Abundant Toward God

8th Sunday After Pentecost

Proper 13C: Hosea 11:1-11; Psalm 107:1-9, 43

Colossians 3:1-11; (Luke 11:1-13 &) Luke 12:13-21

The Rev. Cameron Partridge

August 3, 2025

Good Morning, St. Aidan’s and St. Cyprian’s. It is good to be back with you after two weeks away, and I am grateful to the Rev. Mike Kinman who served in my stead over the last two Sundays. It was a joy to see on social media his enthusiastic description of this community after his first Sunday here, and his invitation to others to come and be with us. 

This morning our gospel passage from Luke, together with what directly follows our passage as well as the section assigned for last week, calls upon us to strive for God’s kingdom, and to do so specifically in the midst of “all kinds of greed” (Luke 12:15). The target, the way of being specifically not to succumb to, is greed. It is a form of economic and material hoarding that temporarily benefits individuals at the expense of communities. But underlying this greed that comes in multiple forms, the real target, the current to respond to with compassion, is fear. It is anxiety.[1] The kingdom for which we strive is centered in God’s vision of an abundance not only of resources, of health and wholeness, but of heart-healing that reproduces itself in solidarity, in community.

Our passage begins with an interpersonal intervention. A man asks Jesus to get his brother to divide the family inheritance with him. Perhaps this is a younger brother who wants his older brother not to keep the inheritance for himself, or at least to divide it differently if not evenly. The man is anxious, perhaps angry. Jesus’ immediate response is to wonder aloud who made him the arbiter of family disputes (in a certain way like Martha asking him to intercede with Mary two weeks ago, but that story has a different valance, as I know you heard from Mike Kinman).[2] But then Jesus warns the man to be on guard against “all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15). In other words, the man should be concerned not only about his brother’s greed but also the urgency of his own claim.[3] Jesus then tells the parable of the “rich fool” as scholars have come to call it. In this parable, a man accumulates wealth through farming. His harvests are so abundant that he decides to build new barns to accommodate them. He feels content. Secure. The NRSV translates the rich man’s inner dialogue like a comedy routine: “I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; eat, drink, and be merry” (12:19). Now the word translated “soul,” ψυχῇ, can also be rendered “life.”[4] So when God says, “Fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you” (12:20), the same word is being used. In other words, Soul, you can’t take your inheritance with you.[5] The real point is not to clutch at possessions but to be “rich” or “abundant” “toward God,” as Jesus’ parable concludes (12:21). The disgruntled brother to whom this story was directed is meant not to be anxious about the things that give him status in this world, not to seek to anchor his life, his soul, in this world such that it is immune from the world’s buffeting.

And this is what Jesus goes on to say in the passage just after ours, whose Matthew version we will hear next year.[6] Not only should the brothers of this world stop anxiously clutching at wealth, but even the more basic things – food, clothing – things that we truly need – even these are not drive us into postures of fear and division. “Life is more than food and the body more than clothing,” Jesus says – and here again the word is ψυχῇ, “soul” in the rich man’s rendering (12:23). The ravens and the lilies of the field demonstrate this by their living flow with the God who made them, who feeds them without barns (12:24, 27). All life is fed by something richer and deeper. It is anchored in the God who made us.[7] The God who, the passage goes on to say, “knows we need” clothing and food (12:30). Knows these things actually do matter and are necessary to us.[8] Our call is not to be driven by fear and anxiety but to seek God’s kingdom first and foremost, to strive for it, knowing in our very bones that it is near, all evidence to the contrary. We are to live in this world framed by the kingdom’s radical vision.[9] And when we do that, when we live out God’s dream, food and drink, clothing, equity, justice, basic well-being in fact follow. They are shared among us and all creation, because we come to express God’s own abundant life.

The kingdom of God is a radical vision. It is not otherworldly. It is very much this worldly.[10] We pray for it every week, particularly in the form of the Lord’s Prayer. You heard Luke’s version of it last week, as Jesus responded to a request from his disciples to teach them to pray (11:1-4). It is a prayer that orients us for God’s reign. Hallowed be the name of the one who made us, it begins. Then, “your kingdom come.” Note that in Luke’s version there is no “on earth as in heaven” – it is simply, a prayer that the kingdom would come. Then a prayer for bread we need, the bread for today, or as some have commented, perhaps the “bread for the morrow,” or even “heavenly bread,” in other words, the bread of God’s kingdom.[11] Feed us with the bread we need to strive for the kingdom for whose coming we pray, toward which we orient our lives, the bread of God’s abundance that we offer back to God and share with one another in gratitude for this life we are given.[12] The prayer then asks God to forgive us our sins as we forgive our debtors (11:4). Matthew’s version, by contrast, has a consistency of terms: “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:9-13). The language of debt in this prayer centers an economy of release from debt, of bondage to possessions. It asks us not to bind one another and creation itself in our anxious clutching at earthly security, but to participate in the spirit of God’s Jubilee, the restoration of our world’s torn fabric, the ushering in of a much-needed, wider healing.[13] You may have noticed that over the last several months our own version of the Lord’s Prayer on Sunday mornings has been using debts/debtors language (following the practice of Presbyterians, as it happens). We made this shift in conversation with Kaya Oakes’ book during Lent and in conversation with her about it.[14] Our use of debt/debtors language in the Lord’s Prayer is meant to remind us of this collective, restorative dimension of that prayer, to intentionally be formed by it for the work of God’s dream.

You may recall from last week, as well, that just after Luke’s rendition of the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus extends its teaching with a scenario in which a friend approaches another one at midnight (11:5-10). Friend number one is sleeping. Friend number two has been visited by yet another friend—let’s call her friend number three. Hospitality requires friend number two to feed friend three with the bread she needs, that they both need, for the morrow. Only friend two does not have enough. This friend truly needs this bread – God knows she needs it, as we have affirmed! So friend two wakes up friend one, who was asleep and is now annoyed. “Do not bother me; I cannot get up and give you anything” (11:7). And yet, because of friend two’s persistence, or shamelessness as one commentary terms it, friend one relents.[15] Friends two and three, as well as one, will now be fed. Jesus uses this story to call upon his disciples to ask, to seek, to knock. And not simply on their own account, but specifically on behalf of others.[16] This is what we do in God’s kingdom. We resist becoming pulled into the world’s cycles of status and possession, into disputes of wealth and power. Instead, we ask on behalf of one another. We knock on closed doors. We seek justice. We strive for release from bondage. Even when it seems impossible. Even when the world refuses.

Today after our service we will participate in a Know Your Rights Training, the first of two we will be doing in the coming weeks. The second one will follow up on actions we have participated in recently, further equipping us to be in solidarity with the trans community here in California as it faces persecution particularly by this presidential administration’s actions. And the first training, today, will center the wide-ranging community of immigrants to this country – which intersects with the trans community as well – who are being attacked and disappeared in terrifying ICE raids, in many cases regardless of their legal status. St. Aidanites want to know how we can support people who are among us, deeply connected to us, who are rightfully terrified of such removals as they seek simply to live their lives, to feed their children, to make a life in this country, to contribute to this country’s economy, often after having fled terrible conditions in their countries of origin.

I was moved to read of an effort in the Diocese of New York over this weekend. A large group of people from across and beyond that diocese turned up outside the federal plaza to protest two of their own who had been unlawfully detained. You may remember Stephanie Spellers, whose book The Church Cracked Open we read and talked about.[17] She was present at this action in New York yesterday and publicly shared a report about her experience.

Yeonsoo Go. She’s 20, a student at Purdue, daughter of a priest, an active young Korean Episcopalian who served at our General Convention last summer. She appeared Thursday at 26 Federal Plaza for a routine student visa hearing. She left the hearing and was kidnapped by ICE. She is being detained in a hideous mass warehousing room inside the same building. She is scheduled to be moved to a different federal detention center shortly, and no one knows where.

We did it for Ketty Elizabeth De Los Santos. She’s 59, fled her home in Peru and sought refuge in the US. She is a tireless leader at St. Bart’s-White Plains. She came to this immigration court for a scheduled hearing, and the judge granted her work authorization. ICE didn’t care. They kidnapped her and shoved her into detention. She is also likely to be moved soon. No one knows where.[18]

In our own diocese we either know or will likely know of situations like what I have just described. We want to know how we can resist such tyranny. How we can be about the repair of this world’s torn fabric. How we can participate in the release of the captives, recovery of sight to those who cannot see the evil they are doing. We want to know ways, small and large, that we can step out from a cycle of reactive anxiety and into a responsive, clear-eyed acknowledgement of a world gone deeply wrong, and a kingdom God continues to urge us to strive for, to live into.[19] God in Jesus Christ calls us today to live out an abundance not only of resources – of money, of food and of shelter – not only of health and wholeness, but of community, of deep-rooted healing that reproduces itself in solidarity. Each concrete thing we do, small and large, matters. Together, we can be equipped for further engagement with such action. Together, we can move mountains. We can join hands with others to shift the tide. Step by step, in love, in solidarity. Your kingdom come, O God. Amen.

[1] Walter Brueggemann argues it is specifically a fear of scarcity. Money and Possessions: Interpretation: Resources for the Use of Scripture in the Church (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2016), p. 193. Justo Gonzalez, Luke: A Theological Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), p. 160.

[2] “The Difference Is a Question,” July 20, 2025: https://mikekinman.substack.com/p/the-difference-is-a-question

[3] Brueggemann, p. 193

[4] Brueggemann, pp. 192-193

[5] Gonzalez, p. 159

[6] Gonzalez, p.160

[7] Brueggemann, p. 193

[8] Gonzalez, pp. 160-161

[9] Gonzalez, pp. 161-162

[10] Gonzalez, p. 144

[11] Gonzalez, pp. 143-144

[12] Gonzalez, p. 161

[13] Brueggemann, pp. 188-189

[14] Kaya Oakes, Not So Sorry: Abusers, False Apologies, and the Limits of Forgiveness (Broadleaf Books, 2024).

[15] Gonzalez, p. 145

[16] Gonzalez, p. 145

[17] Stephanie Spellers, The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline, and New Hope for Beloved Community (New York: Church Publishing, 2021)

[18] Stephanie Spellers, Facebook post, August 2, 2025: https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02fofYnDHuXSbbJEEASaY3SfUQoJLKncauodDm2RqSZ9YrYpUwgsybeQqfFuhn7dcGl&id=1047965831&mibextid=wwXIfr&_rdr

[19] As Brueggemann writes, “there is a proper ‘striving’ (v. 31), but it is not striving for money and possessions; it is rather for the ‘kingdom’ that defies the commoditization of creation.” Money and Possessions, p. 193. Gonzalez argues, “it is a serious struggle, striving for the kingdom.” Luke, 161.