A sermon for the 8th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 13
August 3, 2025, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR
Readings: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23; Psalm 49:1-11; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21
The big success story had a tragic bent, one that many people didn’t know about. Bill was a priest who was dying. He had a good and loving family–at least it seemed so. He had gone home on hospice care, and he wasn’t expected to make it long. I was called to administer last rites. I walked into the quiet house and to the back room. Bill was there in his bed, his wife and children with him in the room. The air in the room was sober, and it grew more sober as a man in black walked in. It always does. I had not expected Bill to be conscious, which more and more is the norm for last rites. But he was. I walked over, patted him on his hand, leaned down and said gently, “Hello, Father. I am here to give you last rites.” Bill’s head jerked back. “Last rites?!” He croaked out his alarm. At first it appeared no one had told him he was dying. I learned later he had refused to believe it, convinced he could make it through. But he died that night.
Jesus tells us a parable today that should make us uncomfortable. Some of Jesus’s parables seem distant from our modern culture–parables about vineyards or kings or people called Samaritans. But not this one. We all have our barns. You good folks are kind of enough to put 18% of my compensation into a barn every year for Molly and me; we call it the Church Pension Fund. Here we have a man who thinks he is all set to retire, enough to make him live well for years to come. But that night, to his surprise, he dies. Like Fr. Bill, he wasn’t expecting it.
Jesus uses this parable to warn us about greed. He tells the crowd, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” That’s the setup for the parable. The foolish rich man had given into his greed. In a time and place where malnutrition was a leading cause of childhood death, he could think of nothing better than to hoard his grain. He forgets that he is ethically, morally, and religiously obligated to share with the poor and needy all around him. Jesus doesn’t mince words: It’s greed. The man’s soul is sick.
We live in a world sick with greed. Jesus’s world was, too. So it should be no surprise that Jesus talks about money a lot. Of his 38 parables, 16 are about money and what we do with it. A full 10%, or a full tithe, of the Gospel is about money. Jesus is not unusual in the Bible. In fact, the Bible talks about money and wealth four times more than it talks about prayer or faith. Maybe that’s surprising to us–but it may reveal to us where we need to pay attention, because there is danger lurking. Greed is a sickness.
Greed is desiring and hoarding something in excessive measure at the expense of others around us. We can be greedy for any number of things, although in our world it usually is money. In our world today, our very worth–we use that word–our very worth is tied to how much or how little we have in the bank. We can begin to think of ourselves, not as souls infused with the Divine Life, but as pocketbooks. And when that happens, we end up putting our trust in the Almighty Dollar. Whether we are rich or poor–it doesn’t matter–we worship at the altar of wealth. We believe in, we put our trust in what money can do for us, and it becomes our god. We rely on it to save us.
In the face of this, Jesus tells us to “take care!” and to “be on [our] guard.” Why? Because it’s so easy to buy into this narrative–to see ourselves as dollars and cents and investment portfolios instead of as children of God. It’s so easy to love money more than we love God and more than we love our neighbors. It is so easy. And before we know it our souls are sick.
Fr. Bill had done well for a priest. We priests in The Episcopal Church tend to live good lives, but Bill lived a very good life. In the early 1960s, a parent had died and left him a modest inheritance. Bill was smart. He bought a bunch of stock in a company that seemed to be down on its luck. It was somewhere around $1 per stock. That company was IBM. Fr. Bill had done very well.
Doing well or doing poorly is not a sin. Sometimes we want to attach a moral value to it. Some preachers even say that if you’re rich, it’s because you are extra good in God’s eyes. We call that the Prosperity Gospel, and it’s heresy. Money is morally neutral, meaning it can be good or bad. But money’s influence on our lives is probably never neutral; it is always morally virtuous or corrupting. It depends on our relationship with it, and that relationship is largely determined by what we do with it–or don’t do with it.
After I had broken the news to Bill that I had been sent to give him last rites, I asked the family if he and I could talk privately. They filed out. I asked Bill if he wanted to confess his sins. He looked at me, annoyed. “No,” he said. “I need my lawyer.” “Why, Bill?” I wanted to know. “They’re going to take everything,” he said. “They’re trying to get rid of me,” he added. “They’re killing me so they can get it all,” he accused. Bill did not confess anything that day. He did not let me administer last rites; there would be no holy oil, no Communion. He did not even want a prayer.
I started by saying that Bill’s story was a success story with a tragic bent that most people didn’t know about. We all knew that Bill had done well, though very few knew just how well. But quietly, he had spent his life building barns, bigger and bigger barns. And he had allowed greed to eat at him, to eat at his relationships, and to infect him with fear and suspicion. He forgot that the antidote to greed, what kills it faster than anything else, is generosity in giving. I don’t know if he got a hold of his lawyer that day. But I do know that he left nothing to charity, nothing to the church. His children do not speak to each other today except through their lawyers.
My friends: Be on your guard. Do not be consumed by the things of this world, for your life cannot be measured by what you do or don’t have. Whether you have riches or not, do not let material things become your god. Refuse to worship at that altar. Instead, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. Do not forget the least among us. Dare to live generously–with your time, with your talent, and yes, with your money. For in so doing you will be rich toward God. And at the last accounting, when the roll is called up yonder, your heart will be where your treasure is: In the courts of heaven itself.
Storied Grace 