God gives abundantly together: 11th after pentecost

The first reading is Ecclesiastes 1:2,12-24, 2:18-23.

The second reading is Colossians 3:1-11. 

The holy gospel according to Luke 12:13-21

¹³Someone in the crowd said to Jesus,

       “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.”

¹⁴But Jesus replied,

       “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?”

¹⁵And Jesus said to them,

       “Take care!

       Be on your guard against all kinds of greed;

              for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

¹⁶Then he told them a parable:

       “The land of a rich man produced abundantly.

       ¹⁷And he thought to himself,

              ‘What should I do,

                     for I have no place to store my crops?’

       ¹⁸Then he said,

              ‘I will do this:

                     I will pull down my barns and build larger ones,

                            and there I will store all my grain and my goods.

                     ¹⁹And I will say to my soul,

                            ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years;

                                   relax, eat, drink, be merry.’

       ²⁰But 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?’

       ²¹So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves

              but are not rich toward God.”

The gospel of the Lord.

 -----

Jesus’ parables—his short stories and riddles—are fantastic!  While we often use them nowadays to think about God, Jesus mostly uses them to demonstrate flaws in how the world works.  And so we hear today’s parable in our own context.  We hear the rich man wonder what to do with his over-abundance.  We hear him question himself about his stuff.  In fact, in a matter of 5 verses, the rich man uses I or my 11 times!  The only other pronoun he uses is you, which he uses once when he is talking to his own soul!!

This rich man’s sole concern is himself!  Not once do we hear a we, an us, or a them.  It is no wonder his possessions are demanding his life!  He is so wrapped up in himself and his possessions that he doesn’t even realize the ways that they are taking over his life.  Until God comes and points out that his life is being demanded of him, that is.  Within the story, the only possibility for who or what is demanding his life is actually his possessions.

This seems a bit extreme, right?  We can’t possibly live in a world where possessions lay claim to our lives like that, can we?  The buildings we use or inhabit, the collections of books, movies, or quilts we have.  They don’t ever consume our lives, right?

And yet, how many of us resonate with our reading from Ecclesiastes “all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest.”  Work can be exhausting and sleepless nights are, perhaps, not as foreign as we’d like them to be. 

The most common response to “How are you?” tends to be “busy!” Frustrations with jobs, houses, property upkeep, the state of the world, can all keep us up at night, claiming our lives. 

Even computer games, Facebook, and TV lay claims on our lives.  They suck us in and mesmerize us so that before we know it minutes and hours have disappeared.  When we finally do try to get some sleep, our brains either won’t turn off to sleep or turn back on at 2 or 3 in the morning.

Jobs, work, and barns are important, but also cannot be understood apart from community.  This rich man doesn’t spare a passing thought for anyone but himself.  He is already rich, before the land produces abundantly, and yet he doesn’t consider who could benefit from the over-abundance of the land; only how he can store and keep more.

It would be easy to simplify this into riches are bad and we should all just give everything to God and the church, but it’s more complicated than that.  It’s not just about God or the church or the “stuff” we call our own.

It’s about community—the whole body of Christ.  The person in the crowd at the start of today’s gospel reading is just as focused inwardly as the rich man.  But none of us are lone wolves.  None of us live in complete isolation.  This.  Right here.   What we do every Sunday.  Is evidence of that.  We come together as a community of faith. 

Faith is supposed to be a community thing—a group endeavor.  Even our jobs depend on others and we in turn are depended on by others.  We are social beings and live in community.  Yet our possessions, the things we claim for our own have the power to pull us away from and out of community, to make us think we did it all on our own; to make us forget that God is the creator of the whole cosmos—of all that is and was and is to come.

That is the struggle for the rich man and for us.  How do we keep our own lives in balance?  How do we keep possessions from demanding our whole selves?  How do we live lives, as Jesus says, “rich toward God”?  And in the midst of that we still need to make sure we eat, our kids can go to school, and a medical emergency won’t bankrupt us.

It is in our interconnectedness that possessions lose their grip.  It is in relinquishing our illusions of control, that we recognize God’s sovereignty and the work of the Holy Spirit bringing us into community and relationship, where we recognize our interdependence.   

We acknowledge together that we depend on God and each other—for sun and rain in due season, for harvesting crops, for building the machines that help us harvest, for those who make the dishes we use at each meal, for people who do business with us, for people who pray with and for us.  After all, we don’t earn our money in isolation, so why should we think about what to do with it in isolation?

As a community of faith, part of how we recognize our interdependence with each other and our dependence on God is through our tithes and our offerings.  When we give each week, or month, or year, we give up some of our false illusions that we are in control.  We put our trust in God and in other people.  We risk not being in control and we are rewarded with a greater dependence on God and a greater connection to each other.  We depend more fully on each other for shared gifts of creation, shared prayers, and shared support for our mission together.

And through all of this, our Creator walks with us, nurturing us and all of creation.  As we heard in Colossians, the new self with which we are clothed “is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.”  God is always recreating us and carrying us.  Forgoing bigger barns, we are able to use the things we call our own to give thanks and praise in recognition for the gifts of abundance that God gives all of creation.  And in this, the Holy Spirit deepens the connections between us all as our bigger barns become a small comparison to God’s bigger love in community.

Thanks be to God.