Scriptures:
Colossians 3:1-4 & Luke 12:13-21
When my sister and I were teenagers, every once in a while we’d meet up in our parents’ bedroom, pull out our mom’s jewelry box, and sift through the contents. Taking turns, we’d pick through everything and put each piece in one pile or another – mine and hers – “dividing the family inheritance.” I’m pretty sure our mother knew we did this because I remember telling her once to be sure she put things back in the right containers in the jewelry box. Kara and I knew whose side was whose! I hope she wasn’t offended at out foolish activity. And foolish it was, we particularly realized, after our family experienced the unsettling experience of an intruder who came into our home and swiped much of that jewelry right off my mother’s dresser. Our lives were not demanded of us, as God speaks in Jesus’ parable, but in our own way, we were faced with the opportunity to reflect on what really mattered – the divided inheritance or the people right in front of us.
Questions about inheritance come up quite a bit in scripture – – not surprisingly as they come up in our own lives and experiences as well. There are a variety of laws governing inheritance in the Hebrew Scriptures. Inheritance is on the mind of several people who talk to Jesus throughout his ministry. He uses the motif himself in parables like the Prodigal Son and in teaching about the Kingdom of God. “Blessed are the meek,” Jesus says in Matthew, “for they shall inherit the earth.”
It’s a concept that implies intimate, familial connection, receiving the blessing of someone else’s labor or abundance. One doesn’t inherit without a community, without another person or other people to be in relationship with, at the very least vertically in the generational structure (parent to child, for example), but then it’s also possible that an inheritance involves horizontal relationships, relationships among siblings or cousins for example. And so it is with these relationships at play, that someone in a crowd of people, a crowd of thousands the narrator told us at the start of this chapter, someone out of nowhere, demands of Jesus, “Tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.”
When we cut this story out of its context, we miss a little something. Jesus has just been talking about some pretty heavy stuff. He has been warning his disciples about the hypocrisy of those who are in positions of leadership, those who have influence over others and their understanding of faith. He tells them to be watchful about the temptation to participate in a culture of secrecy, where knowledge is hoarded and information that should be proclaimed from the housetops is whispered behind closed doors. Telling them “Do not be afraid,” Jesus talks about scary things, like those with the authority to kill and sins that might not be forgivable, while trying to reassure them, “Even the hairs of your head are all numbered…. You are of more value than many sparrows.”
But then, out of the blue, someone calls from the crowd – – “what about my money?”
OK, so that’s not that crass, but….. well…. It kind of is. In the middle of all this life and death stuff, these matters of eternal weight, someone wants Jesus to weigh in on what appears to be a family squabble.
“But,” the narrator tells us, “But” Jesus says to him. That conjunction is doing a lot of work in that sentence. It’s doing that tricky thing a “but” does in all of our sentences, something we really should be careful about in our communication with others. “I’m sorry, but…” “I hear you, but….” “I really didn’t mean to hurt you, but….” A “but” has the ability to pretty much negate everything that comes before it.
“Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me,” the person in the crowd demands. But in a parable that he says is about gree, Jesus said to him, something different. In that wonderfully Jesus-y way, he takes the question of the person in the crowd, a question of personal arbitration over money, possessions, maybe land and livelihood, being squabbled over by siblings, and turns his teaching in a different direction, taking it to an even deeper level, a place that is about more than one person’s (maybe greedy?) question about what he wants or deserves. Instead of focusing on one person’s desire for a singular answer, he shifts the topic to one that is more universal and widens the audience from “one friend” to “them” all. Jesus skips the secret answer and instead shares wisdom “proclaimed from the housetops” for many.
The parable he tells continues the theme. There is a rich man whose land has produced abundantly. Good for him, right? That’s what a landowner would hope would happen. It’s what provides him and his presumed family with what they need. As a rich man, he would certainly have a household beyond just his nuclear family that might include elderly parents or aunts and uncles, as well as servants and workers of his land. He’s also a member of a community that could benefit from this abundance. Whether it means he can employ more people or through offerings to the temple feed priests or those whose land is less abundant, the Scriptures are full of ways the fruit of his labor would be expected to feed others beyond his immediate sphere of influence.
But as soon as we hear this rich man’s land has produced abundantly, we also hear his thoughts to himself. “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” We, of course, find out that’s not completely true. He has as place to store his crops. He has barns – barns that we can presume hold enough to store a usual level of production. He’s a rich man; he’s not going wanting in a normal year. He has barns enough for a normal year; he doesn’t lack barns for storing enough crops. He lacks barns for storing more than enough crops.
So keeping the dialogue internal, he comes up with a plan. “I will do this this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.” The storytelling here is masterful. Privy to this inner dialogue, we are getting quite the picture painted of this rich man. “What should I do” “I have no place” “I will do this” “I will pull down.” “My barns” “My grain.” “My goods” The self-centeredness of this one person is so exaggerated, it’s almost comical.
Almost. Because it’s also sort of convicting. “Make sure you put my jewelry back on my side of my jewelry box, Mom… I mean, your jewelry box.”
But of course, it’s not just about inheritances and jewelry boxes. And it’s not just about produce and barns. In the parable, God calls this man a fool. Not a sinner, as we might expect based on other parables about other people, but a fool. It’s the only time Jesus uses this particular term in Luke’s gospel, and it only shows up on his lips one other time, in Matthew’s gospel. However, it is much more common in other parts of the Bible, particularly in what is known as Wisdom Literature – books like the Proverbs with an extended metaphor about Woman Wisdom and Woman Folly.
In this context, one that Jesus himself referenced in his teaching just the chapter before this one, a fool is someone whose way of life leads them away from God. “You fool!” God says to this rich man – not because richness, wealth, abundance is categorically bad. But “You fool!” God says, because the way he is living in relationship to his richness, to his wealth, to his abundance is leading him away from God.
In the way the original petitioner desired to have the full focus of Jesus on his individual question and problem, the rich man desires to have the full blessing of the productive land on his individual life. The foolish man has consulted only himself about what to do with the abundance he sees around him. He didn’t check with anyone – not his family, not his neighbor, not his community, not other people of means, and certainly not any people of no means. He doesn’t even consult with God what he might do with the fruit of God‘s creation of which he is steward. There is no one else in his little world, no one else who can benefit from the abundance he is so blessed to enjoy, no one else who will relax, eat, drink, and be merry because the land (not even the work of the man himself, but the land that God created) has produced abundantly. And that is what leads him away from God.
St. Augustine of Hippo, the 4th century bishop, had this to say about this parable when connecting this story to the wisdom of Proverbs 13:8:
“The redemption of a man’s soul is his riches.” This silly fool of a man did not have that kind of riches. Obviously he was not redeeming his soul by giving relief to the poor. He was hoarding perishable crops. I repeat, he was hoarding perishable crops, while he was on the point of perishing because he had handed out nothing to the Lord before whom he was due to appear. How will he know where to look, when at that trial he starts hearing the words “I was hungry and you did not give me to eat”? He was planning to fill his soul with excessive and unnecessary feasting and was proudly disregarding all those empty bellies of the poor. He did not realize that the bellies of the poor were much safer storerooms than his barns. What he was stowing away in those barns was perhaps even then being stolen away by thieves. But if he stowed it away in the bellies of the poor, it would of course be digested on earth, but in heaven it would be kept all the more safely. The redemption of a man’s soul is his riches.
“The bellies of the poor were much safer storerooms.”
Friends, there are better barns. There are better barns for the abundance that grows from God’s grace than the barns we build that are just for ourselves. There are better barns than those that keep all of the goodness God’s showers in our lives just in our lives. This isn’t just about our wealth, but we can sure be sure that it is about our wealth. This isn’t just about our wealth, our bank account, our investments, and our retirement funds, if we are so blessed as to have them.
This is about those things and it’s about more. It’s about our hearts – our love, our grace, our passion. It’s about the safety we try to secure for ourselves and our families. The health we expect and the well-being we demand. These riches are not just for our lives and our barns, but these same riches are for all the bellies, all the bodies, all the lives in the community and the world around us.
The way that the leads toward God, the way of the wise, not the way of the foolish, it’s a way that takes us outside of ourselves and toward others. Outside of our own thoughts, our own desires, our own well-being, our own worlds, our own barns – and toward the thoughts, desires, well-being, world, and needs of others.
The way of the wise is the way that is rich toward God and those whom God loves. Lift in God’s presence is not defined by the things, the feelings, the attitudes, the comfort we hold onto for our own use, our own enjoyment, our own security. Life is not found in the abundance of our possessions.
So, let’s see the safer storehouses; let’s build better barns. Barns that are open to all of God’s children. Let’s turn all of our riches – those of our hearts and our resources – toward the people and purposes of Jesus the Christ.
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