Remember
I told you last week that there are some passages that can make you go,”huh?”
Well, this one will definitely make you think twice. This passage can be
misunderstood and quite controversial. Why; because it talks about things that
make us very uncomfortable. This passage talks about having nice things and
wealth. That, alone, can make us all uncomfortable.
This person comes up to Jesus and wants
Jesus to settle this dispute with his brother. I can hear the voice, “Jesus,
tell my brother to give me back what is mine!” It can sound like us when we
were much younger. I can them yelling “Its mine! Is not! Is too! Although it
sounds childish, inheritances were important in Jesus time. Property and items
were passed down from families. It helped in the continuation of the community.
Inheritances helped define the station in life of the person who survives. It
helped when it came to marriage dowries, defined the place in the community,
and it helped maintain a person’s wealth status or determined wealth.
Inheritance was important and this person…could have been a man or woman…wanted
their fair share.
So they go to the person they think can
sort all this out, Jesus. Jesus knows how important inheritance is. He is
Jewish and know that inheritance can mean so much and helps determine so much. I
mean, we are in the twelfth chapter at this point so we know who Jesus is and
many in the crowd have seen how much authority Jesus has been given at this
time. By this time in our Gospel, Jesus has healed, driven out demons, raised
from the dead, and Peter gave his declaration about Jesus, “you ARE the
Messiah.” Surely, these people have some idea who Jesus is; and they go to him
to settle this issue.
Jesus gives an answer that we might
expect and misunderstand. "Take
care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not
consist in the abundance of possessions." Did he just say what I think
he said?! Did he just say we cannot have nice things? That could be a little
troubling. I think we all want to have nice things. Why is it so wrong to have
nice things; a nice car, cell phone, computer, clothes, etc. What makes all
these things so bad? We will cover that in a minute.
Jesus does not stop there. Jesus begins
telling a parable. Parables are teaching tools that Jesus uses to help
illustrate his point. Some of them are quite clear while some can be a little
confusing. He tells this parable of a wealthy man. His fields are yielding an
abundance of crops. There is so much that he cannot store his crops with what
he has. So, he decides to tear down his barns. Sounds like a good decision.
After all, he needs a place to store his stuff and why shouldn’t he build a new
barn to store these crops. Why is this a problem?
Question: Who does he consult in this
decision to tear down his barn? Scripture says he thought to himself. He asks
himself, “What should I do?” Then he says…and I love this part…”soul, you have
ample goods laid up for many years…” Do you notice that throughout this whole
parable the wealthy man is talking to HIMSELF! He uses the first person
singular “I, me, mine.” This wealthy person is talking and thinking to himself
in his planning. One could say, “well, it is his crops.” It is true that they
are his crops but there is something missing from this parable.
What is missing is that there is no room
for anyone else in this man’s world. There is no room for others in the world.
This man is thinking only about himself and what he needs to get by. He is not
thinking about the workers who harvested his crops. He is not even thinking
about the blessings that he received these crops. The point of this story and the
scripture reading is not “don’t have nice things.” The point to this reading is
that this man in the parable is storing all this for himself. He is allowing
the possessions that he has define who he is. Meaning, if he has all this
harvest, then he has to maintain all of it so that he can “eat, drink, and be
merry.” In Jesus time, I said before, being a good host to parties (if you have
wealth) was important. Serving good meals was important. This person is going
to make sure that he has enough to hold all these parties while maintaining
enough for himself. That can get daunting and tiring; so much so that there
isn’t a whole lot of time for other things like friends, family, fun, and God.
That is what Jesus is telling the person
from the crowd. He is saying that when there becomes an overabundance of
things, we tend to work harder at trying to keep our things; to the point that
we become sidetracked and isolated from more important things and our focus is
more what we have then who we are. It means that we let our possessions define
our lives; we let the things we have drive (figuratively and literally) what we
do in this world. We have seen the stories of Lottery winners who are so
inundated with money that they don’t know what to do and some lose all their
winnings and sometimes their homes. Things don’t always go well or as well as
we would like them to. Jesus is warning us not to lose the relationships in our
lives as people and as a community with one another and with God.
This parable warns us to be mindful of
our relationships. What are those things in our life that can distract us from
the love and care of God? What are those things in our lives that allow us to
put the power, grace, and mercy of God off to the side and say it is not
important? What are those things that sidetrack us as a community from our
relationship with God? I am not telling you that you cannot buy the car, the
I-pad, the lottery ticket, or anything like that. Those decisions are between
us and God.
What Jesus is telling us is to not let
things run our lives. Possessions don’t give us value and don’t determine who
we are. Possessions don’t show us worth, don’t speak to us, they just sit there
and cause us to spend more time and money to maintain them. It is our
relationships with one another, the larger community, and most importantly God
that defines who we are. For it is God that shows us worth; God created us and
gave us the gift of one another and to care for the world and for each other.
God gave us value in the gift of sending his only son into the world and that
son who would end up on the cross for us.
So what is our response? What is our
response to a God that has given forgiveness by God’s only Son on the cross? Do
we sit back as the man in our parable and say, “soul, I got what I wanted. I’m
done. Eat, Drink, be merry?” Or do we think to ourselves that God has been so
gracious and merciful that we respond in sharing the compassion that we have
been given with one another and with the community?
AMEN
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