Sermon for July 31, 2022 – 8th Sunday after Pentecost

Be Rich Towards God and Your Neighbor

If Chapter 11 of Luke’s gospel is all about prayer, as we heard last week when the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, then Chapter 12 is all about discipleship and how it is that we are to follow the way of God. The centerpiece of our gospel this morning is the parable of the rich fool, a person who is more concerned with storing excess riches than with striving for God’s realm. Framed on either side by Jesus’ teaching, the parable paints a vivid picture of the dangers of wealth, for its own sake. Those who have possessions in abundance risk the sin of greed: “enough” is never enough, “more” is only to be hoarded, and “I, me, and mine” matter more than anybody else. Greed is a problem primarily because its focus on the self keeps people from being “rich toward God” and rich towards others. The universal human propensity toward greed and our inwardly focused selfishness stands in striking contrast to God’s providential care for rich and poor alike. Let us not forget what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount when he is discussing loving one’s enemies. Jesus says, “[God] causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”

The parable is a familiar story. It is the story of working hard and success, of reward and blessings. This parable should be familiar to us because it is the narrative that we, or at least I growing up in America, have been fed our entire lives. The goal of working is to be a success, and the yardstick used to measure that success is our bank accounts. You must do well in high school, so that you can get into a good college. You get a degree, so that you can get a good job. A good job leads into a good career, all the while slowly climbing up the ladder increasing your net worth a little more with each rung. This story should be familiar because I know it as the “American Dream;” where anyone can do this, no matter who you are or where you come from. Anyone can become a success. For now, I will skip past the cultural biases, institutionalized oppression, and systemic racism that proves this dream a fallacy, because everyone is not working from the same starting place nor facing the same hurdles to have access to basic social services. That is another sermon for another day.

This story, this dream, is not inherently bad either. As with most of Jesus’ teachings on money, money is not inherently evil, it is our intent and how we use it that can corrupt our hearts and our minds. And so, Jesus tells the story in such a way that highlights how wealth can go terribly wrong for us if we are not careful.

Jesus tells us that with his barns already bursting to overflowing, a rich man harvests a bumper crop with no place to store it. Desiring to keep this bounty for himself, and not being one to concern himself with the problem of waste, he plans to tear down the old barns, construct larger ones, store up his crops, and then sit back and enjoy the excess. This farmer stands as a negative example for the followers of Jesus: if you want to know how to not live as a disciple, just be like this guy.

Now, when we hear this parable, we might ask ourselves, “What is so wrong with storing up the crops?” Frugal-minded people have long stashed excess food and supplies in silos, pantries, and basement shelves. We have been encouraged to save for rainy days, to squirrel away funds for retirement, and even stash some secreted cash under the mattress. Is not this a prudent hedge against future economic uncertainty? After all, this is precisely what the young Joseph advises Pharaoh after interpreting a dream to mean seven years of plenty and seven years of famine. Store up the excess in the fat years so that there will be enough for everybody in the lean ones, so says Genesis.

Furthermore, does not this man deserve to eat, drink, and be merry in celebration of his good fortune? Does he not get to reap the benefits of a life well lived? Is that not what we hope for ourselves, to create a life after work in which we are taken care of? There are numerous feasts and parties throughout the Bible that give ample evidence for the practice of celebrating the harvest or rejoicing at signs of good fortune.

To be sure, saving for the future is one component of proper stewardship of God’s bounty. This appropriate concern for the future is balanced, however, with the injunction to give glory to God and to care for one’s neighbor; by providing for the poor and the marginalized, by assisting those without access to the world’s wealth or even to basic needs of survival. We should note that the man in the parable demonstrates neither of these twin aspects of stewardship, return to God and care for neighbor, mainly because he has forgotten both the God who caused the earth’s bounty and the neighbor without access to that bounty.

It is also helpful for us to note this morning, how the pronouns “I”, “me,” and “my” dominate the story. Here there is concern only for himself, not for his neighbors, not those who have no land to produce their own crops, or for the alien, the widow, and the orphan at the margins of society. There is no concern, for the have-nots, even though according to commandments in Exodus and Leviticus they should be very much our concern. We should be concerned for any whose lives are at risk due to their limited access to resources. Throughout Luke’s Gospel, as well as in the development of the church over the centuries, the act of giving to the poor remains a central element of a sanctified life. The man in the parable is so self-centered, however, that he cannot see beyond what he considers to be his harvest, his barns, and his own life.

There are at least two additional issues at stake here. First is the reminder that God is the author of life and death, as well as the creator of a land that produces food for its inhabitants. It is divine providence, and equal measures of effort and luck, that has made possible the excess crops. The parable’s protagonist ignores the hand of God in his good fortune and focuses only on the benefit accruing to himself. Nowhere does he offer thanksgiving to God for the abundance of his land. Nowhere does he offer the first fruits of his labors back to God. Nowhere does he honor and reward those who helped him with a share in this bounty. And nowhere does he set aside some to give away to those in need.

Secondly, the man seems to have forgotten that all created life is bound by death, a reality that comes to bear regardless of the quantity of one’s possessions. In the end, and sooner rather than later, death will separate him from his overflowing barns. “You cannot take it with you,” so the adage goes. Alternatively, we might say, “there are no storage facilities in heaven.” Despite barns filled to the brim, the man’s days are numbered, a fact he seems to forget as he congratulates himself for his fine lot in life.

With all this excess at the center of his life, the man plunges into the trap of idolatry; an idolatry that if often idolized by the culture of my birth. The nearly constant message of today’s media is that life does, indeed, consist in the abundance of possessions. We are encouraged to spend more, have more, and use more; to supersize and maximize; to bank on the appearance of wealth as a sign of the good life. Insofar as culture cultivates a propensity to buy things we do not need; it champions a way of life that Jesus characterizes as folly.

This parable calls on all of us, rich and poor alike, to reflect carefully about what we want and why we want it. Are our desires and standards for what is enough driven by a determination to store up treasures for our own pleasure, or by our understanding of God’s blessings and our true purpose in life? Will we measure our lives by the standards of the media, seducing us to want more and more, or by the call of the gospel to be rich towards God and our neighbors?

I pray that together we can work towards the latter. Amen.