Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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Greed grabs more, chasing life, but life is with God - so...
Guard against greed - there’s no life there
Be rich toward God who’s been rich towards us - you’ll find life there
Intro
I’ve got £10 here which I don’t really need.
And do you know what, I’m just wondering if any of you lovely people want a bit more money?
Who fancies a bit more money?
Hands up.
£10 for you, my friend.
How many of us want just a bit more money?
Let’s be honest, pretty much all of us.
How many of us are here today thinking, “do you know, actually, I’ve got enough, as much as I want”?
Really?
How much is enough?
Well, this is John Rockefeller - ever heard of him?
Toward the end of the 1800’s he was a MAJOR name let me tell you: founder of Standard Oil, which became the largest and most profitable company in the world, he was also the richest man in the world.
He owned a far larger proportion of the total wealth of the US than any of our modern billionaires like Amazon’s Jess Bezos or Microsoft’s Bill Gates.
He was stinkin’ massive mega ludicrous rich.
So when he was asked in an interview “just how much was enough”, what do you think he said?
“Just a little bit more”.
Even for the richest man in the world, how much is enough?
Just a little bit more.
But it’s not just him.
In 2018 a Harvard researcher asked more than 2000 people, each worth over a million dollars, how happy they were on a scale of 1-10 - and how much more money they’d need to get that to a 10.
How much more?
“All the way up the income-wealth spectrum, basically everyone says two or three times as much.”
[that’s a direct quote from the researcher] Not just a little bit more but a whole lot more!
But it’s not just them.
Let’s be honest, this is true for us too.
When are you going to have enough?
Enough vbucks?
Enough riot points?
Enough clothes?
Enough bedrooms?
Enough holidays?
Enough money?
How much would be enough?
… Well just a little bit more.
Why is “enough” so hard to achieve?
What is it makes us dissatisfied with wherever we are, that always makes us want more and more — and more?
What is it that is just so appealing about stuff?
It’s the promises that it keeps on making.
Stuff, this stuff we want more and more of, is busy making promises.
It promises us joy.
It promises us rest.
It promises us security.
Yet every time we get that little bit more, turns out it doesn’t keep it promise.
But here’s the crazy thing: somehow, even though this stuff we have now didn’t keep it’s promise, we’re stupid enough to think that stuff, the stuff we don’t quite have yet, that’s totally going to do it.
Doh! [face-palm]
We’re all chasing after joy, rest, security through our stuff.
At it’s heart, we’re chasing life itself.
And Jesus has something to say to us about that.
We’re working our way through Luke’s gospel, Luke’s telling of Jesus’ life story, as a church and today Jesus has stuff in his sights, and this question of enough.
He has some things to say to say to us which are just as relevant today as they were 2,000 years so.
So let’s listen together to what he has to say - Carolyn’s going to read for us today and we’re in Luke chapter 12, that’s page ________ in these blue bibles, Luke chapter 12 - look for the big 12, and verse 13, small 13.
Page _______, big 12, small 13.
“Be on your guard against all kinds of greed,” Jesus says.
Why?
Not because greed harms others (though it does - that’s just not what Jesus is saying right here) - but because greed harms us; it’s self-harm.
Greed is looking for life in all the wrong places - thinking “just a little bit more” is going to bring us rest, security, joy.
Greed is asking for life from things that just can’t give it: uncaring, dead things like money and cars and houses and toys.
“life does not consist in an abundance of possessions”, Jesus says - or as another translation puts it, “life is not measured by how much you own.”
Greed doesn’t bring us life - all those things break all the promises they make - they have no power at all to give us life.
Instead of life, greed steals away life through misplaced hope - and in its place greed brings us death.
That’s what Jesus’ parable says.
The rich man’s greed brings him death not life.
Now I don’t expect many of us here are set on pursuing greed - but it has this nasty habit of just sneaking into our lives with it’s “just a little bit more line.”
So it’s something we have to keep on guarding against - that’s what Jesus’ warning here tells us: So how do we do that?
Easy to say, harder to do.
I think this parable has two big helps for us in guarding against greed.
First, we should remember there’s a giver.
Take a look again at v16 “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest.
He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do?
I have no place to store my crops."
This rich man here - he’s just a whole lot like us.
No place to store my crops, he thinks.
My crops.
Why are they my crops?
Because my ground yielded an abundant harvest.
Oh did it now?
And that’s yours, you say?
Sure you can plough, and plant, and water.
But God gives the growth.
The ground ultimately belongs to God.
And it’s fruitfulness ultimately depends on him.
We have a tendency to see all productivity, all the things we can accomplish, intuitively as our own.
“I worked hard today, I earned my salary,” we say “so now it’s my money and I can do with it what I want”.
Like the rich man sees what the ground produces as his crops.
But there’s a flaw in that thinking: it rests on everything belonging to us to begin with.
Imagine this: imagine I give you a fabulously powerful robot which can do any DIY job you can imagine in seconds.
Imagine you take that robot and go knocking on doors all down your street looking for odd jobs, get a heap of them done for people, and come back with a giant wadge of cash in your pocket.
Is that really all yours?
It’s my robot, after all.
All our productivity - all our talents and skills, all our capabilities - ultimately come from God.
We have no right to be good at art, or at computers, or at sports or whatever.
Any gift we have is one he’s given to us - it’s not ours by right.
And so when we use it, does the result really belong to us? Are we right to call it “mine”?
If you can do something our culture pays well for, who made you so able?
If you were exactly you in Dhaka’s slums, what chance would you have of getting paid?
Or in ancient Iraq, say?
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