The Parable of the Rich Fool, a sermon based on Ruth 2: 1-7 and Luke 12: 16-28, preached on July 28, 2024

As we consider this parable, called the Parable of the Rich Fool, I’d like to start with a question: Why did God call this man a fool? Fool is a strong word. When I was a kid, most of my days were spent either in my own house or in the home of Buck and Cindy Buchanan, and neither my mother nor Mrs. Buchanan would allow that word to be used in her home. We weren’t allowed to call each other “fool.” In our house today, our daughters aren’t allowed to call each other “stupid,” even if the designation is justified. Why would God call this rich man a fool, a strong word that does not typically describe those who take the time to save for that rainy day? Typically, ancient wisdom calls for saving grain, calling those who save wise and those who don’t foolish. In one of Aesop’s Fables, there is the story of the grasshopper who didn’t prepare for winter. That grasshopper who spent his summer bouncing around and relaxing in the sun was left out in the cold starving once the snow fell, while the ants who had spent their summer building their ant hill and accumulating a storeroom of grain were not only warm that winter but also had food that lasted them until the next spring. This rich man was more like an ant than a grasshopper, so why would God call this man a fool? Let me give you the context, which has helped me to understand this parable better. Just before Jesus tells this parable of the rich fool, someone in the crowd said to Jesus: Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me. Think about that. How many relationships have fallen apart when money was involved? Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me, this man says, and Jesus responds by saying: Don’t save up all your grain in barns. Instead, bake a loaf of bread for your brother and tell him that you’re sorry for being a jerk in the lawyer’s office. Why is this man with a barn full of grain called a fool? It is because he put grain before his relationships. He had the chance to send his grandchildren a little bit of money in their birthday cards, but instead, he said to his soul, “Instead of sending them money, I’ll put a little more grain in my barn.” Instead of taking his wife out for dinner, he put a little more grain in his barn. Instead of going on vacation, instead of giving to the church, instead of making a loaf of bread for his neighbor, instead of burying the hatchet, he built for himself a bigger barn. Then, he filled up that new barn with grain. Did he even eat a loaf of bread himself from that stockpile? Maybe he was thinking, “Winter is coming, and no one is going to come take care of me in my old age. I had better get prepared by filling up this barn full of grain so that I don’t have to live on charity when I can’t work.” That’s not a bad way to think, but to plan for the future, we can’t just think about the grain in our barns or the money in our savings account, let’s also pay attention to the people in our families as well as those who are out in the field. In our first Scripture lesson, we read about Ruth. Do you know about Ruth? Ruth is among the hardest books in the Bible to find. I have to go to the table of contents every time. The book of Ruth is an amazing account of love and dedication amid hardship. Ruth and her mother-in-law were reduced to gleaning. Gleaning is as close as the ancient world got to food stamps or welfare. There was no WIC, SNAP, or free and reduced lunch. If you lost the family farm, had a lazy husband who didn’t get the seed in the ground on-time, an early freeze came through, or the locusts swept your field, you could glean in your neighbor’s field, so long a drought didn’t ruin his harvest as well. In the case of Ruth, there was nothing left in Moab, so she went with her mother-in-law, Naomi, to Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus. There were fields in Bethlehem with grain in them, and after the workers went through the field to harvest the grain and had put it in storehouses, the gleaners were permitted to walk through the field to pick up whatever was leftover. That reminds me of going to the yard sale after lunch. Have you ever been to a yard sale after lunch? That’s the time to get the good deals. Once the good stuff has been picked over, you can get a great deal on whatever is left because the owner doesn’t want to bring that old couch back into the house. Likewise, the workers who went through the field once don’t want to go through it again and the owner doesn’t want to pay them to, so the gleaners were allowed to take whatever was left. That was hard work, and likely, the gleaners were both grateful and ashamed to be doing it. It kept them alive, but it was humiliating, and it was dangerous. As it is true today, so it has always been, desperate, migrant people are taken advantage of. As a woman who didn’t speak the language and didn’t have a husband, the men who worked the field had their eyes on Ruth, yet the owner of that field, a man named Boaz, saw her, protected her, cared for her, and as the story goes, eventually married her. Together, they had children, and when we get to the genealogy of Jesus in the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, we see all these generations. Throughout the generations leading up to the birth of Jesus, four women are mentioned in addition to his mother, Mary. One of the four is Ruth, and as I think about the difference between the Rich Fool who invests in the future by spending all his time storing up a barn full of grain, and this Boaz from the book of Ruth, who notices a young, helpless woman gleaning the field and takes care of her, I realize that one of them left behind a barn full of grain and the other one left behind a legacy that leads to the birth of Jesus, the Savior of the World. Who made the better investment? Who was wise and who was the fool? When we think about the future, we are wise to invest in people, not in barns, so invest in relationships. Mend your fences. Think about the future and consider your legacy in terms of who needs you to invest in them. Warren Buffet is famous for saying, “I want to leave enough money to my kids so that they can do anything they want, but I don’t want to leave them so much that they can do nothing.” How many people have died knowing that they had invested too little time in their children or too little time in their neighborhoods or their churches? Don’t be a fool, filling up your bank account while people need you. The future is at stake. Our legacy hangs in the balance. If the barn is full yet the people are perishing, what kind of a future are we heading towards? Last Sunday, I was complaining about the cameras in here. I was talking about how the camera that records this service hits me right in the bald spot, but what I really wanted to do was to celebrate the impact that our livestream has. Today we’ll be commissioning Jeff Knapp as a chaplain to the Cobb County Jail, where our livestream is viewed. Our livestream goes out into the world. Some people join our church in person after having worshiped with us online for months or even years. When I mentioned all this to you last Sunday, one member of our church came out of the service and volunteered to pay for the new camera that we need to make our livestream better, saying, “I want to recognize the blessings I have received by giving some of what I have away.” This is how we are to live. We are to use what we have to make this world a better place. Only then will we be able to say to our souls, “Soul, you have done so much for the church and for your community and for the people you love. You’ve set the example. You’ve run the race. You’ve loved them all well, and they will be able to continue the work that you showed them to do, so relax, eat, drink, be merry.” Jesus urges us to be mindful of the fact that our days are numbered. That reality doesn’t need to make us afraid. We don’t need a barn full of grain to relax as we face the uncertain future, for He is our hope and our salvation. Trust in Him. Don’t trust in barns. We don’t need to be worried about the end, for when we breathe our last, the One who knows the number of hairs on our heads will receive us fully into that mansion with many rooms. Don’t worry about where you’re going. Instead, worry about how you will leave this earth once you’re gone. Do you want to leave behind a barn full of grain? Or a well-adjusted child? Do you want to leave behind a storage unit full of crystal wrapped in tissue paper? Or a letter to your brother, asking for forgiveness? How many of us have taken the time to fill up a pantry with canned goods, and yet we’ve never made the phone call that we really need to make? How many among us have an attic full of National Geographic, telling the story of people in far off lands, and yet we’ve never sat our friends down to tell them how much they mean to us? Have you been investing in people, or have you been filling up a barn full of grain? Have you asked for forgiveness? Have you mended your fences? Are you filling up your barn without dealing with the skeletons in your closet? We’re running out of time, so don’t wast the time that you have filling up a barn full of grain that you’re never going to eat. My friends, yesterday I tended bar for the third time in my life. If you’re not used to coming to church here, let me tell you what this place is like. Last night, someone just getting to know our church said, “So we can’t clap during the worship service, but the pastors serve beer. How does that make sense?” Yesterday, I worked the bar at Two Birds Taphouse for the third year in a row. Last night, a Saturday night, the whole place was dedicated to a fundraiser for our food distribution ministry. Not only were all the profits going to our Pantry on Church, but this was a Saturday night. Most restaurants are trying to make money on a Saturday night, but not Two Birds. All the money that might have gone in their barn was coming here, to feed hungry people, and when we left that place last night, I looked at the face of the two owners, Jeff and Rachel Byrd, and there were smiles on both their faces. You have time left, so how will you use it? When we use our treasure to invest in people, we will change the world. But should we store up our treasure in barns, what will happen when we’re gone? Amen.

The Parable of the Mustard Seed, a sermon based on Matthew 17: 14-21 and Luke 13: 18-19, preached on July 21, 2024

Since it’s my birthday, I hope you’ll tolerate me telling you my favorite joke about Presbyterians again. My favorite Presbyterian joke is, “What do you get when you mix a Presbyterian and a Jehovah’s Witness?” “Someone who knocks on your door but doesn’t know what to say.” I’ve told that one a few times before, and I keep telling it because I think it’s funny, and I think it’s funny because there’s some truth in it. Presbyterians have been called the “frozen chosen” because when we worship God, we aren’t like our brothers and sisters in the non-denominational praise service. We keep our hands down during the hymns. We don’t dance in the aisles like they do it in the Pentecostal churches. We remain seated until we’re told to stand, and if the preacher isn’t clear on whether to stand or remain seated, a wave of anxiety crashes over the congregation because nobody knows what to do. But what’s worse is when somebody claps. Presbyterians want to clap. Some people feel like clapping; however, we’re nervous about whether or not to do it. It’s a disputed practice. Is it appropriate to clap? Is it decent? Is orderly? In some Presbyterian churches, the same goes with laughing. Someone told a joke in a Presbyterian church and said, “The joke was so funny that the congregation smiled just as loud as they could.” As a denomination, we can be a little reserved, so you won’t see many Presbyterians preaching out on the street, yet when Presbyterians finally do open their mouths, it can be so profound a display of deep and abiding faith that it will move you to tears. You all know that Marilyn Barton died last week. She died on Monday, July 15th, which is meaningful. In 1995 on July 14th, her son Scott died in a car accident just after he graduated from Marietta High School. I was in the youth group with him, and I remember where I was when I heard that news. Terry and Marilyn have honored his legacy. They have remembered him well, so the last words I heard Terry whisper in his dying wife’s ears were, “When you get to heaven and you see our son Scott, tell him I love him.” That’s a powerful faith. It’s a deep and powerful expression of faith to trust that, in the time of death, our goodbyes are not forever, and that death will not have the final word. This morning, my hope is that we all would be able to face death with such a profound and abiding faith, so this morning I want to talk about where and how such a faith begins. I want to preach about tiny faith. Miniscule faith. I want to speak openly and honestly about the kind of faith that is just the size of a mustard seed, for while Jesus said, “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move,” many think of tiny faith as a failure. I knew a man who was engaged to a wonderful Roman Catholic woman who asked him to convert. When he told me that, I was interested because I might have been in the same situation had I not been on my way to becoming a Presbyterian minister when Sara and I got married. My wife, Sara, and her sister were raised Roman Catholic, but she married me, a Presbyterian minister, and her sister married a United Methodist minister. There was not much talk of my brother-in-law or me converting. The protestants invaded the family, and my father-in-law will sometimes say, “One son-in-law is a Presbyterian minister, the other a Methodist minister, which makes me the Pope.” Conversely, this man I knew was engaged to the wonderful Roman Catholic woman who asked him to convert. He wasn’t too tied to the Presbyterian faith he had been raised in, so he relented, and with his fiancée, he began going to the classes that the Roman Catholic Church requires of converts. As a young man raised Presbyterian, so much of what he was learning in the class was new and, to him, seemed strange. Raised a Presbyterian, he’d been taught that communion was mostly symbolic. We don’t think of the bread as literal flesh or the juice as blood, yet he was hearing that Roman Catholics believe the bread becomes His body and the wine His blood, not symbolically, but literally. While that new understanding of the Sacrament stretched his mind, he said to himself “OK, I can handle that”. Then he got to the celibacy of the priests and the veneration of Mary. That was going to a different level. Still, he was OK going along with it. However, somewhere in learning about the saints, all the feast days or the angels, he hit a certain limit, and against his better judgement, he impulsively asked the teacher of this class a plain-spoken question: “Just how much of this stuff do I actually have to believe?” “All of it,” his teacher said. Now, I’ve told this story to several Roman Catholics, including my father-in-law, and each one of them disagrees with the teacher. You don’t have to believe in all the saints and all the angels to become a member of a Roman Catholic Church. Yet, some people think that you do. Some people think that joining our church requires believing all kinds of things, too, while in reality, the only qualification to become a member of this church and many other Christian churches is a willingness to say publicly, “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.” People outside the church will say things like: “I don’t think I can be a Christian because I don’t believe the earth was created in seven days,” or “I can’t go to church. I don’t believe in angels, or miracles, or that the Moses really wrote the first five books of the Bible.” I’ve heard people go through a long list of things they don’t believe in, all while assuming that I’d sign off on each and every one. That’s not necessarily true. In fact, there’s a famous preacher who used to say to the atheists who would come and talk with him about their issues with the church and faith, “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in. Chances are, I don’t believe in that God either.” My friends, before we squabble over orthodoxy and right belief, let us remember that faith, in its beginning, is simply a seed, a relationship with Jesus who knows what it’s like to be pushed out on the margins because He was born in a small town called Bethlehem, on a night when there was no room at the inn. He was raised as a carpenter in a small town called Nazareth, so He knows what it’s like to work hard, and to feel sweat on His brow and splinters in His fingers. As a man, He ate with sinners and tax collectors. He walked the earth in sandals and felt the sun on His back. He loved us so much that He died on the cross, choosing a relationship with us over His own survival. The shortest verse in Scripture is also among the most important: John 11: 35: “Jesus wept.” He wept because He feels our pain and knows our sorrow. He came to earth to live among us. That’s the meaning of His name “Emmanuel,” God with us, so when I hear Him saying, “The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed,” I hear Him saying that a faith just the size of a mustard seed may not appear to be very much, and yet it will grow to become a tree, large enough for “the birds of the air to make nests in its branches.” You don’t have to sign off on all the standards of the Westminster Confession of Faith to be a Christian. You won’t be disqualified from this church if you can’t recite the Apostle’s Creed by memory. “Lord, I want to be a Christian,” the hymn goes, for that’s enough. Maybe it’s more than enough, for Christianity is a relationship. It’s a relationship with Jesus, whom Christians believe is the Son of God, and even those who don’t believe agree that we need to place more emphasis on relationships. Lately, I’ve become interested in an author and researcher named Jonathan Haidt. I was introduced to him as he was being interviewed about his recent book called, “The Anxious Generation,” which is all about the negative impact of cellphones on our kids. In the introduction and the first chapter, he lays out his argument through painfully clear statistics that show that kids raised in the last twenty years are far more likely to be depressed, harm themselves, and suffer from mental health issues like anxiety than generations before them because these kids, whose brains are being rewired during adolescence, are spending less time during those delicate and difficult years with people and friends who might build them up and support them and more time with their phones, where they’re constantly comparing themselves to others, and where, should they be bullied, their phones make it possible for bullies to bully them constantly. There’s a lot of data out there telling us that smart phones are hard on our kids. The negative trends are getting worse, and adolescence is getting harder; however, the exception to the rule of these alarming trends are teenagers in that same generation who are a part of a religious community. Kids who are surrounded by a church that grounds them, builds them up, and loves them well are far less likely to suffer than their classmates and friends who are not a part of a family of faith like this one. Hearing Dr. Haidt say all that made me so thankful because on national TV, he was saying all the things that I wanted to say, but listen to this: Dr. Haidt isn’t a Christian. He doesn’t go to church. He calls himself an atheist, and he claims that he doesn’t really want to believe what his findings illustrate because he has some issues with organized religion, and yet he can’t argue with the trend he is seeing. I want to say to him that this trend he is seeing, let it be enough to walk through our doors because faith the size of a mustard seed is enough. Faith the size of a mustard seed is enough to get started. Faith the size of a mustard seed is enough to move mountains and to reverse a dangerous trend that we’re seeing all through our nation. Don’t worry about your questions. Trust that a relationship with Jesus and His people will change your life. Last Friday, I met a couple in our parking lot. They were lost and were looking for the Square. I hated to tell them that they had already found it. If you made it to our church, you’ve arrived at the Square. Then, I invited them to go to our church, and they pretty much ran away. My friends, how many are lost? How many are running away because they see us and think that we are offering a set of dusty rules and dogmas, when in fact, what we have to offer is a relationship with the Living God? When what we have is a family of faith? It makes me think that, should we open our doors just a little bit wider, should we open our arms just a little bit wider, should we welcome all God’s people in with a little more hospitality to even and especially those who wrestle with their faith, and should we tell them that faith just the size of a mustard seed is enough, we will move some mountains, we will change the lives of some children, we will be like a tree where birds can make their nests. May it be so. Amen.

The Parable of the Barren Fig Tree, a sermon based on Luke 13: 6-9, preached on July 14, 2024

Friends, I was worried about partisan division and the state of our nation before one of the presidential candidates was shot. Yesterday, two people died. One was the 20-year-old shooter. He’s been killed. He killed one in the crowd. President Trump was injured, and as I pray for his healing, as I mourn with those who lost a loved one yesterday, I also worry over our nation, for it feels as though we are coming apart at the seams. It appears as though we are losing our grip on what makes our nation great. On the day the Constitution was signed, September 17, 1787, a woman named Elizabeth Powel asked Benjamin Franklin as he emerged from the Constitutional Convention, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” “A republic,” he said, “if you can keep it.” Can we keep it? I’m starting to worry about that. However, here in this parable that we’ve just read, the Parable of the Sower, I see that Jesus is not so quick to give up as I am. “Cut it down,” the man says to the gardener, “Why should this fig tree be wasting soil?” Yet the gardener (who is Jesus, by the way) says to this man, “Why give up? Why not try something else?” That’s no radical suggestion. Just dig around it. Just add a little fertilizer. And this not-so-radical suggestion makes me think about the small things that God calls on us to do in the face of hopelessness. Just dig around it. Just add a little fertilizer. Just try. The first church I preached in was Druid Hills Presbyterian Church on Ponce De Leon Avenue in Atlanta. I was the summer intern. I preached my first three sermons there, which was daunting enough, but even more so because that church’s sanctuary was built to seat 1,000 people. It was a huge space, yet, each time I preached that summer, only 50 or 60 people were there. Most of my jokes went out from the pulpit and lost steam and petered before they reached anybody’s ears. It was empty in there. The church was dying, only nobody knew what to do about it. The fig tree was dying, and some there were ready to say, “Cut it down. It’s wasting soil. The members here can go to some of the other Presbyterian churches around. Let’s close this place down, for decline is inevitable,” they said. In fact, someone looked at the marquee sign out by the street and said it looked like a tombstone. They could imagine the inscription on the tombstone: “Here lies what was once a great church.” It was a sad place to be. One afternoon, someone heard that I had worked on a lawn maintenance crew. They asked me to consider planting some flowers out around the marquee, and that’s what we did. We pulled up the grass around it. We turned over the soil. We put down a little fertilizer and planted some flowers. It was a nice dose of life and beauty, and while I know those flowers didn’t save the church, sometimes my greatest wish is simply that we had faith enough to try. I wish we would give up on our giving up and find faith enough to doubt the negativity that pushes us to declare that all is lost. All is not lost. In the face of hopelessness, remember that the light of hope may flicker, but it’s just as likely to spread. “Who knows?” Mordecai asked in our first Scripture lesson, “Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this?” Who knows? Perhaps all the tree needs is a little bit of fertilizer? Who knows, maybe all we need to do is to break up the soil around its trunk? Perhaps you and I are here for just such a time as this. Perhaps this church is here for just such a time as this. I think about this church a lot. And I think about how many places in our world are so socially divided. Did you know that when politicians gauge the political leanings of a region, they look for Cracker Barrells and Whole Foods Grocery Stores? That’s because republicans tend to eat at Cracker Barrell and democrats like to shop at Whole Foods. There might be some truth to that. Certainly, our divided nation is becoming more and more divided. Parents worry that their children will marry outside of party lines. Churches lean to one pole or the other, too, but when I look around our pews, I see something different. I see an alternative to the depressing narrative that the evening news keeps us fixated on. While the news tells us that division is getting worse and worse, and that the left is further from the right now more than ever, I look around this sanctuary and I see people who I know don’t vote the same way, singing the same song. When I think about our food distribution ministry, I know that people who vote differently are serving the Lord together. When I hear about who all went to visit Marilyn Barton in the hospital last weekend, I know that here, there is something more important than which side will come out on top in November, and so I remember again that the fig tree isn’t dead yet. We just need to dig around it a little. We just need to fertilize the roots. We just need to remember that hope is not lost. “Don’t give up yet,” the gardener says. “Let’s try something else and see what happens,” for with God on our side, even our meager efforts may lead to long-lasting change if we simply try. Sometimes we get so stuck in habits that we can’t imagine trying anything new. A man in our church who has become a friend of mine is a specialist in habits. This man, his name is Neale Martin, and he told me that there are between 39,000 – 50,000 products in our local grocery stores, yet the average shopper buys the same 300 repeatedly. If you doubt that statistic, then think about the kind of ketchup you buy. Or the kind of mayonnaise. I believe my grandmother would have preferred that I marry a convicted felon over a woman who used a brand of mayonnaise other than Duke’s, which is what happens to all of us. With a few purchases, we blaze the trail, and over time, the trail we’ve blazed becomes a well-worn path, then it’s a rut that we can’t get out of. Likewise, we watch the same news, and we hear the same message. We talk to the people who think like we do, and we get sucked down the same rabbit trails. Try something new, Jesus says. Don’t give up. Dig around the roots. Add a little fertilizer. Befriend someone new. Think some new thoughts. Go out of your way to show kindness. Be open minded. Start asking more questions rather than standing in judgement. We’ve been trained not to talk politics at the dinner table, but what if we try something new: talking politics at the table and listening to people who think differently than we do? Or what about respecting people and loving those we disagree with? The fig tree may yet live. In fact, you and I, it may be that we are here for just such a time as this. Amen.