Colossians 3.1-11, Luke 12.13-21
The Seventh Sunday after Trinity, Sunday 4 August 2019
Jesus was a rabbi who didn’t play by the rules. When a man went asking him for justice, Jesus refused him, and told him a tale the man found very disturbing indeed.
The man asked the Rabbi Jesus to tell his brother to divide the inheritance with him: it was his lawful right to take his share. Jesus’ reply must have shocked him, for he said, 'Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbitrator between you?' Well, as a rabbi, Jesus was a judge and arbitrator. Rabbis knew the law and ruled on it. Rabbis had the power to order inheritances be divided.
The man went to Jesus knowing the rabbi had the power to split the inheritance. But Jesus refused to make this ruling which would have divided them, brother from brother. He refused to be co-opted to the man’s agenda to grab the inheritance and say farewell to his family ties.
Instead Jesus told a story which raised questions about the man's motivation for taking this inheritance; and which deeply challenged the man’s outlook on life. Jesus, resisted his plea, refusing to divide the brothers, instead throwing the responsibility for his actions back onto the brother seeking the inheritance. This presented the man with the challenge of having to go back to face his brother and work out a solution in the light of what Jesus said next.
This story about a man obsessed with the idea of building bigger and bigger barns to store more and more of the excess grain and goods he had in his possession, thinking this would set him up for life. The story, ending with the man's premature death, and God saying to him, 'You fool! You’ll die tonight - who will get all you’ve saved up for yourself?' This rabbi’s tale forced the man to make connections between the rich man in the story and himself.
The rich man in the story was full of himself. He naturally assumed that the extra crops that grew on his land, were his. For him to store up for himself. No thought that they may have been gifted to him by nature, by the Creator. No thought of sharing them with anyone else.
The rich man in the story only ever spoke to himself about these things. ‘He thought to himself, (the story went) 'What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' Then he said to himself, 'I will pull down my barns and build larger ones… And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.'’ He didn’t talk these things through with anyone else. For in his grasping after wealth he had alienated himself from all others. He was rich - but very alone.
And so when God speaks in the story, he shines light on the dark reality that this rich man who had removed himself from his community, had no-one in the world to share with. If he’d ever had family, he’d alienated them, and they’d long since left him to his own devices.
Notice that God doesn’t mince his words with this self-absorbed rich man. He calls him a fool in the strongest term possible in the language of the day. He calls him stupid. ‘Look at what you’ve done to yourself!’ God thunders. ‘You plan alone, build alone, indulge alone, and now you will die alone!’ [2]
As the rabbi Jesus told this tale it transformed from being about a wealthy successful man planning for his comfort in posterity, to being about a stupid rich man closed-off from his neighbours and from God, discovering that, of the things which really mattered, he had nothing.
Notice how the man’s excess was not a product of anything he’d done. The abundance on his land was a gift from God. And notice that just as God gives, so also God takes away. The story makes it sound like we are tenants on God’s earth, indebted to our Creator. And when God says, ’your life is being demanded of you’,‘your soul is being required of you’, there God is calling in the man’s debt: having loaned the man his soul, now God wants it returned.
There were two sayings Jesus used, one at the start of the story and one at the end. The first one said, ’Take heed, and beware of every kind of insatiable desire; for your life does not consist in the surpluses of your possessions.’ And the last one said, ‘So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’
The man who came to Jesus knew his rights - his entitlement to the inheritance - but Jesus’ story taught him that before he claimed his rights he might be best to pay some attention to his wrongs. To those insatiable desires he had for more and more; for the illusion that the more wealth he had the fuller his life would be.
At the end of all this, we learn that this Jesus is a rabbi who refuses to be make judgements which divide people and break up community. That he is a teacher who challenges us to step outside simply ‘knowing our rights’ and opens our eyes and hearts to our deeper motives, about how we act towards others, and towards God. That he is a motivator who sends us back to face our differences and work out for ourselves how to overcome them.
Not everything I have received in life is mine to keep. The wealth that I have has been gifted to me; for the life that I have, I am indebted to God.
Rather than spending my time worrying and plotting over the things I think will make me rich,
Wouldn’t I find it so much better to live with the question Jesus raised and leaves us to answer, the question that holds the key to a satisfied life. What does it mean to be 'rich toward God'?
Notes
[1] A rewrite of The rabbi who didn’t play by the rules, and his parable of the stupid rich man, preached in Somerset in 2016. It combines what I learned from Kenneth E. Bailey, Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes: a Literary-cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke, Through Peasant Eyes, Chapter 4, The Rich Fool, p.57-73, and my sermon Being rich toward God, preached in Liverpool in 2004.
[2] Bailey p.67.
[3] Ambrose, quoted in Bailey p.64.
[4] With money we can buy -
- a bed, but no dreams;
- books, but not intelligence;
- food, but not appetite;
- adornments, but not beauty;
- medicines, but not health;
- entertainment, but not joy;
- a crucifix, but not a Saviour... [4]
… words seen on the wall of a restaurant in Guatemala: translated by Judith Escribano, quoted from a Christian Aid group study guide, Rebecca Dudley, Peter Graystone, For love or money.
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