Our Inheritance

And he [Jesus] said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” (Luke 12:15 ESV) Jesus is put on the spot to solve a dispute between two brothers over the distribution of “their” inheritance. More than answering the immediate question, Jesus reveals to us our true life in Him and how we have become His inheritance. Today at International Lutheran Church, we reflect on our possessions and what it means that God in Christ has made us His very own.

Covetousness and the possession of many things is not a new problem. Human greed and the desire for more has been a stumbling block to all humanity since our parents’ first temptation in the garden to attain something “more.” In the Book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon reflects on the vanities of this life – especially related to our constant striving and struggling in life to have or possess more things. He rightly notes that in the end, our abundance of accumulated stuff all goes to someone who did not work, strive, or struggle to obtain it. What is the point, then, of our toil and effort if in the end it goes to those who did not work? Indeed, our entire life can be consumed with the desire to accumulate and store up more than we can use.

Tomorrow, Lord willing, I will return to Seoul and our ministry at ILC. The “end” of Home Service in the past was always a little bit of a struggle. There is always the tension between the last-minute things that need attention, and also the last minutes to be spent with dear ones that we won’t see for a while. It also reminds me of another tension that used to consume me – the constant need to go through our possessions in my parents’ basement. Now it is a kind of memory that I both cherish and muse over. It had been literally a task that I was avoiding for years. Our time in the US and time spent with my parents always seemed too short. I often felt guilty about not helping them to empty out and sort through all the things that had accumulated in their basement. But at the same time, I knew they hoped to spend time with us when we visited and not “waste a moment of it” in the cold, dark, basement. I should probably explain. A “basement” may not be a universal home construction requirement. For a house in the upper Midwest, a basement is an essential part of every home. A home must be built upon a solid foundation and that includes space for you to go down into in the event of a serious storm or tornado. Before refrigeration, a basement also served as a cool, dry place where a family could store food for the winter months without the fear of it spoiling. My grandmother’s home still has a few jars preserved for the future though she has been gone for decades. The modern-day basement often becomes extra space for a recreational room, a guest room, a workshop, or sometimes mostly storage space. For my parents, their basement was not only their storage space but also a kind of time capsule of their lives. Outdated clothing, records and documents, broken furniture in need of repair, the objects of their children’s youth, things that they had kept because of the nature of what it meant to them. The trouble was, it was more than they could use or even sort through. In the end, going through it all did have a profound impact on me and my sisters. We learned again what was precious to them and it gave us another glimpse into their lives now preserved in Christ.

It is this context that moves me to reflect on Jesus’ words to the two brothers. Besides a warning at the futility and even danger in storing up huge amounts of possessions for our own self-consumption, Jesus’ words to these brothers and especially His disciples and even you and me can really teach us something about what is precious to God – what He found worth coveting. I don’t imagine we would consider God’s foolishness to covet you and me, but in a real sense, that is the true irony of Jesus’ invitation to serve as arbitrator and judge over the inheritance of the two men. It was not the younger brother who had made Jesus judge, but God Himself. In sending Jesus to gain you and me and all people as His inheritance, Jesus would have to die. For us to be His own and live in Him in His Kingdom, God made us His inheritance. This is what our life now truly consists of, not gold, riches, or barns full of our accomplishments – but His precious Blood, His Body offered on the Tree. This is where we see God’s foolishness turned to true wisdom. Here in Jesus’ death and resurrection we become His very own inheritance. Here we are freed from a life focused on self and self-preservation. We are “brought out of the basement” and become the very objects through which He, Jesus, displays His grace and love to a world consumed by its own consumption.

When Paul calls the Colossians and us to “set our eyes on things above” (Colossians 3:2), he is not urging us to live some kind of “pie in the sky,” “wait until we die” kind of life. Rather, he is reminding us of the purpose and value we have in Christ so that we would be transformed in the way we live and act now. If you and I are freed from the possession of our possessions, we can see and care for our neighbor as God had intended us to live in the first place. We begin to see that our greatest possession is that we are possessed by God so that we can share Him with all. In our new life in Christ, we live out our inheritance, “our riches in heaven,” as we share this Good News generously with all. This is what in the end calls us to return and makes all our good-byes filled with His joys and blessings. God grant us all this new kind of life in Him!

Pastor Carl