A positive legacy for future generations

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Mary’s Langdon Hills this morning and will share later at St Peter's Nevendon:

In Jewish society, land belonged first and foremost to God. The land in which the Jews lived was the Promised Land given to them by God when they were a nomadic people. Ultimately, the land was not theirs but God’s. In a sense, they held it in trust.

This is a positive attitude for all of us to have towards our possessions. Ultimately, our home, our money, our savings, our possessions are gifted to us by God and we are stewards of them. If we think like that then, instead of thinking how can I spend what I have on myself, we start thinking how can I use what I have been given for the glory of God. If we start asking ourselves that question then we are on the way to being good stewards of our resources.

When the people of Israel entered the Promised Land, the land itself had been divided up between the twelve tribes down to the level of households. In that patriarchal society the father was head of the household and ownership of the land passed from the father to the eldest son. But the land was held and used for benefit of the whole family and that was one of the reasons why it was not supposed to be sub-divided between younger members of the family. If the land was continually sub-divided eventually it would no longer support family life.

This is perhaps why Jesus was angry with the request of the man in the crowd that we read about in verse 13 (Luke 12. 13-21). He views it as a greedy request because the man wants the property for himself and that will be to the detriment of the wider family. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, the father does divide the property between both sons. The younger son squanders his half meaning that when he returns everyone has to live on half the property; whereas before they had benefited from the whole property. When you understand that, you understand why the elder brother of the Prodigal Son is so angry with him.

The story that Jesus then tells is a story about greed and living selfishly. The rich man in the story has so much that he can store all he has, stop farming and comfortably live off all he has until the end of his life. This is self-centred because he has decided to do nothing else but to take live easy, eat, drink and enjoy himself. But it is also selfish because he is using up and squandering the inheritance that he should be leaving to his wider family. How will they live in future when he has squandered all his resources on himself and there is no longer a working farm?

Jesus’ punchline then is not just that the rich man will not enjoy his wealth because he will die that night. This parable is a reminder to us of the brevity and uncertainty of life but it is also about the man thinking he can have it all in defiance of the legacy he should leave to his family and then finding because he suddenly dies that the legacy he should have left but didn’t is actually the legacy that his wider family receive. “Who will get all these things you have kept for yourself?” God asks the rich man in the story. The answer is the wider family who should rightfully have received then anyway.

So God is concerned about the legacy that we leave as stewards of all that he has given to us. There are at least two broad implications of these lessons for us in the West where each person consumes about 100 times as much commercially produced energy as an average Bangladeshi and where, in terms of impact on the planet, rich countries are far more overpopulated than poor ones.

The first, is that as good stewards we have a responsibility to share our abundance more equitably with others. The second, is that we need to leave a positive legacy to future generations.

John V. Taylor, a former Bishop of Winchester, published in 1975 Enough is Enough, a book which kickstarted the simple lifestyle movement with its slogan of ‘Live simply, that others may simply live.’ The time since has not yet led us to the point of collectively owning the lifestyle changes we need to make to make a difference. The prophetic cry, from those like Taylor for a greater simplicity of lifestyle, whether from moral choice or economic necessity, is one that has been effectively sidelined during our past prosperity but is one that we, as church and culture, desperately need to hear as we face a global race to exploit scarce resources.

If we were to genuinely hear and respond to their cry for the abandonment of over consumption and the adoption on an ongoing basis of a simpler lifestyle then not only could we learn not to repeat the issues raised by our over consumption but we would be also be returning to Jesus’ command to the Rich Young Ruler that we should use our wealth for the benefit of others.

That statement that, in the light of his coming kingdom, we should sell our belongings and give to the poor comes hot on the heels of this story about the rich man who piled up his riches for himself without reckoning on the crisis of his imminent demise. Just like Jesus’ disciples, we too face a coming crisis which necessitates the adoption of a simpler lifestyle.

If we hear these prophetic cries, if we learn lessons from the over consumption of our Western prosperity, if we take on board the plain meaning of Jesus’ words then, with John V. Taylor, we will say that “enough is enough!” and will seek to turn a temporary to a permanently simpler lifestyle; living simply that others may simply live.

The picture is, of course, by no means, wholly negative. Much of what happens at the grassroots of church life is actually a real challenge to the public perceptions of what Church is about. Many congregations are genuinely seeking to engage with environmental concerns and offer help in living more simply but much more still remains to be done.

The responsibility that Jesus places on us in this passage is not to store up our resources for ourselves and to leave a positive legacy for future generations. May it be so for each one of us. Amen.

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