Seeing the guests at the dinner jockeying for positions of honor at the table gave Jesus an opportunity to speak a few words about humility.  Humility isn’t a popular virtue!  Nobody likes to be the low man on the totem pole, so to speak.  Here at the start of the football season, nobody wants our team to be awarded the Miss Congeniality Prize – last place but liked by everyone.  But Jesus says that we are all wrong to want to be in first place always.  There is virtue in being in a lowly place where someone may say to us, “You deserve better than this!”  Those who insist that they must always be in first place just might hear someone say, “He really doesn’t deserve that position!”

You’ve heard about the two little boys who were always fighting over the same toys?  Their grandmother reminded them that Jesus would have always been willing to share His toys with His brothers, and so one of the little boys said to his brother, “Why don’t you pretend to be Jesus and give me that toy?”

Popularity is without a doubt one of the greatest forces among high school students. Dobie Gray sang back in the 60′s, “I’m in with the in crowd, I go where the in crowd goes… And I know what the in crowd knows… When you’ve in with the in crowd, it’s so easy to find romance!”  Can you high school students imagine what would happen if every Christian at your high school applied Jesus’ words to the popularity ladder?  “When you go to school, do not strive to be in with the in crowd but seek to be a friend of the unloved and unpopular.”  Oh, it is easy to follow the usual high school Christian commandments: “Don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t use drugs.”  It isn’t so easy to follow Jesus in loving the least among you, His brethren.  Humility is not a popular virtue.

What about the instructions regarding our social contracts?  You know how social contracts are supposed to work.  You invite me, and I pay you back by inviting you.  You give me a present, and so I must give you one.  Penny and I rarely miss an episode on Monday nights of “The Big Bang Theory.”  Those brilliant but very geeky young Ph. D.s are hilarious.  Last Christmas their pretty neighbor Penny told Sheldon that she had a Christmas present for him but that he didn’t have to get her a gift in return. “Of course I do,” he replied. “The essence of the custom is that I now have to go out and purchase for you a gift of commensurate value and representing the same perceived level of friendship as that represented by the gift you’ve given me. It’s no wonder suicide rates skyrocket this time of year. You haven’t given me a gift; you have given me an obligation.”  Our social contract assures us of temporal blessings, but Jesus said that there was a way of receiving an eternal blessing on Judgment Day.  If we invite people to a meal who will never be able to repay us – the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind – then we will really be blessed.

I am amazed that every year there are those who give up their Thanksgiving Day with their families just so they can prepare and serve a meal to the homeless and poor.  Every year on Christmas Day, our Jewish fellow citizens volunteer to work at hospitals and homeless shelters so that people of Christian faith can celebrate with their families.  There are blessings to be found in such acts of love which cannot be repaid.

These two lessons – the virtue of humility and the blessedness of giving without hope of being repaid – would be reason enough to study Luke 14.  But I’ve spent a lot of time with this text.  I chewed it for hours, discussing it with fellow clergy.  I wonder if you noticed these things?  I think it helps us see Jesus more clearly. This story occurred long after the lines had been drawn and people had taken sides for or against Jesus.  He was traveling to Jerusalem where His crucifixion awaited Him.  It seems to me that Jesus was being intentionally provocative here.  He knows that He is in a hostile environment, and so He decided to make the most of it.

First, we are told that it was a Sabbath and Jesus was dining at the home of a prominent Pharisee.  We are also told that Jesus was being carefully watched.  They were watching Him like a hawk, as we would say.  That sounds a bit ominous, doesn’t it?  What is the first thing Jesus does when He is a guest in this Pharisee’s house on a Sabbath?  He calls a man to His side who has swollen knees and ankles, probably due to heart trouble, and then He asks His host and his pals if it is lawful to heal this man on the Sabbath.  They don’t say a word, but everyone knows that this is a point of contention between the Pharisees and Jesus.  Of course, they think it is unlawful, but Jesus healed the man anyway and then sent him on his way.  He didn’t have to do this.  He didn’t have to challenge His enemies on their turf.  Jesus tried to make this a teachable moment after He had shocked them with His actions, explaining that if one of them had a son – or an ox for that matter – who fell into a well on the Sabbath, wouldn’t they go rescue him?  The Pharisee and the experts in the law remained totally silent!  Speechless!  I’m telling you, there was so much tension in the air there that you could cut it with a knife!  It is clear that Jesus was not going to let the issue of Sabbath laws go unchallenged.  He was going to continue to be a disturbance within the faith community.

The next provocative action by Jesus was to criticize the way the guests had jockeyed for the seats of prominence.  There was a definite hierarchy at those ancient “U” shaped tables.  The host and his most honored guests sat at one end of the table, and people sat in order of rank on around the table until the least among them sat at the other end.  The lowliest person was supposed to wash everyone’s feet before dinner.  There were lots of things Jesus could have talked about after dinner that would not have been provocative.  He could have repeated the Sermon on the Mount.  So why did He choose to talk about how they scrambled for the best seats?  I imagine that those people who were seated around that table felt somewhat scolded by the Teacher who criticized them for their lack of humility, reminding them that those who exalt themselves will be humbled while those who humble themselves will be exalted, especially One who was about to humble Himself on a cross.

And at the very end of the meal, Jesus said to His host, “The next time you have a meal like this, don’t invite this crowd of your friends, relatives, and rich neighbors.  Instead, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.  Then you will be blessed.”  How would you have felt if you had been the host of this meal, having invited Jesus and your closest friends and relatives, and your honored guest critiqued your selection of companions?  You might acknowledge that Jesus had a point about including the forgotten and the poor, but don’t you have the right to invite to your house and to your table whomever you choose?  It appears to me that Jesus knew He had nothing to lose with this group, and therefore, He would gently “tell it like it is” and leave them with some new ideas to chew on.

Someone has said that we envision Jesus to be whatever we would most like Him to be like.  It is tempting for us to paint a picture of Jesus in our minds as One who was always a gentleman, always compassionate and caring, always turning the other cheek, or as someone once said, “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.”  Such a mild-mannered person would not have received such a harsh reaction from the Roman and Hebrew authorities that Jesus did.  It is good to remember that Jesus once publicly called King Herod “that fox” and you know that Herod was angered by this disrespect.  Jesus once overturned tables while driving animals out of the Temple with a whip while He shouted, “My house is supposed to be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.”  Jesus was and is a very human man of great passion and energy, One who could be provocative and aggressive on certain occasions when He was driving home some important point or caring for a hurting child of God.  Such persons are often perceived as threats against the stability of society, as someone who isn’t going to stop until He has rewritten all of the rules and torn down all the walls that divide people from one another.  These persons are often martyred, but the changes they sought often come into existence through their followers.

So, what is Jesus like?  He is humble, One who knew the power of seeking the place of least honor, One who would wash the feet of His disciples, One who would prefer the company of the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, sinner and outcasts.  But He is also One who would dare to challenge the rules of society when those rules caused people hardships, and He would even challenge those rules when He was a guest in someone’s home.  He would dare to stand up to Governor Pontius Pilate and say, “You have power over me only because my Father has given it to you.”  And if you invite Him into your home as a guest today, He just might step out of line and begin suggesting how you ought to treat one another because He never misses a chance to teach us.  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

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The story in the Gospel for today tells us about a time when Jesus literally straightened out a woman in the synagogue.  The NRSV uses rather interesting wording to describe the woman’s condition: she had a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years.  Now, I know that this is actually a reflection of the belief of that era that all illnesses were due to unseen spirits and demons, but still the wording is interesting because I know people who are physically well but nevertheless crippled by their spirit, their attitude.  I know people, and you do too, who are extremely lonely people because they have managed to drive away everyone whoever cared about them.  Just the other day I heard about a lady who was offended when she received a note of encouragement from someone.  How dare you think I need encouragement!  These people have a spirit that cripples them.  They say that nobody cares for them when in fact they have hurt everybody whoever tried to care for them.  Thanks be unto God that Christ straightens out these kinds of people, replacing their mean spirits with loving attitudes.  No one has to remain crippled by their spirits.

But the lady in the synagogue appears to be someone who had a crippling condition like arthritis or perhaps a herniated disc.  Perhaps she had what we now call scoliosis. She was very stooped over, walking with her back so badly bent that she looked almost straight down at her feet as she walked.  If you have ever had any back trouble, as many of us have, you can sympathize with a woman who never got any relief from her condition and who never had any hope of finding a cure.  But like so many people who met Jesus, she found one hope she didn’t know was possible.  Here we see two of Luke’s particular emphases again – Jesus was very caring toward women and other lowly persons of society, and He often healed people without their asking.  Jesus noticed the woman and took the initiative apparently before she could ask for help.  Jesus took the initiative in reaching out to us, too.  In reality, we didn’t find God; He found us.

There is something else I notice here I find very interesting.  Have you noticed that Jesus rarely prayed during His acts of healing?  Your pastor comes to your hospital room and you expect him or her to pray for you.  But Jesus, a man of much prayer, usually didn’t pray for the sick.  Instead, He spoke to them or on some occasions to the illness itself.  At the funeral for the son of the widow from Nain, Jesus spoke to the dead man, “Young man, I say to you, get up!”  In the story today, Jesus called the crippled woman forward to the front of the synagogue and spoke directly to her, “Woman, you are set free from your illness.”  Immediately she was set free and began praising God, probably excitedly and loudly!

I am certainly not suggesting that we ought to stop praying for one another.  But I am wondering if you and I are aware of the power our words carry as we speak words of faith and affirmation to one another.  Our words carry to power of comfort and health.  In our communion service, there is the place where, after we have confessed our sins to God, we say to one another, “In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven!”  Do you hear that affirmation, and more importantly, do you believe it?  Do you receive the blessing from those around you who declare you to be forgiven by God?  You should embrace it with joy!  And at the end of every worship service, the pastor dismisses you with a blessing.  Do you soak in the words you hear?  “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”  The grace of the Lord Jesus – that undeserved, not able to be earned acceptance given to you by Jesus – be with you.  The love of God – that unending, inexhaustible, relentless love of Almighty God – be with you.  The communion of the Holy Spirit – that close, walking-along-beside-of-you constant presence of God – be with you.  Those words are powerful words, and they don’t just mean that it is time to start your engines and race the Baptists to the restaurants!

It really means something when we say to our mates and our children, “I love you.”  When you greet a friend and extend your love and care to them, it really means something.  I have a friend who always tells me, “Be good to yourself.”  One time, years ago at a reform school I was working in during college, I told a wayward youth that I really cared about him, and that tough guy started crying as he said, “Be quiet!  Nobody cares about me.”  Our words are powerful!  “Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can make or break us.”  So, let us continue praying for one another, especially for those in hospitals, but please never forget the lesson Jesus taught us by His actions.  Our words of faith which we speak to one another can raise us up from our deadness to new life!

Jesus often ran into trouble because He worked for God seven days a week.  The Sabbath was a day of spiritual reflection and rest for Jesus, but that didn’t mean that His rest could be an excuse to let someone suffer when He could do something to relieve that suffering.  We still take our dogs out for walks on our Sabbath, no matter how strict our churches are!  The strictest folks in Jesus’ day still fed and watered their livestock on the Sabbath.  But those same strict folks criticized Jesus for doctoring on the Sabbath and they criticized people for seeking healing on the Sabbath.  “There are six other days to seek healing,” the leader of the synagogue said, scolding the sick woman.  “Come on one of those days for healing, not the Sabbath.”  Perhaps that is why Jesus reacted so sharply to this criticism.  It wasn’t aimed at Him but rather at this poor sick woman who hadn’t stood up straight in eighteen years, and so Jesus came to her defense.  For Jesus, Sabbath rules were never meant to prohibit someone from doing good deeds to others.

It is almost laughable, this situation in the synagogue.  A great miracle has just taken place, something that does not happen every day.  A crippled woman can now stand up straight and tall again.  But this synagogue pastor is all upset because he thinks a commandment has been violated.  On another occasion Jesus healed a man who had been born blind, a remarkable miracle indeed.  But because it occurred on the Sabbath, the temple leaders decided that Jesus could not possibly be sent from God.  I would laugh at these Hebrew leaders if I hadn’t been guilty of the same thing.  I, too, have taken offense when God chose to do things in ways that violated my sense of order or dignity.  I am frightened by emotions, but sometimes people react very emotionally and loudly when they are touched by God’s grace.  I go home and take a huge nerve pill when this happens!  It seems that Jesus and God will violate normal protocols when it comes to healing one of God’s children in body or soul.  Jesus seemed to think that we take better care of our pets than we do of our neighbors.

Verse 17 makes a statement that reminds us of how polarizing Jesus was to the community.  His opponents were humiliated but His followers were delighted with all the wonderful things Jesus was saying and doing.  This polarization would continue and deepen.  In time the support of the vast majority of people would be overruled by the opposition from the small number of people in power – the religious leaders in Jerusalem, the ruling politicians, and the Roman authorities.  The masses of people would be powerless to stop Jesus’ arrest and execution by the people in power.

I don’t think things have changed that much in our world.  Jesus still delights people with the wonderful things He is doing, but His opponents often feel threatened.  Jesus will always work through His Church when He can but He never has been limited to using only His Church.  Don’t you wish, in retrospect, that Church had taken a more active part in breaking down the walls of racial segregation in our country so that the Supreme Court didn’t have to be the institution that did this?  The Church should have been leading the charge on this and other justice issues.

Author Anne Rice recently sent shockwaves in the direction of organized religion when she declared that she would remain as committed to Christ as always but that she would no longer be a part of organized religion, Christianity.  “It’s simply impossible for me to belong to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group,” she declared.  She is hardly alone in her actions.  Because of the Church’s inability to love like Jesus does, we are in danger of being ignored by people all around us who are still very attracted to Jesus.  It is His followers that they don’t like.  I am afraid that we might play the part of the synagogue ruler and be humiliated while people are delighted with all of the wonderful things Jesus is doing all around us.  Lord, straighten us out!

Thanks be unto God that Christ comes to us, taking the initiative to seek us out, calling us into His presence to heal our spirits that cripple us, bending all the rules if necessary to heal us.  May we love like Jesus loves, even if it leads to a cross.  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

The purpose of the lengthy list of faith heroes in Hebrews chapter 11, leading up to the crescendo of Jesus’ endurance of the cross, is to point out that most people who are determined to walk with God are met with adversity.  Enemies of faith abound!  Jesus, the Prince of Peace, even admitted that His coming had set people against each other, even within families.  While it is very true that there is no life like the Christian life and that there is no substitute for the assurance of everlasting life that comes to us through faith in Christ, people still need to know that it won’t be easy!  Temptations never go away.  The taproot of sin has been cut but the weeds live on in our lives each day.  Faith does not shelter us from illness and eventual death, and persecution and ridicule are still possibilities for Christians in our day.  In fact, troubles just might be reassurance for us that we are going in the right direction.  But we are not alone in our journey.  God is with us, and so is that great cloud of witnesses cheering us on!  That cloud is made up of our faith family, our faith heritage.  We come from a great line of followers of God.

As many of you know, I have been on a journey into my family heritage this past year simply because I knew nothing about those who came before my grandfather Holt.  In some ways, these unknown persons have had a greater influence upon my life than even my own parents and so I was determined to learn about them if I could.  Robert and Dorothy Holt decided to leave England for Maryland in the mid-1600′s, probably because they didn’t like Oliver Cromwell’s politics, and that determined my nationality.  Claiborne Holt decided to move to Spartanburg in 1800, and that made me a southerner, determining my accent!  I spent all of last weekend complaining to those Midwesterners of Indiana about their confounded unsweetened tea!  Southerners know better than making tea and not sweeten it!  Learning more about my ancestors has helped me better understand who I am and why I am the way I am, and it has made me more determined to stay in the Spartanburg area after I retire until I “sleep with my ancestors,” as the scripture says.  Our heritage is very important.  It tells us who we are.

Similarly, our faith heritage tells us who we are.  We are all sons and daughters of the first man and the first woman and, therefore, we are all brothers and sisters, even though our travels around our planet have changed us so that we no longer look or talk exactly alike. We are akin to Abraham who ventured out far from home, daring to follow God, daring to believe He could make something of us.  We are like the Israelites who dared to follow God out of the slavery to sin into to the freedom of a land of promise of new life in Christ.  Like Jesus, we are called to a life of self-denial and service where the success of a life is not measured by what you attain but by what you give away.  That is who we are.

Our heritage tells us who we are, but it can also inspire us.  In the list of heroes, Hebrews repeatedly uses the phrase “by faith.”  Faith is a two-sided coin.  Faith can mean trust in God, but it can also mean being loyal to God.  These two meanings go together.  Those who trust in God are loyal to Him.  By trust in God and loyalty to God, people passed through the Red Sea as if they were on dry land.  Their faith in God and loyalty to the orders to march around Jericho in a rather absurd parade resulted in the walls collapsing.  Even Rahab became a traitor to her own people in order to be loyal to God.  Some conquered kingdoms by faith.  Others endured torture and death, floggings and imprisonments.  Others endured poverty rather than be unfaithful to God.  Jesus endured the cross by looking at the joy that was going to be His when He had completed His work of redeeming all of us.  That is our heritage!  We belong to that family of people who persevered in faith and faithfulness, in good times and in bad.  That is who we are!  That inspires us to play our best!

Visiting pastors are drawn to the “rogue’s gallery” as we call it – the pictures in the hall of all the pastors who have served Memorial.  It is eye-catching and inspiring.  I look at those pictures and I figure if Memorial survived them, there is a good chance you will survive me, too!  I see the picture of great-grandfather Alston B. Earle and of Uncle Joel Cannon and I think what a privilege is mine to be reaping the harvest that they planted.  You are a strong church, indeed, if you can survive three hits from the same gene pool!  Whenever I see those pictures of all those pastors, I am reminded that I am surrounded by a great cloud of pastoral witnesses who are yelling their words of encouragement down at me.  Lord, help me hear them.  I owe them so much.

People who followed Jesus in the first three centuries had to live in hiding, fearing for their lives and the lives of their families.  They could be declared unfit parents and have their children removed from their homes.  They had to worship in secret, fearing the Romans.  Somehow without Kinkos, they managed to write and reproduce hundreds of copies of their sacred texts, even while they were running from the authorities.  They were fed to lions; they were burned at the stake.  But the Christian faith not only survived, it thrived.  Don’t we owe those pioneers of the faith something?

In the Seventeenth Century, people died crossing the Atlantic in search of religious and political freedom.  Would you believe that my cousin has found a link between great-grandpa Alston Earle and three Mayflower families?  I’m a pilgrim, and you probably are also.  You just haven’t discovered that yet.  Most of you have ancestors who came here, not looking for wealth but looking for a chance to worship God in the manner they chose.  Don’t we owe them something, both as Christians and Americans?

Our heritage informs us.  Our heritage inspires us.  But our heritage doesn’t have to limit us.  You can always adjust your heritage a bit.  I mentioned my forebears Robert and Dorothy Holt.  Theirs may have been one of the first divorces in America.  I don’t know what went wrong, but she was overheard telling a friend that she would just as soon kill her husband as to have to keep living with him.  Now, some of you wives have also said that about your husbands.  I’m not sure, but it sounds like Dorothy Holt was an ancestor of Penny Holt.  But subsequent generations were not limited by this divorce.  We chose a different heritage for ourselves.

That was also true for one of my very good friends.  As a teenager, he became aware that his biological heritage had been very detrimental to his well-being, and that was true for several generations in his family.  He was determined to find a better future for his family.  He was invited by a Sunday School teacher to graft himself into her family.  Throughout college and even after graduation and marriage, my friend went to that family’s Christmas dinner each year.  With a new adopted heritage, complete with a new mother and father and siblings, my friend went on to be a healthier, more successful human being and wise pastor, tossing aside the harmful heritage that had been destroying him.  You see, he decided he was going to be like his new family, not his old.  The New Testament says we can do that same thing!  We can abandon the heritage of sin and death and graft ourselves into the family of God where God is our Father and Jesus is our big brother.  Paul said that this is what happened to the Gentiles who had been grafted together with Israel into a new tree which is rooted in Christ.  We have a great and glorious heritage that can inspire and motivate our futures.  We are surrounded by our heritage, our cloud of witnesses, and that should tell us who we are, inspire us, and help us live faithfully.  And if you are not a part of this heritage, you can become part of it today.  You can have new roots!

We are all out on the playing field.  We are facing a team of enemies determined to defeat us.  But up there in the stands surrounding us is a great cloud of witnesses, followers of God who have already fought and won the good fight of faith.  They were once on the field of battle, so they understand our struggles.  But now they are at the throne of God, worshiping God, joining Christ in praying for our team on earth.  That heritage should inform us of who we are and what a life of faithfulness looks like.  That heritage should inspire us to be as dedicated to our Lord as they were.  Our heritage removes our limitations and it includes Jesus “the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

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Let’s be honest with ourselves and one another.  Jesus’ parable about the rich man makes us a bit uncomfortable.  What is wrong with a man becoming very successful, so successful that he need to build bigger barns?  It is the American way!  I’ve been trying to reap a greater harvest and build bigger barns my whole life!  What is wrong with stockpiling for the future?   It is very wise to save for rainy days.  Didn’t Joseph warn Pharaoh to set aside extra grain for the lean years that were about to descend upon Egypt?  With old age coming our way, we all hope to store away enough in our retirement barns so that we can someday take life easy – to eat, drink, and be merry.  We all want to get ahead in life.  And so this parable makes us all a little uncomfortable.  We struggle with this and other teachings of Jesus about wealth.

Why did Jesus have to talk so much about money anyway?  He had more to say about money than he did any other subject.  He said that repentant sinners – even the vilest of sinners – would be welcomed into God’s Kingdom but that it would be easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for any rich person to get into heaven!  While preachers in America today love to preach about lots of moral issues, Jesus had very little to say about these things and a whole bunch to say about money.  If He were preaching in our country today, Jesus would not be a very popular preacher.  We might even want to join the group that conspired against Him.  We want Jesus to be talking about somebody else, those evil folks over there, and not us.  And we surely don’t want to be seen as hypocrites!  And so we relatively rich Americans cannot help but squirming a bit when Jesus opens up on us His harshest criticism.

Jesus told this parable in response to a man who hoped to drag Jesus into a family dispute over an inheritance.  In those days, real estate was handed down from fathers to eldest sons, but younger sons usually inherited a portion of disposable goods.  The brothers in this family were having some disagreements.  But Jesus saw something more troublesome than the division of inherited possessions – namely greed.  It is one thing to want to have enough but it is quite another thing to be obsessed with getting.  Perhaps that is the point here.  Perhaps it is one thing to work hard to succeed and another thing to become so obsessed with wealth that we ignore other more important things.

The dictionary defines greed as the excessive desire to possess wealth or goods.  Along with wrath, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony, it is considered to be one of the “Seven Deadly Sins” and it will surely get you on Oprah, especially if you run up a credit card bill of $100,000.  While we all get angry, it is deadly and dangerous when it becomes an all-consuming wrath.  We all get hungry, but when we spend too much time at buffets, it shows!  We all want possessions, but when we go overboard and become possessed by our love for possessions, it can become greed.  When it does, then we have lost the awareness what life is really about and what is important in life.  That drew this concern from Jesus: “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.”  Fulfillment in life, Jesus said, does not come through an obsession with accumulating things.

What is it about greed that makes it so dangerous?  Perhaps Jesus’ listeners that day saw the error of this farmer’s ways more easily than we do.  Perhaps the farmer’s first error was his self-centeredness.  There was the custom in the ancient world – and it was even commanded by God – that farmers were to intentionally leave some unharvested crops in their fields for the poor, especially the widows and orphans.  Poor people were allowed to glean the fields, to pick leftover crops for themselves.  Perhaps this farmer took it all for himself.  He didn’t care what happened to the poor around him, just as long as his barns were stuffed.

Someone from up in coal country told me recently that back when the coal mines were running at full capacity, trucks packed with coal would come around those mountain roads so fast that huge chunks of coal would be flung off of those trucks.  The lumps of coal were then picked up by poor people to heat their houses.  Some young entrepreneurs even sold some of this coal to their neighbors.  That was how gleaning was done up in coal country.  Gleaning is still a way that the poor are cared for in our country and in the world.  Jesus’ hearers would have probably realized that the picture Jesus was painting of this farmer was that of one who was not as generous as he should have been.  If we get so busy saving for a rainy day that we ignore the cries of the needy around us, we need to heed Jesus’ warning about greed.  There needs to be a balance.

Secondly, it might have occurred Jesus’ hearers that perhaps this man had not been as diligent about tithing his harvest as he had been commanded to do.  It was fine for him to have plenty for tomorrow as long as he paid his tithe to take care of the less fortunate around him.  In Malachi 3:8, those who refused to give to God their offerings were said to be robbing God.

It is always interesting to me that whenever the subject of tithing – giving 10% to God – comes up, we love to debate what should be counted as the basis of our tithe.  With a huge chunk of our salary already taken out for taxes and Social Security, should we reduce our salaries by those amounts before we calculate a tithe?   The reason I find this discussion so humorous is that the average per capita giving percentage among Christians is 2%.  So, yes; go ahead and reduce your salary by your taxes and then tithe what’s left!  Donations would go way up, as would that percentage!  In fact, if all Christians in America would go on welfare and then tithe from their welfare checks, church offerings would go way up!  American Christians gave a higher percentage of their incomes during the great depression than we did during the time of prosperity during the Reagan years and the 1990′s.  Last year, only 9% of Christians in America tithed.  We spend more on deodorants and cosmetics than we do on missions.  When you and I are so busy filling our own barns that we fail to give what we should to God, we need to hear Jesus saying to us, “Watch out!  Guard against all kinds of greed.”

Thirdly, greed is dangerous because it blinds us to what is really important in life.  The farmer in the parable had been very successful.  He had built bigger barns and had plenty for his future years.  But what he didn’t have was “future years”!  His life was cut short as happens so often here on earth.  “This very night your life will be demanded from you,” Jesus said.  “Then who will get what you prepared for yourself?”  The folly of greed is that you can’t take it with you.

Rev. Lawrence Wood, a United Methodist pastor in Michigan, tells of attending an estate sale of Edna, a dear woman who collected Hummel figurines.  Edna was now dead, and her family was cleaning out the house.  Rev. Wood says, “Now the auctioneer calls out Lot 152, a collection of four hundred Hummels. Eyes roll and knowing smiles break out, but no one bids. The auctioneer looks at the estate agent, the agent looks at Edna’s oldest daughter: a lifetime’s hobby and a person’s identity have come to this. It’s almost possible to hear Jesus asking, ‘And these Hummels, whose will they be?’” (The Christian Century, July 27, 2004, p.20).

Like Edna, we fill our barns with things that we might value but that someone else will consider worthless junk. All we take with us from this world is the treasure we have laid up for ourselves in heaven through our faith in God and our acts of mercy and kindness.

I’ve spent lots of time across the years talking with older folks.  Many of them have regrets, and most of the regrets is that they spent too many hours working for their bosses and not enough time playing with their children.  Greed can blind us to what really matters.

Greed is leaving its mark here on American culture today.  We have a terrific educational system which we designed to help people get ahead – to become successful doctors, lawyers, teachers, chefs, auto mechanics, farmers, CEO’s, football players, etc. We tell all our children to get the education that they will need in order to have a job that will make their lives easier and more meaningful.  We inspire our children with the hope of getting paid really big bucks so that they will be able to buy lots of junk, but we don’t inspire them to be willing to make huge sacrifices in order to serve God, His church, or our fellow human beings.  Have you known that many people who were willing to go to a foreign mission field?  I’ve only known two personally.  I know one young person, a friend of our son, who today is in Morocco serving in the peace corps.  Not many are hearing God’s call to preach.  We dangle the carrot of greed on the string in front of our youth when we – at least those of us in the church – should be dangling a cross of self-sacrifice in front of our children.  Life is waiting for them – real life – life worth living – and it is found through sacrifice and service, not through greed.  Life is found, in Jesus’ words, by being “rich toward God.”  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

Just before I was appointed to the three churches of the Saluda Circuit, my District Superintendent conducted a workshop on conflict management in the local church.  He warned us that church people fight over the strangest things and that, unless the concern was an obvious case of moral right and wrong, pastors should try to remain neutral so that they can mediate peace between the two sides.  You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to maintain neutrality!  An Administrative Board meeting at one of my churches blew apart one night over an ongoing conflict and both sides were mad at me for not assuming command at that moment, issuing some ruling to silence the debate.  But I had decided not to play the role of referee.  They seemed to like to fight, and I didn’t want to deprive them of their pleasure.  The wonderful thing was that when they discovered that I wasn’t going to blow a whistle to signal a foul, they began to take more responsibility for their meetings and to show more respect for one another.  There are times when referees do more harm than good.

Jesus was always having to resist the temptation to be pulled into a fight as a referee.  One time a man said to Jesus, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”  Very wisely, Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?”  Another time when Jesus almost got trapped occurred at the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.  Jesus, a family friend and respected teacher, was to dine there at that house that evening, and special preparations needed to be made for that very special guest.  Martha was running in circles trying to get the table set just right and the food prepared on time.  Mary saw this as a chance for a personal conversation with Jesus about God and life.  Luke said that Mary sat at Jesus’ feet, a phrase that meant that she assumed the status of a student, making Jesus her teacher.  Can’t you just see Martha coming into the living room over and over again, sighing deeply, hinting to Mary that she needed to get herself into the kitchen to help her with the meal?  Mary just would take the hint!  Unable to coax Mary into action on her own, Martha turned to Jesus, asking him to be the referee. “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all this work by myself?  Tell her to help me!”  Jesus loved Martha as much as He did Mary.  He appreciated what Martha was doing in preparing food for their meal as much as He appreciated Mary’s interest in spiritual matters.  He could have been drawn into the conflict where He might have said, “Martha is right; Mary, go help her” or He might have said, “Mary is right, and so Martha, you should stop what you are doing and come sit here with us and listen to me.”  Instead, Jesus tactfully dodged the invitation to become the referee, saying “Mary made her own decision to sit here with me, and I’m not going to be the one to override her decision.”  Smart man!

Jesus also said something in this dialogue that reminds us how important it is to prioritize important things so that we don’t leave the best things in life undone while we are attending to other important things that are not quite as important at the moment.  Mary had come to the awareness that, although a delicious meal upon a well-decorated table was important, nothing could be more important than a few precious one-on-one moments with Jesus.  And Jesus said, “I won’t deprive Mary of what is most important to her.”

Have you ever been so busy providing for your children or your spouse that you didn’t have time to just be with them?  Wasn’t that one of the main plots in the Jim Carrey movie, Liar Liar?  He was a successful lawyer, providing a good home for his wife and son, but he was never really there in person for them.  He was worried and upset about many things, ignoring the one really necessary, most important thing.  There are many good parents who intend on spending quality time with their families, but they never get around to it.  Children get grown and gone out of the house before you have had time to get to know them!  People intend to develop their spiritual lives, but they live so fast during the week that they need to sleep all day Sunday, and so their spiritual needs get pushed back to “someday.”  Sometimes someday never comes.  We need to learn what is most important and do that first!  Mary knew what was most important.  Food could be prepared later.  Jesus was here for a visit now.

A few years ago, a workshop leader at Junaluska brought in a glass jar, some small stones, a few large rocks, and some sand.  He first put the sand in the jar, and then he added some of the small stones.  Only one of the large rocks would go into the jar.  That left out some of the small stones and most of the large rocks. Then he dumped everything out of the jar and started over.  This time he put all of the large rocks in first.  Next he put in all of the small stones.  Finally he poured in all of the sand.  It all fit perfectly.  The small stones filled in the empty space between the large rocks and the sand filled in all of the rest of the space.  By this parable, the workshop leader explained that the biggest, most important things in our lives needed to get top priority, like the large rocks going in the jar first.  Then things of great but lesser importance should go in next – like the small stones.  Finally, all of the little details of our lives, as numerous as the grains of sand in the jar, will find their places.  But, he warned, if you wait on attending to the most important things in your life, you might find that there is no room for them.  They will be crowded out by the not-quite-as-important things.

Martha allowed the not-quite-as-important things to keep her from having very valuable personal time with Jesus.  You and I allow all kinds of less-important things to steal all of our time that could be spent on things of greater necessity and importance.  Like Martha, we worry and become upset about many things, but only one thing is really needed and ultimate in importance.  Like Mary, let us be careful to spend our first energies on our time with Jesus and His people.  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

People called Jesus “Teacher” because that is what the word “rabbi” means.  He held class in the marketplace, in the streets, and by the lakeshore.  Students were always trying to trip Him up and measure their own status against His.  Others who fancied themselves as teachers also liked questioning Jesus, testing this rabbi from Nazareth.  Jesus enjoyed these exchanges.  He especially like using a time-honored teaching technique of returning a question to the one who asked it, in essence saying, “Let me hear your answer before I give you mine.”

Jesus was always able to judge which students were asking a sincere question and which ones had other agendas. On this occasion, Jesus saw right through a questioner.  The man was known by everyone to be an expert in the Law, and so why was he asking how to inherit eternal life?  This man already had his answer to this question; he knew what the Law of Moses required: to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and to love your neighbor as yourself.  Listen to Jesus’ short response to this man: “That’s right; now go do it.”  In turning the tables on this expert, Jesus was exposing his motive and putting him in a spot to where he felt the need to ask a second question to justify himself.

That word “justify” is an interesting concept.  From our computers and typewriters, we know that we can line up all the words on a printed page with a margin.  When our family celebrates a birthday, we explain what we are taking a second piece of cake.  We do this in order to straighten up the cut edge of the cake, to make that margin straight; at least that is what we say.  This expert in the law felt a loss of respect from how Jesus had answered him and now he wants to straighten up the respect others had for him.  “Just who is my neighbor, Jesus?”

Jesus’ response is well known to all of us.  “The Parable of the Good Samaritan” is only reported by Luke, and so we would be missing out on this wonderful story if we had only the other three gospels.  It is an interesting study as to why each gospel writer included the stories that he did and left out others.  It all had to do with their intended audience.  You need to be careful not to alienate the very people you are intending to win for Christ!  My sermons used to be packed full of jokes about Clemson until I learned that I was alienating half of my congregation.  I realized this just before someone burned a wooden chicken in my front yard…  Matthew, who was trying to portray Jesus as a very loyal Hebrew, would have had difficulty repeating a story that made a hero out of an enemy!  I don’t think that today you are in the mood to hear the “Parable of the Good Taliban Soldier.”  But Luke had a different audience in mind, one that included Gentiles and even Samaritans, and so he included this and other stories to illustrate Jesus’ love for outsiders and the common people.  One of my seminary professors told us that people of that day loved ethnic jokes, and most of these jokes made the Samaritans the butt of the joke.  They also liked to joke about their religious leaders, and so it might be helpful to realize that this parable took the form of a joke. The surprise at the end of the joke is that the usual “bad guy” was made the hero of this story.

You know the details of the story.  A man went down the wrong road, one known to be dangerous because of the robbers who traveled that road in search of people to rob.  The man traveled alone, never a good idea.  He was accosted by at least two robbers who easily overpowered him.  They knocked him unconscious, took his possessions and clothes, and left him half dead.  He probably looked completely dead; otherwise, I cannot fathom why a temple priest and a synagogue leader would just walk by the man without checking on his condition.  There are bad health issues resulting from contact with a dead person, and their jobs as worship leaders couldn’t be done if they became sick or religiously defiled by coming into contact with a corpse.  The point of their inclusion in the story is that these two men of all people should have been able to be counted on to take care of a wounded man.  Probably they were of the same nation and religion as the injured man.  We might understand it if others ignored this injured man, but we would be shocked to hear that a preacher or a teacher didn’t stop to offer help.  The priest and the Levite might even be than injured man’s neighbors, but they didn’t behave very neighborly.

I wonder what the reaction of the audience was when Jesus uttered the word “Samaritan”?  Some have suggested that, since people were used to hearing ethnic jokes about the Samaritans, that people started laughing the moment that word came out of Jesus’ mouth.  If the priest and the Levite ignored that injured man, what would a Samaritan do?  Perhaps he would trip over the man and fall down – something dumb like that.  Maybe he would see if the robbers left anything behind.  Surely he wouldn’t stop to help the injured man.  Samaritans wouldn’t do something nice like that.  They can’t be trusted.  They are all lazy.  And they hate us!  But, Jesus said, this one felt pity for the injured man and went over to him.  First he cleaned, disinfected, and bandaged the wounds as best he could.  Then he placed the man on his own donkey and took him to a nearby motel where he could rest and recuperate in safety.  Then when he had to continue on his journey, he payed the motel owner to continue caring for the injured man, promising to reimburse the innkeeper if he incurred any other expenses.  Of the Levite, the priest, and the Samaritan, which one acted like he was a neighbor to the injured man, Jesus asked.  It was obvious to everyone, but the learned expert in the law couldn’t bring himself to even say the race of the neighborly man.  Unable to say “Samaritan,” the expert said instead that the neighborly one was the one who had shown mercy to the hurt man.

One of the problems that we humans have is putting too many limits on our mercy and love.  Peter wanted to know if he could stop forgiving his brother after seven offenses but Jesus told him that forgiveness didn’t keep score.  If God wants me to love my neighbor as myself, how far does my neighborhood have to extend?  I’ve got to set some limits on my neighborhood or else I’ll never get to the end of being kind to others!

Jesus was trying to enlarge people’s neighborhood every day.  He talked every day about a Kingdom ruled by God that would reach out to include everyone in God’s neighborhood.  He encouraged the very righteous and religious to reach out in love to the sinners around them because there was a place for both in His Kingdom.  If a member of the Roman Army which was occupying Israel at that time demands you to carry his armor one mile, consider him a neighbor and carry it a second mile.  If someone persecutes you, pray for him as if he were your neighbor.  And even those Samaritans over there, they are your neighbors, too.

Edwin Markham pinned a very famous poem entitled “Outwitted” that expresses the heart of Jesus as He tries to include us all:

He drew a circle that shut me out ‑

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle and took him in!

Jesus was telling the expert in the Law to draw a bigger circle, one big enough to include even the Samaritans.

There was something else noteworthy about the flow of this parable.  The story began when the expert asked what he must do in order to earn eternal life.  They agreed that God requires one to love God completely and love his neighbor as himself.  But the story ultimately ends not on an emphasis on works of care but on a note of mercy.  The Samaritan had shown mercy to the injured man.  Ultimately it isn’t our work of loving God and neighbor that saves us but the mercy of God which He so generously bestows upon us in Christ!  “Go and do likewise,” Jesus tells us.  “Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.”  As God has been merciful to us, so are we to be merciful to one another.

The great thing about mercy is that it is given by the offended to an offender who does not deserve it and never will.  The Samaritan showed mercy to the injured man, even though they were enemies.  God shows us mercy.  While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  Who do you need mercy from today?  Who needs for you to be merciful to them today?  O Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

People were always getting mad at Jesus for things He said, and sometimes it had to catch Him by surprise.  Once Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  What could be offensive about that? But some in His congregation got angry and answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been anybody’s slaves.”  Then He stopped preaching and went to meddling, as we say:  “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.”

If Jesus had a chance to preach to America today, He would say that when He looks at us, He sees people who are slaves, in spite of the freedom we are guaranteed in our Constitution.  Our overcrowded jails are one indication of our enslavement and our drug-addicted population is another.  We have to lock our doors and purchase security alarms because some people are slaves of the habit of stealing. People drink to excess and then try to drive home.  Some Americans are habitually unfaithful to their mates and others of us are addicted to our knives, forks, and spoons.  I asked my doctor once if he thought I had an underactive thyroid and he said, “No, but you might have an overactive fork!”  We are slaves of sin.

Personal debts enslave most of us.  Few of our young adults finish college without massive debts and are slaves of those debts for much of their adult life.  This is especially true of our young preachers who finish seminary with huge debts and then are appointed to our smallest churches that pay the lowest salaries.  Some of them will be paying off their seminary expenses until they retire!  Most of us carry far too much debt on our high-interest credit cards, and if you don’t have health insurance, as is true for more and more Americans each year, one hospitalization can lead to bankruptcy.  We are slaves of our poor stewardship.

In his letter to the Galatians churches, Paul talks about proper use of the freedom that Christ has given us, and that causes me to think about how we need to be careful to use our American freedom responsibly as well.  Paul warns us not to give up our freedom by allowing ourselves to become enslaved again.  He next gives us a list of some things that can enslave people, and we quickly agree with many of those items.  He names immorality, debauchery, drunkenness, idolatry, and witchcraft, and we say, “Amen, Paul!  Preach it, brother!”  Then he hits us right between the eyes with some surprising things that God considers just as sinful: hatred, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, envy, causing disagreements, and splitting up into various factions.  We hear that list and we want to say, “Now, wait just one doggone minute, Paul.  I deserve to hate that person for what they did to me.  Yes, I am jealous of those people – they get all the breaks and I have nothing but bad luck!  And what’s wrong with wanting to be first in my chosen profession, and how can I help being envious of actors and ball players who make a thousand times more per year than I do?  And I don’t mean to cause so many disagreements, but I have some very strong political opinions!  I happen to like the political faction that I belong to and I’m not very fond of the other ones.”  Paul responds, “I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.”  Yikes!

Jesus was right.  We are not free.  We are slaves.  We need the Son to save us.  We need for God to show us how to make good use of the freedom our ancestors have given us and that Jesus has provided.  We need for the Son to constantly set us free.

One of the problems in the early church was that people didn’t understand what they had been freed from.  They heard that they had been freed from the Law of Moses and some of them misunderstood this to mean that they were free from the moral imperatives contained therein and that now they were free to become immoral and irresponsible.  Some folks in Thessalonika thought that freedom in Christ meant that they no longer had to work for a living.  If salvation and God’s love were free gifts, and if God would always love them no matter what, then let’s get busy sinning, they thought.

Paul explained that this was not what he meant by being free from the Law.  It couldn’t mean that because we should so identify with Jesus’ cross of self-denial that we strive to become dead – numb – to the temptation to sin.  If Jesus was dead to sin because of His self-denial, so should we be.  So, they weren’t free to sin; they were dead to sin.  I am still crucifying some of my sins.  They aren’t dead yet, but I’m working on them.  I hope you are working on yours also.

What then were they freed from? They had been freed from a legalistic religious system that demanded strict observance of all laws if one was going to be saved.  Their salvation no longer depended on their own perfection.  It now depended upon what Christ had done for us.  But that did not mean that they could sin as they pleased now.  In fact, Paul wrote that we should be careful not to misuse our freedom as an excuse to indulge in sin.  We have been freed from a legalistic religious system.  We have been freed from the penalty for our sin.  But that did not mean that we were free to sin as we please.

Secondly, Paul said that we were free to enjoy a much simpler religious system defined as “love your neighbor as you love yourself.”  We are free from having to remember a thousand little rules as long as we remembered that one little rule.  Well, it would also be helpful to also remember the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” How wonderful it would be if, before we took any action toward another human being, we asked ourselves, “Is this a loving action?  Is this how I would want to be treated?”   We don’t have to be slaves to sin any longer or to the Law now if we would become slaves of Christ’s simple religious rules.

Some years ago, Bob Dylan tried to tell us this same thing in a song “Gotta Serve Somebody.”  He said that no matter who you are, “… you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed, You’re gonna have to serve somebody. Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”  We can be free from slavery to sin as long as we were willing slaves of Christ.

Thirdly, we become free when we allow God’s Spirit to pack us full of His goodness.  I heard the Christian life once described this way by a preacher.  It isn’t so much trying so hard to avoid bad things; it is, rather, packing your life so full of good things that you don’t leave yourself time for the bad things!  I like that.  You fill your time with good things so that you don’t give yourself time for mischief.  I know that when we were busy raising small children, we tried to keep them busy with good things.  Penny took them to story time at the library one day and to other activities on other days.  Both children went to a preschool program.  John used to tell people that he went to preschool at the “bappy church.”  They both played sports.  Our church had a softball field right next to our parsonage, and our children played on co-ed softball teams until they were in high school.  Then Hillary got busy with school chorus and John played varsity soccer.  We also carried them to church every week.  We had an agreement that they would go to church as long as they lived at home with us.  I wish we had been at a church that had employed a Katie Jeter to plan programs for them when they were little.  I wish we had been in a church with an Andy Watson working with them during their teen years.  If our children were growing up here at Memorial today, we would have them here for every activity!  I would let you fill their lives up with good things.  I tell you, if you are busy driving a family taxi around, hauling kids from one good activity to another, they won’t have time for mischief and neither will you!  The Christian life is not a matter of just avoiding bad things; it is a matter of filling our lives with worthwhile things.

The Holy Spirit comes to us to pack our lives with good things, too,  like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self‑control.  The Spirit doesn’t just empty us of sin and leave us empty.  Jesus said that if we stay empty, the evil spirit that has left us will come back and reoccupy us – and bring along seven of his evil spirit friends too.  Thanks be unto God that after we are cleaned up by Christ, we can seek to be full of the Spirit so that we don’t return to our evil ways.

Paul concludes this passage with these words: “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”  That paints a picture of a marching band or a group of soldiers marching, kept in step either by a drummer or by a drill sergeant’s cadence.  We are free as we keep matching together, keeping in step with Jesus’ cadence.  We are freed by following the Spirit’s drumbeat in our lives.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt