Readings 

Luke 16.19-31; Amos 6.1a, 4-7; Psalm 146; 1 Timothy 6.6-19

Find the sermon after the readings, starting on p.4

 Amos 6:1a, 4-7

Warnings to the wealthy

6:1aWoe to those who are at ease in Zion and for those who feel secure on Mount Samaria.

6:4Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and lounge on their couches and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the stall,

6:5who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp and like David improvise on instruments of music,

6:6who drink wine from bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!

6:7Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile, and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away.

Psalm 146

Help and hope come from God

146:1Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD, O my soul!

146:2I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long.

146:3Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.

146:4When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.

146:5Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD their God,

146:6who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever;

146:7who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free;

146:8the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous.

146:9The LORD watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

146:10The LORD will reign forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the LORD!

1 Timothy 6:6-19

Pursuing God's justice

6:6Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment,

6:7for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it,

6:8but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.

6:9But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

6:10For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

6:11But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.

6:12Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

6:13In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you

6:14to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ,

6:15which he will bring about at the right time--he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords.

6:16It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

6:17As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches but rather on God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.

6:18They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share,

6:19thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

Luke 16:19-31

Poor Lazarus and the rich man

16:19"There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.

16:20And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores,

16:21who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores.

16:22The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried.

16:23In Hades, where he was being tormented, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side.

16:24He called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.'

16:25But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.

16:26Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.'

16:27He said, 'Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house--

16:28for I have five brothers--that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.'

16:29Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.'

16:30He said, 'No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.'

16:31He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'"

Sermon 

“Put not your trust in princes, nor in any human power, for there is no help in them.” So says our psalm today. Taken on its own, this is an unusually easy religious message for people to swallow in our times. In polls it’s clear that a majority of us have little or no trust in our government and politicians, and a significant minority have no trust in other powers like the police. Instead, people are turning inward – reserving their trust only for those they know or who they see as being like themselves. Many people go even further, concluding that the only person you can really trust is yourself. And our culture, with its focus on self-reliance and self-care, only serves to reinforce that focus. If you can’t trust others, then it’s a kind of protection to do everything you can to look out for yourself. If focusing on ourselves in this way will make us happier and healthier, as all our wellness media seem to tell us, then that’s an added bonus.

But the underlying message of the psalm, and of all our readings today, is actually the opposite of that. Rather than narrowing our focus, refusing to trust in the powers of this world is meant to make us look outward, placing all our trust in God. “Happy are those… whose hope is in the Lord their God.” God is the source of everything that exists, God cares about those whom the world exploits and forgets, and God’s loving reign shall long outlast every powerful person or thing we encounter in this world.

And today’s readings give a very practical focus to what it means to trust in God. Quite obviously, they all talk about money and its effects, and I’m going to do that today as well. But first, I want us to understand that what underlies all of these readings is love. God’s love for us, God’s generosity in providing and sustaining us with all that we have, God’s self-giving in Christ’s sacrifice for us, so that we might share in eternal life with him… this is the context for everything that these readings say, because it is God’s love and generosity that call on us to make a response in kind. This is what discipleship means. Following God means keeping the law of love: we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our mind, with all our soul and with all our strength, and we are to love our neighbours as ourselves.

This loving response to God can shape our whole lives, everything that we are and all that we do. It should upend and overturn the values of the world, with all its selfish loves and hatreds. It’s not something that we can confine to our worship on Sundays. And I know that this is a message that so many of you here know already. This isn’t a church full of idle rich people lounging on beds of ivory of the kind that Amos describes. I see you look after each other, I hear your care for those outside these walls. I know how many of you have pursued careers that involve looking after others. I know how many of you with little money work an honest job or more than one to keep food on the table for your families, and still find time to care for others in hundreds of different ways. Above all, I have the privilege of hearing privately from many of you about your prayer lives, those intimate relationships with God that sustain and guide you, so I know that you are not guilty of relying only on yourselves.

But today’s readings still challenge us to go further, to let God rule over more and more of our lives. Our reading from Amos and the Gospel put the choices that face us in the starkest terms, predicting devastation of more than one kind for those who enjoy the good things of this world at others’ expense. But just because they are so stark, if we’re not careful in how we read them, then we can end up giving ourselves too much wiggle room, too much plausible deniability. I’m not taunting a poor guy outside my house by standing at the window eating a roast dinner, so surely Jesus’ parable doesn’t apply to me. I enjoy eating and dancing with my friends, but I still care about suffering people, so surely Amos’ warnings don’t apply to me. By thinking like this, we can allow ourselves to become complacent, forgetting the ways in which we do still enjoy our lives at the expense of others.

That doesn’t mean that Jesus is telling us that we’ve got no hope with God unless we give up everything we have and become like Lazarus, starving and covered with sores. That wouldn’t be a very inspiring message, nor is it true to the character of God as we know it. God is nothing if not merciful, and God’s love isn’t conditional on our actions. The rich man in Jesus’s parable doesn’t end up in torment because he has more than he needs, but because he failed to respond to his good fortune with care for others. He failed to love God back.

In the same way, we’re called on to be generous to others not because we want to make a bargain with God for a good afterlife, but as a thankful response to the gifts God has already given us, including above all the gift of eternal life that is freely given to us in Jesus Christ. As the letter to Timothy makes clear, generosity is a practical way of living out our love for God, of helping ourselves keep focused on that love in a world that wants to make money, power and social status occupy the place in our hearts that God should have.

Generosity can take many forms, from taking the time for a cup of tea with someone who’s lonely to volunteering on the front lines of a global crisis. All of us can be generous in ways that go beyond money. The reason all these readings focus on the dangers of wealth isn’t because money matters more than these other things, but because our tendency to focus on money is one of the most powerful things that can draw us away from love for God and love for others, even while we’re being generous in other ways.

I’ve no interest in guilt-tripping anyone about what they own, nor do our readings today. What they do ask of us is that we search within our own hearts to see where we’re truly placing our trust. Is our trust in God or in human powers? Money is nothing if not a human power, and like all human powers, it will pass away in time. By giving it away, we reduce it to its true value – simply a tool, like any other, in the service of what we value most.

Take a moment now to ask yourself: does the way you treat money reflect the things you value most? Does it connect you with others, or keep you apart from them? Does it show your love of God?

By being generous, in whatever way we are able, we help ourselves to keep focused on the things that really matter, taking hold of the life that really is life. And we help others, too, both directly with what we give, and – if we can do it cheerfully – by setting an example of lives lived to the full, open and loving in a world torn apart by suspicion and hatred. We help them to see God’s love in our own. So I encourage all of us to grab hold of this life, to let God liberate us from the love of money, and with that liberation to empower us to make Christ known throughout the world, with all the generosity we can. 

Amen.