The Parable of the Rich Fool
Luke 12:13-21
There is nothing like a simple store to illustrate a point. We gravitate to storytellers, and Jesus was a master of the story, in particular the parable. They are stories from everyday life. This makes them easy to understand. One does not need to go into a lot of analysis to get the main point. Or so it seems. We must remember that Jesus used parables to conceal as much as to reveal. The simplicity of the parable makes it easy to jump to the wrong or incomplete conclusion. This is true of this text as well.
At first the story is simple enough. It starts with an argument between two brothers over an inheritance. This is timeless. How many families have been destroyed over division of their parents’ estate? The man who comes to Jesus was probably the younger brother. In Jewish law, the oldest brother got possession of all the property and a double share of the goods. This seems strnge to us today, but the reason for this is to prevent the family farm to be divided into such small pieces as to make it hard for one to sustain his family. We don’t know whether this argument was a division over a family house and farm, but Jesus’ parable that he uses to illustrate the problem indicates that it well might have been.
In those days in Palestine, disputes were often settled by going to the local rabbi rather than to file charges in court. So this brother came to Jesus wanting him to settle the dispute in his favor. At this point, Jesus was held in high regard among the common people. But Jesus refuses to intervene in the dispute. If he took sides, then there would be dividing his listeners as some would side with the other brother, and some with this one. Jesus’ mission was far too important than to get involved in local politics. He tells the main plainly that He had not been appointed to settle such disputes. There were others who could serve in this capacity, but not Jesus.
Jesus then uses the occasion as a teaching moment. Turning to the crowd, He warns them about the danger of covetousness. He tells them that one’s quality of life is not dependent upon how rich one was. This in turn is illustrated by the Parable of the Rich Fool.
Farming is still familiar enough today for most people to understand. We still need to grow food to eat. Perhaps today, Jesus might have used a rich stock investor who made an investment which made him incredibly rich. But the economy of Palestine tended to be more agricultural. We first of all notice that this man was already rich, even before the bumper crop. Agriculture is always a risky business as drought, rain, locusts, and other things always made a crop uncertain. But this was an incredible blessed year. This rich man had such a harvest that now he was incredibly rich. He had a problem everyone would envy. His barns were not big enough to store all the wheat.. This crop was enough to sustain him for many years, and he had to protect it. He came up with a brilliant solution. He would tear down the barns and build bigger ones. He had so much now that he could quit work and live a life of ease.
There was only one problem. It is not only the production of crops in semi-arid Israel which was certain. Life is uncertain. It seems that everyone wants to live to an advanced old age, but if one checks the obituaries, one soon realizes this is not the case. Some people die young, and others live to advanced old age. And death is no respecter of wealth. Rich as well as poor die young. And some rich and poor live to advanced age. One thing is for certain. Everyone dies. That rich man had no longer thought he was set for life that the death angel came. Now the children would be left to fight over his estate.
Jesus sums this up by saying that this is the case for someone whose treasure is in himself and is not rich towards God. Nothing is said about the rich man’s eternal destiny, but is seems that his untimely death was the judgment of God against him for his pride.
It seems short and simple. Don’t covet earthly things, and be rich towards God. We like simple pragmatic answers. Will Rodgers once said that a sermon had a good beginning, a good ending, and not too much in-between. If this is all, then we might as well have the closing hymn and benediction. O, I see your faces. You are hoping this preacher will shut up and let you out to lunch early. I hate to disappoint you, but there is more that needs to be said. I hope that all the in-between stuff will be illuminating.
The trouble with easy slogans is that they are incredibly easy to say and remember. But they are sometimes very hard to put into practice. How many one-liners have you heard, only to be frustrated later. The problem here is that we are covetous of earthly goods. Some are afraid of the future and want to squirrel up stuff to deal with a rainy day. This type of covetousness is one that says that I cannot trust God to provide for me in uncertain times. It is so deceptive because you can say in your heart that you aren’t like that rich man. You aren’t rich and aren’t interested in the glamour of extreme wealth. You just want enough just in case. So you stuff as much as you can into your little barn. You take on that extra job, so that you can be sure that you will have enough. But in doing so, it takes away from the things that make you rich towards God. You do not have time for prayer, for bible study, and to attend worship. You are concerned more about your physical well-being and not enough about your spiritual. The quality of your life is compromised by doubt and worry. It is most pitiful, as these are those who work themselves to death and never enjoy the blessings of God. Death comes at some point anyway. What would your life of worry come to in the end?
There is a second class of coveters. You are poor and would be like the rich man. You are jealous of his possessions and think that that person should be you. You are the one who hopes that you have a rich distant relative that will leave you a large inheritance. Or perhaps you are hoping to win 474 million like someone did in the big lottery last week. Some resort to swindling someone out of their wealth or resort to outright theft. This is a more obvious form of covetousness, but we find ways to justify this attitude. If only I would win the lottery, I would give so much to the poor and to the church. But are people who win the lottery more happy? Statistics seem to show that this is often not the case at all. Some who have won the lottery have committed suicide. Others have been murdered. There is an increase in divorces. Your old “friends” come to you with their hands out. The net result is that the winning lottery ticket is often a ticket to misery. If you win, you lose. And if you become addicted to buying lottery tickets in the hope of winning the big one, you lose too. In either case, you lose everything. And even if you have ease for a short time after winning, you still will lose your life. Your beneficiaries will fight over what is left.
Then there are those who are already rich, and that is not enough. John D. Rockefeller, I believe, who was the first billionaire was asked how much was enough. He answered to this, “Just a little bit more.” These keep on working to add to their own vast wealth. But this is no guarantee of a long blessed life either. Rockefeller indeed lived to the age of 97, but he had to deal with the fact that vast wealth is not of itself a ticket to happiness. He realized that he had to give some of his wealth away to find real meaning in life. He was known for throwing silver dimes in crowds of people. In today’s terms, this seems like and insult to the poor. But in those days, ten cents went a lot farther. It would provide a good meal for a family. We have also heard of the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations. But some store up riches just to consume for their own pleasure. Michael Jackson earned millions, had a large ranch, and should have had the good life. But did he? There are lot of questions concerning his life which only God can judge. But he died young and always seemed angry. And he died bankrupt as well. What about Howard Hughes, who was fabulously rich, but was scared of germs and lived a life of a recluse. Was he happy? He had an abundance of things, but did he have abundance of life?
There is just one more thing to look at here. The Jews believe that wealth was God’s blessing. So to be rich was seen to be proof that one was right with God. The thinking is that God rewards the righteous with wealth and punishes the wicked with poverty. On only need look around to see the absolute foolishness of that statement. Even Scripture shows the fallacy of such an idea. The psalmist wondered why the wicked prospered like a spreading tree while the righteous seemed forsaken. But he saw that the wicked would soon be cut down. The abundance of what one possesses in earthly goods is no guarantee of God’s blessing, and poverty is no proof of God’s curse. Neither is the opposite true.
The conclusion of the matter is: would it not be better to leave the inheritance of a memory of being kind and generous, and a testimony that one lived as a follower of Jesus in all aspects of his/her life be what we should covet after. Kindness and love do not have to be divided in a way that one gets more and another less. Love is one of those things that the more yo give away, the more you have. A life that is rich towards God is one who trusts God for his/her daily bread as well as knowing that when death comes, that person has the promise of everlasting life. Is this not the riches we should strive for. Let us leave a legacy greater than money. In the meanwhile, lets us show our trust in God by our generosity.
It is only by the grace of God we can do this. But we have an example in Jesus who left the riches of heaven to give us the greates inheritance of all. With God, all things are possible. Let us pray for God to empower us.
