August 10, 2025
Pentecost 9 Lectionary 19
Luke 12:32-40
Epiphany, Winnipeg
“Have no fear, little flock. For it is God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
So says Jesus to his disciples, who have no kingdom of their own. He says it to a few fishermen who are among his group but who walked away from their work to follow, and there’s a tax collector with them too who might not collect taxes any more. There are a few women there too, with names like Joanna and Mary Magdalene and Salome. Whatever else any of them have, they don’t have any kingdoms or power.
“Have no fear, little flock, for it is God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
Jesus looks his disciples in the eye as he says this, but there’s a bigger crowd gathered around him, thousands of them, and they hear the same word themselves and take it in as well. All that crowd – some are rich and some are poor and a lot are in between. There are all kinds of people and their lives gathered there; some who have influence and some who are just not noticed; some are important and respected and a lot more of them just don’t seem to matter at all. Some have a lot, some have a little, and none of the people in that crowd have a kingdom. They’re just an occupied people, in a land that is home to them but ruled by Rome.
There are those disciples and that crowd, and Jesus looks out at them, and then looks out far beyond them and sees us and his words echo here too: “Have no fear, little flock. It’s God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
To give you the kingdom: Jesus has dropped hints all along about what this Kingdom of God, let’s call it the realm of God, might be. There was that time when he was out on the wide open prairie calling out to the crowds and saying, “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God!” A few days later he was talking to another crowd – maybe we were there too – and he called his cousin John the greatest of all those born of women – John must really be something! Then Jesus says, “but in the realm of God the very least ones are greater than John.” It’s like that song Jesus’ mother Mary sang when she talked about the rich being sent away empty and the hungry who are filled with good things. For whoever is one of the least in the crowd, whoever it is who’s hungry or pushed away or just ignored, a good word is spoken: “It is God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom, where the least are even greater than the strongest.”
There was the time when Jesus gathered children and infants together, and told the disciples and the crowd and us that the realm of God belongs to them, to these children who have no kingdom of their own. Until now.
We heard it again and saw it again when Jesus fed a crowd of thousands who had no food to share, and there we saw a realm of God where people eat together, and there’s more than enough for everyone, even for those who have no kingdom or just no food of their own.
There will be a time when a convicted criminal, on the next cross over from Jesus, will ask Jesus to remember him in the kingdom, and Jesus will say, “Yes, today you’ll be with me in paradise.”
“Have no fear little flock: you who live with guilt and shame; you at the end of their rope; you who feel so alone; you whose last breath draws near. Have no fear, for it is your God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
Have no fear: Jesus says this in the middle of a lot of talk about money and worry and hardship and fear. You might remember last week, when he told a story about a rich man who had that great harvest and decided to build bigger barns to hold the crop and all his stuff. But all that stuff won’t preserve his life. Then right away Jesus said, “So don’t worry! Look at the ravens – they don’t farm or garden or store up more goods in bigger barns. God feeds them. Look at the lilies – they don’t spin yarn and sew and make or buy anything to wear, but God clothes them with so much beauty. Don’t worry. God will look after you too.”
“Have no fear, for it is your God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”
But then Jesus says something that could make us all afraid: “So sell what you’ve got and give it away. Sell your stuff and give mercy, or kindness, or generosity to your neighbour. Just get rid of your stuff.”
That’s hard to hear, because we all know how hard it can be to resist the pull of one more possession to add to what we’ve got. Or we know how tempting it is to put our trust or our sense of security in the money we have or things we call our own. We put our trust in these things and this money that are so fragile, that we know could disappear in a broken economy or a computer crash somewhere or in the hands of a really smart hacker.
When Jesus says this about selling and giving away, it’s hard to hear, and it might even bring up some fear. But maybe it’s not just some kind of stern order. Maybe Jesus is just saying all of this with a bit of an ache inside and with sadness that runs deep because he knows how wealth and possessions, having it all or having nothing, can eat away at people. So Jesus looks around and sees people he loves, people for whom he will soon give everything, even his own life, and he knows the ways that money and things will eat away at the ones he so deeply loves. Even us. Jesus knows how people will live for it, and sometimes kill for it. Loving relationships break up over it, and anyone of us even in this little flock of Jesus’ can develop health problems worrying about the money and things that could disappear any time. Jesus looks around at people he loves and he sees how some live well because they have more than enough of it, and how some barely live because they have none. Maybe Jesus’ heart kind of breaks while he looks around and sees people he loves who will learn that the money and things it’s so tempting to trust will all disappear one day. So Jesus says, “Sell it. Get rid of it now, empty your barns and find out that life isn’t all about what we have or what we’ll get. There’s so much more.”
When Jesus says all this he’s not giving us all an order. He’s just calling us to trust. He’s giving us a promise that we can trust the One who feeds the ravens and clothes the lilies.
Or as we look back now on this side of Easter, we can trust the one who raised Jesus from the dead. We can trust the one who always sees to it that there’s more life to come.
After all this, Jesus tells a new kind of story. He paints a picture for all of us in the crowd of disciples then and the crowd of disciples now. “Be like those slaves who are awake and have the lights on, ready to welcome the master of the house who’s coming home from the wedding party. And when the master knocks on the door and finds the servants awake, the master of the house will come on in, sit those slaves down at the table, tighten his belt and throw on an apron, and serve a feast to those servants.”
It is God’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom….that different way of being in the world where the one who was once called master becomes a servant to the servants. The ones who were treated like the least find once again that they really really matter.
Be like those who are awake to see the one they call master come home to serve. And who wouldn’t want to be awake for that? To see that generosity wins out over gathering up stuff; to see kindness that’s given for the least and for the ones who don’t have to be greatest any more; to be a part of this new way of a new world where when the barns get too full, we empty them for our neighbour. Where the one who might have said, “Serve me, look after me,” turns around and says, “Have a seat, here you go, all of this is for you.”
Who wouldn’t want to be awake for that? Where there’s one who sneaks in to be among us in this house, a master who tightens their belt and gets to work, serving us at the table right here. “This is my body, this is my blood…have no fear little flock, for it is your God’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”