Where Can I Put My Stuff?

“Where Can I Put My Stuff?”

Luke 12:13-21

In a monologue, a comedian talks about our obsession with the accumulation of material possessions, and the modern anxiety for which it is both the cause and result:

“You got your stuff with you?” he asks his audience.

“Guys have stuff in their pockets; women have stuff in their purses…Stuff is important.

You got to take care of your stuff.

You gotta have a place for your stuff.

That’s what life is all about, tryin’ to find a place for your stuff!

That’s all your house is; a place to keep your stuff.

If you didn’t have so much stuff you wouldn’t need a house.

You could just walk around all the time.

A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it.

You can see that when you’re taking off in an airplane.

You look down and see all the little piles of stuff.

Everybody’s got their own stuff.”

In our Gospel Lesson for this morning, Jesus is starting to gain a lot of followers.

He is becoming influential.

Crowds are surrounding Him and hanging on His every Word.

Most people view Him as being a Jewish Rabbi and it was normal, back then, for Rabbi’s to settle any number of disputes between persons.

They were considered to be the arbiters and those who possessed the words of wisdom.

So, someone who is having a family feud with his brother comes to Jesus and says, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”

How many times has money and the dividing up of estates driven a wedge between family members?

How many of us know people who are no longer speaking to one another because of a disagreement over money?

In any event, according to Jewish inheritance practices, an older brother would get two-thirds of an estate and the younger brother would get one-third.

But instead of getting involved in this, Jesus says: “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?’

Then he said to them, ‘Watch Out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.

A person’s life does not consist in the abundance of their possessions.’”

In other words, Jesus is warning this man and the crowd listening: “Don’t let money and possessions control your lives.

Don’t allow greed to be your master.

Don’t waste your time on things like this.

This isn’t what the kingdom of God is about.

This isn’t what you have been created for.”

And then He goes on to tell the parable we read as an example of a wasted life.

Jesus is saying, “Here is how NOT to live.”

There was once a guy whose barns were already bursting to overflowing.

He was a rich man and he harvested, yet, another bumper crop.

It’s enough to feed him for years and years and then some.

It’s more food than any one person could ever use or need in a lifetime.

And since, before this bumper crop comes, he already has more than one person could ever need, he says 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 my surplus grain.”

In Matthew 6:24 Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Mammon” –Mammon means “STUFF!”

“You cannot serve both God and [Stuff].”

The comedian continued on with his monologue he said, “So now you got a household of stuff.

And even though you might like your house, you gotta move.

Gotta get a bigger house.

Why?

Too much stuff!

And that means you gotta move all your stuff.

Or maybe, put some of your stuff in storage.

Storage!

Imagine that.

There’s a whole industry based on keepin’ an eye on other people’s stuff.”

Every time we pass a new storage facility, Clair says, “We’re building bigger barns.”

The farmer in Jesus’ parable says, “I have no place to store my crops.”

And it doesn’t even occur to him that there are people—hundreds, thousands of people who are hungry, starving, struggling to feed their families, dying in the streets even—who could really be helped if he were to simply share his overabundance.

It doesn’t even cross his mind.

He is so focused on himself that he has forgotten both the God Who caused the crops to grow and the neighbor whom he is called to love.

With all this excess at the center of his life, the man plunges into the trap of greed and idolatry.

Money, possessions and his concern for “me, myself and I” have become his god and he misses the point of his life.