Sunday August 3rd, 2025 Worship

When I get married in three weeks, I will be wearing my late grandparents’ wedding rings on a necklace, as a sign of my connection to them and the 60 years they spent married to each other. When I wear those rings, it isn’t about the objects themselves, but about what they mean to me. As symbols of love, companionship, and their deep commitment to each other and God. They will be worn on a necklace chain left to me by my late uncle, their son, as a testament to his impact on my life too. They were some of the biggest influences in my life, so even though they cannot be there with me in person, I know they are going to be there with me in spirit. This is part of what they left behind for my sister and I after they died, but this is just a very small piece of their legacy.
It’s had me thinking about what kind of legacy do I want to leave behind? I know some might say that I’m a little young to be thinking about a question like that, but I think it is an important question to ponder as we discern our values and morals. This isn’t a just a question for us as individuals, but as communities, as organizations, as people whose actions and lack of actions have an impact on creation around us. We have a choice in how we live each day, how we interact with one another, and how we show up in and for the world. I’m not saying this to make every day feel daunting and overwhelming, but to remind us that when we are grounded in who we are, in the values we draw from our faith as we love God and love neighbor, that this will be there to help guide our days. It gives us a center to which we can come back when everything else around us feels too scary or out of control. It gives us a different way of being in the world, and I won’t lie and say that living in such a way doesn’t come with some challenges at times. Because it is often difficult to say the hard thing or stand up for what we feel is right; there are a lot of societal consequences to doing so.
These readings today are a strong indictment of the way we are taught by society that we should be living our lives. That we shouldn’t rock the boat. That we need to work, work, and do some more work. That our focus should be on building up wealth or buying the next shiny object. That our worth comes from not only how much we work, but what we come to own as trophies of our wealth. I often wonder what Jesus and the Scripture writers would say about the fact that we have so many billionaires in the world, but we also still have profound homelessness and hunger. We have been taught that resting is laziness, even though God rested after creation and calls the Sabbath holy. That our value comes from how much we can produce, which has caused so much harm to people who are differently abled, as they are dismissed from society because they are not seen as contributing enough value. It’s why so many kids these days are thinking about their college major decisions based on what will earn them money instead of where their passions and gifts meet the needs of the world. We need doctors and engineers, but we also need artists, teachers, and writers. I can’t tell you how many time peoples asked me what I was going to do with English and Religion degrees, while most people at my school were studying Business or were preparing for Medical School.
Our callings in life, our vocations, are multi-faceted. We don’t have just one vocation. Our callings can include being a spouse, a sibling, a child, a member of society, a parent, and sometimes they happen to include the job we do to earn money. I know that we can’t ignore the reality that we all need food, shelter, clothing, etc. and that the money to pay for that has to come from somewhere, but I also can’t express enough that our life should be about more than just our work. That isn’t said to shame the workers who need to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet but it is a critique of the system that values profits more than people. Where people work so hard just to survive but aren’t truly able to live.
The reality is that greed is idolatry. This is what Jesus is talking about today in his parable. In Greek, the word we translate as faith (πίστις, pistis), should more accurately be translated as trust. When we are so focused on money and the status our accumulation of it can give us, we are putting our trust in those things instead of putting our trust in God. Instead of recognizing that all people are worthy because we are all created in the image of God, our worth becomes dependent on what we can do, how well can we do it, and for how much money. Our life, our being, comes from God, not from currency.
As the Gospel parable highlights today, none of us know when our time will come to an end. And, I know it’s a cliché, but we really can’t take any of it with us when we go. When get this whole setup with Jesus today based on a man who is upset that his brother is not sharing their family inheritance with him (Luke 12: 13). Jesus is annoyed that he has asked to judge between them, so he says the following and then breaks into a parable: “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (Luke 12: 15). The reality is that even still today many families become estranged because of their fights over the family inheritance. It was one of the main reasons that I didn’t realize that my grandpa had four other siblings until I was 18. The family didn’t really start to come together again until they were also approaching the end of their lives. Many expressed regrets over how much of their lives passed by while money divided them.
I think too about how much of our lives pass us by when we are consumed by working toward this thing or that thing that we just must have. Often, it doesn’t give us the satisfaction that we think it will and then we are off on the quest for the next new object we need. It’s why they are always trying to get us to upgrade our car or our phone, even when we have a perfectly good one already. In the society we’re in, I think we constantly need the reminder that our life isn’t defined by the possessions that we own. Nothing that we own is going to make us more worthy in the eyes of God, our worth comes inherently from being created in the image of God. And, while there may be some things that we pass on to future generations, the impact that we have on the world and in people’s lives is the legacy that will be remembered most.
But, as someone who is perhaps too sentimental at times, I can’t dismiss the value we have for the things that have been passed on by our parents, grandparents, or even great-grandparents. Like my story in the beginning, it isn’t even really about the items that we receive, but what they represent to us. When we use their serving bowls and we think about the times when we would gather together for family meals during the holidays. When we have their pictures hung on our walls, so we are reminded of who we are a part of, the legacy that we are quite literally embodying. Our life isn’t about those possessions that we own, but about the people who changed us for the better and how we in turn can change the world for the better too. But sometimes these things remind us of the life that we share together too and renew us to go out and continue others’ legacies. What kind of legacy do we want to leave behind?