(If you are receiving this twice, there was a delivery problem this morning that left many people without the post. Please excuse duplicates. And I hope everyone can read and enjoy today. Blessings to you!)
Today’s Revised Common Lectionary text is the Parable of the Rich Fool.
Luke 12:13-21
Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me." But he said to him, "Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?" And he 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." Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, `What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' Then 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. And I will say to my soul, `Soul, 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?' So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."
Jesus was poor.
It seems strange to write that, because I’m not sure how often Christians stop to think about Jesus’ social status! He was the son of a carpenter. In the Roman Empire, carpenters — even if there were freemen — were usually lumped into the slave class at the very bottom rung of society. Any working carpenter with even a modicum of success was taxed at a crushing rate, a debt that functionally enslaved them to the state. Sons of carpenters were expected to follow their father’s trade — and inherited their father’s tax obligations as well. When Jesus teaches at the synagogue, some of his neighbors find his wisdom hard to believe, “Is not this the carpenter’s son?”
It wasn’t a compliment. A few verses later we learn, “And they took offense at him.” Jesus was speaking above his station. Even the poor in his own hometown looked down at him. He was that poor.
Jesus never says anything good about wealth. “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” He flippantly dismissed Roman taxes with his “render to Caesar” comment. He said that wealth yields nothing, earthly riches are little more than targets for theft, and warned that “gaining the world” forfeits the soul. He sent away a rich young man seeking to follow him. He blessed the poor, praised impoverished widows, and insisted that undesirable people be invited to dine. “For where your treasure is,” he said, “there your heart will be also.”
Early Christians echoed his words with instructions like those found in I Timothy:
Those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 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. But as for you, man of God, shun all this!
Jesus was poor. And not just poor, but the despised poor.
He blessed the poor — his people, his friends, his neighbors. And he also invited them into abundance.
“I came that they may have life,” said Jesus, “and have it abundantly.”
Not money. Abundance.
Seeking wealth, storing treasure is foolish. But abundance? That’s wisdom.
The subject of money and abundance is fraught for American Christians. Our culture conflates the two. Any talk of “abundance” immediately brings to mind the prosperity gospel and huckster evangelists or wellness gurus.
But when Jesus speaks of money and abundance, he draws on the Wisdom tradition from the Hebrew Bible. This teaching begins with a referent to Solomon, the King-Judge of Israel — as a person in the crowd asks Jesus to solve a legal problem of dividing an inheritance (harkening back to Solomon dividing the baby). After warning his listeners about greed, Jesus launches into a story — a parable — about a rich man and his storehouses.
Parables are stories intended to upend conventional ideas and offer up alternative wisdom for a way of life with God. They function in the same manner as does the Wisdom literature — the writings (maxims, fables, poetry, and teachings) in Proverbs, Job, Song of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes. Indeed, three of the Wisdom books have been traditionally attributed to Solomon. So, Luke’s allusion to Solomon at the beginning of this Jesus story is a tell. To make sure you get the connection between Jesus and Solomon, the parable actually quotes Ecclesiastes 8:15 — “There is nothing better for people under the sun than to eat, and drink, and enjoy themselves.”
While wealth and prosperity is often associated with blessing in the Hebrew Bible, the Wisdom tradition takes a dim view of this common belief:
He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity. Ecclesiastes 5:10
The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender. Proverbs 22:7
A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold. Proverbs 22:1
Do not toil to acquire wealth; be discerning enough to desist. When your eyes light on it, it is gone, for suddenly it sprouts wings, flying like an eagle toward heaven.Proverbs 23:4-5
A faithful man will abound with blessings, but whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished. Proverbs 28:20
Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me. . . Proverbs 30:8
The point seems clear. Money, especially greed, is the source of sorrow, sin, and suffering. Hoarding riches is foolish. Having enough — a good name, food to eat, living without debt — is blessing and abundance. And abundance is central to wisdom. Just enough. For this day.
In this passage, where he contrasts foolishness with wisdom and reminds his hearers of life’s vanities, Jesus is a wisdom teacher! “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you,” he said a few verses later, “even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.”
Thus, to the poorest of the poor, in these teachings offered by a poor man, the promise of abundance is wisdom that exceeds even the wealth and insight of Solomon.
I hate to say this, but part of me roots for the rich man. My parents probably would have said that he was wise to save up in case of a rainy day, and that he was responsible to protect his “grain and goods.” I find Jesus’ harsh response to him difficult to grasp — it flies in the face of conventional wisdom.
But that’s exactly what biblical wisdom does — it turns over conventional wisdom like money-changers’ tables in the Temple. Despite my worry about the rich man, Jesus’ parable stops me in my tracks, turns my eye from bank apps and retirement accounts, and redirects my attention toward a different treasure: wisdom. The way of being “rich toward God.” Manna in the wilderness. Daily bread. Don’t hoard. Take what is needed. Give the rest away. Wisdom acknowledges the gifts of God, and doesn’t cling, doesn’t store up. Abundance receives, responds with gratefulness and thanksgiving, and lets go.
Who wants to be a fool? And who doesn’t desire wisdom, the gift of abundance?
INSPIRATION
How did I come to be
this particular version of me,
and not some other, this morning
of purple delphiniums blooming,
like royalty—destined
to meet these three dogs
asleep at my feet, and not others—
this soft summer morning,
sitting on her screened porch
become ours, our wind chime,
singing of wind and time,
yellow-white digitalis
feeding bees and filling me—
and more abundance to come:
basil, tomatoes, zucchini.
What luck or fate, instinct,
or grace brought me here?—
in shade, beneath hidden stars,
a soft, summer morning,
seeing with my whole being,
love made visible.
— Laura Foley, “The Once Invisible Garden”
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.
— Mary Oliver
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Sunday Musings
Still pondering this one, and I read it Sunday and re-read it today.
Life is processional. Life is change.. Life is unpredictable. These truths I know/believe to be universal...on any plane/in any realm they are examined from.
And I'm good with (as in accept) all that.
However, I'm still wondering where and how blanket statements like those cited in the week's Musings can be made for the 7.99 billion souls currently residing on Earth; where resources are getting scarcer and scarcer (and therefore more dear); where pelf, lucre and greed are the usual/standard metrics for gaging success (no matter where these souls reside or what form their version of "success" takes)...while at the same time, every religion and culture praises preaches Jesus's "do unto others as you would have them do unto you"; and where words like "abundance" and "need" and "enough" are both subjective and objective measures for our worldly and spiritual lives.
This was masterful. Thank you. You don't let us weasel our way out of holding wealth at bay. I'm thankful that I can seek wisdom more than wealth. This is always present to us. Praise God.