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Sermon: The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost Year C - 1st August 2010
St Alban's Anglican Church Epping 7, 8 & 10am
Readings: Hosea 11:1-11 Psalm 107:1-9, 43 Colossians 3:1-11 Luke 12:13-21
Today’s readings concern the foolish destructiveness of self- sufficiency. Luke’s parable portrays a “fool” who is a great accumulator and who imagines that his vast estate adds to his well being. In the end he talks only to himself in his isolation, and his self-preoccupation is interrupted by death.
Colossians echoes the same conviction using the telling phrase, “greed which is idolatry”. Greed is a way of worshipping wrong gods. Colossians, however, goes further. It not only warns against such self-destructiveness, but it commends a new life, the one baptized into Christ who centres life not on self, but on “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience and forgiveness”. There is a genuine alternative!
This teaching is urgent in our society. Not only because of the perennial seduction of greed, but because we live in a society of bad tax law, bad credit arrangements and bad advertising, all of which seek to make greed into a civic virtue. We can choose against such foolishness for a life of neighbourliness.
Warnings against the temptations of material wealth take centre stage. Jesus says it plainly: “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions”. Jesus does not speak against possessions themselves, but against hoarding things beyond what we need. We must choose, therefore, between greed and God. We cannot have both; we are possessed either by our possessions or by God. Although most of us can grasp this concept intellectually, few of us can actually do it.
Passages like today's gospel are often called the "hard sayings" of Jesus. Hard sayings, it seems, are any that call us to do something we'd rather not do. In this case, Jesus is rebuking those who "store up treasures for themselves." How easily his followers today ignore or rationalize his teaching! So many of us think nothing of saving money, storing up treasures, for retirement, for education and saving for the future. Why, it's just good stewardship and after all Jesus was talking about the rich, not about us! We can't get off so easy. Jesus' warning rings as true today as ever, and it applies to our wealthy culture perhaps even more aptly than it did to first-century Palestine.
His point, then and now, is about priorities. As Paul put it, "Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth". The focus on material things is especially dangerous because it causes us to lose sight of what really matters. The rich man in the parable plans to use his abundance to "eat, drink, and be merry" apparently without regard to neighbours in need or concern for God. Jesus makes unmistakably clear God's judgment of such behaviour: "You fool!"
Jesus doesn't leave us only with judgment. He offers reassurance and solace for those who seek to be "rich toward God", or rich from God's point of view. The proper place to store up "treasure" is heaven, and to do so we are to "sell your possessions, and give alms" to those in need. A hard saying, but we must trust that being rich in God's eyes is its own reward. As it says in the Psalm, "Let those who are wise give heed to these things, and consider the steadfast love of the Lord".
The Gospel story is framed by the commandment “Do not worry”. Just before the story of the farmer, Jesus told his listeners not to worry about what they would say when they were brought to trial for his sake. Just after the story, he said, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear.” In between, he told a story about one of the things we worry about most: money.
So when Jesus’ listener asked him to command his brother to divide the inheritance, Jesus responded, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”
The rich man is preoccupied with his possessions. Until the voice of God interrupts the fool’s daydream, there is nothing in the story but the man and his possessions. His goods and prosperity have become the sole pursuit of his life, until finally the poverty of his abundance is exposed. Thus the parable forces us into a searching reflection on the meaning of life. We may declare, as our society tends to does, “Whoever has the most toys when he dies wins”, but the parable exposes the emptiness of such a materialistic life-style.
The man was secure in his self-sufficiency. The parable sketches the figure of a man who does not need anyone else. He can provide for himself, and his provisions will take care of him for many years. He needs the security of the love of neither family nor faithful friends. He does not feel the need of a community of support or the security of God’s love. In an extreme case, the parable allows us to see the ultimate extension of the common inclination to think that we can make it on our own and that we don’t need anyone else.
The fool was in the grasp of greed. Greed is the opposite of generosity. The thought of what he might be able to do for those in need never enters the rich fool’s mind. His innermost thoughts reveal that he has no sense of responsibility to use his fortune for the welfare of less fortunate people. Greed seems to have eaten away any compassion he may once have had.
He was locked into a hedonistic lifestyle. The rich fool lives it up in his prosperity because he envisions that because of it he can “eat, drink and be merry”. His daydream is to spend his future indulging his whims and desires. Or, as the advertisement for the lottery says “Spend the rest of your life!” The greatest good he can imagine is a life of maximizing his own pleasure; leisure, recreation, freedom from the demands of work. Are we really planning prudently for our future? What gives your life meaning now and what will give it meaning then?
The fool was for all intents and purposes a practical atheist. The rich fool may protest that he has always believed in God, but when it comes to managing his life, dealing with possessions and planning for the future, he lives as though there is no God. The parable, therefore, probes our basic commitments. What difference should our faith in God make in the practical day-to-day matters of our life?
There’s nothing wrong with wanting and having a nice car or house or clothes, but there is something very wrong when we feel incomplete if we don’t have all the things that we would like to have. Yet, our economy is largely based on creating in us the desire for things we don’t want. Advertisers base their appeals on our insecurities. Drink this kind of drink! Use this deodorant! Buy this car! It will make you happy, attractive, fulfilled.
The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible reads, “This very night your life is being demanded of you”. However, the Greek text says something more like, “They have demanded your life”. Who were the “they” who demanded the life of the farmer? His possessions, of course, for he no longer owned his possessions: they owned him. Or as someone once said, “Your goods are putting the screws on your soul”.
The rich fool made the mistake of believing that he really possessed his great wealth, although Jesus said that the reality was that it possessed him. Movie magnate Sam Goldwyn, on being told that he couldn’t take it with him, replied, “Well then, I just won’t go”. However, that is not an option. We can’t take it with us, nor can we refuse to go when it is our time. What we have, we can’t we really possess, we only hold in trust. Today’s possessions become tomorrow’s garage sale treasures.
So, Jesus concluded his parable of the rich fool by saying, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God”. He had stored his wealth in earthly barns, even though he had had the opportunity to store it in heaven. Wealth is not wrong or sinful, but it is problematic. The spiritual problem of wealth is that it anchors our hearts too firmly in this world, rather than in God’s kingdom.
The rich and foolish farmer tore down his barn and built bigger barns. He opened more bank accounts and invested his money in high return shares. There is nothing wrong with any of that, however, God invites us to invest our money and ourselves in the kingdom of heaven.
The story is told that at the funeral of the fabulously wealthy Aristotle Onassis, one of the mourners turned to another and said, “How much did he leave?” His friend replied, “Everything. He left everything.”
The sermon produced using material from the New Interpreter’s Bible Vol IX and www.sermons-that-work.org and www.sojo.net.