“Money and Time”
Original sermon given on Sunday, August 10, 2025 written and delivered by Pastor Jeff Leininger at First Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church.
Watch the sermon live.
“Money and Time”
Luke 12.32-40
Luke 12.32-40
In the name of the living God and the risen Christ. Amen.
How can you tell what’s important to someone? What measurement tool might be useful in determining what someone values? To get more personal, in what pile of treasure might the Lord find your heart resting in this morning?
“Time and Money,” the old saying goes. That is, if you showed me your bank statement and your calendar, it would take me about thirty seconds to tell you what you value most — where your investments lie. What we do with our Time and Money is perhaps best indication of what we “treasure.”
Only this morning, in these two teachings/parables of Jesus, the thematic order is reversed. Money and Time. Jesus gives his closest followers here in Luke 12 words of comfort for the upcoming persecution they will no doubt endure for following him. They will lose all their money and time. His word doesn’t feel much like comfort because there’s a lot here regarding our money and time which convicts us. But he starts out with, “Don’t be afraid, little flock,” and what follows is the reason why a life of “investing in” and treasuring eternal things is a life of freedom over fear.
First the money part. “Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out.” Since not everyone carries purses anymore (or man-purses for that matter), we might say “invest in the things that truly matter.” Eternal things. Every earthly possession will fade away. Every earthly investment will, sooner or later, meet with a great crash. No amount of anxiety about future financial security can add one span to our life’s length or one ounce to its true value. Earthly possessions are powerless to enrich us — and powerful to distract us.
Jesus here is not commanding abject poverty as the calling of every Christian, but he is commanding subjection to him in every aspect of life, including our wealth and possessions. What is more, he here promises that our eternal investments — treasuring his word, his gospel, his people, and a relationship with him — these investments remain inexhaustible in value, unfading in permanence, unassailable in security. They cannot be taken from us, precisely because he cannot be taken from us.
That’s money. Then there’s time. In a parable which we might expect to hear at the end of the church year or perhaps in Advent, Jesus tells us about what we should be about. If the first teaching is about how we spend our money, the second is about how we spend our time. Both are an indicator of what’s important to us.
The servants of the Lord busy themselves in preparation for his return from a wedding banquet. In the old King James, they “gird up their loins.” (Love that phrase. Can we bring that back? Much better than “be dressed for action.”) They need to get dressed for action because in the ancient Middle East their long flowing garments needed to be gathered up and fastened around the waist when it was time to work. These faithful workers stand at the ready, loins girded, lamps lit, eyes open, hands busy with their Lord’s work. And when he returns, he commends their use of his time — they do work for him, after all. Their use of his time is commended, and in the end, he deigns to serve the servants when he returns.
Time: Jesus gives a positive parable in the return of the Master who finds his servants making good use of their time; and a negative example in the thief coming in the middle of the night. You want the Lord to return soon; you don’t want the thief to show up… ever. But in either case, it’s going to go a lot better for you if you’re not asleep. Wakefulness, waiting, watching, working are all images of the good and godly use of our time.
Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” In other words, how can you tell what’s important to someone?
Whether it’s money or time, today’s gospel reminds us that there is wisdom in reflecting on what we value. An unexamined life doesn’t even think about where your heart rests this morning. It just follows along blindly, spends what it wants, occupies itself in whatever comes along no matter what it is or what the consequences. This is the “unexamined life, not worth living” — even the Greek philosophers knew this truth.
But Jesus here calls us to not just examine our lives (and our hearts, where they’re resting), but also to reorient them. That is, in repentance, to turn back to eternal things. To have your heart focused in the right place, in the things of God, and being forgiven in Christ to live a life of freedom over fear.
As you know, we’ve been doing a summer book study on St. Augustine’s Confessions, his autobiographical journey back to God. This 4th century Christian scholar is famous for the insightful line at the beginning of the book, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”[1]
But God had to take a lot from him in order to bring him to that insight. The earthly treasures of lust, greed, vainglory, resentment, shallow friendships, empty philosophies — that’s where his heart rested because that’s what he “treasured,” invested in, valued above anything else.
The tragic death of his dearest friend began Augustine’s journey back to God. Augustine had actually previously tried lead this friend away from the Christian faith, but the friend was converted when gravely ill — a conversion Augustine scoffed at and mocked. But when the dear friend whom he loved deeply finally did die, Augustine’s heart and life were shattered. Depressed, devoid of hope, he began to question what is of real value. It took the death of a dear friend to teach him about true treasure.
Here’s how he described his life during that time: “I lived in misery, like every man whose soul is tethered by the love of things that cannot last and then is agonized to lose them.”[2]
That’s the miserable, tragic irony of treasuring only earthly, temporary things. We all know they will not last, but we are unconsolably grieved when they’re taken from us; and life is lived in restlessness and meaninglessness.
Instead, the Christian life is lived resting in the eternal promises of Jesus. The master, who will return one day, descends even here, this morning to serve us eternal food and promise his beloved flock true rest. The Lord and master became the suffering servant, who gave away everything for us — even his very life. And in that eternal moment of suffering on the cross and then rising again on the third day, he assures us that nothing can separate us from his love; and nothing can replace this love in our lives.
Tether your soul to him. Rest your heart in him. Treasure his eternal things and know the freedom that is greater than fear.
Come soon Lord Jesus. Amen.
[1] 1.1.1., trnsl. Henry Chadwick
[2] Augustine, Confessions (ed. R.S. Pine-Coffin), IV, 6, p. 77