First Reading – 2 Corinthians 9.6-15
The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work. As it is written,
‘He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor;
his righteousnessa endures for ever.’
He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will produce thanksgiving to God through us; for the rendering of this ministry not only supplies the needs of the saints but also overflows with many thanksgivings to God. Through the testing of this ministry you glorify God by your obedience to the confession of the gospel of Christ and by the generosity of your sharing with them and with all others, while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing grace of God that he has given you. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!
Second Reading – Luke 12.16-30
Then he told them a parable: ‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” 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 towards God.’
He said to his disciples, ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them.
Sermon on Harvest
“And Jesus told them a parable.” As Graham said last week, Jesus is telling a story that can change people’s lives. I would like to say that parables shock people from their usual way of thinking. I think we can agree this parable certainly does make us think about possessions anew.
Don’t we understand the attitude of the rich man? Don’t we all want to hold on to more and more of our possessions? So much so, that we have to find new places to store everything we have. Our cupboards are overfilled, like Mrs McGillicutty’s closet. (You have heard of her, haven’t you? She kept telling her husband, “don’t open that door!” but he always did and you would hear the tumbling of pots pans and everything else from those depths.)
We want to store up everything for ourselves, like the rich man in his counting house as the child’s rhyme goes. But everything goes wrong, doesn’t it? Blackbirds fly out of their pie and the order of things is disturbed and the maid has her nose pecked off (though it is restored thankfully).
The rich man in his counting house is much like everyone we know, isn’t he? He is the miser counting all his money time and again. We all enjoy looking at our possessions, don’t we? Some people go into their treasury to prize their trophies. The avaricious do so to a very dangerous degree. I hope we are not all so obsessed with the things we own and I am sure we don’t want to be like the biblical rich man who wanted to collect even more by building greater vaults. The parable tells us that all of this comes to nought, doesn’t it? The truism, “You can’t take it with you,” is a fact we too often forget in our lust for things. And so the accusatory voice from God resounds, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”
Who will own the things you used to hold so dear? That is the question we need to consider now and do so urgently. Time is short. The end of the world is coming – maybe in our own lives – and we must prepare for it, or change our ways to prevent it. This is the message of the “extinction rebellion”, the “cost of living crisis”, or that man on the street-corner declaiming, “The end of the world is nigh!” These prophets are bringing to mind what we have forgotten, just like the OT prophets before them – we have forgotten to act well towards the environment, to other people and to God. Repentance for our misdeeds is demanded of us by Jesus and every other prophet who has ever lived. They tell us we must remember what is right and good.
The point is this: the one who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the one who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.
How can we do good things sparingly? Goodness and mercy are abundant gifts to be shared with all. – No, that is wrong, they are to be given away freely. – We should make no distinction between people with whom we share what is right and good. Everyone should benefit from the largess of love, the consequence of the one commandment we should all follow.
Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
Paul is asking us to consider our giving. It must be commensurate with who we are, with what we consider to be good and right. Paul is encouraging us to be cheerful, and who cannot but be cheerful when the good is being enacted in our lives for the sake of others. Who cannot but be cheerful when one is free from all compulsion? Who cannot be anything but cheerful when one is giving away everything in the generosity of the spirit of God?
In that happy release – in that real freedom from greed – we realise the truth of what Jesus says in the parable explanation. ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.’ We need not worry about our lives at all, because when you are truly alive there are no considerations to be made to any one thing which you touch in your everyday.
God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.
Paul realises that there is enough in life normally, when we live in the light of God. Only when greed and evil intentions get in the way do we have want and suffering. The mercy and generosity of love provides.
We all have the ability to do good to all whom we meet. This is a generous deed – a deed that does not rely on being tight-fisted, counting all the pennies in a completely selfish accounting way. We are not to be “bean counters”. If we are to be innocent as doves yet as wily as serpents, we ought to sow those beans for a greater harvest. Let us go back to the language of the parable. Sowing and reaping are metaphors speaking to how we need to lead our lives. We need to engender the good life actively by encouraging truth and justice with mercy. Mercy is without bounds, isn’t it? Mercy is generosity incarnate and I would suggest that generosity is how we sow in our lives. Generosity is that metaphorical sowing. Like the sower in that other parable the seeds are scattered indiscriminately, landing everywhere, rocky ground, on paths, but most will fall on good ground.
I work as a gardener and my wife and I have always had a vegetable patch. This time of year is when we begin to prepare for next year. As we harvest we are turning over the ground and enriching it. There is a saying that always comes to mind: “Money is like muck – it has to be spread around to do any good.” This is the generosity of the gardener. Lots of muck, that wonderful compost that has been maturing in the heap during the summer. I am often too generous, because we are always in danger of not being able to cover everywhere for spring, when everything begins again.
However, we are celebrating Harvest today. What do we harvest in our lives? We know what the garden offers us, but what do we offer others as their harvest from the garden we are for them? Have we been generous with our time and talents? What about the treasures in our store-houses? Seeds need to die in order to come to fruition as that other parable says. Has this happened for our harvest? Have we let go? Have we sown those seeds by letting them fall from our hands freely? These are all the questions we have to ask when we celebrate Harvest Festival. I am afraid I have raised more questions than given answers. Such is my generosity as I reflect on the parables of the kingdom and our celebration of Harvest.
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