Sermon for 12th after Trinity. Give up all your Possessions.

Psalm 49: 5 - 12,

5 Why should I fear when evil days come,

when wicked deceivers surround me—

6 those who trust in their wealth

and boast of their great riches?

7 No one can redeem the life of another

or give to God a ransom for them—

8 the ransom for a life is costly,

no payment is ever enough—

9 so that they should live on forever

and not see decay.

10 For all can see that the wise die,

that the foolish and the senseless also perish,

leaving their wealth to others.

11 Their tombs will remain their houses forever,

their dwellings for endless generations,

though they had named lands after themselves.

12 People, despite their wealth, do not endure;

they are like the beasts that perish.

Luke 14: 27 – 33

Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, 30 saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.” 31 Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. 33 So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

I find Award Shows boring and pointless, they seem to consist of successful people giving other successful people awards for being successful, maybe you love them, and that's fine, I'm not making a religious pronouncement, I'm just commenting of the seemingly empty glamour and glitz, and it would seem Jim Carrey may agree. Jim Carrey, the Hollywood actor and comedian, said this when hosting the Golden Globes,

Voice over, 'And to present the award please welcome two-time Golden Globe winner, Jim Carrey!

Thank you I am two-time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey. You know when I’m going to sleep at night, I’m not just a guy going to sleep. I’m two-time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey going to get some well needed shut eye. And when I dream I don’t just dream any old dreams. No sir. I dream about being three time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey. Because then I would be enough. It would finally be true. And I could stop this, this terrible search. For what I know ultimately won’t fulfil me.

In Church we don't have Award Shows, we have a different system, Jesus said, “Whoever does not take up the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple”, and “...none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”

Not a Golden Globe, but a cross. How’s that going to go down in the modern world? The briefest leaf through a popular glossy magazine will show that in this world, you are what you own, and that giving up all that you have for the sake of one individual, even if you suspect that individual to be the Son of God, is just not going to happen.

To be honest, we are all rather attached to what we have, and wonder what Jesus would want with it anyway.

Yet I also suspect that most of us consider that materialism and greed may be corrupting our society.

I once spoke to a lady today who grew up in 1950s in West Lothian, she said it was a simple rural upbringing, without much money.

She said, "We didn't have much, but we had everything", then she added, "some people these days have everything, but don't have much".

Do you know what she means?

Poverty is terrible evil, she was not saying that poverty is good, but in our society do we perhaps have an ever expanding definition of enough?

William Morris wrote,

‘I have never been in any rich man’s house which would not look the better for having a bonfire made outside of nine-tenths of all that it held.’

There is a gravity about possessions, the more we get of them the more we want, and the more we get of them the more they weigh us down.

Mizuta Masahide, a17th century Japanese poet and samurai, wrote,

“My barn having burned down, I can now see the moon.”

No one should look for hard times, but they do focus our attention on what really matters.

Our economy has become fuelled by credit and mass consumption, the function of the citizen has become to acquire stuff, on the High Street I shop therefore I am. Land fill, storage cupboards, over-drafts, liposuction, produce mountains, gigabytes, greenhouse gases, downloads, super fast broadband, garages full of junk, gardens full of cars, fad diets, packed curriculums, performance targets, buy one get one free – perhaps we could better see the moon with a little less?

Not that humanity has learnt a new trick in the age of global capitalism, in his book, ‘On Walden Pond’, published 1854, Henry David Thoreau writes,

‘Not long since I was present at the auction of a deacon's effects, for his life had not been ineffectual. As usual, a great proportion was trumpery which had begun to accumulate in his father's day... And now, after lying half a century in his garret and other dust holes, these things were not burned; instead of a bonfire, or purifying destruction of them, there was an auction, or increasing of them. The neighbours eagerly collected to view them, bought them all, and carefully transported them to their garrets and dust holes, to lie there till their estates are settled, when they will start again.’

The desire to acquire is as old as humanity, the mistaken idea that security is to be found in material possessions rather than in spiritual devotion is ancient, it is just that we moderns have increased our means beyond the most extravagant dreams of the ancients.

In Psalm 49 we heard,

5 Why should I fear when evil days come,

when wicked deceivers surround me—

6 those who trust in their wealth

and boast of their great riches?

7 No one can redeem the life of another

or give to God a ransom for them—

8 the ransom for a life is costly,

no payment is ever enough—

9 so that they should live on forever

and not see decay.

10 For all can see that the wise die,

that the foolish and the senseless also perish,

leaving their wealth to others...

12 People, despite their wealth, do not endure;

they are like the beasts that perish.

The Psalmist is blunt, that which we own, be it possessions, status, career, ideology, even our dearest relations, all end in the grave. The people with the big memorials on church walls are as dead as the people with little memorials, or none at all. No one can pay the ransom for a life, the cost is too great, that is no one except Jesus, who gave his life as a ransom for us all.

Jesus asks us to trade the mortal for the immortal, the perishable for the imperishable, to release our grip on false security before it slips inevitably through our fingers, and to instead take hold of the cross.

The advertisers try to persuade us to exchange our lives for stuff with the promise that the stuff we buy will make us happy. Jesus asks us to redeem our lives by giving up our stuff.

Jesus said, ‘whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the good news will save it.’

In our passage from Luke Jesus asks his disciples to give up everything, and to take up the cross. This means to offer to Jesus all that we are, not just to stream line our material possessions, or to send off a cheque to Charity, the call is uncompromising – everything.

That includes our fears as well as our hopes, our weaknesses as well as our strengths, our disabilities as well as our abilities, our self-doubt as well as our pride.

Jesus may well ask us to continue to carry the responsibility of all that we are in the service and love of others, but in his service the burden becomes light.

Giving to Jesus all that you are enables a life giving reordering of your priorities. The cross is a gateway to a new and better life in this world and the next. It is not just our society that is over-laden, it is not just our neighbours, it is each one of us who need to turn to Jesus and receive his healing and forgiveness. To leave at the foot of the cross all that we possess, so that we may then perceive who we truly are.

Amen.