"Being Christ To Our Community: It's About Falling In Love"

“Being Christ in Our Community: It’s About Falling in Love”

Luke 18:18-27

In his book, “Don’t Waste Your Life,” John Piper writes:

“I will tell you what a tragedy is.

Consider a story from Reader’s Digest, which tells about a couple who ‘took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51.

Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball and collect shells.’

Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: ‘Look, Lord. See my shells.’”

Piper ends it with this: “People today are spending billions of dollars to embrace that tragic dream.

Over and against that, I put my protest: Don’t buy it. Don’t waste your life.”

Our Gospel Lesson for this morning is a difficult one for most of us, I would imagine.

I know it is difficult for me.

One of the reasons is that although many of us might not consider ourselves rich, compared to 99 percent of history’s human population or even compared to the vast majority of folks in the world today—we are rich indeed.

And in any case, none of us have to be rich in order to covet or idolize money and possessions.

It’s our love for wealth, not the amount of wealth we actually have that starves our souls… and our culture encourages this kind of love for wealth.

Do you know that the root of the word “culture” is the Latin word “cultus”—which is a system of religious worship?

So, the culture we live in worships wealth and the pursuit of it.

That’s not the whole story, to be sure, but it is a large part of it.

So, what are we to do with such a radical message like the one we are faced with this morning?

We can become very sad and walk away, because we are people of great wealth or at least people who desire great wealth.

Or we can seek to “Follow Jesus”…believing that “What is impossible for people is possible with God.”

In his book, “Streams of Living Water,” Richard Foster writes: “The Christian life comes not by gritting our teeth but by falling in love.”

Remember that last week we talked about Jesus’ Mission Statement as it is found in Luke Chapter 4: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

So, we have this Rich Young Ruler who comes running up to Jesus.

He asks Jesus, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

And Jesus answers: “Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.

Then come, follow me.”

All three synoptic Gospels record this event: Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

In Mark’s Gospel it says that Jesus “looked at the man and loved him.”

In other words, what Jesus calls the man to do is not some punishment.

It’s not a judgment.

It is a message of love.

Jesus is inviting the man, out of love, to unload his burden, to give away his wealth, to free himself from that which binds him, imprisons him and keeps him from what his heart truly desires—a living and loving relationship with God and people.

It is the greatest challenge this man has ever faced; it is the hard truth that his money is in the way of that which he seeks.

His possessions are obstacles to eternal life.

His wealth is in the way of him falling, head over heals, in love with the One Who loves him.

Can you relate?

I can.

But when we let loose our grip on materialism and allow ourselves to, instead, fall in love with God and our neighbors—we come to life.

We enter the Kingdom.

And, once we do, we wouldn’t have it any other way.

In his book “How Much is Enough?,” Arthur Simon founder of the Christian Movement—Bread for the World writes about his own struggles to follow Jesus.

As a young Lutheran minister advocating for justice on behalf of hungry people he says that the poverty he has seen over many years has caused him great anguish.

He also writes that he has sensed “a connection between empty stomachs on one side of a city and empty lives on the other side.”

He also struggled with his own commitments and spending habits, and he writes: “I continue to struggle, learning as I go.

And each follower of Jesus faces this challenge.

To serve money is to turn away from God.

To serve God is to reject the accumulation of wealth and become recipients of a totally unmerited love, a love that enables us to let go of anything which we are captive to and follow Christ.”