Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 3 August 2025.
The Parable of the Rich Fool by Rembrandt, 1627 (Source)
• First Reading: Hosea 11: 1-11 (God’s love for Israel)
• Second Reading: Colossians 3: 1-11 (Living as those made alive in Christ)
• Gospel: Luke 12: 13-21 (The parable of the rich fool)
Most of us like a little salt with our meals. We put in scrambled eggs, we boil potatoes with it and it is there in our salads. Not too much, you understand: just enough to enhance the taste of what is already there.
So I wonder whether this is how we see our faith: like seasoning of an existing lifestyle. Just enough to make it interesting but definitely not too much. Maybe we can let it be known that we meditate – or do yoga or tai-chi. A few good works that all can see – wearing the right kind of ribbon at the right time, and helping out in a charity shop or at a parish event.
But again, not too much. All things in moderation. Never get too involved or passionate. That is for the sports events – never for the things of life and death and eternity. Just not done.
But look at the gospel. Two brothers arguing over a will and the loser appealing to Jesus like a social arbitrator.
But His reply is devastating.
Life is not what you have but what you are – and what you become. In any case, money itself has long been debased into an electronic box of ones and zeros and even our notes and coinage depend on our confidence in the banks to manage these measures and stores of value and units of account. They definitely have no intrinsic value.
And so Jesus tells of the fragility of wealth. It can never be isolated from the risks of this world. Indeed the very idea of investment is about making a long term commitment in the hope of receiving long term rewards. And if war or famine or calamity intervene – then that is the way it is.
But the things of God really are eternal. The total self-giving love of God is eternal. So is His truth. And His justice. And His word. The life and truth of Jesus are also eternal.
And that applies to His passion, death and resurrection. Even the mission He entrusted to His disciples to spread the gospel would come to an end so the institutions of the church are also fragile.
Writing to the church in Colossae, Paul reminds them of who and where they are in the sight of God.
They are raised with Christ, having died with Him and been given new life in baptism. Their identity now lies with Him. Their purpose in life is also in Him. His ways were to become their ways – and not the other way round.
Jesus was never going to compromise on the holiness and purity of God.
But the people would have to confront the things of their former lives in order to conform to His life. They were to set their minds and priorities and loyalties on His nature and character.
Having died in Him and been raised in Him, He would now be their life. Their lives conformed to His, just as He had given His life for them.
And it would mean confronting the old habits of life: its values, thinking, loyalties, appetites, priorities.
Some things would come to the surface quite quickly – sexual and spiritual activities. The emotions and surges of desire or fury that directed their feelings and what they said and did. Their relationships would have a new kind of quality.
So yes, anger, greed, every kind of impurity, every kind of desire and self-assertion. It would all have to be conformed to the life and character of Jesus Christ.
And equally the old loyalties of race and culture and social class and occupation would become reconciled and moderated in Jesus Christ.
Setting the mind on the things of God, letting go of the things that must die, looking to a renewed identity in the knowledge and in the image of God Himself.
And yes, if this was all so easy then we would not have to speak of it. Nobody tells us to breathe for we do it anyway. But we do need to be strengthened in the things and ways of the Lord.
That is why we need each other so much. It is why our identity as Christians draws us together.
And yet God also looks on us much as He looked on the people of Israel: a long yearning for that intimacy and fellowship as they find themselves in Him.
The pleas to return to the ways of the Lord and to the foundation of their faith in Him.
For ancient Israel it was the covenant with Abraham and then the Exodus deliverance from Egypt under Moses. It was there in the great kings like David, Josiah, Hezekiah.
And God looks at us, as to the ancient Israelites to be renewed in our faith in Him. ‘When Israel was a child I loved him.’ And yet they went after other deities much as our times prefer a faith that is a moderate compliance with good manners rather than an everlasting love for the things of God. The issues are the same, even if the society is different.
Just as they were threatened and overawed by the local super-powers of Egypt and Assyria, we also have superpowers, some benign to us and others definitely hostile.
But the call to find in Jesus Christ our security and our future is the same.
Only this time, we have the message of the cross in the gospels and the presence of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost. So we have no excuses.
