Sunday’s Sermon: The Parable Of The Rich Fool

Luke 12:13-21

Dialogue
“It’s not fair.”

In a home with two small children, that’s a sentiment Debbie
and I hear with increasing frequency.

And it’s a feeling not limited to minors. How many of us see
or experience something and also want to cry out, “It’s not fair”? More of us
than we care to admit, I venture.

It’s so widespread that politicians prey on it. Is it any
accident that New Labour spin doctors told MPs not to refer to ‘justice’ but to
‘fairness’? When he was still Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown’s
speeches were liberally sprinkled with references to ‘fairness’: fairness with
regard to money, education, health and opportunities. ‘Fairness’ was a
vote-winner.

Hence, when someone in the crowd says to Jesus, ‘Teacher,
tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me’ (verse 13), it has a
contemporary, if not timeless, ring. This is the cry of human beings in every
age. It feels to the one who says it like a cry for justice[1].
But it’s more like something else that is up-to-date: a demand for ‘my rights’.

And that is something else our politicians exploit. They don’t
talk about what people need, but about what they deserve. “I deserve my share
of the inheritance,” says the anonymous member of the crowd to Jesus, “It’s my
right. You’re a rabbi; rabbis often pronounce on legal matters. Give me my
rights!”

However, Jesus is no ordinary rabbi. He came not to judge,
but to reconcile. Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?’, he
replies (verse 14). And ‘arbitrator’ carries the notion of a ‘divider’. For
here are two brothers who are far from reconciled. They are divided over the
question of land, just as Israel/Palestine is to this day. No: if Jesus came to
judge at all, then in the words of one Middle Eastern commentator, Ibrahim
Said,

Jesus becomes a judge over
them, not between them. He judges the
motives of their hearts, not their pocket books.[2]

Jesus stands against the lust for ‘my rights’ that
inevitably means I get what I want, but others suffer as a result. Not only is
it what causes broken relationships in families (as in the two brothers here),
it has consequences worldwide. It is the story today of unfair trade that keeps
prices low for us; it is the story of developing countries suffering climate
change, due to our pollution.

Rather than support the man, he warns him: ‘Take care! Be on
your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the
abundance of possessions’ (verse 15). In fact, Luke says, he warns them, the whole crowd, because this is a
universal problem. For greed, read ‘insatiable desires’: even if you get what
you want, you won’t be satisfied. Get one thing and your desires will escalate.
It is like an addiction. It is like drinking salt water. And it is as deadly.

So Jesus tells a story – ‘the parable of the rich fool’ –
and he holds it up as a mirror. It isn’t merely a mirror to the man who came
with the demand that Jesus resolve his father’s last will and testament in his
favour. The parable – for the reasons I have already indicated – is a mirror
that reflects us, our selfish world, and even our self-centred churches.

Parable
The man is already rich, before his land brings forth plenty (verse 16). He already
has more than enough – but to him, it isn’t enough. The fruit of the land isn’t
even something he acquires through business skills, it is a gift of God. But he
does not acknowledge it as such. Whatever lands in his lap to his advantage is
his. What will he do with unearned surpluses? One thing is for sure: he will
not acknowledge that any material goods coming his way are on loan to him from
God. So he is the ‘Lord’ of these crops: they are his possessions, and he can
do with them as he likes. He is not answerable to anybody. They are his, and
exist for his benefit. That this attitude might harm others doesn’t even enter
his head.

So he mulls over what to do:

And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no
place to store my crops?” (verse 17)

In fact, he takes his time to mull it over: more literally,
the Greek says, ‘he was thinking to himself’. He dwells on this. He debates
with himself. Yet the one thing he never questions is whether he needs this
excess. And nor does he attribute his increase to God: they are ‘my crops’. How similar is his thinking
to the way we might make financial decisions today. It is my money. It’s so easy to do. It’s seductive. Yet it is surely an
aspect of Christian discipleship to pray about family budgets that we set, and
about major financial decisions.

And there is deeper tragedy in these words; ‘he thought to himself’. He has no friends or
cronies with whom to share his bounty – and perhaps you wonder why. Has he so
cut himself off from others by some trait of greed and selfishness? Is there
nobody he can trust? It certainly sits at odds with conventional
decision-making in Middle Eastern societies. The dwelling on and debating was
common, but it was done together. The village elders used to sit at the gate
and explore decisions corporately. They would take their time, even subtly
pressurising those who tried to introduce information that would settle the
matter in question – why ruin a wonderful discussion?

But this man has no fellowship, none of the communal support
that provides checks and balances,. When John Donne wrote his famous words, ‘No
man is an island’, he was being thoroughly biblical. It is part of the way God
has made us – and part of the way he calls the redeemed community to function –
that we take counsel together. There is a call to mutual accountability. It can
happen in the small groups, and certainly John Wesley expected that with the
class meetings and ‘bands’ that he devised. The man in the parable has rejected
any sense of accountability towards God, and he has cut himself off from the
healthy mutual accountability of fellowship.

So – without these checks and balances – he makes a
disastrous decision. “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build
larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods” (verse 18). In Scripture,
the language of ‘pulling down’ and ‘building up’ was used of courageous
prophetic actions (e.g., Jeremiah 1:10). Instead, this man deploys the language
of courage for the actions of self-indulgence and theft. The self-indulgence is
probably obvious in the story, but it also surrounds us as if we were goldfish
and it were the water we swim in, so pervasive is it in our culture.

But how is building barns for his extra produce theft? In
this sense: barns were normally used to set aside the ‘tithes and offerings’
required by Jewish law. The priests and Levites, who had no land from which to
derive an income, depended on these tithes and offerings for their living. They
would call at the barns to collect them. However, this man intends to deprive
others of what they need to live by hoarding for himself and indulging his
pleasures and lusts.

Still talking to himself with no one for company, he says, “And
I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years;
relax, eat, drink, be merry” (verse 19). He thinks he has made it, but he
cannot share his news with anyone – not because loved ones have died, but
because he has cut himself off by his attitudes. The cartoon character of
Montgomery Burns in The Simpsons is closer to home than many might think, in
this respect, whatever the exaggerations, because there is one who has used
wealth, power and self-indulgence but become wizened and lonely. This man is
not much different. Willingly under the delusion that his total needs can be
supplied by his material surplus, he is not only alone, he is isolated.

He thinks he has the good life all sewn up, but he is in for
a shock. Just he relaxes, ready ‘eat, drink and be merry’, he receives a
terrible jolt from the Almighty. God addresses him as “You fool!” (verse 20).
There are four words for ‘fool’ in New Testament Greek and this is one of the
strongest. It is also the opposite of the word used the good life the man
thinks he is going to enjoy. He has got his life the wrong way up, and nothing
is more foolish than that.

The man who fails to appreciate that his material blessings
are not his, but rather are on loan to him from God, now learns to his shock
that even his life does not belong to him: life is on loan to him from heaven,
too. “This very night your life is being demanded of you” (verse 20). Today, if
we ask the question, ‘Whose life is it anyway?’ (as in the title of a play some
years ago), we expect the answer, ‘It’s mine.’ Like Billy Joel singing ‘My Life’,
we think life is something we own, and nobody has the right to tell us what to
do with it. So when Christians campaign against some evil in society, it isn’t
unusual to label us as ‘self-appointed moral guardians’. Who are we to tell
people what to do? But there is a reckoning to come, because life is not a
possession, but a gift.

So, then, if life is on loan and the loan can be called in,
no wonder God says to the rich man, “And the things you have prepared, whose
will they be?” (verse 20) What does that do for wealth-gathering? What does it
say to Jesus’ original questioner, who is expecting to inherit? Think how some
dying people are only too aware of otherwise uninterested relatives suddenly
taking a close interest in their health. Reflection on that gets beneath any
direct questions for which the rich man would have had a ready reply: doubtless
he could have rationalised why he hadn’t given money or goods to the needy. But
the imminent prospect of death is a challenge he can’t dodge. Death shows him up
for who he is.

Conclusion
Jesus has a devastating conclusion when he finishes the parable. He hammers it
home:

So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but
are not rich towards God. (verse 21)

There are two parallel but contrasting activities Jesus
mentions here: ‘treasuring up for ourselves’ versus ‘gathering riches for God’.
Clearly the man treasured up many things for himself. His goods were his
treasures. But what might it mean to ‘gather riches for God’? Isn’t God all
sufficient? Doesn’t he own the cattle on a thousand hills (Psalm 50:10)? Can we
add to God’s perfection? Surely God isn’t lacking anything?

But if everything we have (not just material possessions,
our lives too) is on loan from God, then all we have, and especially our
material surpluses, are for him.

Perhaps this was best epitomised for me as a young Christian
when I came across two good friends of my parents’, Bob and Kay. Bob had had a
high-powered job in the advertising industry, but had become dissatisfied with
it. He decided to leave. His employer offered him a three-month break but Bob
said, no, he had had enough. Instead, he used his talents as the publicity
officer for the Shaftesbury
Society. Despite a lower income, Bob never lost sight of how to treat his
material goods. I remember him particularly applying this to his car. It was
never his car, but the Lord’s car. And it is this turning things back over to God
that in Jesus’ eyes is the true good life, not the acquisition of more goods
that never satisfies.

In the parable, the rich man says nothing in response to God’s
verdict. And back in real life, we don’t hear a reply, either, from the man who
originally petitioned Jesus over his inheritance. They must make a response. So
must we. The real problem the questioner had wasn’t the division of the family
inheritance, it was the will to serve himself, instead of serving God by
serving others (including his own brother).

We have fundamental choices to make, then. Let others mock
us if we choose the way of Jesus rather than the path of death – like the
t-shirt slogan which says, ‘If you Christians are going to be with Jesus, can I
have your stuff?’ In one sense, they can
have our stuff, but it will weigh them down to a lost eternity. Actually, there
are others who would be blessed by the prayerful dedication of our abundance. So
let us make those choices – and let us continue to do so, because this is not something
that will be settled by a one-off decision. It is something to which we shall regularly
return as disciples of Jesus.

 

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