August 3 2025 Sermon
God’s love underpins our lives. God’s love is the very substance from which we come. Do our lives bear evidence to that reality.
Each of the scripture passages speaks of actions, concerns and things that get in the way of our enjoying fully the love which God so lavishly showers upon us.
In the verses we read from Hosea God is portrayed as a mother loving the nation of Israel – but the people worship foreign God’s – the Baals
In the epistle, St Paul points out that the believers in Colossae, who had died and risen with Christ through baptism were giving in to fleshly ways that distance them from God.
In the gospel, a man is so caught up with a family feud over an inheritance that he misses God’s love personified in the person of Jesus standing right in front of him.
What is it that blinds us to God’s love?
Thomas Keating identifies three essential biological needs for human beings: (1) Security & Survival, (2) Power & Control, and (3) Affection & Esteem. These biological needs are good and essential in our growth as human being. But when they dominate our lives, then they possess us and become our gods.
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” 12:14 But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?”
Irony Jesus who comes to judge the living and the dead, offers a parable. Jesus seems to challenge the petitioner to recognize whether he is trying to make use of a perceived status and authority in Jesus without facing the claim upon his own life implicit in that status and authority.
What did the farmer do wrong? so with clear-sightedness and practical wisdom he upgrades his storage capability so that all his stores can be maintained most efficiently.
Our very life, the life-force within us, from which stems all our power to act, one has been gifted to us by God. God may ask for its return at any point.
The farmer was right to the extent that he saw that life is about the accumulation of wealth, but what kind of wealth should we be primarily concerned with accumulating? To “become rich with God in view” refers in the present context primarily to the use in obedience to God of one’s material wealth for the relief of real needs in the world.
15 And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”
Gift becomes more important than the giver Somewhere deep inside, we all know that Jesus was stating a powerful truth. Everything we own also owns a little bit of us. If we own a house or a car, then we are under an obligation to earn money to pay for the house or car; we have to take time to see to it that our house or car is cared for. We are no longer quite as free as we were before.
Want to control the giver The matters in my life that I consider to be my biggest, most pressing problems may not interest Jesus in the least. It’s always a shock to have a conversation with Jesus and to find that he is more than the answer to my questions and the solution to my problems.
The gifts are temporary, the giver eternal
12:20 But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’
12:21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
3:1 So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 3:2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, 3:3 for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 3:4 When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.
Not pain free, Not riches, But eternal, But glorious