Foolish Choices

Luke 12:13-21

¹³Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” ¹⁴But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” ¹⁵And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” ¹⁶And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, ¹⁷and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ ¹⁸And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” ’ ²⁰But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ ²¹So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

A friend who worked in what’s known as “the shop” where I live (a GM plant) told me of another worker who was 77 years old and had worked in that plant for almost 60 years. He worked 7 days a week, 12 hours a day. (That was back when the plants ran 24 hours a day and you really could work as much as you wanted to. This is not the case today.) This man had lost his family, his friends, and really, his life. He did nothing but work. The idea of a vacation or a day off was anathema to him. I suspect he had a great deal of money – but that was all. His life was consumed by making money the only way he knew how and it had become his obsession.

In our reading for today, Jesus is pressed to adjudicate a dispute between a man and his brother over their inheritance. Jesus, of course, refuses to become embroiled in something like that but uses this question as a teachable moment over the issue of the value of worldly wealth and our obsession with “more”. This particular parable is found only in Luke but is a powerful reminder of what worldly wealth can attain for us. The man in the parable is wealthy and proud of it. He is confident in his wealth to provide him with the good life. Unfortunately for him, his hope is limited to this life. There is no eternal future in worldly wealth. When he speaks, he speaks to himself for his money is all that he needs. His speech concerns his mistaken idea that he is completely self-sufficient. The other character in the parable is God Himself who calls the rich man out on his folly, for his death would occur that night and of what value would his wealth be to him in that circumstance?

To be rich toward God is to believe that God is the giver of all things, including life and salvation. To show that one believes is to share with others the gifts God gives. This is the consistent teaching of Jesus in his various words about possessions. Behind it is the Gospel of grace: forgiveness is bestowed as God’s free gift in Jesus Christ. Yet a time of accountability will come when God will ask whether his free gift of forgiveness was appropriated through faith or was abused by the arrogant assumption that God’s gifts were personal possessions earned by one’s own efforts and therefore at one’s disposal to hoard or waste foolishly.

Just, A. A., Jr. (1997). Luke 9:51–24:53 (p. 507). St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House.

The take home point here is fairly obvious. But while the lesson might be obvious, the application can be difficult. My dad used to joke that “money can’t buy you happiness, but I’d be willing to give it a whirl.” The man in the parable had convinced himself that he was happy. But his sudden death and subsequent arrival in what we can only assume would be hell was certainly unpleasant. For some, it might be a daily struggle to remember that all of our possessions, while gifts from God, are also incredibly fleeting. Instead, in Jesus Christ we hold onto the only secure future that is available. His blood alone has paid the price for our salvation. There’s no amount of money great enough to pay that price.