What God Wants

Reverend Philip Stringer

Luke 12:49-56

LET US PRAY: O merciful Father in Heaven: You give the knowledge of your saving help -- a comfort to your people. Feed our hearts with your Holy Word, and make our hearts instruments of your glory, today and all days. AMEN

Do you know what matters most? If we took time to go around the room, I imagine we would hear some pretty thoughtful answers -- deep, philosophical, profound. And if you’re like me, you probably try to keep the answer to that question at least in the back of your mind all of the time.

But if you are like me, you probably find it getting crowded out more than you would like -- and most of the time without realizing it.

The question of “What matters most?” is most often replaced by the question, “what do I want most?”

It would be nice if those two questions had one-and-the-same answer. But more often than not, they don’t.

Do you know what I want?

Do you know what the person next to you wants?

Do you even know in all honesty what you want?

Our Scripture texts today help us explore these questions -- and more than that, they offer us promises in which we can shape and cradle these questions. They point us beyond what we want -- to what God wants. And what God wants . . . is justice.

And by that I don’t mean merely a reckoning of just rewards for one’s deeds. “Justice,” as used in reference to God’s will, is that all things are as they should be. Everything is as God intended it to be. Justice -- in God’s eyes -- is that you have life in its fullness. Justice is that we are reconciled to God and each other. Justice is that we are all Gathered together in God’s love and are – ourselves -- perfect images of God’s love.

As Jesus spoke to his disciples, large crowds of people began to follow them everywhere they went. Luke tells us that “the crowd gathered by the thousands, so that they trampled on one another.”

They gathered around Jesus because they saw in him something that gave them hope. They were desperate to fill what was missing -- they were hungry, yes -- but they didn’t realize how deep that hunger was.

Jesus was healing people and feeding people -- When they looked at him they saw no more suffering, no more hunger, no more pain, no more worry. You can’t blame them for being excited about that! In effect, they wanted to be comfortable. And to this, Jesus said, “no.” Comfortable has nothing to do with what God wants. Their vision of how Jesus would fulfill their needs was much too small.

It’s difficult for us to be TOO hard on the crowd. We can see shadows of them within ourselves -- especially when we are afraid -- or those we love are ill, or there is something we desperately want, or life just isn’t going the way we want it to go.

The miracles of Jesus were extraordinary — and I mean that literally. They were EXTRA- ORDINARY. That is what made them miracles. They were things that did not ordinarily happen. Through the miracles Jesus gave the people following him a foretaste of the kingdom of God. Like smelling a wonderful meal that is cooking — it is being prepared for dinner, but the people didn’t want to wait for dinner; they wanted it all, right at the moment they smelled it!

For this reason, the miracles of Jesus often got in the way of his message. The reality is that the people saw Jesus merely as a means for satisfying their physical wants and needs. What God wants for them — and for us — goes far beyond this — it has to do with meaning and purpose.

I try to look at the church calendar before preparing for worship, but last week I missed the fact that last Sunday — August 10 — is the commemoration date for Saint Lawrence. Today seems to be a good day to revisit his story, because it underscores the lack of clarity by the people around Jesus, as well as the deeper meaning of life that comes through faith in Jesus.

You have likely heard the saying that someone “can’t see the forest for the trees.” That is exactly what was happening with the crowd around Jesus — and we see it in the story of Saint Lawrence, too.

Lawrence was one of 12 deacons serving the church in Rome in the third century. He was responsible for overseeing the treasury of the church and the distribution of alms to the poor.

The Roman Emperor Vespasian is known as one of the fiercest persecutors of the early church and was responsible for the deaths of many. When Vespasian learned that Lawrence was the treasurer, he had him brought before him and demanded that he turn over the church’s wealth. In response, Lawrence gathered together some of the poorest people who had benefited from Christian charity and proclaimed to Vespasian, “Here are the treasures of the church — for none are more precious to God than his children.”

The emperor had Lawrence thrown into prison until he would produce the wealth that he was sure was being hidden. After all, he reasoned, the Christians would only be feeding the poor if they had more than enough for themselves.

But when Lawrence continued to insist that there was no hidden great pile of cash, Vespasian had Lawrence slowly roasted to death on an iron grate.

Vespasian could see no further than his belly and his greed blinded him to a much richer life. He simply could not comprehend a life lived in love.

Saint Lawrence did not want to die a slow and painful death. And I dare-say that I don’t think that that’s what God wanted either. But what God DID want is what Lawrence clung to -- even when confronted with death.

It would be easy for us to reduce faith in Jesus to a fantasy that he can magically make our troubles disappear. We see it all the time — the idea that if we are good enough — and if we believe hard enough — if we pray hard enough — bad things won’t happen to us or to the people we love. So easy to get locked into this notion that “justice” means bad people get punished and good people get rewarded.

When I was young, I remember seeing a billboard for a church in Indiana. It had a beautiful husband and wife with their beautiful, blond children — a boy and a girl — standing in front of their beautifully manicured home, with their shiny new car in the driveway — and the caption below it read, “Success in living.” Clearly making the statement that people who are good Christians win the game of luxury.

But Jesus told his followers that to find the meaning of life they must be willing to let go of those sorts of dreams. Those who want to save their life must lose it. A friend of mine simply puts it like this: “The church exists to give itself away.” A life of loving service is what Jesus lived, and it is the life to which he calls us, also.

That’s what God wants. That is God’s justice.

The blindness of the crowd around Jesus is with us still today and so is the selfishness and greed of Vespasian — one simply has to take a look at the wars that are raging — and the callous acts of many in power to see it.

But we hear echoes of Jesus’ calling to a more excellent way in our modern day, too. Bishop Helder Camara served as archbishop in Brazil in the 1970’s and 80’s and was known as an advocate for the poor. He famously stated, “when I give bread to the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.”

God longs for us to live lives of abundant love. The love of God is poured out for us through our baptism into Christ. And the power of that love resides in your own hearts. The power that will set you free

from all of the world’s measurements of value;

free from the need to seek the world’s approval;

free from the need to try and satisfy yourself with power and wealth

and beauty -- and even knowledge.

I think about that saying of “not being able to see the forest for the trees,” and I think about the crowd gathering around Jesus -- how Luke describes them to us by saying that they were “trampling on one another.”

The people saw the people around them as obstacles separating them from what they wanted. The irony is that they are trampling over each other to be fed by Jesus -- and what Jesus shows us is that the people are the food that he gives!

Love one another. That’s the plan. That’s what God wants. Your neighbor, your family, the people seated next to you here, strangers on the street — and strangers whom you will never meet but who benefit from the offering you give — God is feeding you through them -- if only you will see him there.

AMEN