Yesterday I saw a beautiful photograph of Malachi, my god daughter’s 8-month-old son. A well-loved baby with a big smile and exuberant energy. His mother is full of hope for him, sees his potential and is ready to do everything in her power to help him to achieve it. He will, of course, face challenges in his life as all humans do, but now, in the newness of his life, he is filled with joy and potential.

Today’s reading from Hosea tells us that God remembers Ephraim- young Israel this way: new and full of potential and describes how God nurtured that early community. But God’s memories are also painful as God recalls Ephraim making bad choices. God is a nurturing, frustrated and grieving parent. The nation that God liberated from slavery in Egypt, turned to other forms of enslavement, leaving God, their liberator, sick at heart; and yet God cannot forsake them, cannot turn away from them, continues to be with them. God continues to be the Holy One in their midst, and to be the Holy One in their midst means to be a liberator. The text tells us that there will be another exodus because God is incapable of forsaking what he loves. In the first exodus, God is a loving parent. In the exodus that is to come, Hosea tells us that God will lead his people like a roaring lion, with fierceness. God leads the people through an unsettling landscape of betrayal, catastrophe, misery, to arrive in the end at the promise of a fearsome deliverance, and a restored but altered community. Psalm 107 echoes this story of a people who wandered in the desert, who cried out to God in their distress, and were delivered by God’s steadfast love. We too are led by God’s steadfast love, through joys and sorrows, through painful experiences, through times of being lost and found, and we, too, are changed, no, transformed by the journey because the Holy One accompanies us through it all.

In the lectionary calendar it is midsummer, but Paul’s letter to the Colossians strikes the tone of a new year’s resolution, urging us to turn over a new leaf, to examine our lives, end bad habits and live a new life in Christ. Paul is very specific about the things that are an obstacle to our life in Christ and lists not one, but two, lists of vices that we are to avoid. To live a life in Christ is to become gradually transformed, and this is challenging, as the kind of transformation required is counter-cultural. It is not about worldly success, recognition or accomplishments. It is not about pleasure or the acquisition of money or possessions. It moves us well beyond the normal cultural language of change and into the language of life and death. Paul speaks of dying to self and living a new life that is “hidden in Christ”, a difficult message to understand, and yet we all know people, including members of our own parish who live gentle, loving lives, unencumbered by the need to be seen as successful or accomplished: people who are generous of spirit, available to others, and who demonstrate a quiet reliance on God. These people are humble and usually quite unaware of the way they manifest the Spirit of God. They are often people who have suffered, people who have struggled with addictions, and elderly people who spend long hours alone and tell me that they don’t feel “useful” anymore. To quote the Trappist monk Thomas Merton: “they are walking around shining like the sun and they don’t even know it”.

And that brings us to today’s Gospel where Jesus pretty much dismisses a question from a man who is concerned about his fair share of the family inheritances and reframes the issue with a parable.  Jesus uses strong language (“you fool!”) and, unlike Luke’s stories about a good Samaritan, a lost sheep and a prodigal son, but more like those about the rich man and Lazarus, and the wicked tenants, this parable offers no happy ending; there is no last-minute rescue, only a dire warning to get our priorities in order and sort out our values before it is too late.

We all know that “you can’t take it with you,” and many of us have downsized our homes and given away many of our possessions as well as being generous with our resources. I don’t think any of us is planning to build bigger barns to store our stuff, but the question that really intrigues me about this parable is  this:  what does it mean to be “rich before God”? Jesus doesn’t give us any simple answers, which is not entirely surprising as he didn’t directly answer the man with the question about inheritance.  Like all the parables, this one is a koan: we are supposed to wrestle with it to find the meaning for it in our lives. This is what some of my wrestling revealed to me: The issue is not so much about resources or investments as it is about distractions and this is certainly a challenge for me as I am very easily distracted. You will recall the story of Mary and Martha that we heard recently. Martha was doing most of the work while Mary was listening attentively to Jesus. When Martha complained about this, Jesus told her that she was “distracted by many things”. In the current situation, Martha had lost her perspective on what is most important. Both the man focused on the inheritance he does not yet have but wants to gain, and the rich man who has much but wants even more, are distracted, not by many things like Martha, but fixated on the one thing that matters to them to the exclusion of all else.

When Jesus counsels not to worry about food and clothes, he is not necessarily urging everyone to adopt a radical Franciscan lifestyle; he is addressing the human tendency to be drawn to the things that distract our attention from the good that only God can provide.  The issue for Martha, the discontented brother, the rich man and us, is to discern what is most important, of most value. Perspective is essential in discernment and not an easy process. No one sets out to make poor choices or foolish decisions but if we have too many distractions, it is hard to put things in perspective.  The purple clad rich man is so distracted by his sumptuous banquets that he cannot see Lazarus who is starving. The talent-burying servant is obsessed with the idea of a tyrant master’s displeasure. The rich man is so focused on acquiring beautiful items and building barns to store them in that he forgets that this is not his permanent home.

What about you? What distracts you from being rich towards God? This is not our permanent home either.  What gets in the way of your relationship with God? let’s take a few minutes to reflect on that question.  Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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