[Sermon] The Gospel Can't Fit in a Barn

Rev. Kevin Beebe, Director, Camp Lutherwood Bellingham

August 4, 2025 + Eighth Sunday after Pentecost / Lectionary 18

Rev. Kevin Beebe weaves together the parable of the rich man, reflections from Camp Lutherwood, and the recent ELCA Churchwide Assembly to call the church to bold transformation. He contrasts the abundance of Spirit-led leadership among youth with the scarcity mindset too often found in institutional church life. With urgency and grace, Kevin calls out the greed that clings to buildings and traditions while inviting listeners to imagine a church courageous enough to let go. Rather than preserve the gospel, he says, we’re called to live it—wildly, generously, and without fear. The gospel doesn’t need a barn; it needs space to breathe.

Sermon Transcript

From YouTube's automatic captions, lightly edited by AI for readability.

Grace to you, beloved siblings in Christ, and peace this day. Peace this day from your camp—Lutherwood Camp and Retreat Center on the shores of Lake Samish.

Number 78 has one week left this week, and so our staff is gathering one last time together—these 20-some college-age kids who come from around the country, and as far away as Brazil, to come together to walk with kids. It’s an honor to serve you all as your other pastor who hangs out at the lake all day.

And grace and peace to you from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The rich man said to himself, "I'll say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry.’"

But God said, "You fool."

(This church has a great echo, by the way—You fool...)

"This night, your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared—whose will they be?"

Oh.

If there ever was a pointed parable in the Gospel of Luke, this one might be it.

As I wrote the sermon—about an hour before this—I was on the Monarch app (which is a budget app), looking at my budget with my wife, looking at our Roth IRA and our 401(k)s, and wondering what's going to happen. And then I open to the Gospel of Luke, and my very life, apparently, is being demanded of me.

As Jesus is surrounded by a crowd in this chapter—so, so large they are crushing one another, trampling one another—and he's trying to talk to the disciples, this one voice cries out:

"Teacher, make my brother give me my inheritance!"

And Jesus is like, "Dude, now is not the time. You want to talk about greed?"

I’ve been wrestling a lot with this parable, and, you know, I think you can just take it at face value. It’s one of the few that maybe you can. Don’t be greedy. How are you being generous with what God has given you? Are you storing up into barns what God is calling you to share with the world?

Those are great questions that I think every disciple of Jesus could walk out of here today and ask themselves.

But I’ve been thinking about the myriad of types of greed in the world. And the one that hits me most—as a pastor, also as a young father of two who is constantly worried about the berry budget (why did no one warn me about how many blueberries I would be buying in my lifetime?)—is the greed that comes from scarcity. The fear that we will not have enough.

This rich man in the parable—I wonder less if he’s like, “I need more and more and more,” but really: is he fighting, “I need to have enough. I need to make sure I can store enough—not for others, but for myself—to eat, drink, and be merry”?

My work at camp has actually had me praying about this parable a lot. Because when you're in charge of a 78-year-old institution—a camp that sometimes looks like a 78-year-old institution—you feel scarcity. You wonder what's going to happen. You look at old buildings, or chipping paint, or an old canoe that has a crack in it. (Why do we still have that, by the way?)

And at the same time you're looking at all of those as a camp director, I get to work with the most amazing group of young adults and youth in the world. I get to work with what every church probably wishes they had: an army of young people that are gender-diverse in all forms, neurodiverse in all forms, racially diverse in all forms.

Did I mention that they're young in all forms?

To have this radical group of disciples week in and week out at camp—the leaders that God has called, walking with youth all their weeks, walking with the young ones who are the disciples of God, the leaders of this church...

And as a side note—this is my, like, camp director box—I’m just going to say: I really don’t like when people say that our counselors are the “next generation of leaders in the church,” or that our youth are the “next generation.” They are the current generation of leaders. They are the current generation of disciples, just like all of you.

Sorry. Soap box down.

But I get to go to camp—and I will in a few hours head back there—to gather with my staff for one last time. And it’s amazing to see the work that they do, to see Jesus’s grace lived out at Lutherwood.

But here’s the stitch—and that’s a fancy Generation Z word for “here’s the rub,” I think? I don’t know. They say funny words in front of me that I don’t understand as a millennial...

Most of my staff, and most of the youth who come to our camp, aren’t that thrilled with the church anymore. There’s a myriad of reasons why, and you probably can name a lot of them. They’re not listened to in many churches. Their churches simply aren’t safe—for many who are queer or inhabit bodies of color. The church is too old school. All they hear is a really, really loud organ. Or the church seems stuck on money and institutions and the ways that it wants to prop itself up in its buildings, rather than live the gospel outside its walls.

And I feel that tension as a pastor in this church—as someone who does love the ELCA greatly—but also to hear the tension of the young ones, who worry about the greed (I think) of the church that is scarcity—the want to maintain the structures and systems as we understand them.

When at camp, those systems don’t apply as much—because there, it’s authentic relationship, and weird songs, and deep questions of faith.

I hold it especially in tension—not just because I’m standing in a regular church this week—but because, if you aren’t a church nerd like I am, you may or may not know: this last week was the Churchwide Assembly for the ELCA in Phoenix, Arizona.

Who wants to go to Phoenix in August?

Everybody must’ve spent a good rate on that hotel.

But the Churchwide Assembly is kind of like our regional synod assembly—or even your own annual meetings here at your church—just on a grander scale. The church comes together. Over a thousand Lutherans descend upon Phoenix, Arizona, wondering where the mosquitoes are and why it’s so dry. And there, they vote on things like who our Presiding Bishop will be, what social statements we need, what’s the future direction of the ELCA at large.

And the question I think a lot of pastors ask—a lot of individual congregants try to ask—is:

Is the institution of the ELCA going to embrace or resist change?

Are we going to demand our inheritance so we can live it out now—or pay it forward?

Are we going to resist the call of the Spirit—or jump in faith?

Because on the macro, I wonder about this parable of greed and how it relates to the church at large. Because, beloveds—thanks be to God—the church has produced abundantly.

From the moment of Pentecost to this day.

I mean, look around. Two thousand years, and we’re still sitting in these buildings. We’re still worshiping God—through wars, through conflict, through pastor transitions, through building projects, through buildings being torn down. Somehow, the church has continued together through the Holy Spirit.

It is abundant.

Though, as often is asked in the church: are we just storing it up—the treasures we’ve been given—for this time in this world? Storing up the way we do things so we can keep always doing them the same. Storing up the treasures of what we learned to follow Christ—to make it ours, hoarding it, making it the “right” way.

And yet, the life of the church is being demanded at this very moment.

When you live in the church world, you often hear about how churches are shrinking, or budgets are getting smaller, or all of these things—and that the church might be dying.

But that’s not enough to change.

Let’s just store it up, right?

Let’s just keep doing what we’ve always been doing, because it used to work. Will it work in the future?

It’s tradition, after all.

And tradition isn’t bad—because we have clearly, in 2,000 years, passed on some very beautiful things. Handed them down: the sacraments, the gospel, the loving grace of abundance that is God’s free gift to all.

But I’ll never forget what my worship professor in seminary told me, and that is: Always be careful of tradition. Because the Latin word where we get that—traditio—means “to hand over,” “to hand on,” “to hand down.” It’s actually the same root as the word traitor—as in, Judas handed over Jesus.

And perhaps this parable is once again asking the church—in our struggles in the modern world, wondering how we relate, trying to hold the good tradition while also not wanting to let go of the comfortable things that we like, while being simultaneously saint and sinner, where we are upholding the beautiful gifts of God, the grace, and passing that along, and at the same time—as sinners—betraying the very gospel that has been handed to us...

Maybe Jesus is inviting us—even at camp, where our structures and systems... (that hippo song is ancient, by the way)—maybe there we need to look at the ways the life of the church is being demanded. That the life of the church is coming to an end this very day.

And I wonder if that is actually a bit of good news.

’Cause maybe, if we are courageous enough to stop and pause beyond our inheritance of what we’ve been given, and to crack ourselves open, the Spirit might again flow into us—wiggle into us—the light shine through once again. And even if what seems demanded might feel like death—of what we might hold most dear in the church sometimes...

We are a resurrection people, beloveds.

We know that death is never the end. We believe that God will bring life again. And we can trust that good news—in the big church, in the small church, in our individual lives.

Trust to follow the gospel wherever the Spirit leads us, even if it’s through the dark, shadowy places that feel like death.

And don’t worry—we will not be the first down that road.

I see that new life already bubbling into the church. The Holy Spirit demanding new life—even while demanding death.

I mentioned the Churchwide Assembly that’s happening. And I think there are some really beautiful things that our church is doing that should be talked about.

Like this last week: the ELCA finally has confessed and asked forgiveness, and repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery.

This last week, the ELCA has edited our social statements on sexuality from 2009—to be more inclusive of all the ways we understand gender and sexuality in the world, to make sure more people feel welcome.

Our church named genocide publicly in Gaza.

And our church elected our first person of color to be Presiding Bishop of the ELCA, in Bishop Yehiel Curry, and our first female person of color to be Secretary of the ELCA, in Reverend CeCee Mills.

Beloved, that’s new life in the church. Different from what we might know. They aren’t Scandinavians, folks!

But new life.

I see that Spirit fire demanding the gospel at Lutherwood, as people ask—even at our camps—“How can we be more inclusive?” “How can we make the space not just for kids, but for adults, for people who need mobility aids, for all the different ways that young disciples come—asking deeper questions of faith, wrestling with the world, and forging new faith?”

’Cause, beloveds, Jesus isn’t trying to scare us with this parable.

Well… maybe he is a little bit.

Maybe he’s trying to scare us into asking some better questions.

And maybe he’s trying to invite us into the gospel life again—that trust that God is always demanding the gospel to be lived out. That the death and brokenness of the world may fall away, and the new may spring forth.

And instead of trying to scare it away... instead of trying to run away... instead of trying to build barns to protect what we have and let God do it...

To share abundantly in this good news. That God is up to something. That as the resurrection changes us—our faith, our church—that we can cry out together:

Thanks be to God for this resurrection hope.

Amen.