The Rich Fool – Luke 12: 13–21

By Revd Lisa Kerry,
Regional Minister Team Leader of the Central Baptist Association

Like many of Jesus’ parables this one is instigated by a seemingly innocent question. An aggrieved brother tries to enlist Jesus on to his legal team in order to claim his inheritance. But, as is often the case, Jesus is not interested in the immediate question but is far more concerned with the problem behind the question.

This is good to note, as we might all do well to be careful when asking Jesus questions! We might be oblivious to the lurking sin and prejudice behind our seemingly legitimate enquiries, but Jesus never is! Asking a question of Jesus nearly always leads to more accurate self-knowledge and this is rarely comfortable.

Windfalls and Bumper Crops

The man in the crowd is agitated because his expected windfall is not coming his way. Money he was perhaps banking on is not being shared. We hear the frustration in his question and yet Jesus seems very unconcerned with his legal plight. In fact, he is rather keen to point out the danger of money we haven’t worked for landing in our laps. His warning to the crowd might seem a bit harsh, but it appears that greed is a big issue for Jesus. He is keen to point out that life is not about what we have. His words about greed seem to suggest that it is an insidious sin that creeps up on us and which may cause us damage. He warns the crowd to be on their guard against it!

Greed creeps up on you

It is fascinating to me that even in Roman-occupied Palestine, greed was a personal problem. I wonder how much more Jesus would have to say to us about our relationship with greed?

As a local pastor I would preach on many things, but greed was often tricky. Preaching on greed to those who give, often sacrificially, to pay your stipend is not comfortable. In my role as a Regional Minister I often regret the loss of preaching as a pastoral act as I now preach mostly to people and congregations where I don’t know all of the daily struggles that shape their lives. But perhaps preaching on greed is easier in this circumstance. I don’t know what all of your personal situations are so I hope I can speak freely without any of you feeling I am having a personal dig at your choice of car or holiday or housing. We all make choices with the gifts we are given. But I do think that Jesus is right about the danger of greed. We live in a society that values greed. The accumulation of stuff is what drives our whole economy. We are encouraged to feel that what we wear, own, drive or eat and drink defines who we are, and that predisposes us to greed. Jesus says this isn’t how we are made. He dares to suggest that life is worth more than these things.

Of course he had the law on his side in this pattern of thought.

Dealing with excess – Leviticus 19: 9–10

⁹ When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. ¹⁰ Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.

There was clear guidance in the law to make sure that greed never took hold. You were not supposed to grab every bit of produce that your fields yielded. It was written into the law and the fabric of Old Testament society that there would always be some left for others.

The man in Jesus’ story seems to have forgotten this. His first thought on receiving an abundant harvest is how he is going to store every last bit of it. The use of the word surplus here is very deliberate – surplus doesn’t belong to you. Surplus belongs to the poor! And yet this man is consumed with being able to store up all his crops for himself.

Now it is perhaps helpful to comment that storing things up in itself is not a problem. In Genesis 41 we read this:

⁴⁶ Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from Pharaoh’s presence and travelled throughout Egypt. ⁴⁷ During the seven years of abundance the land produced plentifully. ⁴⁸ Joseph collected all the food produced in those seven years of abundance in Egypt and stored it in the cities. In each city he put the food grown in the fields surrounding it. ⁴⁹ Joseph stored up huge quantities of grain, like the sand of the sea; it was so much that he stopped keeping records because it was beyond measure.

Genesis 41: 46–49

Clearly, God had a plan to save Egypt and Joseph’s family through the famine and storing up surplus was the key to that plan. Now we might look back at Joseph’s methods for selling back the grain and wonder about greed but there was not a problem with the storing. Keeping resources to use for others is good stewardship. Storing them up for ourselves is not.

I wonder what our attitude to our surplus is? Do we see it as something we should store up for ourselves or do we have an attitude that looks for how it might bless others?

Jesus seems to be suggesting that beyond our responsibility to others, resting on our own surplus wealth is not good for us. He seems to be saying that the sitting back and relaxing on the basis of all that extra wealth is actually a place of spiritual poverty.

Resting on our wealth isn’t healthy

I suspect that most of us are not in that bracket of wealth where we don’t have to work at all and can just live off our wealth. And yet it can still be something that society aspires to. I have been really shocked by some of the adverts on TV which seem to suggest that somehow the world owes us this kind of existence. Cruise adverts that seem to say that eating, drinking and living in complete luxury is normal and something we should all expect; cosmetics that tell us we are worth it; it all adds up to an insidious expectation that the world owes us something. Jesus is saying that not only is this not the case, but that actually this sort of greed is bad for the soul. The rich fool is a fool because he is oblivious to the poverty of his soul and the transient nature of all that he thought would bring him pleasure.

So what does Jesus mean when he says that we should be rich toward God?

What does it mean to be rich toward God?

Perhaps the clue to being rich toward God is in the attitude we have to the things he gives us? How do we receive them and how do we hold them?

Holding lightly

It can be so easy to grasp the gifts that God gives us – to hang on to those things in a way which makes us anxious and negates the goodness of the gifts.

There was a famous experiment with monkeys where scientists put nuts in jars just big enough to roll the nut out, and just big enough to let the monkey’s hand in, but not big enough to let out the monkey’s hand holding the nut. To get the nut the monkey would need to let go and tip the jar but most monkeys sat with their hand trapped inside the jar clutching the nut they could never eat.

We can be like that with the gifts God gives us, clutching tightly to them and never really able to enjoy their benefits. Holding lightly, in a way that understands that gifts can come and go and are not to be held onto at all costs releases us to enjoy what God has given us.

Holding out to others

In holding lightly, we are also much more able to hold out those gifts to others. It is very rare for God to give us something for us alone – his gifts are usually designed to benefit us and others and to increase with sharing. We can only do that if we hold out those gifts to others with open hands. This might mean that others take advantage or don’t do what is right by us; we might end up like the man asking Jesus for help and not getting what we perhaps are entitled to; but it also means that we will never be slave to those things and will always have our security in something much more permanent.

Holding in gratitude

Lastly, we should hold our possessions and gifts in gratitude. As soon as we feel entitled to something it loses its power to bless us. The truth of our existence is that all we have is a gift from God. As the Psalmist reminds us, the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it. Anything we have is on loan from the gracious creator, who loves us enough to share his creation with us. Being grateful frees us to be open to the wonderful and underserved quality of those gifts and to have the courage to share them.

The tragedy of the rich fool is that he was in fact very poor. He had planned his life to be able to rest on riches that weren’t his to squander and neglected the part of his life that would survive him and affect his eternity. His complete confidence in what was in his barns hid the neglect of his inner life. Perhaps this is what Jesus was hinting at when he suggested that greed of all kinds creeps up on us. That smug comfort from material possessions can act as an anaesthetic to the really important things of life and we are just as prone to that kind of foolishness as the people Jesus was talking to.

Perhaps today is a good day to reflect on how we hold the material gifts that God has given us? Life is so uncertain and riches are so fleeting.

Let’s learn from this story how to hold the riches that God gives us in a way that points us to our heavenly store, where nothing can destroy or take away the good things that God has for his people. We should aim to be rich, but in the things that lead us closer to God and which show others his love for them.

¹⁴ For this reason I kneel before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. ¹⁶ I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Ephesians 3: 14–19