Quick Summary:

Perspective is everything; and our lessons offer very different perspectives this morning. The Teacher of Ecclesiastes sums life up this way: You invest all your blood, sweat, and tears and when your time is up, it ends up in the hands of some bozo who hasn’t got a clue! Pretty cynical outlook, it seems to me. Psalm 49 offers a variation on the theme: what folly it is to think you can take it with you. And when we get to the gospel, we get a parable on the same topic, this time from Jesus’ perspective.

The wealthy farmer has no trouble imagining how he could build bigger barns to store his windfall, but he has no imagination for seeing how that abundant harvest might be God’s way of helping his neighbors. What if, Jesus seems to say, we were to imagine the harvests that come our way not as windfalls meant for us alone but as God’s way of providing for others?

The sermon uses illustrations from my recent road trip, and our current Tiny House building project, and asks whether the house project is that an earthly thing or a heavenly thing.