Year C
August 4th, 2019
Luke 12:13-21
The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible labels today’s parable as the “Parable of the Rich
Fool.” As I read the parable again and again this week, it struck me as an odd title for the parable. What the rich man does makes - at least to some extent - makes good sense. One might call it “saving for the future.” I have a retirement account. I have a savings account. Life insurance. These things that are supposed to create security and well being into the future. Arguably the rich man does both the responsible thing and the wise thing - at least for himself. Save for a rainy day, you never know what tomorrow will bring.
Beyond saving for our future, a common push in our culture is to have the latest and the greatest and to accumulate stuff and money. Think about how advertising so often works: they work to convince us that what we currently have isn’t enough so we need this other thing in our lives. I recently saw a commercial for a washing machine. It was better than all the other washing machines out there. Why? Because it held enough laundry soap for 40 loads and automatically dispensed it - so you wouldn’t have to. Something that I never even saw as a problem (putting soap into a washing machine) is lifted up as a problem that only this machine can solve. To be clear, there are good reasons for this kind of technology: there are folks for whom putting soap in a washer is a actually a difficult thing. For instance, my Gram, if the top is screwed too tightly on a bottle of detergent can’t get it open again. But that commercial wasn’t directed toward my Gram, it was directed at me. The actor was someone about my own age with seemingly no issues that would make the process of putting soap in a machine a difficult one. The message is: what you already have isn’t good enough - you need this other thing to make your life better. There’s something better out there. Keep up with the Joneses.
I fear that sometimes the parables are over sanitized. This parable is often boiled down to - in the words of Matthew Skinner - “you never see U-Haul trailers behind hearses.”(Skinner, “Poor Fool,” https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5368). In other words, that shiny new phone or the latest greatest washer and dryer set won’t follow you into heaven. Or it gets turned into a lesson about spending our time and energy differently. A lesson about spending time with family because life could get cut tragically short. Those both are good lessons to learn, and I do, for instance, value spending time with my loved ones over buying “stuff,” but I think those interpretations of today’s parable aim to keep today’s parable a little too close to our comfort zones. But I think this text today pushes us to wrestle with something… deeper.
Pastor Mary Anderson suggests this: “we’re more afraid of scarcity than we are of the devil. The advertising world counts on this fear and constantly plays on it. Before there’s greed, before there’s hoarding of stuff, there’s fear and anxiety about our future. This needs to be named out loud” (Anderson, Sundays and Seasons: Preaching Year C 2016, 215). In other words, the rich man kept the harvest for himself because he was afraid that there’s not enough to go around - and that one day, he’ll find himself without enough. And with that anxiety, he turns inward. Did you catch all the first person pronouns in the passage? “And he thought to himself, ‘what should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ then he said, ‘I will do this. I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, and be merry.” Anxiety about not having ample goods laid up for many years turns him to think only about himself. It is fear that turns into self-preservation.
If we think about it, fear of insecurity, in general, has this tendency to turn us inward. Greed, as a friend Pastor Marissa Sotos said so well last night, is “the drive to have whatever we believe we can possess that makes us not need God or other people.” Greed can be about hoarding money and resources. Greed can be about accumulating power and privilege. Greed can be about collecting “things” in order to make us feel safe and secure.
So the problem today is not wealth in and of itself, but it is how anxiety about not having enough leads to self-centeredness - and how wealth or greed in particular can push us into buying into the idea that we don’t need God or other people, feeding the myth of the self-made person. It turns us in on ourselves, seeking to put a bubble around ourselves. This rich man misses a really awesome opportunity to serve the neighbor in need. But instead, he hoards crops (which are likely perishable) for himself. Not because he’s evil. Not because he’s a terrible person. But his anxiety and worry about the future has turned him inward, giving him tunnel vision, so he only sees the possibility of not having enough and it puts him into self-preservation mode. And his greed - his hoarding of food for himself - keeps others from having enough. Poverty is real. There are people in his community that don’t have enough, and if he shared the abundant crop, the community could have enough.
Sadly, the Revised Common Lectionary stops a bit short. So all we hear from the Gospel reading is this heavy, law-driven passage. So to get at the “grace” or Good news for today, I’m going to do something I normally don’t do: I’m going to read the next part of the Gospel of Luke, which serves as a sort of commentary on the parable:
“22 He said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. 23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. 24 Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! 25 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 26 If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? 27 Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 28 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! 29 And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. 30 For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. 31 Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.” (Luke 12:22-31, NRSV).
The Good News today is that this kind of fear is not what God intends for God’s people. This kind of greed is not what God intends for God’s kingdom. We are stewards of what God has created. It isn’t ours; it is all God’s. God intends for there to be enough for everyone. It frees us from the cycle of keeping up with the Joneses and the fear of not having enough. It frees us from the fear of scarcity and insecurity. We’re freed from our turned-in-on-self selves so that we can turn outward - sharing the resources that God has entrusted to our care.
Amen.
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