Mel Prestamo, Elder PCUSA
Luke 12: 32-34, Offered to the Berkshire Valley Presbyterian Church, August 10, 2025
Jesus’ comments at the beginning of today’s good news story from Luke start with the words, “Do not be afraid…for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.”
That is the starting point isn’t it, for everything that Jesus is trying to teach us about the Father. That, it is the “Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.” That sets the stage for everything we can come to know about the Father. In all Jesus’ lessons, all the parables he told us, all the insights he gives us about the Father all begin at, “…it is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the Kingdom.”
The Creator Father created the cosmos in his “good” pleasure and made it good, called it good. In each step of our Creation story in Genesis, our Creator God spoke into existence the elements of the cosmos from out of nothing and called them good. He created Light, night and day, the stars and the moons, all of the creatures that swarm under the seas and over the dry land. And God pronounced all of them good. It was in the Father’s good pleasure that he created us, humankind – male and female – and placed us into the garden to walk with him and that was good. God blessed us, gave us stewardship over God’s creation and told us to go forth and multiply. That was good, until we screwed it up.
After humankind’s fall from grace into sin, our righteous Father called Abram to become the father of the nation to whom our steadfast God would make promises on behalf of all of God’s Creation and then strive to keep those promises even in the face of his chosen people’s constant betrayals.
The Father’s good pleasure has been and always will be to have a righteous relationship with you and to give you every opportunity to be with God through all eternity in God’s Kingdom.
This is our starting point – our jumping off point for today’s lesson in Luke.
Then Jesus builds on this premise by telling us how to take advantage of God’s good pleasure. But to understand what Jesus is saying here, we have to go back a bit in the lectionary to a parable Jesus taught perhaps just minutes before in real time. This twelfth chapter of Luke probably made more sense to Jesus’ listeners in real time than it might for us because our lectionary breaks these teachings up into separate passages. So, let’s go back to verse 13 when someone in the crowd surrounding Jesus calls out to Jesus, as a respected Rabbi, to be the arbiter of a dispute between two brothers over a family inheritance.
The voice calls out, “Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” Ordinarily, this would have been the role of an elder or a Rabbi to listen to disputes and then in their wisdom make a decision, so that justice could prevail in disputes between the people.
But when presented with this request to settle a dispute over earthly wealth and possessions, Jesus’ response to the man is, “No. No way. Ain’t going to go there.”
However, Jesus, sensing an opportunity for a teaching moment goes on to tell them a parable about a rich fool. You will recall the story. The rich man has a bumper harvest and is faced with the challenge of what to do with this vast surplus in the harvest – which by the way God had provided him.
The rich man had many choices. He could have thought of all the people in need around him and shared a portion of his surplus with the needy. Or, he could have brought it to the Temple’s treasury to be used by the chief priests and elders. But he did neither of these. Instead, he decides to build bigger and better barns in which to store up this unexpected bumper harvest for himself.
In the parable, as Jesus speaks for the rich fool, the man uses the words, “I, my, and myself” ten times. Never once does the rich man consider the needs of anyone else other than himself. When he had built up all his new barns and stored away all of his surplus harvest, he remarks to himself that he now has everything he needs to live a long and happy life. So, he says to himself, “…relax, eat, drink, and be merry.”
Then God steps into the picture and chastises the rich man, calling him a “fool”, telling him that very night his life will be demanded of him. And then God asks, “then what will happen to the things you have prepared? Whose will they be?”
That reminds me of a quip. Would you like to make God laugh? Tell God your plans.
Now after God chuckles at that man, God tells him that He has called the rich fool for his life. God then asks, what will become of the things that you thought were so very important to you in this world. You have stored up things that robbers can steal from you, that moths can invade, eat and destroy. In the purse that is your heart, you have stored up only things that will ultimately be stolen or rot away to dust.
Instead, Jesus tells us to store up treasures in our purses [in our hearts] – the kinds of treasures that will not rot away, – unfailing treasures in heaven where thieves cannot get near and moths cannot destroy. Build up our treasures by building up our relationship with God, Jesus is telling us. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
In other words, where your focus is in this life – on a right relationship with God, there your heart will be also.
So now we have progressed back to our starting point in today’s reading. Once we have worked on building up a right relationship with God, Jesus tells us, “Do not be afraid…for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.”
Now comes a verse that is probably the one that is most difficult for us to comply with. “Sell your possessions and give alms.” I know it is a difficult one for me. Sell my possessions? God, really? God, I already support my home church congregation. I already make gifts to multiple charities and care organizations. Heck, I even gave blood yesterday. Why would I still have to sell off my remaining assets? I’m hoping, No.
But, Jesus tells us, yes. If your possessions are going to distract you from knowing God; if your earthly wealth is going to blind you from seeing and knowing the God who has called you good; if we turn what God has created as good into an evil choice which leads us to choose to leave God’s garden, then yes, you need to sell that off and focus back on God.
And then, he tells us to rely on God to provide for our needs. I’m sorry. Let me be honest with you all, this is a big ask. And to be openly honest with you, I don’t know how to respond to this challenge.
I search my heart for an answer on how to make this work. So, I have to tell you, I need to be careful here not to go to Scripture looking for the answer I want. I hope that I am finding insight into Jesus’ wider meaning of how we should live out our discipleship.
When hearing today’s Word, I find myself also thinking of Jesus’ parable of the three servants. The ones whose master assigned talents before he went to travel abroad. The parable is that talents were distributed to each of them. The first is given ten and he doubles them. The second is given five and likewise, he doubles them. The third takes the one he is given and buries it in the ground. He is chastised as being slothful and lazy, having wasted the talent he was given. However, the two servants who invested their talents and made them grow are praised and rewarded.
How does this parable which encourages us to use our talents to the best of our abilities and make them grow balance against this teaching that tells us to sell everything and rely on God. Are we talking about Apples and Oranges or is there a message here which explains to us how to balance the two.
I think there is. So, let’s try to take a look at how that might work out.
Let’s look at the rich fool and the servants and what they were given and what they did with these gifts.
First the servants are given the talents by the master of the house. The premise here that Jesus is trying to stress to us is that the talents, the gifts we receive in this life come from God. The two servants never lose sight of where their talents come from and to whom they belong. The rich fool, however, never acknowledges where his surplus harvest comes from. He believes everything that he amasses in his lifetime comes from his own hands, his own work, his own efforts. Recall if you would with me that Jesus begins the parable of the rich fool with this opening line, “The ground of a rich man yielded an abundant harvest.” In other words, Jesus is telling us that God had caused the ground to yield up an abundant harvest. God is where all good things come from. But the rich fool never sees or acknowledges that.
Now in both of these parables, the two servants and the rich fool work feverously to make their fortunes grow. However, where the servants are working on behalf of the Master of the house, the rich fool is working solely for himself.
In the end the two servants return to the master all the proceeds of their efforts. They return to the master this wealth to be used as he sees fit. The rich fool, however, stores his harvest up for himself and no one else.
The focus of the servants of the master are to serve the master and make his household grow. The focus of the rich fool is to hoard, to store up, to lock away. Sharing or placing any part of his wealth – even a small portion [10%] – into God’s hands never crosses his mind. His focus is single minded. It is self-serving. He is focused on only one thing and one thing only – himself.
So, the point I guess I am suggesting is where is your focus? Is your focus on building up your personal wealth and setting it up apart from God as the rich fool did. Or is your focus on building your talents up so that they can be returned to God for God’s use?
So, Jesus presents us with this question still referring back to the rich fool. Obviously, the rich fool was concerned only with how to provide for his lifestyle and how to extend it longer into his future. Jesus’ question is, “Can any of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your life span?”
The answer of course, we cannot. We cannot live our lives as the rich fool did planning it out in the greatest of detail, not seeing God as having any part of it. Nor can we live our lives as the foolish servant did, in fear, burying the talents we have been given into the ground. Both were ignoring what God’s plans for them might have been.
Instead, I think we need to look at the two servants who took the talents that they were given and made them grow. The caveat however is where do we place our focus. Working for ourselves or working for God. Are we working out God’s plan?
Working out God’s good plan – which is to bring God’s Shalom to all of creation – should be our sole focus. That should be the treasure that we store up in our hearts. If that is where our hearts lie, then how we steward our resources using them for God’s good work will also be called good.
If so, if in God is where you store up your treasures, then I think it would be God’s good pleasure to give us our place in God’s Kingdom.
May it be so.
