Sermon: Wittenberg Academy – Oct 29

29 October 2019

Text: Matt 19:16-30

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

In the fallen world, we cannot have everything.  So we have to prioritize, and act upon the most important thing to us.  In Economics, this is known as “scarcity.”  So if you can either buy a cup or water or a cup of diamonds, but not both, which one would you buy?  If you were in the desert and dying of thirst, you would be foolish to buy the cup of diamonds.  In that situation, the water would be worth more.  Under different circumstances, your priorities might be different.

Jesus invokes this principle with the rich young ruler.  After running through the commandments, our Lord gives him a choice: he can either “have eternal life” along with selling all of his possessions and giving the proceeds to the poor, or he can keep all of his riches and forget about eternal life.  St. Matthew reports, “When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.” 

Having a God to fear, love, and trust above all things is the ultimate example of scarcity.  As Jesus said elsewhere, “you cannot serve two masters… you cannot serve God and money.”  So which one is the top priority?  In this case, the rich young ruler chose his possessions.  They became his god.  And this is the curse of riches, for wealth makes it difficult to worship God.

But it isn’t only money that is an idol.  

I once had a conversation with a freemason who had been out of the church for decades.  He was older now, and asked if he could return to the church and take the Lord’s body and blood.  I asked him if he had renounced freemasonry.  He assured me that he could be both, that freemasonry was just a fraternity, and that its connections to Lucifer were not the devil, but rather to the goddess Venus.  (Yes, he actually said that).  So I posed a question to him.  I said that if he could only have one, which would he choose: the body and blood of Christ, or membership in the Masons.  He remained silent. 

Sadly, he developed cancer.  I visited him in the hospital, but he clung to his Masonic lodge.  He died without the comfort that comes from worshiping the one true God and putting his faith in Christ alone.  So though to my knowledge he did not have great possessions, he too made an economic decision based on priorities in the face of scarcity.  He too “went away sorrowful.”

Dear friends, we have many distractions that compete for our worship: money, organizations, the secular world, popularity, and even good things like our families, our health, and our work can replace the Holy Trinity as that which we “fear, love, and trust” in “above all things.”  And so how can we remain faithful?  Our Lord says, “With man this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible.”  Our ability to leave even “houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands,” for the Lord’s sake if need be, is not of ourselves.  It is a grace of God.

In our fallen world, we cannot have everything, but in the kingdom of heaven, we do have everything: we have forgiveness, life, and salvation, we have the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, and as we sing in Dr. Luther’s hymn: “The kingdom ours remaineth.  Amen.”

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.