The Rev. Canon Dr. Brett Cane, August 1, 2010
10th Sunday after Pentecost: 8:30 a.m. & 10:00 a.m. Holy Communion
“Our Attitude Towards Possessions”
Luke 12:13-21
Opening Prayer:
Lord Jesus, you challenge us to count our wealth in terms of our relationship to God; help us now, by your Holy Spirit, to receive this truth in our hearts and put it into action in our lives, to the glory of God the Father. Amen.
Introduction
How many of you have had to face the challenge of moving to a smaller home or accommodation and having to “downsize”? As I get older, I am realizing that sooner or later I will have to get rid of a lot of the “stuff” that I possess. I think this helps bring home that we need to live more simply and that if we had less “stuff,” things would be so much easier for us!
Is the main point of today’s Gospel reading that Jesus is condemning having just such an over-abundance of possessions? At first glance, we might think this was the central thrust of the parable of the “Rich Fool.” But it is not. At second glance, we could see in the story an emphasis on sharing one’s goods with those in need. This is closer to the main point of the passage but it is interesting that the original question of the man who approached Jesus was about making his brother share his inheritance with him and Jesus does not address this.
What Jesus does address is the man’s underlying problem – the attitude of his heart. Jesus speaks to this rather than to the other issues of over-abundance and sharing. Because, if that underlying problem is addressed, then the other problems will be solved. Jesus addresses our attitude towards possessions and through that, our attitude towards life as a whole. He does this through two sayings in the passage which I believe speak directly to our hearts today. Jesus talks about the root problem and the real solution.
The Root Problem
The first saying is: “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (verse 15). Here, Jesus exposes the man’s root problem. The man in the story had brought him a predicament about the division of an inheritance. Some of us may be familiar with break-ups in families and friendships because of quarrels over inheritance. But Jesus says that the man’s basic problem isn’t with his uncooperative brother and the division of the inheritance, it is with the attitude of his own heart. The root issue is greed. The word used here for “greed” can be extended to mean “insatiable desire.”
This is a major problem in our western world today. We can never get enough of what we think we need. Many would see this insatiable desire as the cause of the current world economic crisis. We always have to have more. William Barclay quotes a Roman proverb that said that “Money is like sea-water; the more you drink, the thirstier you get.”[1] But are we happier? No! I would say we are less happy now than in the past. Yes, a minimum of material goods is necessary for life but “greater abundance of goods does not mean greater abundance of life.”[2] That would seem to be a self-evident fact, but so many of us fail to see it. It colours all our dealings with one another as it did here with the man in the story who asked the question. Jesus saw through to the root problem which in his case was greed and the man was trying to use Jesus to satisfy it.
Are there problems in your life that are being caused by insatiable desire? Even as a Christian, are you driven by anxiety at not having enough – of goods, of money, of security, of status, of relationships? Take seriously Jesus’ words that our lives do not consist in abundance of possessions.
The Real Solution
We now come to Jesus’ second saying in the story to help us see the solution to our problem. “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God” (verse 21). Jesus is expanding on his comment earlier about what life consists of. Life consists of being “rich towards God.” To make his point, Jesus tells the parable of the Rich Fool.
The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to myself, You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
The contrast in the story is between “being rich toward God” and “storing things up for yourself.” In the parable, the rich man speaks only to himself (“He thought to himself…”; “And I’ll say to myself…” verses 17, 19) – he is not oriented towards others. The man never sees beyond himself and never sees beyond this world.[3] So God’s word to him is not “What have you done for others” or “Why have you failed those in need?” – he would not be able to hear that. Instead, he points to the heart of the matter – “Look what you have done to yourself! You plan alone, build alone, indulge alone, and now you will die alone!”[4] – “You fool!” (verse 20). What a tragic epitaph for a life!
The key here is that we are not our own – “Your life will be demanded from you” (verse 20) – it is on loan; both our goods and our lives are lent to us – they ultimately belong to God. It is so difficult for us to see this. We do not want to acknowledge God’s prior claim on our lives. Not recognizing this is at the root of our insatiable desires. If we see ourselves as self-made and self-sufficient, we will desperately try to support ourselves with all kinds of means and methods – but they will all ultimately fail, because we do not belong to ourselves – we belong to Another. In fact, we will find ourselves sold in bondage to the things we try to satisfy our appetites with. It is Jesus who has come to buy us back, to free us from that to which we have enslaved ourselves. Freedom will only come when God’s will, not our own, is at the heart of our desires. This is the real solution to our root problem.
Steps to Freedom
So how do you move from belonging to yourself to making yourself a gift to God? Begin by asking yourself where is your greatest investment – in terms of your time, energy, money, etc? Is it in physical things, your work, your family? It ultimately needs to be with God. Now this includes, of course, energy spent in doing a good job where we work, spending time with our family, and so on. But is it with an eye to doing good for God first, rather than ourselves? Is God and his will the central priority of your life? Have you surrendered your life and will to him? Are you growing in your relationship with him and his people through worship, prayer, giving, service and study? This is where freedom begins.
Then we can move on to our relationship with others. One of the key ways of being rich towards God is by being oriented towards others – if the man who asked the original question of Jesus about the inheritance had been more eager to serve others, including his brother with whom he had the disagreement, he would have been making himself rich towards God. In this way, Jesus addresses the needs of the poor by addressing the cause of so much poverty – the greed and self-centredness of those of us who already have so much. “In the Bible, wealth is given for sharing, but the rich farmer (in the parable) is stacking up goods to guarantee his own pleasant future. He is reveling in profit while forgetting the poor.”[5] Storing up harvest for the future was not a negative thing in itself – after all, Joseph did that back in Egypt – but the storing-up was to have enough to share in times of need. In Biblical times, there was a stark disparity between the rich and the poor. Large landowners maintained their wealth and status by exacting tribute from the peasants around them. We would, of course, say that today, we in Canada do not do that and we try to redistribute wealth through charities and government programmes. However, in today’s global economy with its shocking disparities, there may be poor on the other side of the world whom we may be inadvertently exploiting. For us, the others with whom we are called to share include those in different societies and cultures as well as our own. Because God is a global God, our giving of ourselves involves gaining a global vision and seeing our neighbours as those around the world. Sharing of the blessings God has given us is a key way of being rich towards God.
Conclusion
It is interesting that the parable is open-ended – we do not know what the response of the original questioner was to Jesus’ challenge to be rich towards God. God extends the same open-endedness to us. Are you storing up things for yourself or being rich towards God? What is your attitude to
[1] William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible: The Gospel of St. Luke, Rev. Ed. (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1975), pg. 164f.
[2] From T. W. Manson, in The Sayings of Jesus, (London: SCM, 1937), pg. 271, as quoted by Kenneth E. Bailey in Through Peasant Eyes, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980), pg. 62.
[3] Barclay, op.cit.
[4] Bailey, op. cit., pg. 67.
[5] David Buttrick, Speaking Parables. (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 2000), pg. 189.
