Dunbar United Church of Christ - October 11, 2009

This is a story about three brothers. There was a bachelor party across the street in the Firehouse. Around midnight when it was over, people were cleaning up. Left over with the food was a tray of homemade cookies that the youngest brother wanted. He asked the host if he could take them. The host -- who was his oldest brother -- said, “Of course! If you like them, please take them.” So the youngest brother was carrying the whole tray to his car when his middle brother saw him and yelled: “Stop! Those are mine -- give them to me!”
“But older brother gave them to me,” he said. “Well, said middle brother, they’re mine. Give them to me.” Not wanting to start a fight, the youngest brother gave the cookies to his middle brother.
The oldest brother saw what happened. He ran to the middle brother and said, “Hey! those cookies aren’t yours -- they’re his.” The middle brother said, “They’re mine!” The two looked like they were about to fight. Seeing this, the youngest brother said, “Don’t fight over the cookies. Please take them.”
Later he found out that the cookies were used the next day at a picnic and the other middle brother didn’t want to go to the store to buy them -- he brought as much free food home from the party leftovers as he could.
Is there a moral to this story? We could say it teaches us that if we want something badly enough -- we might get it. But we lose something too. The middle brother got the cookies and lost heaven.
Jesus used certain words for eternity -- the place God dwells: kingdom of heaven, paradise, salvation. To step into heaven, we have to let go of something -- we have to give. Letting go of our prejudice or anger will sometimes open the door of heaven. When Zaccheus told Jesus that he would give half of his possessions to the poor and give people back four times what he stole from them, Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this house.” None of us enter heaven by hoarding and taking. Eternal life is a matter of letting go, giving, opening the heart. The rich man in the Gospel could not be with Jesus in heaven because he loved his possessions too much. In the story I told you, youngest and oldest brothers touched eternal life. The middle one went to hell for a plate of cookies. Heaven and hell -- eternal life and endless suffering -- are the places we go in and out of every day. Our goal in this church is to learn to follow Jesus, so we will spend more of our time in heaven than in the other place.