One morning back in 1888, Alfred Nobel was quite surprised, as you would be, to read his own obituary in a French newspaper. Obviously, it was a journalistic mistake. One of his brothers had died, and a careless reporter had used a prewritten obituary of the wrong man. But as he read, Nobel was shocked and deeply disturbed to learn what the world really thought of him. He was seen simply as the dynamite king, the merchant of death, who had amassed a great fortune out of explosives. Nobel himself had hoped his inventions would be useful to people and to nations.
From the moment of reading that obituary, Alfred Nobel resolved to show the world the true purpose of his life. He revised his will so that his fortune would be dedicated to the recognition of great creative achievements, with the highest award going to those who had done the most for world peace. Today, of course we still associate him with the Nobel Peace Prize.
Today’s gospel reading (Luke 12:13-21) challenges each one of us to think about what we would like to see in our obituaries – which I hope will remain unwritten for a long time to come !! In the gospel we heard of the man who pulled down his barns to build bigger ones simply to store his grain and his goods. He was concerned only with ensuring his own comfort – he could relax, eat, drink and be merry…. Except when his life was taken away a barn full of grain and other possessions was worth nothing to him.
The story is told of a man who was in the gold business and he was transporting his gold from one place to another by boat. The boat developed a leak and was about to sink, so the man reached for his gold, strapped as much of it as he could around his waist, leapt overboard, and attempted to swim to the shore. Not surprisingly, he didn’t make it! He sank and drowned and the question was asked "As he was sinking, did the man have his gold, or did his gold have him?"
Last week I was asked the question of what happens to sins when God washes them away in baptism – and that question has tested my mind at times throughout the week, until I read the first line of the reading from Paul’s letter to the Colossians today (3:1-11). It says, ‘If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is… Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth…’
What Jesus has done in his crucifixion and resurrection is way too difficult to really understand, but we know enough of his love for us through those actions, that we know we can trust his word. We can never take back things that we have done wrong – they still exist, other people, or we ourselves, may still suffer as a result of them, but in Jesus our sins are just wiped out. They are forgiven and forgotten.
And that fact is something that we can only give thanks to God for. It is his grace, his mercy and his love, that enable us to enjoy a relationship with him. Sins don’t disappear anywhere when we are symbolically washed in baptism. That sin may not have been visible in the first place to anyone other than God.
And that is true of all of our attitudes – the gospel today is a warning of the dangers of greed and materialism. It is a warning to put God and other people first. Last week in the evening we thought about looking good on the outside but not being much good inside – and all of us at times can look good on the outside whilst holding a lot of bad feelings inside – Well, God sees them all !
God looks at our hearts, and just as he understands our human frailties, so he asks to be invited in to our lives to help us get over some of those frailties. And, as he does so, he asks us to be conditioned by him, and not by the standards and ideals of the world today.
The whole of the New Testament message can be summed up very simply as an instruction to love – to love God and to love our neighbour, whoever that neighbour may be. And that command to love is a high standard to set. It is very different from so much that we see in the world today, where there is often a desire to put ourselves first, or at least our close families and friends.
Jesus turned that ideal upside down, and he continues to call on us as his followers today to live out his message. The grace, the mercy and the love of God are not things to be explained, because the depth of God’s love is way, way beyond our understanding – rather the grace, the mercy and the love of God are to be received as we open up our lives to him, and ask to be fed by his strengthening power and cared for in his ever loving arms. AMEN
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