Sermon preached at St Margaret of Antioch, Toxteth, 10 August 2025
Last week, our preacher spoke to us about Jesus’ parable of the rich man who, content with the wealth he had stored up for himself, sat back to ‘relax, eat, drink and be merry,’ only to be caught off-guard by death itself.
In our gospel reading this week, Jesus continues with that theme of readiness, preparedness, watchfulness, and the danger of being caught unawares. He uses the idea of a Roman household, where a slave or servant would have to be ready at all times for his master to return, to impress upon his listeners the need to be alert. In Luke’s gospel, from the moment Jesus begins to look ahead to his impending trial and death—a prediction the disciples don’t always succeed in grasping—he emphasises increasingly the need to be on guard; to look out; to wait and be ready. The old-fashioned term in the King James Version is ‘gird your loins,’ which I suppose might have a parallel today in the phrase ‘fasten your seatbelts.’ In ancient times, a girdle was a belt you wore for work or travel; and so the cord around my waist and that of monks and nuns and such is a girdle, a symbol of readiness.
How, then, can we live lives of readiness, preparedness? Jesus tells us: ‘Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’
Oh blimey. I like the bit about treasure in heaven (we all do), but ‘Sell your possessions’ is the tricky bit, isn’t it? What we are willing to part with tells us a lot about the state of our heart, and about our willingness to truly serve God and others for the sake of the kingdom. Are we so attached to the things we own that we let them become a distraction from doing the things of God? From loving and following the Lord, and from loving others in practical and meaningful ways?
Eight hundred years ago in Assisi, the young son of a wealthy merchant took Jesus’ words very literally and gave up everything he owned and was to inherit so he could invest himself completely in serving God, embracing lepers, feeding the poor and preaching the gospel throughout the Umbrian countryside. His name was Francis, and he’s over there by the pillar—do say hello to him after the service and perhaps ask him to pray for you, that you would have the desire and the boldness to put today’s gospel lesson into action in your own life. As you know, I’ve taken vows to try and imitate Christ in a similar way to that of St Francis of Assisi, with emphasis on the word ‘try.’ I go about the task in my own clumsy way with only a smidgen of Francis’s sense of devotion and resolve—and that’s not me being humble; it’s me being embarrassingly honest.
We are not all called to live out that same radically literal interpretation of Jesus’ words—we know from the gospels and Acts that some of Jesus’ followers were quite prosperous and remained so; they made money and used that wealth to support his ministry and that of the apostles—but we are all called to examine our hearts and ask whether property, material things, money, careers and aspirations might be getting in the way of truly following our Lord.
And often, when we see that our desire for a particular lifestyle or a particular material thing is an obstacle to our lives as Jesus’ disciples, we are put to the test. Can we part with that thing as a means to focus more on God? More on heavenly things—peace, joy, love—than earthly things, that moth and rust destroy? ‘You can’t take it with you,’ they say. This is why we give up things in Lent each year, of course: To remind us to reorient our lives around the things that truly matter in eternity. The things we can take with us as we journey on.
Is it time to part with the flashy car and settle for something less glamorous and more practical so we can invest more of our income in supporting those who need our financial aid? Is it time to let go of some of the gadgets that take priority over more pressing things? Do we need to spend a little less money on feasting and making merry and a little more on giving to missions and charities and churches that are helping the poor and the vulnerable in ways that make a real difference in their lives? My new flat is surrounded by cosy pubs, nice cafes and tempting takeaways, so perhaps I’m preaching mostly to myself here. Mea culpa.
Do we need to give up some of the things that take our time away from family, from friends and from those causes to which God is calling us? The answer will look different for each of us, but the word from Jesus today is the same: Store up for yourself treasure in heaven.
St Paul continues this theme in his letter to the Colossians, to whom he writes: ‘Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.’ In other words, focus on eternal things, not on the temporary things of this world, because a heavenly treasure—a share in Christ’s glory—awaits you.
Lest you think I’m saying we should all become like monks or nuns and spend all day in deep contemplation, don’t worry. Investing in heavenly treasure or setting our minds on things above isn’t about spending endless hours in prayer every day or shutting ourselves away to have mystical experiences, although bless you if that is how God’s calling you. No: Investing in heavenly treasure might look like sitting quietly with a person—friend or stranger—who’s feeling alone or depressed. It might look like dropping off a loaf of bread at the food bank or knocking on a neighbour’s door and inviting them round for a cuppa.
Being watchful might be choosing not to walk past the homeless guy and pretend you didn’t notice him, but stopping and having a conversation, buying him a meal, replacing his sleeping bag or offering to make a call to someone to arrange for help.
Storing up treasure in heaven might be sharing a slice of cake when you’d been looking forward all day to eating up the whole thing yourself. It may be coming out to church to encourage others with your presence and your prayers, even when you’d been secretly hoping for a lie-in.
It is easy to miss where God might be calling us, or what he might be asking us to do in the world. We often live very rushed lives these days, and this takes away from the mindfulness to which Jesus calls us. We may need to slow down, perhaps literally taking time to slow down at the beginning of the day and asking God prayerfully to make us alert and ready as we go about our day: Ready to hear his voice, to see where he is leading us, to have hearts open to the words he gives us to say and the tasks he sets us to do.
Like the master in today’s gospel reading, our Lord calls us to a banquet, but an eternal banquet of the sort the Welsh poet and priest George Herbert described as ‘a feast that mends in length’—that is, a party that only gets better as it goes on. Remember the miracle at the wedding in Cana, when Jesus turned water into wine. It’s so beautifully illustrated on our west wall, over the spot where we have our own feasts and celebrations. Jesus’ kind of wedding feast was not one that fizzled out as the night wore on, but one that only got better and better; the guests remarked that the host had saved the best wine till last.
What a tragedy it would be if we missed out on the freely given gift of God because we allowed ourselves to become distracted by the pursuit of wealth and our own satisfaction at the expense of the things that eternally matter. What are the things that eternally matter? St Paul defined them, didn’t he? ‘Faith, hope and love—but the greatest of these is love.’
Be watchful; be prepared; by your words and your deeds, build up a treasure store not on earth, but in heaven, because it is the kind that will last. Amen.