Claimed, gathered and sent

  I've gotten a bit behind, but this is the sermon I preached at St. Timothy Lutheran Church on Sunday, July 31. The text is Luke 12:13-2 1.   Diseases are all around us—the latest forms of COVID, Monkeypox and others. Another that’s been around for quite a while is Affluenza. Young and old, rich and poor suffer from it. In societies like ours, it has reached epidemic proportions.   Affluenza even rears its ugly head throughout scripture; in both testaments. In today’s gospel, we see a pointed parable concerning Affluenza. A disagreement over the division of an inheritance introduces the parable. This issue is all too familiar to many of us. We have seen families violently, irreparably divided over inheritance issues. Jesus tells a parable to address it and how we hear the parable is influenced by this introductory issue.  A farmer was blessed with a bumper crop. It doesn’t say the man has done anything wrong toward his employees or anything else. The farmer wa...

This is the sermon I preached on Sunday, 7/31 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The text is Luke 12:13-21 Our society encourages us to succeed. From the time we are children, we are taught that if we work hard and do our very best we will be rewarded. Having plenty of money, a nice house, lots of vacations and a good retirement is what we are told to strive for. Some would consider such success a sign of God’s blessing of our efforts.    That theology was even more prominent in Jesus’ time. From that perspective, the rich landowner was a success. In fact, he was so successful that his current storage facilities were too small. Today's gospel passage is bracketed by two equally powerful, yet opposite drives--greed and being rich toward God. When Ray and I moved from Rhode Island to Gettysburg for seminary, we left many things in storage in Rhode Island. We felt we could do without them for four years and we did. Whenever we visited Rhode Island and drove by ...