When the Barn is Full 7-31-22
When the Barn is Full
Eccl 1:2, 12-14, 2:18-23; Luke 12:13-21
Eccl 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 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 our good gifts entrusted to us. Remind us, during today’s time of worship, of the fragility of our existence, of our utter dependence, not upon our own prudence and calculation, but rather upon your love and grace – amen.
The parables of Jesus are close cousins to jokes with their surprise endings and their unexpected twists and turns. This Sunday’s gospel is no exception. Here’s a man whom we would call a prudent, careful, wise and visionary entrepreneur – someone most of us would look up to and hope attended our church. And, our parable names him as a ‘fool.’
The rich farmer is a success, such a success that it becomes a problem of sorts. His land has produced so abundantly that he has run out of storage space in his barns. He immediately moves into action (he has not become an agricultural success by just sitting back and waiting for things to happen). He starts making big plans to pull down his barns and build bigger ones to store all of his abundant harvest. When the barn is full and he has accrued ample savings then he is well-fixed to sail into a prosperous and happy retirement.
Here we have the fabled American Dream – work hard, be prudent, save wisely, put things aside today for security in the future. Then sit back, relax, and enjoy the fruits of your labor – sound familiar? The rich farmer had planned for just about everything except for one thing – GOD. “Fool, tonight you will die. Now who will get the things you have prepared for yourself?”
Why does the parable name the farmer a fool? Not because he is successful and wealthy but rather because he is so self-centered. Note that his conversation is all in monologue. He speaks to himself, counsels himself, commands himself, reassures himself. His hope, his security rests solely and completely on himself. Sound like the expectations of our western society?
‘What will I do? I have no place for my harvest?’ ‘Here’s what I will do. When my barn is full, I’ll tear it down and build bigger ones. That’s where I’ll store all my grain and goods. I’ll say to myself, You have stored up plenty of goods, good enough for several years. Take it easy! Eat, drink, and enjoy yourself – you have earned it.’
We may have to ask the image in the mirror if perhaps we have spoken similar words. And I wonder, where is the gratitude? No sense that what not anything he has harvested has been sown, cultivated or harvested by himself. He’s got much more than he will ever need for himself. The rich farmer lives in a very small world with a very big harvest. He has self-possession of everything except his own life. He is master of all except himself. And even though he has lots of things safely stored in those new barns, to whom will these things belong once the rich farmer finds himself with God?
‘You can achieve financial security,’ proclaims virtually any advertisement from financial institutions. While it may be possible to achieve financial security there’s no securing ourselves against the fragility of life. There’s no way to own ourselves. All the possessions in the world can’t secure us against mortality.
Most significant of all, we can’t secure ourselves with God by our own accord – let me say that again – we can’t secure ourselves with God by our own works, our own successes, our own faith. Our relationship with God is about God’s ongoing works and faithfulness and has very little to do with what you and I say, do or believe. As Jesus warns, ‘Watch out!’ he says, Guard yourself against all kinds of greed. After all, one’s life isn’t determined by one’s possessions even when someone is wealthy.’
One of the very important lessons I’ve learned in my 30+ years of hospital ministry is that death has a way of clarifying what really matters in life. The person who was successful and rich in our story this morning was also foolish. We wonder if, right at the end, in being addressed as ‘Fool,’ did he wise up. Did he come, in that moment, to see his life and his possessions as not his? All that we have comes from God and our lives go back to God. Not much left to regard as ‘private property.’ Not much to be regarded as eternally mine.
Much of Jesus’ ministry was meeting people where they were, healing the sick, responding compassionately to those in need of healing, feeding the hungry in ways they never imagined. When he encountered someone in need he responded to them, not by preaching a sermon rather by meeting their need. Fine, but what if that someone is life the rich farmer in today’s gospel passage? The man’s crops have brought forth a bountiful harvest, so bountiful that the farmer has a problem, a need for bigger barns when his barn is full. He has no need except for larger storage space for all of his possessions.
In fact, he congratulates himself on this work, his successes, his contentment. He has no worries for the future. Through his hard work and prudent business practices, he can take it easy. Question, if you were preaching to this man, this successful, contented farmer, what would you preach? He has solved all his material needs through his successful accumulation of goods. And he has solved any anxiety about his future. He has it made.
If the whole point of the gospel is the fulfillment of need, then what is to be said to the person without any apparent physical or spiritual need? You could say to this self-satisfied farmer that he is only kidding himself. Surely there are personal regrets, aches and pains accrued on the way, perhaps even a few unfulfilled hopes and dreams. In other words, we could say, ‘Sure you have accumulated lots of stuff and fulfilled most of your dreams for financial security, but I wonder if there isn’t something else you would really like to have? Joy? A sense of purpose in your life? I wonder if making sure your barn is full all there is to life?’
What do we say to the person who says, “Well, I’m happy, contented, well fed, reasonable decent, and, after all, if there is in fact more, isn’t that what religion is all about?” And I can honestly respond, “No, that isn’t what religion is about.” In fact, it is the opposite. We do the gospel of Jesus Christ a great disfavor when we present a prosperity gospel as a technique for self-fulfillment, self-gratification, self-sufficiency, self-actualization. Most self-help techniques imply that you are a self-motivated, capable person who, by following their technique, can achieve more bliss in your life. Self-improvement through greater self-concern is the goal. For Christianity, it is not. Our Lord tells us that if we want to find ourselves, we must first lose ourselves in something greater than ourselves. In giving ourselves, we receive back the true selves God has created us to be.
But who can blame people for concluding that their self-contentment is ‘what religion is all about.’ In our evangelical fervor we have corrupted the gospel presenting it as ‘best deal a person ever had,’ as the payoff in blessings for good deeds, as a panacea for all our personal aches and pains. If a person already has health, happiness, a reasonable amount of joy, and a passable sense of contentment, then it’s easy for that person to assume that he or she already possesses all the benefits of the Christian faith, and therefore, has nothing to gain by dabbling in religion. That assumption, though understandable considering the way the gospel has been corrupted, is incorrect, perhaps even foolish.
‘When my barns are full, I can take it easy. I have secured my life on the basis of my astute investments and hard work. What need do I have of the church?’ Persons of strength do have needs, and one of their most pressing needs is a need to be challenged by the narrow confines of their limited notions of both their own lives and the Christian faith. Many materially successful, contented persons, because they have the resources to handle more of the everyday problems that bedevil weaker souls, think they have the strength to handle every problem. Their self-perceived strength blinds them to their weaknesses. This, I think, is why Jesus said that it was as difficult for a rich man to enter God’s kingdom as for an elephant to drive a VW bug, or words to that effect. It is simply difficult because the self-made person who can solve most of life’s nitty-gritty problems through their checkbooks, delude themselves into thinking that they can solve all of life’s difficulties in this manner. The rich fool in this morning’s gospel passage was called a fool because he thought his successes, his accumulations, his full barns insured him against the vicissitudes of human experience.
I suppose that is why Jesus proclaimed ‘blessed are the poor.’ Not because they had less than others, but because they are likely to catch on to the facts that, 1) we are dependent upon a gracious God, 2) we are bound to the work and gifts of other people to survive, and 3) our stuff, no matter how much we have accumulated does not secure against the difficulties that come the way of every human being, rich or poor.
Many people whose lives are spent gaining more and more in areas such as education, business, and politics will always have a sense of fear and scarcity because they can never get enough of whatever to feel satisfied or to feel truly secure – just look at the current political landscape. Many rich people will always feel destitute because they can never get enough to be sure they have secured their lives. A materialistic, consumptive society such as ours will invariably be an impoverished society, always getting but never enough, losing as much as it gains, destroying all the time when it thinks it is building.
Our passage this morning is a hard note of judgment whereby a prudent, successful person is called a ‘fool.’ We must tell the strong ones in our midst that their strength, when misdirected, is weakness. The poverty of the poor is tragic, so is the peculiar moral/spiritual poverty of the rich fool. The intellectual can never know enough. The scholar will perish whether she or he publishes or not. The business person climbs to the top of the organizational pecking order only to find out that, rather than running the business, it now runs him or her. The preacher compromises along the way to the episcopacy only to find that, as bishop, there is nothing left to say. The more we acquire, the less we have on which to spend it.
The rich farmer in our story this morning had bursting barns and was indeed gifted, blessed and fortunate. But gifted, blessed and fortunate for whom? God asks, “Now who will get the things you have prepared for yourself?” There is no reason why the Christian faith cannot be lived as well by the five-talent person as by the two-talent person. Success and riches are not evil in themselves. They are dangerous, but not inherently evil. Our strengths are gifts, and like any gift, can be used for good or ill. Gratitude is a much more productive motivation for discipleship than abasement.
What does our faith say to a person who has everything? Perhaps a new, a different perspective on his or her strength. Perhaps hold up a mirror and offer a growth opportunity to see those strengths as gifts from God. Perhaps offering the freedom to use those strengths for something greater than one’s own selfish desires. Conversion, metanoia, turning around, a change of heart and life, for the person of strength would involve, not a denial of strengths, rather the kind of humbling gratitude that comes when one realizes that one’s gifts have a divine source and purpose.
To the rich farmers in life who have achieved much, who have accumulated much, who have bursting barns, the church has demanded little. We have spoken of Christianity as if it were a cushion, a get out of hell free card, and not a cross. We have transformed the faith into an insipid soufflé with all air and no nourishment, a sweet placebo which cures nothing because it challenges no one. It is a faith which is hardly worth living for, much less dying for. We have so tamed and housebroken the Spirit that it soothes rather than prods. This dull, domesticated, full barns, impotent version of the faith is a heresy which mocks the Christianity for which people once bled. Can we come to see our lives, our faith, our talents and our possessions as gifts from God to be gratefully used for the glory of God? It is the way to true wisdom – may it be so – thanks be to God – amen.