13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” 14 But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” 15 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.” 16 Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17 And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ 18 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. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ 20 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?’ 21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
Luke 12:13-21
My sermon from the 8th Sunday after Pentecost (August 3, 2025) on Luke 12:13-21.
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There are a bunch of different tricks we can use to dig deeper into the stories – the parables – Jesus shared. We can, for example, imagine the entire scene in our head, creating a visual map that lets us know who – or what – is at the center of it all. If, however, we struggle using our imagination in this way, we can choose to figure out the parts of these similar-to-the-real-world stories that feel a bit odd. Figuring that out can be difficult since what was strange to people living in ancient Israel and Palestine 2000 years ago might fly right by us. What we might do instead is pause and focus on the actual words Jesus used. We can circle all the verbs since faith, like love, is meant to be alive and so the activity within Jesus’ words can reveal how God is already moving in our world. Or we might pay attention to the pronouns – all the I’s and you’s, the he’s and she’s, the mine and theirs that serve as a window into what Jesus chose to say. These are just some of the different methods we use to enter into the stories Jesus told. And the fact we get to do this shows why Jesus used stories in the first place. The parables Jesus shared with those during his public ministry provide an opportunity for us to dwell over an extended period of time with holy words spoken by the Son of God himself. And yet I wonder if – maybe – there are times when what Jesus chose not to say also gives his words their power.
When Jesus introduced the rich man, he invited us to let our imaginations run wild. This isn’t, I think, very hard since someone always owns way more vacation homes than we do. We’re surrounded by those who we imagine have a fancier car, a bigger house, and whose financial difficulties look nothing like our own. The rich might have their issues but the anxieties and fears that keep us awake at night are not what a truly rich person has. And that, I think, is a pretty good description for the rich man in Jesus’ story. They began with a lot – and, over time, turned that amount into so much more. His wealth, like a lot of the wealth in the ancient world, was rooted in the land itself. We’re told he had a piece of property – and the property produced abundantly. We shouldn’t assume, of course, that he worked the land himself. He already had a gaggle of merchants, employees, hired hands, and slaves doing the management and physical work for him. Those who heard this story for the first time assumed all those people were within Jesus’ words but he was completely silent about them. We don’t hear about tenants, servants, overseers, and the enslaved doing the planting, weeding, shepherding, harvesting, and selling. All we hear is about this man – whose ownership, status, and investment – gave him permission to act like he was the one who did it all. The dirt on other people’s hands and the sweat they poured into the ground was merely an extension of himself. There exists a hierarchy of worth that places those with wealth above everyone else. And that’s because we let those who make investments define what belongs to who. And so, without saying a word, every person, hardship, struggle, moment of suffering, and when someone in that field did something amazing – everyone vanished from the story because everything belonged – and was defined – by him. That’s why, I think, his inner monologue was so full of the pronouns “I” and “mine.” All he saw was the abundance of his stuff since those who generated the abundance were silent in the first place. The work of other people’s hands became his own and his only response was to wonder where he could put all he claimed to create. In his mind, the only thing there was – was him. And he lived that out by claiming a future he created, maintained, and built all on his own.
Now if Jesus’ silence was only about the rich man’s inability to see how he was part of something so much bigger than himself, we could keep this parable safe and manageable. It was, after all, the rich man’s inner monologue which revealed how imperfect he was. When he discovered he had way more than his daily bread, he didn’t ask anyone else or even God about what he should do. The rich man’s perspective and world was so small, it didn’t have room for gratitude, thankfulness, or trust in anything else. He is, then, a template of what we shouldn’t be and we can easily check that off by including God whenever generosity comes our way. But there’s one other part of this story that Jesus is completely silent about. Nowhere in the text does he imply that the rich man gained his wealth by unjust means. That doesn’t mean his use of enslaved labor and exploitation was somehow good. Rather, the person whose world only included themselves grew their wealth by taking an initial investment and, over time, growing it into something more. As much as we’d love to win the lotto or maybe discover there really is a Nigerian prince who will give us their entire fortune, how the rich man generated their wealth matches the kind of wealth generation we practice today. We, in a multitude of ways, take money, park it in a series of investments where other people do the work, and turn it into more wealth for us. It’s a practice that shapes the investments held by our church, by the Ricci Foundation who supports our Special Gifts fund, and is even what I’m doing while planning for my far off future retirement. Taking a little today so we can create a future that is more merry and bright doesn’t feel as if it should be something God would declare silly and foolish. Yet Jesus, throughout the gospel according to Luke, described any kind of wealth as a – in the words of Rev. Dr. Jennifer Wyant – “barrier and a distraction to following God because it makes us focus on the wrong things.” That’s why Jesus told those with more than their daily bread they already had what all there is for them and that it would be easier for a camel to literally pass through the eye of a needle than for them to enter the kingdom of heaven. It’s why Jesus told a story about guests being invited to a banquet who refused to attend because they had lands and families to support and then told a rich young man to sell all they had and give the money to the poor if they’d wish to inherit eternal life. Like the rich man in this story – and even the brother in the crowd fighting over his inheritance – wealth can trick us into trusting that the silence at the heart of the unknowable future can be broken by what we do today. And while there is value in intentionally having, maintaining, and creating a financial floor for ourselves and others so we all can sleep silently through the night, our future isn’t as controllable as we’d like it to be. When our money, wealth, and stuff become the source of what our tomorrow might be, it doesn’t take much – an illness, a lost job, a broken relationship, an untimely death – to bring everything down. Our possessions and our wealth cannot – and will not – save us. But the God who sees you, the God who loves you, the God who is with you, and the God who – in baptism and through faith – has already built an eternal future of mercy and grace for you – will not give up on you. And while we cannot fully control what tomorrow might bring, we can trust, follow, love, serve, and choose to not let what we – and what other people – possess define us. We can, instead, seek after God’s kingdom and, in the process, show ourselves and others what it truly means to treasure God.
Amen.