Where the Heart Is
By
SCRIPTURES
31Instead, strive for his
kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.
32“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good
pleasure to give you the kingdom. 33Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for
yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no
thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Watchful Slaves
35“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; 36be like those who are
waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may
open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. 37Blessed are those slaves
whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his
belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. 38If he comes during the
middle of the night, or near dawn, and finds them so, blessed are those slaves.
39“But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the
thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. 40You also must be ready,
for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”
SERMON:
As we continue our
lectionary selection in the Gospel of Luke, let me summarizes
In verses 22-32,
At this point, let
us pause and look at the context of such a statement, “sell all you have and
give the proceeds to the poor,” which implies becoming poor in this world in
order to become rich in the next. Let me
emphasis
Having said that,
let me say that there is no way any of us is going to sell all that we have,
give the proceeds to the poor, and tramp around the country side preaching the
Gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact, several
courts in this country have ruled against people who have done this,
impoverished themselves and their families, and went on welfare. The courts made the institutions that
received these folks’ money for the benefit of the poor or for a particular
ministry give back the money, which was then placed in trust with the State for
the care and keep of the foolish followers of
To even consider
this suggestion, to sell all that we have, give it to the poor, and become a bunch
of mendicant preachers is ludicrous and it defrauds scripture by
misrepresenting its context.
Furthermore, it sets us up psychological and spiritual to be failures as
disciples of Christ.
Therefore, what do
these scriptures mean for us? First, the
Gospels are replete with evidence that
In the writings of Paul,
the end is at hand; in Mark’s Gospel some twenty years after Paul the end is at
hand; in Matthew’s Gospel some fifteen years later than Mark the return of
Jesus is delayed so the Church may evangelize the world; however, in Luke’s
Gospel, written a bit after Matthew, the return of Jesus is out in an
indefinite future.
The writer of
Luke-Acts writes to a church whose people are poor and persecuted because of
their faith, and it is a church anticipating more persecution. Persecution and the delay of the return of
the Lord have caused many people to abandon their faith and the church.
Therefore,
Well, two-thousand
years have come and gone and
Having said that
let me say that today we have Christians that live in abject poverty, while
others live in the lap of luxury, having more resources than they could use in
ten life times. According to
In biblical
psychology, the heart is the center of one’s moral, intellectual, and spiritual
existence and as such, it is the seat of one’s values and volition.
Even today, we talk
about the heart in psychological and spiritual terms. Such things as my heart
isn’t in it; my heart is full of sadness or joy; I don’t have the heart for
such and such; my heart felt feelings are …, etc.
At this point, I
must confess I am whetting my ax on the grinding stones of others. I have stop preaching and gone to meddling.
Let me share with
you a nightmarish epiphany I had. As a
newly ordained minister, who would have never thought of himself as naive, I attended
my first General Assembly. I booked my accommodations in the convention hotel,
the hotel nearest to the convention center. Since I had flown, I didn’t want
the expense of renting a car to get around. The hotel’s restaurant where I took
several of my meals was very posh and expensive and my church was picking up
the tab. On the Sunday of the assembly,
I attended a big-steeple church in the heart of the downtown area. It was one of those huge, gothic edifices
with the gigantic pipe organs, huge choir lofts, the high, ornate pulpit, with
expensive religious artwork hanging in impressive galleries.
The call to
worship, the prayers, and the call to confession read like the social agendas
of various special interest groups and milquetoast political correctness forums
I had attended during the Assembly. The
hymns were dirges of self-effacing piety.
All of a sudden,
something came over me, the hair on the back of my neck raised and I said to
myself, “What in God’s name am I doing here?” Here I am, spending far too much
money on so much to do about nothing. All the resolutions put forth, passed or
defeated, had no binding power on the autonomous local church. Given what I understood at the time, which
was later confirmed over the years, all that these resolutions did was
exacerbate existing divisions in the minds of many people in churches or make
issues out of things that were not problems.
Here I was setting in a building that was decadent in its extravagance;
mumbling words and phrases of concern about things only guilt-ridden,
upper-middle class white people can afford to be concerned with. All the while, there is a world of truly poor
people, not the shiftless, the lazy, or near-do-wells out there dying for the
want of a descent meal, adequate shelter, or the simplest of medical
treatment. People who are suffering at
the hands of others because of some squirrelly differences in political philosophy,
ideology, or theological viewpoints one has to die to prove. There were and are large areas of our planet
that are being polluted and damaged beyond recovery just so I and the people surrounding
me could enjoy a life style beyond sufficiency or necessity. Not to mention, there is a world out there
drowning in a morass of immorality, corruption, and injustice whose only hope
is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In the
face of such things, it appeared to me that most of modern-day Christianity
doesn’t have the heart to confront evil, injustice, or deprivation. We are too busy straining at politically
correct gnats and cosmetic evils while the termites of moral decay devour the
foundation of the Church.
I couldn’t believe
I was part of a group of Christians, who expected the government or some charismatic,
religious extortionist to take from those who had more than they had and give
it to the poor. It was obvious that most
of us in that sanctuary were not giving sacrificially. I couldn’t believe that
these people, including myself, where willing to spend so much time and energy
in our politically correct activities and pious, sanctimonious affirmations in
the face of a world that was hell bent and hell bound at the expense of the
In that moment, a passage of scripture sprang to my
mind and I summarily passed judgment on my people and myself reminiscent of
Isaiah, 5And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of
unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen
the King, the LORD of hosts!” Isaiah 6:5 (NRSV)
I had, had an insight true and sincere and judged most
of Western Christianity, including myself—religious schizophrenics. Institutional Christianity is totally out of
touch with the reality the Gospel of Jesus Christ is supposed to address. It was all that I could do to keep from
running out of that church in utter terror of my own insight.
Afterwards, I
struggled to make sense out of my experience.
And, where I came out was where I started as a young Christian at
From the moment of
my epiphany, my emphasis in ministry and my major concern has been the health
and well-being of the local church, and the quality of its ministers and
ministry because the local church is were the rubber hits the road of salvation
and offers hope for this world.
I fear that the
passage of time and the unrealized expectations of some great cosmological
event of the Book of Revelation have caused Christians to grown lax, selfish,
and far too sophisticated for the ancient Gospel of Jesus Christ. Many people remain nominally Christian as a
hedge against the uncertainties and unknowns of death but their lives speak of
no heart for the Gospel. I guess given
the state of the world, Christians have just lost heart for their calling to
bring the kingdom of God on earth and are settling for hope in death.
O well, so much for
my commentary on the state of the world and Christianity’s place in it.
I know the
congregation of
In closing, let me leave
you with several questions to ponder and to pray about. What do you value most of all in this life?
How does that relate to your eternal life?