All Things in Thee Possessing

Robert E. Hall
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

August 5, 2007

Text: Luke 12:13-21

“Humor, like childhood and play, can be seen as an ultimately religious vindication of joy. Laughter can relativize the seemingly rock-like necessities of this world.” (Source unknown; perhaps Peter Berger, Rumor of Angels)

At first, when you hear the parable Jesus’ tells, you think to yourself, “Why, yes, that’s exactly what you should do when you receive a windfall: build a bigger barn to secure your future. This is sensible, wise and prudent.”

Let’s say you get a windfall of $250,000. After taxes, you could spend all the money playing all of finest and most famous golf-courses around the world, (or some other life-long desire); or you can meet with your financial planner and make provision for the future. The latter is surely the wisest decision. This is surely what you and I should do.

So what’s funny about this parable?

It takes us a few minutes to catch the humor in the man’s response. I miss it almost every time I read it. Then it hits me: the farmer does not consult with anyone----except himself. Now this is truly comical. Whoever heard of consulting only with yourself---your own needs, your own security, your own happiness----before making a decision of such magnitude?

Six uses of the pronoun “I;” three uses of the word “me;” and then he talks to his “soul.” No reference to other people, no reference to moral considerations, no reference to religious traditions, or to God.

He plans for himself, he even congratulates himself. He is the subject of his self-conversation, and he is narrator of his story. This is a one-man play.

His windfall crop has seduced him into self-absorption. He has the condition that Martin Luther called “curved inwardness.”

Is he a criminal? No, there is nothing illegal about building bigger barns. We may remember that Joseph, in the Genesis story, foresees a famine on the way and persuades the people to store their crops during the good years so as to be prepared.

No, the farmer in the story is not a criminal. He is a fool. A fool is someone who, without thinking about it, unintentionally acts in ways that lead to their own misery.

He is a fool because he thinks he can secure his mortal life by having surplus goods. He needs to go back and read Ecclesiastes for a little dose of reality. You get all these things together that then, whoops, you up and die, and you have no control over what happens next.

Martin Marty says that all plans should be made under the provision of James 4:15

“Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and gain,” whereas you do not know about tomorrow….Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and we shall do this and that.”

To be wise is to know your own mortality and live your life fully in the present. To be a fool is to be oblivious to life precariousness.

And he is supremely a fool because he leaves God out of the conversation. He is a practicing atheist, no matter what he says he believes. Why? Because when he gets his windfall, the result of water and good earth and rain that he did not provide but came from his Creator, he forgets who made it all possible. “The “fool says in his heart, ‘there is no God.’” (Psalm 14:1) “Life is a loan; God gave it, and declares that its return will be demanded.” (Caird, Luke)

And he forgets that he is a member of his community. The farmer shows no intention of storing up for the sake of the community he is a part of. His goods will keep him for many seasons. He has forgotten the warnings of the prophets that placing one’s self interests above the interests of the larger community is anathema to God----and self-defeating even from a selfish point of view..

The farmer’s well-being is directly related to the well-being of his neighbors and community. You cannot live in isolation, economically speaking and emotionally speaking. To think otherwise is to be a fool, because you out of touch with the real world.

Notice that Jesus is not saying that we should live without adequate provision. He is not advocating misery or forced poverty. Building bigger barns without an awareness of your mortality, God’s eternity, and the needs of your community are paths to misery and death.

But, “reducing life to the daily routine of earning, acquiring, storing, throwing away and wanting more,” is to settle for less than God intends for you and for your family and for your community. (James Wellington Chambly, Word and Witness, August 3, 1986)

Jesus proclaims and demonstrates the “strange new world”  (Karl Barth) which God is planting in the world. In the light of God’s forgiveness of sins and offer of new life, we are confronted with a decision: to live our lives in the worship of idols, including the Self or Mammon, or to worship and serve the God who is our Judge and our Savior. We are challenged to live for the sake of the kingdom of God, which is a personal and social reality, involving neighbors near and far.

I don’t have to tell you that “contemporary Western society is in the grip of the rich fool’s delusion. That life consists in what we can get and keep and spend is probably the loudest of the voices of our mass culture, conveyed with seductive expertise in the advertising that forms our consciousness subliminally as well as overtly.” (Richard Baukham in The Lectionary Commentary) We are constantly encouraged to add to our list of “gotta-haves.”

Jesus says that to be wise---really in touch with reality---is to live our lives by being “rich toward God.”  Whatever else is meant by this cryptic phrase, it means living as those who trust in and love God, aware in every self- and other-conversation of the presence of the Divine voice; and, out of the graciousness of God, use what is given us unselfishly.

I will spend the rest of life trying to get my heart and mind around these words of Jesus, “Whoever wishes to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Luke 9: 24; Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34-9:1)

I like to imagine what a wise farmer would have done with a miraculous crop. His conversation might have sounded like this:

“What a blessing! My Lord! What shall I do with this windfall? Lord, please give me wisdom.

“Since so many people starve in the lean years, I will call together the leaders in my community to see how we, working together, their families and mine, can preserve this bounty so that everyone will have enough. I know that my worth does not consist in having more than others; and I don’t want to be tempted to go down that road: I’ve seen what such hoarding has done to others. Lord, God, make me equal to the task of doing what is right in your eyes. I am your servant, and I want, above all, to do your will in this situation. Show me what is required of me to love you with all my heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love my neighbor as I love myself.”

Our lives are secured by the steadfast, faithful love of God. Trusting in God, we are freed to live wisely.

Let us pray:

“Grant us thy peace, almighty Lord,
     Thou source of every blessing,
Feeble and frail, trust we thy word,
     all things in thee possessing.
In thee is our hope and safety.”   (Felix Mendelssohn, “Grant Us Thy Peace”)