Rich Fool's 8-3-25

Rich Fool’s

Ecc 1:2, 12-14, 2;18-23; Luke

Ecc 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-23

Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind. I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me —and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. So I turned and gave my heart up to despair concerning all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil. What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun? For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity.

Luke 12:13-21

Someone in the crowd said to him, “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.”

Prayer – You have graciously blessed us, good Lord, with a rich, wonderful, and good world. We thank you for all the blessings of this life—our families, our homes, our jobs, our friends, and our possessions. All this has come, not from our hard work or wise investments, but from your beneficent hand. And yet, we also confess our tendency to treat these things as if they were our own, as if the world was ours to manage and manipulate as we please rather than your good gifts entrusted to us. Forgive us for our foolish forgetfulness. Give us wisdom so we might wisely note the fragility of our existence, might wisely confess our utter dependence, not upon our own prudence and calculation, but rather upon your love and grace. This we ask in the name of  Jesus, who had nothing to call his own, who stored up nothing for himself, who gave everything away so that we might wisely find the way to life in its abundance. Amen.

Today’s gospel begins with a squabble between two brothers over the distribution of their father’s estate. Jesus refuses to adjudicate between them but instead warns against become infatuated with material things. In reading this, my mind went back to a person in a congregation who was very “well off,” as we said, meaning he was rich. I went, hat-in-hand, to ask him for a major contribution to our church building fund. He politely, but firmly refused. He said that he could not afford to give more to the work of the church because, “I want to pass on a good estate to my children.”

All that he had accumulated and now closely guarded, he intended to pass on to his children when he died. Just a short time after our conversation about giving, he died. I was appalled that the day of his funeral, his three adult children were back in town, not focused upon the funeral, but already squabbling over who was to get what from their father’s estate. I understand that they had a major argument, the day after the funeral, over who would inherit their father’s prized wine collection!

Just a year later, none of the siblings were speaking to one another. The grandiose family home was on the auction block because none of the three wanted the others to get the house and the man’s beloved family had disintegrated amid name-calling and threats of legal action. The man who loved his children enough in life to save for them and to pass on his inheritance to them in death unintentionally assisted them in dismantling the family and severing them from one another. Makes you wonder if the old man was in fact, a rcih fool.

I know, from conversations with you, that people come to church to worship for lots of reasons. Some of you come for socialization, to be with your friends. And that’s fine. Others of you say that you are here for comfort, or peace, or answers to life’s questions. And that’s okay too. Maybe you are here to be instructed in the faith, to bolster your own sense of the reality of God. This Sunday, I’m hoping that some of you are here to hear the truth. I think that this Sunday’s gospel espouses truth that you may not hear anywhere else in town. Truth about the true limits of our lives, truth about the true source of our security, our true, only hope in life and death. I hope you are open to hearing some inconvenient, though true, wisdom about life.

Well, here’s the story: A rich man has a problem. He is the beneficiary of a spectacular harvest, a harvest so great that he has nowhere to store all of the grain. Fortunately, he is a man of action, a person of initiative. (How do you think he accumulated all this wealth in the first place? Not by sitting back and waiting for it to come to him.) He takes decisive, wise action. He doesn’t just build new barns to augment his old ones; he tears his old barns down and builds new barns.

And I know this story. Do you? I’ve been the chief actor in this story. Have you? Unlike the rich man, I don’t have full, overflowing barns. Rather, I have a pension, a retirement account, investments and savings. Like the rich man I’m not hoarding all these resources for myself. I’m doing it for my children, my grandchildren, maybe even for my great grandchildren. As they say, “You can’t take it with you.” But what I can do is to prudently set some aside, invest, watch the market. I look at my monthly investment report on the status of my pension and say to myself almost the same words that the rich man in Jesus’ parable says to himself: Take it easy. You have been a wise and prudent saver. Time to retire, relax, and watch the compound interest grow.

I say to myself almost the very same words the rich man said to himself: “’You have stored up plenty of goods, enough for several years. Take it easy! Eat, drink, and enjoy yourself.’” Trouble is, those self-satisfied words of self-care are a lie. For the first time God enters the rich man’s story and God says the truth: “But God said to him, ‘Fool, tonight you will die. Now who will get the things you have prepared for yourself?’”

The one we might call a prudent, wise business person, Jesus characterizes as “fool.” Jesus then adds a commentary on the parable: “This is the way it will be for those who hoard things for themselves and aren’t rich toward God.” Riches are considered by the world, a sign of divine blessing, hard work, personal achievement, or shrewd behavior; for Jesus, riches are a dangerous, self-deluding, and an impediment to salvation.

Of all the people Jesus calls to “Follow me!” only one refused. His rebuff was due to money. “It’s hard to save rich people,” sighs Jesus as the well-healed man walks away. “How hard is it, Jesus?” asked the disciples. “As difficult as to shove a fully loaded camel through the eye of a needle,” he replied. “That’s impossible!” said the disciples. “Still,” muses Jesus, “with God even something so far-fetched as the salvation of the rich is…possible.”

There’s so much good that can be done with money. Those who have money ought to see that money as a gift to be used for the good of others. But we ought also to see the limits of our money. Our wealth can do lots of good things for us and for others. The one thing it can’t do is to give us immortality, an unlimited future, eternity. Only God does that.

It’s enough to make one ask, who are the foolish and who are the wise? Christians are often considered to be foolish by the worldly wise. And in so many ways we are foolish. Yet maybe in this way we can show that gospel wisdom is wiser than what passes for wisdom in the world. “Look at you,” Paul tells one of his congregations. “Not the brightest candles in the box, not many mighty, no celebrities.” Then the great mystery: “But God chose the foolish to stupefy the wise, the weak to confound the mighty, the world’s refuse to trash what the world values”. From the first, those who trotted after this homeless, unemployed, vagabond Jesus, where considered by the stupefied world to be foolish.

We may not know as much as we would like to know about Jesus. But one thing we know for sure; Jesus knew that rich people are in big trouble. Never did Jesus praise wealth as a result of hard work, the art of the deal, or divine blessing. More typically he spoke of riches as the either the sorry fruit of foolishness or as temptation to foolishness, as in today’s gospel lesson.

Since Death is going to rip off all of our stuff anyway, it’s probably a good idea to begin divesting now. This relinquishment is a foretaste of when none of us will have any power, honor, or wealth because it all belongs to the Lamb. Note that the voice of God doesn’t accuse the rich man of injustice, of immorality, or even greed. God calls him, “Fool!” “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” End of the rich man’s life, end of his story.

The “things” which he so prudently managed and secured so that they could secure him, are ripped off. The story ends with a question. Whose “things” are they now?” The man who thought he had so many things, discovers, too late, too late, that his things had him.

We thought we were managing our lives, securing our lives against misfortune with our things, gaining control over our destiny only to discover, that the things were managing us.

In a death-denying culture it’s so easy for us to become deluded, to look upon our lives as our property, to attempt to manage and control our future as if our future is in our hands, to have an exaggerated sense of our own power. Then along comes death, the great rip off, death that mocks our pretentions of immorality and security.

On this morning, we came to church. Jesus tells us a little story. And perhaps we hear a voice, a voice from the outside, that intrusive voice of God, that is, the truth, “But God said to him, ‘Fool, tonight you will die. Now who will get the things you have prepared for yourself?’” Fool, wise up.

Jesus ends his story about the foolish man without telling us anything to do or say. Maybe he has confidence that we already know the point of the story. Maybe the story is meant to be a mirror, held up against our lives, to help us wisely take a more truthful look at ourselves and our lives.    

On any Sunday morning, people are in church for a host of reasons. This morning let’s claim that one of the reasons we’re here is to hear the truth about life, death, God, and money. Thanks be to God – amen.

Adapted – William Willimon – “Fools Like Us”