Sermon Tone Analysis

Desiring the Kingdom

Jesus has been speaking to his disciples about hypocrisy: about being real in their walk with him, and about not being afraid of what following him may cost them.

Smith has written at great length on our idea of “the good life.”

The things we see in advertisement, or on social media, paint for us a picture of “the good life,” and we are meant to assume that all these beautiful people are living it.

We’ve seen, over the last couple weeks, Jesus’s call getting more and more uncomfortable for us.

He calls us to honesty with each other about our weaknesses—that’s hard enough.

He calls us to honesty with the rest of the world about our faith—which is for many people even harder.

He tells his disciples that following him may cost them their relationships or their comfort or even their lives.

And unfortunately (as Jamie Smith says), these visions of the good life are “more often caught than taught”: over time, as we walk past these storefronts and scroll through our Facebook feeds, we begin to unconsciously see “the good life” through the lens of what we see.

When we think about the good life, we start to see it through Instagram’s “Rise” filter.

The further he goes, the deeper he goes—just when we think he’s going to leave us alone now and let us have some part of our lives for ourselves, he comes and snatches that up too.

Smith wrote about what he called “the liturgy of the shopping mall.”

It’s the constant onslaught of advertising we see without meaning to, simply as we walk through the mall.

In every storefront, we see photographs and videos and plastic mannequins wearing clothes the stores sell.

Obviously, it goes further than the mall—Instagram is probably the biggest proponent of this kind of idea.

We go on Instagram, and everyone is happy; everyone is beautiful; everyone is smiling.

The idea is, of course, that there is a need being filled here that you didn’t even know you had.

The things we see in ads, or on social media, paint for us a picture of “the good life,” and we are to assume that all these beautiful people are living it.

And in these ads we see, everyone is happy; everyone is smiling.

The idea is, of course, that the products in this store fill a need you didn’t even know you had.

They paint for us a picture of “the good life,” of a certain ideal of what the good life is, and we are to assume that all these young, beautiful people are living it.

He’s not finished.

In today’s text, someone in the crowd around them asks Jesus a question, and in Jesus’s response to the question, he says that following him will cost us even more than our comfort or our relationships: it will cost us our own desires, our own ideas of what “the good life” is.

All of us are chasing some vision of the good life.

“It’s not a question of whether you’re chasing the good life,” Smith says, “but which.”

And unfortunately, these visions of the good life are more often caught than taught: over time, as we walk past these storefronts and scroll through our Facebook feeds, we begin to unconsciously see “the good life” through the lens of what we see.

When we think about the good life, we start to see it through Instagram’s “Rise” filter.

And the gap between the life we imagine as “the good life,” and the life we actually have, gets bigger and bigger, and this gap weighs on us more and more heavily, until we start doing things we would never have done before, thinking things we would never have thought before, all in pursuit of this ever-evasive “good life” the world is selling us.

And over time, as we walk past these storefronts and only passively look at what they are selling, we begin to unconsciously see “the good life” in a similar light.

When we think about the things we want for ourselves, when we think about

That’s the situation Jesus addresses in our text today.

He’s been speaking to his disciples about what following him would cost them.

It may cost them their relationships or their comfort or even their lives.

And in today’s text, he’s going to take it even further: someone in the crowd around them asks Jesus a question, and in Jesus’s response to the question, he says that following him will cost us even more than what we imagined: it will cost us our own desires.

But, he will say, if we let go of those desires, it will be to replace them by something even better.

, if you remember, while this huge crowd is waiting patiently for him.

When he finishes speaking to the disciples, someone in the crowd says something that Jesus is going to jump on (Jesus is, if nothing else, an opportunist of the best sort—he never misses the chance to make a point).

Felt Needs (v.

13-21)

Anon, 2016.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 And he 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.”

16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’

18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.

19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”

’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool!

This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’

21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

“Covetousness” is, to put it simply, greed.

It’s seeing something you want, and feeling unhappy or unfulfilled until you have it.

Now, it’s easy to write off these

16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’

18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.

19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”

’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool!

This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’

21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

This parable is so clear, even a child could understand it.

Jesus is warning against pursuing useless things—things which won’t ultimately last.

But strangely, no matter how obvious is the wisdom in what he says, people still struggle with it.

This is why you see high-energy, very ambitious men and women who will work themselves to the bone, practically in slavery to the company they work for: no matter how much money they have, they want more of it.

Now, it’s easy to write off this passage if you don’t have this overwhelming craving for money or things.

The majority of the people in our church are fairly young, so don’t have a lot of money yet.

And you’re okay with that.

t’s easy to write off this passage if you don’t have this overwhelming craving for money or things.

The majority of the people in our church are fairly young, so don’t have a lot of money yet.

And you’re okay with that.

Can I be honest?

If you have enough money to afford even a studio apartment in Paris, you are rich.

Compared to the rest of the world, you have money coming out of your ears.

That’s not a bad thing

But let’s just put aside the fact that if you have enough money to live in even a studio apartment in Paris, you are overwhelmingly rich, compared to the rest of the world.

Jesus’s teaching here isn’t mainly about money.

It’s not mainly about your bank account.

Jesus says, “Take care, and be on your guard against ALL covetousness.”

“Covetousness” is, to put it simply, seeing something you want, and feeling unhappy or unfulfilled until you have it.

“Covetousness” is, to put it simply, greed.

It’s seeing something you want, and feeling unhappy or unfulfilled until you have it.

And that, we can all relate to.

We all have things that we want, and that will make us unhappy until we get them.

You’re miserable in your job, and you think, “If only I had a better job, I'd be so much happier.”

You don’t get along with your parents, and you think, “If only we had a better relationship, I'd be so much happier.”

Our apartments are tiny and expensive and old (it’s Paris, after all), and we think, “If only I could live in a bigger house in the suburbs, I’d be so much happier.”

Now can we agree that these things aren’t bad, in and of themselves?

It’s not a bad thing to have a job you love, or to have a good relationship with your family, or to have a house in the suburbs.

These are good things.

But they’re not needs.

They are, as the saying goes, “felt needs.”

A felt need is something that we don’t actually need, but that we want so badly, it feels like a need, rather than a desire.

I know a lot of you here won’t be able to identify with Jesus’s parable, because never in your life have you had enough money that you could store it safely away and have enough so that you won’t have to work again.

As far as I know, we have no mega-rich people in our church.

But we all have things we want so badly, we’ll have a hard time being happy until we have them.

We all have things we want so badly, they feel like needs.

And these felt needs extend very, very far.

What’s dangerous is wanting something—even a good thing—so badly you can’t be content without it.

For example…

hatever we want, where if we have it, we’ll finally be able to relax, to be at peace,

How many people here want to be healthy?

How many of you single people want a family?

How many of you married people want kids?

How many of you parents want your kids to do well at school?