The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost ---- 31 July 2016

Luke 12:13-21

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." ¹⁴ But he said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" ¹⁵ And he said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." ¹⁶ Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. ¹⁷ And he thought to himself, "What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' ¹⁸Then he said, "I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹ And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' ²⁰ But God said to him, "You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' ²¹ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."

So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.

·        Do you wonder what being rich toward God means? It’s not a phrase that come lightly to the lips and it also flies in the face of many contemporary Christians.

·        Let me first say that we all need to know that the books of the Hebrew Bible – the Old Testament – argue with each other. The Book of Deuteronomy says in a number of places that health, wealth, and prosperity are gifts from God. True enough, we’d say, and that same book goes on to say that they are rewards for the faithful. Those signs might be taken for proof that you have lived a faithful and holy life. The next step – which Deuteronomy may or may not say openly – is to say that the poor and the sick are that way because they are sinners. Remember the story of “the man born blind” in John’s Gospel? The Pharisees ask Jesus whose sin the blind man is suffering for, his own or his family’s. This is an example of the sort of thinking that might flow from reading Deuteronomy in a righteousness-only light.

·        The Book of Job stands opposed to this. Job is THE righteous man who has never sinned. Still his farm is laid waste, his children killed, his workers carried off by desert raiders, and he himself is reduced to scraping boils off his skin with a piece of broken pottery. The reward of the Just! Finally he gets mad at God and demands an answer. God’s answer is simple: in Hebrew it is “Meet Tza?”; in English, “Who is this?” Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?

·        Our first reading from Ecclesiastes takes a similar view: What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun?  For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity. “Vanity” by the way, comes from a Latin word meaning “emptiness.”

·        Over all pretty depressing stuff, isn’t it? When faced with Luke’s passage today, we see hints of the earthy realism that Jesus brings to his preaching. The rich man is quite wealthy and has a bumper crop to bring in. He decides to tear down his barns and build new ones to accommodate the crop. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.

·        God, however, has other plans. There are two more-or-less modern sayings that come into play here. First we have “Man proposes, God disposes” taken from The Imitation of Christ by the German canon, Thomas à Kempis in the early 1400s. The second is the old Yiddish proverb “We plan, God laughs.”

·        We make our plans and act on them, as if we were really in charge. If you want to plant crops, there are a lot of people in this congregation who could give you good advice. If you want financial planning, I can give you a reputable name, and it’s not my own. We all know people who can be of great service in building, in computer work, in music lessons, you name it. Nothing says we should not plan and take steps, but everything ultimately depends on God.

·        Right there is the parable rich man’s error. He is obviously wise in the ways of keeping a farm and doing well with the world’s goods. He make plans any of us might want to make: relax, eat, drink, be merry. What he doesn’t do is take into account the community he lives in and the relationship he has with God and there is Jesus’ point.

·        Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. Jesus reacts to the demand that he judge between two brothers over an inheritance. He seems to have sniffed out the real problem there, and the problem is greed.

·        Rich is having; Greed is wanting. A rich person might be satisfied and grateful. A greedy person can be neither, since they always want more. We could well ask “For what reason?”

·        The one thing the rich man in the parable did not take into account is what his riches were for. He did not see himself as part of a larger community. He did not ask himself – or God – what his riches were for. He simply horded them… And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?

·        If ever there was a parable focused on our own time, this is it. Greed is visible almost everywhere around us, and if we’re honest, within us. Some people involve themselves in what my university professors called “conspicuous consumption.” In other words, riches are flaunted so others can see and envy them. Don’t just keep up with the Jones’s but destroy them and crush them with your better stuff.

·        And we are called “fools” for not playing that game.

·        Yes, we are fools who don’t buy into those attitudes. Like Paul, We are fools for the sake of Christ (1 Cor. 4:10) Like Luther we know “The god of this world is riches, pleasure and pride.”

·        Years ago, I tried to follow a “fool for Christ” in his way of following Jesus. If anything, I have become a bigger fool since then. Good for me! Before I leave on my holiday, I’d like to share with you a favourite poem of mine. It’s wonderfully foolish in the best sense and not a vanity at all.

·                   When I am old and tutored by
The grim experience of days;
When I have proved men in their ways,
Oh, do not let the dreamer die.

When I have learned aside to toss
The foolish things that wise men hate,
Lest Littleness should hold me great,
Be mine the folly of the Cross.

When comes detachment's strength to me,
Let mine the weakness be that wept
O'er Lazarus' grave and kept
Three comrades in Gethsemane.

When head bids heart herself forget,
When Reason's lure would love deceive,
May my poor foolish heart achieve
A few life-giving blunders yet.

When I have grown too sane, too sad,
To join the angels' faerie ring
And serve the playtime of the King,
Then, Sweet Saint Francis, make me mad.

(A Franciscan Prayer by Enid Dennis)

(To my readers - I will be on my summer holiday until the end of August. This blog will resume then. Thanks for understanding.)