By the Rev. Robert Blezard
Revised Common Lectionary reflection for Proper 13, Year C
August 3, 2025
Key verse: Jesus teaches, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” -Luke 12:15
If you were planning only ONE Sunday this year to preach about wealth, greed and the spiritual dangers that money poses for God’s people, this would be the perfect Sunday.
The Gospel lesson offers stark warning about possessions. They have the power to lure the human soul away from the godly life. We end up loving our stuff rather than the Lord our God and our neighbor. In our North American context this message cannot be repeated often enough! Our lopsided economic values have rewarded the rich and punished the poor, resulting in an increasingly wide wealth gap between the haves and the have nots. (A theme that will be raised on Proper 16 with a reading from Isaiah 58.)
Jesus gives us a wonderful starting point with his blunt warning in Luke 12:15. This verse alone offers several important teachings. Here it is, broken down:
Take care! – Jesus tells us to handle wealth as we would nitroglycerin: It’s powerful, dangerous and liable to explode and cause much damage if we are not cautious.
Be on your guard … – Watch out, because the power of money is sneaky and can overtake us unless we are vigilant!
… against all kinds of greed! – We tend to think of greed coming in only one color: Green, like our dollar bills. But Jesus invites us to think of other kinds of greed, which can be characterized as insatiability. All of them are harmful to our spirits. In addition to money, we can be greedy towards food, power, pleasure, friends, knowledge, politics, sex, alcohol … and on and on.
And greed can poison our lives and relationships. In fact, the Gospel lesson opens up with a man asking Jesus to mediate a dispute with his brother over inheritance. Ah, squabbles over the estate. Nothing like a fight over what mom or dad has left behind to divide a family. No doubt everyone knows of a family being torn apart by a fight over inheritance.
For life does not consist in the abundance of possessions! – In this one insight, Jesus not only summarizes a primary Biblical critique of wealth, but he also eviscerates the prevailing assumption that drives our consumer economy. Our American values tell us that our life DOES consist in the abundance of possessions. So much so that we talk about our financial accumulation as our “worth.” In contrast to our limited financial worth, our intrinsic worth is priceless because we are precious children of God, loved so much that Jesus died for us.
A good sermon could focus on Luke 12:15’s final phrase alone, rebuking our culture’s assumption that our worth = our wealth and instead pointing out what our life DOES consist of. The account of true wealth that God gives us could include salvation, love, trust, friends, faith, joy, contentment.
Jesus illustrates his points about wealth with his story of the man who was so rich that he planned to build bigger barns. The joke’s on him, however, because God tells him that his life is ending that night, “And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (Luke 12:20). In doing so, Jesus loops the discussion back to the starting issue, inheritance.
Jesus wraps up that story – and his warning about money – with the insightful, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God. Similarly, a sermon would reach a fine landing zone talking about what it means to be rich toward God.
In worship
This Sunday, make the offering extra special by inviting congregants to write down what “stored up treasures” they have that might be keeping them from being richer toward God. And to consider whether they would be willing to give them up. Anonymously, of course. Do this by including 3-inch by 5-inch index cards in the bulletins. Give them instructions during announcements or before intercessory prayers to think about and write down those stored up treasures. During the offering time, instruct them to hold onto the index card and pray over it.
Alternatively, using the index cards, challenge congregants with Jesus’ teaching that “life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Invite them to write down what, instead of the abundance of possessions, their life consists of.
Previous reflections for Proper 13C:
2019 – Clothed with a new self
2016 – Vanity, thy name is mortal
2013 – So it is
2010 – Problematic preaching about bigger barns
Leave a Reply