The BBB: Bigger, Better Barns
Luke 12:13-21
Rev. Jerry Owyang, Guest Preacher
Have you ever said this prayer? “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray my HDTV to keep. I pray my stocks are on the rise, and that my analyst is wise. That all my data is on the cloud, and that my music is not too loud. That all my investments are enough, that all my sushi’s fresh enough. That my iPhone still works, that my career won’t lose its perks. I pray my microwave won’t radiate, my condo won’t depreciate. I pray my health club doesn’t close, and that my money market grows. But if I go broke before I wake, I pray my Tesla they won’t take.” (Adapted from Family Survival in the American Jungle, by Steve Farrar.)
This Sunday, we'll take a look at what Jesus says about our "stuff" in Luke 12:13-21. Take a "sneak peek" at the text and
- Count the number of times you find "I," "me," and "my" in the text. What's the significance of this?
- How would you define greed? What other areas of life besides material wealth can greed affect?
Is it more likely for a rich or a poor person to be greedy?
How does one become rich towards God?
Jesus never condemns ownership-but he does give great insight to our attitude and wise use of our possessions.
Jerry Owyang has been serving Cal-Pac since 1989 in a variety of cultural and ministry settings—churches, camps, and correctional facilities. He previously served here at FUMCO (2002-04) as the Associate Pastor to oversee Youth & Christian Education Ministries. For the past 12 years, Jerry has served as the Senior Pastor at Cornerstone UMC in Placentia and is now taking a renewal leave of absence for a holy conversation with God!
Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, he graduated from UC San Diego and the University of Santa Clara School of Law. Married to Julie, they have three married adult children. He loves good food, good books, good music, solitude, and would rather be on a zip-line than filing papers!
How Much More?
Luke 11:1-13
From time to time every one of us goes through a hard season - a series of bad turns and misfortunes that leave us shaking our heads and asking “how much more can we take?” Sometimes its physical or mental health issues, sometimes its a series of losses and grief in our lives, and sometimes its just the news of the world around us weighing us down and filling us with discouragement. “The water is already up to my neck, and its still rising rapidly…Lord, have you forgotten me altogether? Do you not know I’m at my limit? Lord, how much more?!”
During life’s soul-withering moments, in the heart or at home or around the world, we will find no small comfort in the routine and disciplines of daily prayer and worship. But Jesus urges us to prayer and worship less for the moment of order and comfort they bring and much more because they are a means for knowing God’s true heart and self. In this world, Jesus points out, even the most heartless and cruel person will on occasion find a way to act kindly toward others. If we who are wicked know how to do this, how much more will God grant the Holy Spirit to us?
We Are Won, and So We Are One
Galatians 6:1-16
What happens when a Christian is found to be struggling with sin? What, if anything, should the rest of the church do about that?
There are at least two extremes by which Christians respond to the sins of others, both of which, for Paul, fall short of faithfulness. The first response says "to each his own, it's none of my business, that's between the sinner and God and I shouldn't get involved.” Paul rejects the notion that we can disregard one another, because Christ never disregarded us…”even while we were yet sinners.” (Romans 5:8)
The other extreme continually puts laws, statutes, standards and roadblocks ahead of people, as if to say “you broke the rules, now you can no longer be with us.” It’s the way of ultimatum, threat, and dissociation—making a scapegoat of others in hopes of justifying our own selves. This is not the Christ way either.
All Christians are connected, "one body with many parts" (1 Corinthians 12). Paul urged the Galatian churches to remember that no one is dispensable to Jesus; we must endlessly work to restore those who've strayed into sin back to the Body of Christ. But we must always do so as Jesus did: "In a spirit of gentleness" and love. (Galatians 6:1)
What Grows in the Garden
Anyone who’s ever grown a garden knows that tilling the soil and sowing seeds is just the beginning. Those conditions which make it possible for vegetables and fruit to grow are also just the right conditions for weeds and unwelcome plants to thrive. So we find that a major element of successful gardening is cultivation of the garden. Between seedtime and harvest comes the weeding, pruning, and watering that produce an abundant crop.
As with growing a garden, so it is with the life in Christ. Paul’s reminds the churches in Galatia the freedom we are given in Christ is just the beginning. There is a weed-choked part of each of us - what Paul calls the way of the flesh, which is contrary to the way of the Spirit of Christ. We are, in Paul’s view, like living gardens, and the Holy Spirit is the gardener. Giving in to natural, fleshly inclinations is likely to produce a harvest of weeds.
We are all like gardens, and all of us are producing some sort of crop or another. For those who who are guided by the Spirit, choosing Christ above all, the harvest will bring an abundance of love, joy, peace, and self-control.
We Are Already Made Free
There may be nothing more frustrating in all the world than watching a person with every advantage and resource imaginable just take it all for granted. Instead of rising up in strength and grace, they instead squander their gifts in a lifetime idleness, dissipation, and distraction. We ask “how could someone who is given so much toss it all aside and treat it with such scorn?”
This is the passionate frustration with which Paul to write to the Galatians, urging them to take hold of the freedom and the life-giving Spirit God had given them through faith in Christ. The old ways, the ways of slavery to the law and to the pagan idols, was broken. They are no longer slaves, but children of God, and heirs to the inheritance of Christ’s Kingdom.
“Take hold of your freedom,” Paul urges us, “and do not return again to the old, lifeless ways.”
Equal But Not the Same
On a Sunday when we are celebrating Christian baptism, we might be tempted to ask “who can belong to the Kingdom where Christ reigns?”
God’s answer: All are welcomed, by the grace of God! Those who swagger into his presence, brimming with pride of self-accomplishment, and those who stagger under the weightof guilt and frustration over continual failing (despite the best of intentions). Those who are absolutely certain they “belong” and they “deserve,” and those who see themselves as lifelong
outsiders…who’ve constantly been asked to surrender their very sense of identity if they ever wanted to be included.
Ever since God toppled the tower of Babel and scattered the nations, humans have viewed our many differences through suspicious and uncertain eyes. Great wars and injustice and oppression have occurred - even geneocide - because we viewed our diversity as a curse. But Christ reveals the story of how a curse is turned into a blessing. Christ assumed all that divided us and carried it to the cross on our behalf. In place of our old lives, he gives us a new fellowship that transcends our divisions. Though our past are varied and strange to one another, in Christ we are all equal; equal in sharing full participation in the community of Christ and equal in receiving the life and
power of Jesus.
We are equal, but not the same.
Spending or Defending Our Lives?
There are many in the church today who are walking daily in close faith and fellowship with Christ. Taking no confidence in their own work or righteousness, they are nonetheless people of absolute peace because they trust solely in the grace of God...God's saving power. Day by day they receive "Christ's faith" in greater and greater measure, and we can recognize them by the way they are joyfully spending the life Christ has given them in gratitude, sacrifice, and service to others.
There are many in the church who run about constantly crying "Lord, Lord!" but are in fact strangers to the grace of God (Matthew 7:22). We recognize these latter persons by their busy, harried lives, their cluttered spirits, their temperamental nature, and their deep insecurities about God's love for them. Day after day they run out in pursuit of the path of peace...the right mixture of good deeds, proper words, and restrain from evil that will once and for all put them on the right side of God. They are more concerned with avoiding "troublemakers" than serving neighbors, and they are constantly in fear. These poor souls are consumed with defending their lives through their good conduct, but what they seek can never be attained.
To the world outside the church, the "works" done in Jesus' name all tend to look the same, whether those doing them belong to the first group or the latter (and most often, the recipients of the church's ministry and compassion don't really care what's in the heart of the givers). But for Paul, and for all who are being saved, what's in the heart of the Christian makes all the difference.
Due to technical difficulties, we were unable to capture an audio recording of this sermon.
A Revelation and A Call
In order to establish the authority of the gospel that he preached, Paul found it necessary to tell the Galatians how he came to be a messenger of the gospel of Jesus. His journey was not as the other "apostles" had journeyed; he was late to the party. He underwent a powerful personal conversion, resulting in a 180 degree turnaround of his life, and he spend a number of solitary years quietly seeking to understand the depth of God’s grace.
The Galatian churches knew that Paul was Jewish, but he went out of his way to show them that his preaching and his message were not "products" of the Jerusalem church, or of any human organization. Paul is an apostle precisely because of God's revelation to him, and God's subsequent call to be Jesus' ambassador to the non-jewish world.
Paul's central message is that the progress of the gospel in the world is God's activity. It is not of human origin. Our understanding of salvation may be deepened and perfected as we learn and pray and have fellowship, but salvation isn't achieved through family inheritance, discovered in a library, validated with a diploma, or authenticated by traditions. It comes from God alone.