August 5, 2007 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK
Ecclesiastes 1:2 2:21-23 + Psalm 90 + Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11 + Luke 12:13-21
In many ways, he is a good man. He is lot like many of us. There is nothing here to make us think he has mistreated his workers, cheated anyone, manipulated the market, or been dishonest in any way. In fact, it is just the opposite. He clearly has worked hard. His land produced bountifully; the soil, the rain, the sun joined in making him a wealthy man. He makes an economic decision and replaces his barns with bigger ones. He is not wasteful. He is not careless. There is no suggestion here that he is unjust. But he is fool! In a rare and sudden outburst, God speaks out like no where else in the scriptures. God says what we are in the scriptures forbidden to say: “You fool!”
The problem here, the behavior that merits this outburst is revealed in the man’s conversation. He speaks only to himself. Listen to that text again. “He asked himself” it says, and then, what’s worse, he answers himself. “What shall I do? I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones.” I shall store all my grain and other goods, and I shall say to myself, rest, eat, drink, merry.” It’s all about him. His individualism has isolated him to the point that he converses only with himself and answers his own questions. He really is a fool. Has he no family? Has he no servants, no obligations, no God? There is his foolishness.
Because he lives for himself, he falls into greed, and the appetite of greed is always the same: it eats yet remains hungry. Greed is that endless search for more that always leaves the searcher with a desire for more rather than with fulfillment. Greed was seen as particularly vicious in the culture of Jesus’ day in light of their perception of limited good. This notion asserts that there is only a limited amount of any good thing; anything that one acquires is someone else’ loss. Contrary to capitalistic notions that all can increase in wealth, in first-century Palestine the operating assumption is that everything is finite and cannot be expanded. It remains to be proven that capitalism’s claim is correct. In fact, the days in which we live with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer would lend more credibility to the old idea from the time of Jesus
If someone’s share gets larger, someone else’s decreases. At the time of Jesus, desiring more for oneself was the most insidious of vices, because it was utterly destructive of village solidarity. Look at that family torn apart in a dispute that started this response from Jesus. Riches in themselves are neutral; it is what is done with them that reveals the allegiance of one’s heart. The process of amassing wealth is colored by the intent driving it. This fool accumulates, not the better to serve others out of love for God
but, rather, to finance his own anticipated extravagant leisure. What’s wrong with this picture?
The dire consequence of greed is the destruction of community as it brings conflict between brothers and sisters over ownership. It makes an idol out of possessions, so that one who stockpiles has no thought of the One to whom all things truly belong. It feeds a delusion that power and salvation rest in one’s own accomplishments.
That is foolish thinking, says Luke at the stop on the way to Jerusalem. Since we began Gospel readings from the Journey Narrative, Jesus has said again and again that it is not what we do that matters, but what we become. Today he says that it is not what we have that matters, but who we are as revealed by what we do with what we have.
Again and again, Luke raises the subject of possessions for disciples. The simple truth he teaches is that wealth brings privilege and duty, never one without the other. As Jesus reveals the nature of God, he invites us deeper into that image in which we have been made. To be true to the image in which we were made, we give like God gives.
So many of you work so hard to leave so much to your children: it leaves me to wonder what it is exactly you want to teach them and what you really want to leave for them.
Perhaps more than anything we might simply teach our children to be in this world and not of this world; teach our children to put their trust and the future in the hands of God, teach our children how to be good stewards, not good consumers, and teach our children that their value and their identity is not in what they have or what they do, but in who they are as children made in the image and likeness of God:
a God who gave up his only son for the sake of others.