What Should I Do?
Free Version: Eighth Sunday After Pentecost- Hosea 11:1-11; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21
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Our readings this week lead us to consider the generous, faithful and steadfast heart of God.
Through the prophet Hosea (Hosea 11:1-11), God laments the ways in which his son, whom he called, adopted and nurtured, has turned his back on Him. God taught Israel to walk, lifted their cheek and fed them. And yet, Israel has turned from God over and over again.
In this, God contemplates whether to allow the Assyrians to destroy Israel due to their unfaithfulness. In the end, he asks himself questions which only have one answer: “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel?”
The answer: he will not. Though he wrestles, God’s heart is compassionate. After all, he is not like a man. He is the one true God. His call to the remnant of Israel may be comforting, in some sense, but it is also frightening. Because, like in Egypt, God is not merely liberating his people. He is calling them to be who they were created to be in the world.
Our epistle reading (Colossians 1:1-11) illustrates the intentionality required in living out our identity as God’s people. Paul describes the Christian life with verbs like: set, put to death, rid yourselves, and put on. After all, we have been raised with Christ!
Things like sexual immorality and divisive talk do not serve us well in this new world and new identity. We can take that stuff off. Each day as a Christian involves laying down the old self and putting on the new, trusting into who we have become through Christ’s resurrection and in our baptism. Other identities surely still exist, but they no longer ultimately define us and they must not be our claim to privilege.
In our gospel reading (Luke 12:13-21) Jesus responds to a man demanding that his brother share his inheritance with him by sharing a parable about a man who had a great harvest and wanted to store the harvest so that he could have plenty for his future, so that he could relax, eat, drink, and be merry.
This man is called a “fool,” not because of his success, but because of his failure to consider God in deciding what to do with his wealth. All wealth comes from God and it all belongs to God. Wealth for us is fleeting and will not be there for us in the end. We do not control the way the world spins, how crops grow, how markets change. To seek such control is idolatry. It is best to hold our possessions loosely, not to let them define us.
We would do well to ponder God’s question in the Hosea reading, whether or not to “give up” Israel, his son. We see a similar question in the gospel reading, the successful man asking how to use his grain: “What shall I do?” God shows his great love in his compassion for Israel and ultimately by sending his Son to be rejected and to take our sin upon himself. But God does not surrender the world to the effects of sin and death. His love raises Christ from the grave, conquers sin and death and makes all things new. This leads us into a new way of living, intentionally putting away selfish and objectifying behaviors, instead putting on our resurrection clothes every day.