Sunday, August 3, 2025, Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

“Hearts and Minds On Things Above”

Psalm 100; Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-26; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

Divine Service III with Holy Communion

Hymns: #686 “Come, Thou Font of Every Blessing”; #730 “What Is the World to Me”;

#575 “My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less”

Dear Friends in Christ, 

     What is your heart set upon this day? St. Paul urges us in Colossians to “set our minds on things above, and not on earthly things.” But we live in a world full of “rich fools,” whose hearts are intent on building bigger barns for themselves and filling them with more and more things – not thinking of the day when each of us will have to stand naked before God. May we have the wisdom to set our hearts on Christ and live our lives for Him. Amen.

     There’s an ad on TV for one of those companies that sells gold and silver coins, as an investment against economic downturns and financial disaster. One of the taglines in the ad says, “Buy now, to avoid disappointment and future regret.” I heard that and thought to myself, “Boy, isn’t that a metaphor for life?”

     Read the story of Solomon in the book of First Kings; the man was blessed beyond belief, chosen by the grace of God. He had older brothers that should have been king before him, but God chose him instead. When David his father died, and Solomon became king, the Lord came to him and said, “Ask me for anything you wish, and I will give it to you.” Solomon could have asked for a billion dollars, for fame and fortune, or to be king of all the world; but instead he asked for discernment to govern his people rightly, and for the wisdom to know right from wrong. God was pleased with Solomon and his answer, so He did bless him with discernment and wisdom - and with riches and honor as well. And God promised him, “As long as you walk in My ways and obey My commandments, I’ll bless you and give you a good, long life.”

     Solomon became Israel’s greatest king, and the greatest king in the world in his day. It was he who built the Lord’s Temple, and the walls around Jerusalem, and then a magnificent palace. He built fortified cities, and aqueducts and reservoirs, a great irrigation project that made Israel a garden, from the Euphrates River to the Mediterranean Sea. He had horses and chariots more than anyone could count, and more gold and silver than anyone could measure. He built a fleet of ships to sails the seas and bring home treasure. He made treaties with the kings and nations all around him, and kings and rulers from all over the world came to bring him presents and hear his wisdom. The man had the whole world by the tail, and God’s blessing besides; he had it all. 

     But is there such a thing as being too successful? Part of making treaties in those days was to marry the daughter of the king you were making a treaty with. First Solomon married the daughter of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt; and then he took another wife, and then another, until at last he had 700 wives and 300 concubines. And all those wives brought along the gods and idols of the countries they’d come from. “And as Solomon grew old,” the book of Kings says, “His wives turned his heart after other gods.”

     Solomon built and built and built, and worked and worked and worked, and added on and added on and added on. And what did all that toil and striving, and the sleepless nights that go along with it all, get him? When your heart is on things, and not on God, what happens to you? When he wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon was an old man, and looking back on it all - looking back on all the things he’d built, and all the things he’d done, and everything he'd gathered for himself. And he says, “It’s all been meaningless, useless, vanity. It’s all been a waste of time.”

     Solomon at last had come up against the fact that he was going to die soon, and no amount of glory or fame or wealth or money or power could do a thing about it. And everything he had, he was going to have to leave to his eldest son who’d succeed him. Solomon says here, “And who knows if he’ll be a wise man or a fool?” But he already had his doubts about his son Rehoboam – and he was right. The boy turned about to be a bad king, and a genuine fool. He ended up losing half the kingdom, and bringing everything his father had worked for to ruin. (Maybe Solomon should have spent a little less time working, and a little more time with his son!)

     Solomon concludes at the end of things that all that work and toil and striving will lead you only to despair - unless you remember that everything you have is a gift from the hand of God, and that without Him, everything you do in life, if it’s done to please yourself and not to please Him, is like trying to catch the wind. Did Solomon go to heaven in the end? The tone of his letter in Ecclesiastes seems to say he was repentant and sorry for everything he’d done, so I’ll say yes, and we’ll leave it at that. God knows.

     In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus had been preaching “the good news about God’s kingdom” – the good news about the grace and mercy of God, and about how much God loves us, and about how important it is to acknowledge the love of God while you live, and to thank Him for His blessings by using your life to serve Him. And a man in the crowd, somehow missing the whole point, says to Him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” If Jesus ever did a face-palm, He’d have done one here!

     Jesus replies, “Man, who appointed Me a judge or an arbiter between you?” Jesus isn’t Judge Judy. He isn’t a probate judge; heaven isn’t a small claims court. We should all have the grace and good sense to care for our earthly possessions on our own, and to be kind in our dealings with others. Jesus isn’t all that concerned about what’s in our pockets; He cares much more about what’s in our hearts. 

     So Jesus turned to everyone there and said, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." A better translation of the word greed here is “covetousness.” We all know about coveting, right? Those last two “thou shalt nots” of the Ten Commandments? When I teach Catechism classes, I sometimes like to teach the Ten Commandments in reverse order and start with those “coveting” commandments; because coveting starts in the heart, and it’s where all sin begins. If you want something bad enough, what will you do to get it? Will you break the other Commandments, like lying or cheating or stealing, or even murder, to get what you want? Eventually you’ll find yourself breaking the very first Commandment, and putting the things you want to have ahead of loving God and worshiping Him and honoring His name in your life. Watch out! The devil’s trap is getting us to believe that the ‘things’ in this world are all that matters, or that they matter more than God’s things. “All this I will give you, if you will bow down and worship me,” is the oldest temptation in the world.

     The rich man in Jesus’ parable could have been named Solomon – or Larry, or Mike, or Mark, or Jerry, or Bob. The man had been blessed. No doubt he put the work in for that good crop, and did the plowing and planting and cultivating that needed to be done. But every farmer knows that although the hard work is necessary, it’s the grace of God in the end that brings up the beans and the wheat and the corn. We can’t make the sun shine, or produce a single drop of rain.“Without Him we can do nothing,” the Bible says. Without Him we can’t make a single seed sprout up and grow. 

     This guy, though, stood there looking at that bumper crop of standing grain, and instead of giving thanks to God, his heart went right to the “I, I, I’s.” “What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops. This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’” 

     He truly was a fool. (And I didn’t pick that word, Jesus did). Anyone is a fool who thinks they won’t have to stand before God one day and give an account of what they’ve done with the blessings God has given them. In that light, we’re all accountable; accountable for loving God, and accountable for expressing our love for God by loving and caring for our neighbors and the people in our lives. “Blessed to be a blessing” is a wonderful phrase to remember. The rich fool could have blessed his neighbors, fed a crowd, done a world of good, instead of hiding all his extras in a barn. It wasn’t that he was wrong to be rich, it’s that his heart was in the wrong place. And a poor man can have a wrong heart, too.

     So God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your soul will be required of you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?' “Your soul will be required of you.” And isn’t that true of us all? What truly matters is that in the end, did you believe, did you have faith in Jesus, and did your faith express itself in works of love and grace and mercy? That’s what Jesus means by being “rich toward God.”

     So what do we do? How do we guard ourselves against greed and covetousness? How do we keep the good things the world offers from leading us away from God? Solomon says, “A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from hand of God, for without Him, who can eat or find enjoyment?” How do we thankfully, gratefully enjoy the good things God’s world offers us, while at same time keeping “things” from leading us away from God? Paul has wise advice for us, in our reading from Colossians 3.

     “Since, then, you have been raised up with Christ,” Paul says. And you have been, haven’t you? Washed in the water of Baptism, forgiven for your sins by the blood of Jesus, given a new life by the grace and mercy of God? If we’ve been raised up with Christ, and there’s a glorious resurrection yet to come waiting for us, then what should our focus be while we’re down here one earth? Paul says, “Set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, and not on earthly things.” Set your mind on Jesus, who’s the same yesterday, today, and forever, and set your heart on the place you’re going to spend eternity – not on this world we’ll only spend seventy or eighty or ninety years in, and where everything is decaying and passing away. In that light, piling up a heap of stuff we’re not going to get to keep anyway just doesn’t make a lot of sense.

    “For you have died,” Paul says. Not in the physical sense, not yet, anyway, since we’re all still here. No, he’s talking here about Baptism and being “born again” and coming to faith. Into the water to drown and kill and bury all your sin, up from the water to be made brand-new and live a brand-new life. “Your life is now hidden with Christ in God,” Paul says. You’re wrapped up in Christ, or maybe Christ is wrapped around you, or maybe it’s both – but once that miracle happens, how can you ever be the same?

     Getting Christ into your soul brings hope into the picture. No more looking around and crying, “Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless” – because now you know there’s so much more to look forward to. “When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.” And knowing and believing that makes all the difference in the world. That’s Christian funerals are different, and why, as Paul says, “we don’t grieve as the world grieves.” 

     Now, that being said, here’s the more difficult part. We’re forgiven and saved, but we’re far from being perfected. Sin still lives in us; there’s always a rich fool that wants to live in our souls, that covetous little man that wants to scratch and claw for all the things the rest of the world has. What to do about that “old man that lives inside us?” Kill him! Drown him every day, by remembering your Baptism and confessing your sins and keeping God’s Word in your head and in your heart. There’s no such thing as being free of sin so long as we live in this world; we’re going to have to fight it every day. 

     “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature,” Paul says: Kill  immorality and unbridled passions, kill evil desires and covetousness and greed, kill ten thousand things we human beings can turn into an idol. Those are the things that are bringing the justifiable wrath of God upon the world. And that’s who we were and who we used to be “before faith came.” What Paul says here makes me think of the young man I used to be, with the “anger, rage, malice, and filthy language.” 

     I had dreams when I was young about what I was going to do, and how rich I was going to be; but I see now that those foolish dreams had to die, in order for God to take me where He wanted me to be instead. That rich young fool, that old self, had to die, so this new self that really wants to try to be like Jesus could live. No more living for things that only pass through my hands, no more building bigger barns for someone else to keep, no more living for myself and not for somebody else. No disappointments, no future regrets. Christ is all, and Christ is in all; and by the grace of God, may Christ live on in us all.

     Lord Jesus, You are here with us -- here by Your Word, here by Your good Holy Spirit, here by a miracle of grace in the bread and wine of our Sacrament. You are with us, today, and with us always. Grant us the grace to hold on tightly to You and never let go. In Jesus’ name; Amen.