Lectionary: Luke 12:16-21
Ya know what they say: you can’t take it with you.
Christ makes this pretty clear in his story today, a story about a rich man concerned with erecting new barns for his plentiful harvest. With all this wealth and all these resources, the rich man is excited that he can now kick up his feet and enjoy some well-earned complacency. The harvest has been fruitful, God has been merciful, now it is time to sit back and live a comfortable life.
But Lo! Surprise! His soul is required of him this very night! What a fool, he has placed all of his focus on his possessions, and on his comfort, and now that the Lord has come for him, he has nothing to show for it, nothing to take with him!
...Alright, I think I get it: possessions are bad, camels can’t fit through eyes of needles. I’ve heard this all before. But hey, I’m a priest, ya know, I wasn’t really worried about erecting barns to hold my riches anyway, so I’m real glad Christ’s story doesn’t actually apply to me, right? I mean, how many of us truly feel that we can take it easy like this rich man, anyway? Who amongst us is truly in a place where we have no concerns, no responsibilities? No financial worries, no anxieties?
Sure, things might even be good now, but when is the stock market-shaped shoe going to drop? What if something major in the house breaks, what if my car breaks down, what if I lose my job tomorrow? And what if things already aren’t going well right now? What if I am doing everything I can just to keep my head above water?
Well, I better hustle, I better keep my head down, I better do whatever it takes to provide for me and my family. And you know what, I need to do better than that. I need to set my loved ones up with enough so that they never have to worry about any of this, so that they will be comfortable and happy. What I’ll do is, I’ll squirrel away anything and everything, I’ll devote all my focus to getting through whatever is in the way of my end goal, so that I can get to that prosperous and peaceful life that I ask God for every Liturgy. And if God is good to me along the way, great, I’ll take those gifts and I’ll pool them all together. There’s plenty of rainy days out there, so it would be foolish to spend anything now, right? And you know what, once I have enough that I can finally rest and enjoy this life with my family, then I’ll be happy. It’ll be me, my comfortable life, and those barns full of my stuff -
Hey! Wait a second!
I just ended up with the same exact mindset as this rich fool, and I don’t even have any riches! When we become preoccupied with the concerns and anxieties of this life, what we are really focused on is the future. We become concerned with the what-ifs, the unforeseen challenges and problems that we want to be ready for. We might have the best of intentions, we might do it because we want to care for ourselves and our loved ones, to ensure that everything will be okay. But if we let our hopes and fears for the future rule our lives, we are left devastated when things go wrong anyway. Because things do go wrong. Roadblocks pile up, life constantly challenges our security, our comforts, our best laid plans. When the unforeseen circumstances of life take away our hope for the future, where then do we have any hope left?
Christ, unlike these hopes and anxieties that we’ve preoccupied ourselves with, is not off in the future somewhere. He is here, now, and he is taking care of us right here, even in the present moment. You see, Christ has more to say right after his story about the rich man. Right after what we have just heard, today, Christ goes on to talk about birds, ravens to be specific. He talks about how these ravens have no jobs, no barns, no 401k. And yet they live. Their life is not earned through their toils and labors, but as a gift from God. They live their little bird lives, trusting that God will provide for them. So who are we, who are so much greater than ravens, placing all of our trust in earthly cares instead of in God? He then talks about lilies, flowers in the field that attain their beauty and their vibrancy not through toils, not through hoarding of resources, not through anxiety about the future. They flourish and live by Gods grace, they simply live. Who are we, laying plans and making schemes for rainy days, when we are just as fragile as the lillies, as blades of grass?
We toil and we struggle and we pine for a life that we desire, trying to force our life into whatever we envision for ourselves. But Life itself, life in Christ, is already offered to us freely. And this life in Christ is found in trusting him, in following him, even accompanying him through the struggles and heartbreak of the Cross.
Trust amidst uncertainty, hope amidst tragedy. Christ gave his life not so that our lives would be made perfect “one of these days”, but so that he could transform us now. We find comfort in our daily struggles by remembering that Christ’s victory over death is a victory that is not in the future, It’s not something that we are all just waiting around for. The Resurrection is not someday, but today.
And we find that very Resurrection in the liturgy that we are celebrating right now. The liturgy is not some reminder of a future kingdom of heaven, it is a participation in that kingdom now. This is why we, in just a few minutes, sing the Cherubic Hymn together, and we say that we have now laid aside all of our earthly cares. This is us telling God that we are stepping out of the cares and anxieties of the world, and into the eternal comfort of his kingdom. We are placing our trust in Him.
So when things seem uncertain, when no amount of barns are enough to protect us from the unforeseen challenges of this life, we look to Christ. We look to his Cross, and we are reminded that his sacrifice has provided us eternal life, freedom from anxieties and freedom from death. But this doesn’t mean that we do not struggle, in this life. The uncertainties of the world are still here with us. But what it does mean is that in every moment of suffering, in every moment of struggle, Christ is there with us.
Christ takes all our suffering, even the struggles we face today, and he bears it on the Cross for us, so that we don’t have to do it alone, and so that he can help us overcome that suffering. By placing our trust not in barns, but in Christ, we find that everything that we offer to Him, all the hope, and love, and comfort that we find in Him, we get to take that with us,wherever we go.
Glory to Jesus Christ!
