10 Pentecost, Year C

"FOCUS"
A homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at Trinity Church, Mt. Vernon, Illinois; Sunday, August 1, 2010 (Delivered by Mr. Barney Bruce, licensed Lay Worship Leader)
Proper 13 -- Ecclesiastes 1:12–14, 2:1–7,11,18–23; Psalm 49:1–11; Colossians 3:5–17; Luke 12:13–21

Our gospel text for today brings to us one of the rich treasures from Luke’s record of Jesus’ teaching: The Parable of the Rich Fool (as it’s generally known).

We are indebted to Luke for making available to us so much of Jesus’ teaching, material we find nowhere else.

So, let’s turn to this wonderful parable, which was given by Jesus while He was on His way to Jerusalem.

Like some earlier teachings, this parable is told in response to a question. In today’s case, it is the request of an unnamed person for Jesus to act as an arbiter in the division of the family estate.

“Teacher, bid my brother divide the inheritance with me,” the man says. But Jesus declines the request to be the executor of the estate. Instead – and as He often does – Jesus cuts to the heart of the reason for the unnamed man’s request: It is greed.

“Take heed and beware of all covetousness,” Jesus says, “For a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

But that first line is better translated this way: “Take heed and beware of all greed.”

Scholars tell us that the sort of greed Jesus has in mind is better understood if we look into the implications behind the Greek word. In the Greek, this sort of greed is the sort that isn’t happy with just having things. This sort of greed always wants more!

As Jesus unfolds the parable and its teaching, we begin to hear a succession of self-centered words: The rich fool uses words like “my crops, my barns, my grain, my goods, my soul.”

My, my, my……

Clearly, the rich fool’s focus is on himself, his possessions, his welfare, and his future security.

The rich fool is in a relationship with himself, and with no one else.

Now, we have come to the heart of the matter. For, you see, it’s all a matter of relationships. Relationships with God, with others, and with the things we possess.

With respect to our relationship to God, Jesus sums up the parable with this final statement: “So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”

Put another way, Jesus says that, while the rich fool was making provisions for himself, he made no provision for God in his life.

You see, it’s all about relationships: relationships with God, with others, with the things that we possess, and, oh yes, with ourselves.

Are we – each of us – islands, apart from the main (I refer here to the famous poem, the first line of which says, “No man is an island, apart from the main.”)?

Jesus makes it clear that no one of us is an island, apart from God. That’s the point of the last line in our gospel for today.

If we were to trace the rich fool’s relationships, they would have to begin with God, wouldn’t they?

Notice that Jesus begins the parable with this sentence: “The land of a rich man brought forth plenteously.”

How could the rich fool’s land produce such a good crop, if it weren’t for the goodness and the bounty of the land, which ultimately comes from God?

So, to begin with, God’s goodness lies behind the rich fool’s blessings. All of our blessings come from God, a reality we affirm each Sunday morning as we present our tithes and offerings. We sing, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.”

But then, if we use our common sense a little, we can also imagine that the laborers who planted the rich fool’s crops, who cultivated them, and who harvested them, are also due some credit for the bounty that has been brought into the rich fool’s barns. Though Jesus doesn’t say so, common sense would tell us that the rich fool didn’t do all of that work by himself.

But the rich fool’s laborers are also left out of the man’s assessment of his situation. “My crops, my barns, my grain, my goods,” the rich fool says.

The rich fool, immersed as he is in himself, is in for a rude shock: “Fool! This night your soul is required of you,” God says, “And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”

A rude shock, a complete reversal of roles, is what awaits the rich fool. Not the secure retirement he seems to have envisioned for himself, no, that won’t be the rich fool’s future at all.

The truth about our relationships to our possessions rings out in today’s parable, and in our reading from Ecclesiastes. There, King Solomon reflects on his life, and the sum of his life’s work, saying, “I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me; and who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool?”

Solomon tells us, as Jesus does today in our parable, that everything we own will, someday, no longer be ours. Someone else will possess them, all of them. So, the saying is true, “There are no U Hauls in heaven.”

At death, all we will have left, all we will possess, is our relationship to God. Everything else will fall away.

Jesus’ parable about the rich fool has a lot to say to us today. The attitudes we hear the rich fool express in his private thoughts are attitudes that tempt every human being, down through the ages.

But the rich fool’s attitudes are particularly tempting, and are particularly evident, in our world today.

We, as 21st century Americans, live in a culture of extreme self-centeredness, and in a culture of out-of-control materialism. We pride ourselves on being self-made men and women. “Be independent, be a hard worker, and you will reap the benefits of all your efforts.” That would be a good way to characterize the attitudes that our society values.

These attitudes are the same ones we see in the rich fool.

Like the rich fool, we can easily think that our success – which is often measured in material terms alone – is all due to us, and to our hard work.

If we are tempted to follow the rich fool’s example, and to allow the culture around us to shape our values, then we might be tempted to leave God out of our lives.

But Jesus’ teaching tells us to make room for God now. “Cultivate your relationship with God while you still have time,” might be a good way to summarize Jesus’ intent.

So, while we still have the time, we cultivate our relationship with God. That’s one of the main reasons we are gathered together this morning in God’s house. Being together to worship God is the right way to start the new week. Hearing God’s word, offering our praises and our prayers, and sharing in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, are some of the ways that we build our relationship with Him.

Then, we are called to go out from this place to share the Good News of God in Jesus Christ. He, who loves us and who gave Himself up for us as a sweet offering to God the Father, demands that we share the love He has poured into us with those around us.

The command to share that divine love with others means we cannot subscribe to the rich fool’s vision of the future. For the Christian, there can be no secure, self-made retirement from the command to love and to serve our neighbor, as our Baptismal Covenant makes clear (see the Book of Common Prayer, page 305).

The work that our Lord Jesus Christ gives us, to share the blessings that come from God, and to share His love, never ends, no matter what age we are, no matter what our life’s circumstances might be.

May the Lord God almighty correct our ability to see the future as God sees it, and to strengthen our hands for service to others in His name.

AMEN.