Luke 12:13-21
August 5, 2007
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
Without a doubt and without saying, we all want to be rich. When Joy and I were about to become engaged, my mother told Joy, “Donald has no money!” To this day, I tell Joy that I don’t have any stash of money hidden some place.
Being rich or having lots of money doesn’t make us necessarily wiser. We often hear about instant lottery winners squandering their newly found wealth away and becoming perhaps even more destitute then before they won the windfall. Being rich and being wise are not always the case.
There’s an old movie comedy about not knowing or rather not being wise. It was in a movie with either Abbott and Costello or Laurel and Hardy but I don’t remember which ones. Anyway, the dumb member of the duo finds a stack of paper money and is thrilled. He calls out to his partner that he has found something really great, something that he needs. Throwing the bills away, he holds up proudly the rubber band that had encircled the money, implying that it’s not every day that one finds a rubber band! Having lots of money doesn’t make us any wiser.
The Rich Fool
The lesson from Luke today begins with a man who asks Jesus to serve as an arbitrator in a dispute with his brother over an inheritance. The man thinks his brother is not being fair, so he asks Jesus to intervene. Jesus, of course, refuses, instead warning all present to beware of greed, because “one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Just by having a lot of money doesn’t define one’s life’s value.
Seeing an opportunity to tell a parable, Jesus tells this story about a man who trusted more in his wealth and his ability to provide for himself, than in the God who is the source of all wealth. When the man’s crops produce far more that he can store away, instead of sharing the surplus with less fortunate neighbors, the man decides on a drastic step—he will not just enlarge his present storage facilities, but instead, decides to tear them down and build larger ones.
In the man’s soliloquy, talking to himself, he uses the personal pronoun, “I” 6 times and the possessive pronoun, “my” 5 times. Focusing only on himself, he talks to himself, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” Then God enters the picture, telling him that he has just spent his last night on earth. Wishing to hoard everything for himself, the man was rich toward neither God nor his neighbor. Having lots of crop in bigger barns didn’t make this farmer any wiser. He was foolishly rich.
The rich farmer is called a fool because he mismanaged a miracle. He was foolish because he failed to recognize that the unusually large harvest was a miracle sent by God, and not the result of his own effort. He was foolish because when he failed to share his surplus with his neighbors, he isolated himself from everyone. His soul can now relax, eat, drink and be merry for many years but he’s doing this all by himself. There’s no one to whom to share his abundance. And worst of all, for a Jew of the time, he was foolish because there is no one to whom to leave his wealth. He had no descendants to share his wealth. Although he was rich, he was foolishly self-centered, alone, and without any one to share his wealth. There’s that old saying, “You can’t take it with you.”
This reminds me of a story of a stingy old man who had been diagnosed with a terminal illness. He was determined to prove wrong the saying “You can’t take it with you.” After much thought, the old stingy man finally figured out to take at least some of his money with him when he died. He instructed his wife to go to the bank and withdraw enough money to fill two pillowcases. He then directed her to take the bags of money to the attic and leave them directly above his bed. His plan: When he passed away, he would reach out and grab the bags on his way to heaven.
Several weeks after the funeral, the deceased man’s wife was up in the attic cleaning, came upon the two forgotten pillow cases stuffed with cash.
“Oh, that darned old fool,” she exclaimed. “I knew he should have had me put the money in the basement.”
Greed
This parable is not about Jesus railing against the rich, it’s about greed. The man seeking to make Jesus judge in his dispute with his brother over the family inheritance is that he wanted more—greed. The man’s problem is not about whether he will have a share in the inheritance because he will. But it’s about how much of a share. The parable is not about whether the farmer should never have had so much crops but it’s about his unwillingness to share his surplus with his neighbors. For both of these men, it’s about greed.
In the Statistical Abstract of the United States for 2007 recently released by the U.S. Census Bureau, it reports that we are a people with too much. We live in a “super-size-me” life. We watch too much media. We eat way too much. And we’re rich.
I know that you’ll get turned off over statistics but listen carefully just for a moment. Half of U.S. households owned stocks and mutual funds in 2005, which seems reasonable until you realize that one in six people world-wide lives on less than $1 a day.
The average American’s net worth amounted to $144,000 in the year 2000, more than 100 times higher than the average Indian or Indonesian, whose assets totaled $1,100 and $1,400, respectively.
But to measure our excess wealth with a simple indicator, Americans bought 2.1 billion pairs of imported shoes in 2004. That’s an average of seven pairs per person! Now you can’t tell me we need more than seven pairs of shoes a year.
Satisfying the world’s yearly sanitation and food requirements would cost only $13 billion—that’s the amount people of the United States and the European Union spend annually on perfume.
The problem with any statistical data is that we rarely see ourselves in the data. Unless the Census Bureau is lying to us, we must realize that we are the most over consuming people on God’s earth. We are foolishly rich. The farmer in the parable could have just expanded on his barns—added a second floor. But he was so foolishly rich that he took the time and spent his wealth to demolish his perfectly functioning barns to build newer and larger ones. That’s foolishly rich!
We see greed in the unexpected game show, Deal or No Deal hosted by Howie Mandel. Based on a series that debuted in Holland in 2002 and became an international hit, Deal or No Deal is about luck and playing the odds.
Contestants are faced with 26 briefcases held by 26 models, each case with a hidden value ranging from a penny to the top prize that will escalate by week’s end to $3 million. As the game progresses and cases are eliminated, a contestant weighs the chance of snaring a big prize against lesser but still tempting offers made by the show’s “bank,” represented by an anonymous, silhouetted figure.
The success of this show is that it taps into the most basic human emotion: greed, a desire to improve one’s situation, often in a very sort of a get-rich-quick scenario. This is what Jesus is warning against when he says to “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.” (15) He knows our appetite for more is tempting, so he says to be intentional in looking out for it.
Blessing to Others
Our biblical faith teaches us the peril of possessions and our greed to want more. In the Ten Commandments, it reads “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” (Ex. 20:17) The prophet Micah condemned those who “covet fields, and seize them; houses, and take them away; they oppress householder and house, people and their inheritance.” (2:2) Paul warned against greed in Romans 1:29 and writes to his young associate Timothy to teach the early church, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.” (1Tim. 6:10)
The Bible is consistent in the theme that:
We are given to—so that we might give to others.
We are blessed—so that we might be a blessing.
We are loved—so that we might love.
We are reconciled—so that we might reconcile.
We are forgiven—so that we might forgive.
The problem with greed and the accumulation of possessions is that when we are rich, then and now, we forget that blessings are intended to be use to bless others. We end up foolishly rich when we can richly bless.
Practical Ideas
When we say we are “foolishly rich,” it suggests that we have a choice to stop being foolish. Just because we may be blessed to be Americans and live in the United States does not mean that we are a hopelessly unable to be changed from being rich fools to becoming a blessing to the world. Here are some practical solutions to our greed and accumulation:
*Go through your closets and drawers once a year. If you didn’t wear a piece of clothing that year, give it away to goodwill.
*Consider shared ownership of possessions with your neighbors. There are many things we own which we don’t need exclusive use of. Do two homes need two lawn mowers? Sharing possession reduces accumulation and builds relationships with your neighbors.
*Make a list of the things you need to live and another list of things you want. Commit to purchasing only from the need list for the rest of he year.
*Make a list of your monthly budget in order of amounts spent on each—clothing, eating out, entertainment, hobbies, housing, charity. Does the order need to change?
*For the next month, every time you appreciate something that somebody else has, stop to pray for your own contentment with how you have been blessed.
*Don’t rent a storage unit. If you have one, consolidate to only what you can fit in your home.
*Christmas shopping starts up again in three months. Declare a price limit on family gifts, go with a no-gift Christmas, or spend as much sponsoring a local shelter you do on gifts.
A fool sees neither beyond himself/herself nor beyond this world. Greed is a sin that prevents us from sharing in the vision that Jesus teaches us. Each of us knows someone like a fool. Their primary life focus is on acquiring more of something. Money, fame, and power form the traditional formula of greed.
But a disciple of Jesus sees beyond himself/herself and beyond this world. When we trust the Father for daily bread, always seeking to obey the word of God, and already giving alms to those things that are within, we don’t have any anxiety about what happens to us in the future. Each of us knows someone like the model disciple—their primary life focus is on those things having eternal value. Love, joy, and peace on earth for every person are always on the heart of a disciple.
Foolishly Loving
When we change from being foolishly rich, we can become foolishly loving. But we often wonder if any one of us can make any significant difference when it comes to becoming foolishly loving.
Helen Keller once said, “I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.” Each one of us in tiny ways can participate in improving this world when we foolishly love others.
Let me conclude with a story from Henri Nouwen. There’s an old holy man who saw a scorpion floating helplessly in the water of the River Ganges. The old man leaned over the water, hanging on some roots, and tried to rescue the scorpion. As soon as he touched it, the scorpion stung him. Instinctively he withdrew his hand. A few seconds later, having regained his balance, he stretched himself out again. This time the scorpion stung him so badly that his hand became swollen and bloody. The old man’s face contorted with pain.
Just then a passerby saw the old man stretched out over the roots struggling with the scorpion. He yelled, “Hey, stupid, old man! What’s wrong with you? Only a fool would risk his life for the sake of an ugly, evil creature! Don’t you know you could kill yourself trying to save that ungrateful scorpion?” The old man turned to the stranger and said calmly, “My friend, just because it is the scorpion’s nature to sting, that does not change my nature to save.”
Let us begin to stop being foolishly rich and in our faith in Jesus Christ, become transformed to being foolishly loving by trusting our lives in God’s hand, sharing our possessions with others and truly become a blessing in the world.
By the way, after being married for almost 35 years, I can still say to Joy as my mother once said, “Donald has no money.”
Let us pray.
Loving God, it is so easy to want our share, to get all we can. Sometimes in the getting and wanting, we lose sight of you, O God. We think we need so much—that new car, a new shirt, a flat screen TV or that iPhone. In all this accumulation, we just have more things. Today, all around our neighborhood, families go hungry each night. Help us, Lord to see beyond our wants. Help us to look to the needs of others above our own, in the name of Jesus the Christ. Amen.