Luke 12:13-21 "God's Riches" Scott Hoezee

Sometimes it is surprising what people will ask a pastor. Most pastors field their fair share of biblical and theological questions. Often people will call with a follow-up query to a topic that cropped up in a sermon. Those are the kinds of pastoral inquiries one would expect. Once in a while, though, pastors get asked for advice on matters about which they don't know a whole lot more than the next person. Sometimes these are logistical questions related to a wedding: "Pastor, how do you think the bridesmaids should come down the aisle?" At still other times pastors get thrown into the middle of disputes, being asked to throw the weight of their ordained status behind one party in the squabble.

As most pastors would probably confess, when such unusual requests get made, you feel ill-equipped to say or do anything. This happened to Jesus in Luke 12. Last Sunday evening a lawyer came up and asked Jesus a typical theological question: "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" But tonight another stranger approaches Jesus with a practical matter involving a family argument. "Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me!" It's not even a question, is it? This is a demand, and Jesus seems a bit upset about it. "Mister," Jesus says, "I don't know who you are or what you're talking about! I am not a judge and have no authority here at all." It was a curt retort.

But you can't blame Jesus. After all, this section in Luke's gospel contains Luke's closest parallel to Matthew's Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is teaching important spiritual matters. In fact, he had just finished giving a lovely set of instructions to the disciples about how they are to rely on the Holy Spirit when they face opposition. In terms of the gospel, this is very important advice. But that only makes this stranger's interruption the more striking. If I am midway through a lecture on the fruit of the Spirit, I will not be very happy if someone raises his hand to ask if I have any advice to give on how to do estate planning!

The only explanation for someone's making such an intrusion is that this person is preoccupied with money. This stranger had not really been listening to Jesus at all but had been ruminating on his financial woes. So the moment there was a lull in Jesus' speech, he burst in with this inheritance question. Jesus was not pleased at this interruption but he recognized what was going on here and so immediately offers some warnings about greed.

But then, this is what we've been talking about all day here, isn't it? When I made the current sermon schedule, I did not realize that matters related to money would be part of both sermons! But since it did work out that way, this evening's message can dovetail with what we thought about this morning in connection to stewardship. But I also think that although you might not at first guess it, this Parable of the Rich Fool may also prove to be a good lead-in for our celebration of the Lord's Supper.

We have already seen that it was this stranger's preoccupation with money matters that leads Jesus to give this parable. But when you think about it, this is a rather unusual parable. Most of Jesus' parables illustrate some aspect of the kingdom, of grace, of salvation. This parable, however, is more generic. In fact, the main and only character of the parable does not have any obvious connection to anything spiritual whatsoever. He looks to be a secular figure in every sense.

But it is precisely this secular atmosphere and the complete isolation of this rich man that delivers this parable's punch. This man is completely out there on his own, doing his own thing with no reference to anything or anyone else. Even this parable's dialogue is actually a monologue--the only person this rich man talks to is himself! But this isolation is a sign of the man's basic problem: he neither sees nor cares for anybody but his own self.

In the end God calls this man "a fool," which is a powerful word that plays not an individual note on the larger biblical keyboard but in fact whole chords. In the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament a fool was anyone who fails to notice how the world works, thus adapting himself accordingly. Fools are the ones who spit into the wind, who saw off the branch they're sitting on, who are constantly trying to row their boat against the current because they simply do not pay attention to how life works. Fools are also unteachable. It's not only that they fail to make good observations on what works and what doesn't, fools also refuse to listen when others point these things out for them.

Fools, the old adage has it, are often in error but never in doubt. In fact, the more foolish a person is, the more likely it is that he or she will become more and more isolated as time goes by. People give up on fools. "There is no sense in talking to him," folks eventually conclude. We have all heard the phrase "a fool's paradise." And that phrase is a reflection of how it often goes: having cut himself off from those who could teach him valuable lessons, having blinkered his own vision to keep from seeing the consequences of his own actions, the fool becomes an island unto himself.

But biblically speaking there is one last piece of folly that often attends such folks and it is reflected in that verse from Psalm 14, "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.'" The last straw, the ultimate piece of damnable folly is to live cut off from God. Actually as we have noted in other sermons, when we read, "The fools says in his heart, 'There is no God,'" what that means is not full-blown atheism in the modern sense of claiming that there is no God in existence anywhere. In biblical times there were very few, if any, atheists in that hardcore philosophical sense. More likely what that meant was along the lines of thinking "There is no God here." There is no God who is close enough to see, or be bothered with, my life. So what I do, what I say, what I think, how I behave has nothing to do with God in that God, even if he exists, doesn't see me anyway.

Failing to realize the divine dimension to life: that is the rich man's problem in Luke 12. Because all things being equal, and as we said also this morning, it was not sinful that this man had possessions, had big fields and sizeable barns in which to store his grain. It was not a bad thing, either, that this was clearly a savvy agro-executive who put his good business sense to work in producing a huge crop. This world needs people who know how to get things done, who discern the mechanics of good economics, and who ply all that knowledge toward the production of necessary goods and services.

The sin of this rich man in Luke 12 is that he has isolated himself from his fellow humanity, from the larger community, from God himself. But then he is interested in no one but his own self. He is not interested in sharing with those who have less. He doesn't even see such folks. They exist beyond the margins of his consciousness.

The man's failure is, as such failures always tend to be, a double failure. Not only did he fail to see God, as a consequence he likewise did not take note of all those little reminders of God that surround each of us every day. What are those reminders? Other people. The images of God in our midst. The more open a person is to God in his or her daily life, the more likely it is that this person will begin to see God all over the place: the face of the neighbor is the face of God, the face of the poor is the face of God. But in the case of this rich man, having done the foolish thing of pretending there is no God nearby, he lost sight not only of that God but of God's children who were also nearby.

As we noted earlier, much of this goes along with the stewardship theme we pondered this morning. But I also hinted that this parable may, oddly enough, also help to lead us to Christ's holy table tonight. How might that be? Because in God's Son Jesus, we see the exact opposite of this rich man's fatal flaw. Although it is not unusual for Jesus to reach for agricultural images in his parables, still I find it interesting that the crop this rich man raised and then wanted to store away for himself only was grain. Wheat. The stuff that becomes the staff of life. But by hoarding it, this man was not a life-sharer or life-giver but someone who deprived others of life. When God says in the end that this fool's life would be demanded of him, the punishment fit the crime.

But please notice God's last question: "Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?" It is an open, unanswered question. The implication, however, seems to be that by his death, all that life-giving, staff-of-life grain will go to feed the very people he had failed to notice! By his death he became a dispenser of life after all. But not in an heroic way. That does not make this parable's ending a "happy ending" after all. Yet sometimes it does happen that by death can come new life.

This rich man who ignored God is, of course, a counter-example for what Christians are to be. But that is no surprise since we follow a man who once said, "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain. But if it dies, it bears much fruit." By his death and resurrection Jesus gives us the staff of life, bread that is real food, and wine that is real drink spread out before us on this table again tonight.

Jesus was the opposite of this rich man in that his focus on God his Father caused him to see every last person around him as someone with whom, and finally for whom, he wanted to give his life so that their own lives could be enhanced. This consistent focus on God even got Jesus into trouble. But he couldn't help it. He saw a man named Zacchaeus and even though the whole rest of the city hated that sawed-off little crook of a tax collector, Jesus loved him and brought life to his house. He saw prostitutes, Samaritans, lepers, the demon-possessed and while the rest of society gave them a wide berth, Jesus was drawn to them in the love of God. And every time, every time, he emptied himself out of all the riches of God that he himself possessed so as to give life.

Tonight as you take to yourself the body and blood of this Lord, realize again that this is your very life. But ponder also the fact that had Jesus been unable to see the God in you and the God in me and the God in every person he met, none of us would have this life tonight or any time. But he wanted us to have this life so badly that he died to deliver it to the doorsteps of our hearts. And so it is only fitting if, as we take, eat, drink, remember, and believe this evening, we also sense this same Savior opening our eyes to the divine riches that we now have by grace. It is only fitting if we feel this Savior's hand on our backs as he shoves us out this church's doorways tonight so that we, too, can fly into this new week, hungry to see the God in all we meet so that we can become for also them dispensers of this great and rich feast of life. Amen.