Dr. Ron Sumners
September 11, 2005
If I told you that I was going to be preaching on the "Messianic, iconoclastic, eschatological harbinger of the impending Kingdom of God," would you have any idea what I would be talking about? It would be much better communication if I said that I would be talking about John the Baptist.
If you look at the stories of Jesus, you never find verbal abstractions that went over the heads of his hearers. His parables touched people where they lived, and they understood exactly what He was saying.
One day Jesus was teaching the people when He was interrupted by a man who was obviously upset. "Teacher, make my brother divide our inheritance with me." Disputes about inheritances were very common in that time, for the social arrangement of the family dictated that the oldest son assumed control as soon as the father died, and he acquired the responsibility for settling the estate with the other siblings.
In Jesus' story of the prodigal son, the older brother probably got a two-thirds share, simply by virtue of his birth order, while the younger brother got one-third. If there were more than two children, the oldest son probably would have received one half of the estate and the rest would, share the other half. The first born occupied a powerful position in ancient family systems. If your older brother didn't like you, or if he was greedy, you might be looking for some help from somebody like Jesus too!
This is the context in which Luke sets this parable of the rich fool. An elder brother must have been dragging his feet when it came to dividing up the family inheritance, and the younger brother attempts to get Jesus involved because there was no court system in that day to handle such family conflicts. Jesus refuses to get pulled into a family squabble.
This is one of three instances in the gospels when someone asked Jesus to do something to a third party. In all three cases, he refused to reinforce such a manipulative way of dealing with problems. You remember the time when Martha was working busily in the kitchen while her sister was sitting listening to Jesus (Luke 10:38-41). Martha got upset enough to demand that Jesus tell Mary that her place was in the kitchen helping with the meal. Jesus didn't get sucked into this ploy. He never encouraged people to solve their problems by going behind the backs of others.
The third occasion was the day the scribes and Pharisees brought the woman to Jesus who had been caught in the very act of adultery (John 8:1-11). They attempted to involve Jesus in the issue asking if they could, according to the Mosaic Law, stone her. He refused to join their condemnation, turning the focus on their sins instead.
In the same way, Jesus chooses not to deal with this man's complaint against his brother. His approach was always to reinforce the idea that people should take responsibility for their own actions and their own lives. We are never to go to God and focus our attention on the offenses of others. When we go to God, we need to go with our own baggage. We should go to God as grateful people or as confessors, not as complainers or accusers.
Jesus refused to do what the man asked. He responded, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist of the abundance of his possessions." Again and again in the Gospels, Jesus demonstrated that He had a good nose for idolatry. He had more to say about the first Commandment of Moses than all the other nine put together: "I am the Lord your God ...; you shall have no other gods before me" (Exodus 20:2-3). Jesus knew that it was a human tendency to elevate something that is not God to godlike status. I think that Jesus detected this in the younger brother's concern, so he proceeded to deal with him far differently from the way the man had expected.
Jesus was never an over-simplifier. His attitude toward material things was one of sanity and balance. I think that Jesus would say that possessions can help individuals in their moral development. Think about it. How can you ever become a responsible individual if you never have anything for which to be responsible? If you never let people experience ownership of any kind, all they will ever know is infantile dependency. To say to a child, "Learn to read, and then I will give you a book," or "Learn to swim, and then I will let you get into the water," is foolish. We must have something that is our own in order to learn to be responsible stewards.
I think that Jesus understood that. You never find Him saying that wealth was everything or that wealth was evil. What Jesus did say very clearly was that material things can do certain things for us, but it can't do everything. We can never be fulfilled human beings through material possessions alone. If we place a material object on the altar of ultimate importance, hoping to extract from it everything that feeds the hunger of our heart, we are going to be disappointed!
After warning his questioner about greed, Jesus proceeded to tell the parable of the rich fool. In this story a wealthy farmer had a bumper crop one year. He thought to himself, "What shall I do, for I have more crops than my barns can hold? I will tear down my barns and build bigger barns. Then I will say to myself, 'You have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.'" But God said to him, "You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?" Jesus concluded by saying, "So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."
Jesus called this man a fool! Here was a man who was already rich, a farmer whose land had brought forth such a crop that he had no place to store it all. He was obviously a good farmer. He is the type of person that our culture considers a success. Yet Jesus, a Galilean peasant with virtually nothing to call His own, declared that this way of living was profoundly foolish. Why do you think that Jesus took such a position? I would like to suggest three possible clues.
First of all, the man was described as a fool because no amount of material wealth can give human beings security against the uncertainties of life. Things can only do so much for you. We all have needs that no amount of wealth can touch. For example, no amount of money can make another person love or cherish you. Some of you may have had the experience of being in love with someone who didn't return your love. It is devastating and no amount of money can buy that love. Suppose the doctor tells you that you have two months to live and that there is no medical treatment to help, what good is your wealth to meet your need then? If your spouse says they are leaving, does the car you drive, your bank account or the house you live in lessen the pain of rejection? Money can only do so much!
The rich fool was not evil. There is no hint that he acquired his wealth dishonestly. He was foolish; however, to think that wealth could do for him what, in fact, it did not have the power to do.
A second reason for describing this man as a fool is that he missed the genuine delight that comes from an experience of profound gratitude, from realizing how much he had received that was utterly beyond his deserving. One of the highest joys lies in recognizing the grace of God behind all things. This farmer's ego and lack of gratitude are easy to spot. The words "I" and "my" occur numerous times in the story. Here is a man who obviously thought that his own efforts were the only source of the great harvest.
When we consider the mysteries of the soil, rain, and sunshine, it is almost comical for a farmer to say "I" and "my" when talking about the harvest. It demonstrated how limited this farmer's vision was.
No one can acquire wealth nor maintain it without the help of others. Think of those who taught us how to read, write, compute, and work. One of the joys of life is recognizing that we are playing just one instrument in the great symphony of life and God is the Conductor. Behind all that we have there should be a deep appreciation, gratitude, and humility toward a benevolent God! There is food for delight in just being able to get up in the morning, in realizing that we have a measure of health and seeing the seasons come and go in an orderly fashion. There is so much for which to be genuinely astonished and immeasurably grateful. The rich fool missed the point entirely. His foolishness lay in his superficiality, his egotism, and his lack of gratitude.
A third clue is found in the rich fool's lack of generosity. Generosity is the most basic of all virtues. Before creation, the Bible suggests that God said, "This wonder of "being" is too good for me to keep to myself I want to share it." This is the biblical answer to the question: "Why something and not nothing?" Creation was an act of generosity - God sharing the bounty of what he was and what he had. The farmer missed by 180 degrees what it means to be made in the image of God. Generosity is a part of that image! He looked on his abundance and said the very opposite of what God said. He proposed to keep it all for himself, which is the surest way to miss the meaning of life. Just as there is delight in recognizing how much you have that you do not deserve, nor did you create; there is another kind of delight that lies in seeing your generosity bless other people.
Imagine that through some catastrophe you are the only person left on the face of the earth. You can take possession of anything you want. No one is there to prevent your ownership of whatever you desire.
Think of what that would be like. Any house could be yours. You could be the owner of the Biltmore House in Asheville, NC. Do you want a Rolls Royce? All you have to do is drive one home from the dealership. You desire designer clothes. They would be there for the taking. Diamonds and precious jewels, not by the karats, but the pounds would be yours. Anything your heart desired would be owned by you. Now ask yourself, what would those things mean if there was no one to share them with? We are relational by nature and relational in our needs. It is a deep part of our essential humanity to be able to share what we are and what we have with someone else.
When God judges the man to be a fool, it was not with scorn but sadness, for he had missed what it means to be a human being. Perhaps the deepest sadness of this man was that he never realized the joy he could bring by sharing his abundance. He was the poorest of men because he had never experienced the look of appreciation from another because of his generosity. He had everything but nothing of real value!
There is an old story of a man who dreamed one night that he had died and was given a chance to visit both hell and heaven. In this dream, he discovered that after death everyone had stiff elbows. No one could bend their arms. In hell, the dreamer saw terrible conflict and agitation. Everyone had food in both hands, and they were very hungry but, given their rigid elbows, they could not get the food to their mouths. Each one was concerned with only himself or herself, and the misery was unspeakable. The dreamer was then taken to heaven, where all the people had the same disability, only these folks had discovered a solution; although they could not feed themselves, they could feed each other!
Generosity - a willingness to give - was finally the difference between heaven and hell, which is what Jesus was telling us in the parable of the rich fool.
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