music and the communion that blesses the gathering.

Speaking of music, budding musicians receive the guidance and training to play in the two youth orchestras that call this place home. The human spirit withers without music and degrades without art. In fact, we acknowledge the strong relationship between spirituality and art through the new art ministry which is being launched in Room 18.

Because God has blessed us, we want to be generous with our church and we want to bless others. Our United Methodist Women, with the help of many, just completed another successful holiday bazaar, with the proceeds going to missions both near and far. Young people in the area from 3 churches and from no churches gather for fun, faith formation and service in the name and power of Christ. People gather weekly in different groups to study the Bible, to discuss topics important to Christians, and to pray. Women circles meet, prayer shawls are knitted, choirs rehearse, homebound persons are visited and called, and of course, our Sunday mornings are devoted to engaging a gracious and compassionate God through our worship and praise.

Think of all the people, near and far, young and old, in times past and in current times and in time to come whose lives are touched and blessed because this church is here. These people – our friends and neighbors, the stranger and the afflicted, the lost ones and the found, the saints and the sinners, the happy and the hopeless – all these people are precisely the reason why Jesus calls us to be generous, blessing others.

  1. In chapter 16 of Luke, Jesus told a somewhat confusing story about a dishonest steward.But the end of the parable is clear, where he said:

Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? (Luke 16:10-11 NRSV)

  1. The programs and ministries I just named… the people who are blessed by them…these are the true riches of life.It’s not the “terracotta armies” we build around ourselves as a defense against our fears. It’s about generosity. That’s why Jesus talked so much about generosity. That’s why he warned us about gravitational pull of money, wealth, and possessions:

No slave can serve two masters; he said, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. (Luke 16:13 NRSV)

  1. And this is why we also talk about generosity and about overcoming the strong human tendency to gather for ourselves when we should be sharing with others.There is so much riding on this – not simply a church budget, but our integrity and happiness as the followers of Jesus and the children of God.

It’s important we get it right!