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."
Sermon by the Rev. Carole Horton-Howe
It’s not fair! How many times have we heard those words in our lives, in our work and homes. It’s not fair. He got something I didn’t get. She got something I really wanted. Is there something in our human nature than when we look round and see someone else that has something we thing we might want – and we learn this at a very early age. “I want that. Give me that.” I’m not sure we ever shake this off.
And particularly among siblings. From the earliest siblings recorded in scripture, we see that there are some tension. When Caine realizes that the sacrifice that Abel makes to God is more acceptable than his own sacrifice, he has his own moment of “that’s not fair” and “I want that.” And is so upset that he decides to take his brother’s life. The very first siblings recorded in scripture.
And this business of inheritance – that’s its own sticky wicket. Because we can stay in the book of Genesis, we don’t have go any further in scripture, to find that difficult story of Jacob and Esau. Remember them? Jacob was the younger of the twin brothers.
But birth order matters in the ancient world. And so Jacob need to be the older twin so badly that he thinks “I will lie to my father, I will cheat my own brother, I will do whatever I need to do to get the birthright and the patriarchal blessing.” So the existence of sibling rivalry in our world today can’t be too surprising if those things existed in ancient times.
And somehow the death of a parent, in some families, seems to bring out really poor behavior. There are media reports of these things all too often: recently in a family named Burgess, where there was an allegation that one sister had unduly influenced their mother to change her will, the family spent the entirety of their inheritance arguing in court for years. In the end, there was nothing for anyone. Except maybe the lawyers. Proving the old saying that some people are so poor that all they have is money. And then they don’t even have that.
And so we have this interesting lesson from Luke’s gospel today. This very interesting lesson about a man who isn’t getting what he thinks he should get from his father’s estate. He believes his brother should be giving him more. He asks Jesus to intercede on his behalf.
What we know about the ancient world and inheritance is that the older son usually got a double portion of the estate. So if you were the younger son you got about a third and your older brother got two thirds roughly. Depending on what the inheritance looks like, it could leave you living well or in poverty. So we gather that a younger son who is unhappy with his share comes to Jesus to say “I don’t have enough. Tell my brother to give me more.’ Jesus refuses to get into the middle of this family squabble.
Instead Jesus uses it for a wonderful teaching moment. That’ much more than about inheritance. We don’t really know what happened in this family. We don’t know why this young man thinks he should get a bigger share – maybe he was more faithful or more helpful to his dad. Maybe he’s just greedy. But we know that he’s asking for more, he doesn’t have enough. And Jesus, in the way he loves to teach, tells a parable.
A rich man – whose bounty is so tremendous after a bumper crop, has so much, his barns can’t hold it all. So he’s thinking to himself, what do I do now? I have all this abundance. I know, I’ll tear down my two small barns and build bigger ones. And if I do that, I won’t have to work for quite a while, for years. And I can just relax. This is so good. Notice he doesn’t ask himself “who might I give some of this grain to? Who didn’t have such a good crop this year? No, there’s none of that.
He runs into a problem. Because who shows up to have a chat with this guy? God shows up. “You fool,” God says. “This very night your life be will demanded of you. And whose gonna get all this stuff when you’re gone?” That’s a big question for this man. Because he is so consumed with how do I hang on to everything I’ve got. It’s mine!”
Theologian Walter Brueggemann during his lifetime preached about the whole idea of living in fear of scarcity. A lot of us understand this. Our parents or grandparents lived through the depression and then through the rationing times of the second world war.
There was a fear that you might wake up one day and desperately need that one thing that you let go of the day before. Now you’re in the world of hurt that you dreaded and tried so hard to prevent. So the idea of scarcity was a real one for them.
But when we allow ourselves to live in fear of scarcity rather than in anticipation of and in thanksgiving for abundance, it causes us to live our lives in ways that are not life-giving. We are so concerned with holding onto things that we can’t envision how God would have us take care of all God’s people.
And when our lives have been demanded of us, when our time is done what’s going to happen to all our stuff? We’ve been so carefully hanging onto it. I’m as guilty as anyone, I’ve got family heirlooms I attach great importance to them. Because they’re all I have left of my family. And I don’t feel good about it. But what is going to happen to all that we have amassed when our time here is done?
Mitch Albom wrote a book called “Have a Little Faith.” It’s about a minister in the inner city who had a rather circuitous route getting into the ministry. But now he’s been called to a church where he has nothing. Is literally in a church that is missing part of the roof and it’s the middle of winter. Snow is coming in.
But rather than living in a mindset of scarcity, he lives in a place of abundance. “I know God has got this. I know God is going to care for us. I know that we’ll be able to take care of the next hungry person what comes to us, that needs a place to sleep – I know we can take care of them. I know this because I trust in the Great Abundance of God.”
That is such a rich and life-giving place to live. Because it acknowledges that what we have really isn’t ours in the first place. We have what we have because we are stewards entrusted to care for these things while we are here. We have it because of God’s goodness, we have it because of God’s graciousness.
When we approach life from that standpoint, when we approach life from that place, suddenly this fear of not having enough is replaced with a sense of “God will provide.” As Jesus says in the verses that follow this passage today, look at the ravens. They don’t have a store house or barn, they don’t have any of that, but they eat every day. They eat every day because of God’s Great Provision. It is as true for us as it was true for those who heard Jesus tell this parable 2,000 years ago.
We have been entrusted with tremendous gifts that make a profound difference in God’s world for God’s people. And when we live with the assurance of the real inheritance – that the real inheritance is not about our stuff, the real inheritance is about the life that we will go on to live eternally with God. When we live our lives with a sense of that reality and that richness and that abundance, we see everything differently.
We see the ministry that we do 5 days a week on our St. Francis patio “Doing the Loving Thing” providing food for the hungry, water for the thirsty on these very hot summer days, and hats, gloves and scarves during the cold winter months – that we provide to over a hundred people every week.
We do that and we’ll still eat, and stay hydrated in the summer and warm in the winter. We’ll still be fine. We will still know God’s love and provision.
So I invite all of us this day to give up the notion that there’s a scarcity of anything. Because in God there is no scarcity. I invite us to believe in God’s abundance. I invite us to believe that God puts us here to care deeply for one another.
When we do that, when we put our focus not on material things, but on the life we will live eternally with God, our outlook about everything we do becomes lighter, more joy filled. Our lives are more reflective of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. We feel God working in and through us. And we live as people abundantly blessed every day of our lives. Amen.