We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
Luke 12.13-21
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.”
One day the
Publisher’s Clearing House prize patrol pulled into the driveway of a large
house in Palm Beach, Florida. The woman who owned the home was presented with
an oversized check for ten million dollars. She told reporters, “I already have
a Mercedes, but now I want a Jaguar and a BMW, too. And some more antiques. Of
course, I’ll have to add a new garage and a new parlor.” She put most of the
money in blue chip stocks and contracted with a caterer for a big party for her
family and friends. Not much later, she wrecked her new Jaguar and was killed.
There was no security in the good life after all. Incredibly, she had no will.
The state took over her fortune and kept a great deal in probate fees and taxes.
What a pity she did not prepare while she had time.
Actress Mae
West was credited with saying, “I’ve been poor, and I’ve been rich and let me
tell you, rich is better.” Jesus told a story of a farmer whose lands and
holdings produced an abundance so big even he was surprised. It doesn’t sound
like a tough problem, does it? There was so much food and produce that he could
hardly take it all in. It’s a miracle! What to do with it all? Can’t just leave
it lying out on the ground. The farmer is quite happy with himself. There are
worse things that can happen to a farmer than having a super-abundant crop. Nowhere
does the parable indicate that the farmer actually worked very hard for his
abundant crop. “The land,” said Jesus, “produced.” The farmer did not earn the
bounty. It was presented to him.
It’s kind of
like compound interest or stock dividends. Sure, the farmer had to have done
something, sometime, to get any harvest at all. He surely tilled the soil, but
then things went along on automatic pilot. It’s sort of like investing in the
stock market these days. The Dow goes up, it goes down, but in the last forty
years it has gone up by 3,847 percent.
There’s
nothing in the parable that tells us the farmer deserved such an abundant crop.
But really, this is not a parable about farming and crop production, is it? It’s
about you and me and our obligations in managing the things we have and being
stewards of our souls.
II
Where did the
farmer go wrong? The same way we all do: He asked himself what to do and got an
answer from his own best advisor, himself. “I know what I’ll do! I’ll tear down
all my barns and build bigger ones.” Then I’ll have enough to last for years
and years. Party down and take it easy! That’s what I’ll do! It sure is easy to
answer tough questions when one answer is to live high. We don’t need someone
else’s advice for that. It’s obvious.
The farmer
was all plans, no prayer. “Gosh,” he says to himself, “What do I do with all
this stuff? I’d better ask someone I can trust to give me an answer I like! And
that would be me!” With God out of the loop, the coast is clear. The thought of
asking the United Methodist Commission on Relief or the local food closet whether
they could use any of his wealth doesn’t cross his mind. The moral issue of
shutting everybody out of his life escapes him. “I will” do this, “I will” do
that, “I will” do the other thing. He looks himself right in the “I.”
The old barns
have to go, and new ones must be built. Obviously, the future harvests will be
just as big. Those dividend checks and annual raises and Christmas bonuses are
going to keep coming on in. No plan to pile up wealth seems too far out when we
don’t ask God for advice.
The farmer
mentally clones himself and says, “Mister, you’ve got it made.” We’ve all done
that once or twice: looked into a mirror on a really good day and said, “Here’s
to you, kid.” People who admire themselves have no competitors or rivals.
There’s no hint the farmer recognizes that his abundant life was God’s gift. He just wants to figure out how to park it until he can get around to using it. Since he can’t eat it all today, the answer is to eat it all later. What the heck—you can’t take it with you, right? So live the good life and take things easy for a good, long while.
When we look
inward, it is easy to check out of public life and public obligation. When our
hearts are not thankful, we do not ask God what to do. So we converse with
ourselves, “What do I do with all my stuff?” It’s an ordinary question, just
one of personal management. But when we cut God out of the loop, we mismanage
the gift of God’s provision. It’s obvious what to do when we only seek our own
permission to do what we already want.
III
Hello, God,
goodbye party! Just when the farmer sees an endless horizon of the good life,
God shows up like a fraternity house mom who wants to close down the keg room.
The farmer had tried to shut God out of his life. God was not impressed that
the farmer debated with himself and won. “You moral vacuum!” God cries out. God
is not fooled for a minute.
God made the
world, but God didn’t make it infinite. The farmer went off track when he asked
himself what to do with the super-abundant gifts of God. He shut the moral
issues out and considered only the mechanics. “Where can I put it?” was the
wrong question. “Why do I have it?” was the right one. He made a plan, but it
was the wrong plan.
So God announces the truth of the inner man. If the farmer looked in a mirror and liked what he saw, God looked through a window and didn’t. On the outside was the picture of success and prosperity. On the inside was greed and covetousness, morally empty of godly considerations.
The farmer
will die that very night. It will be a natural death, maybe in his sleep. God
won’t kill him. God is no avenger lashing out in anger. The farmer just
happened to strike the jackpot shortly before his time on earth ran out. All
his hopes and dreams will die with him.
The farmer
wanted to possess his things, but his things wound up possessing him. When God
asked him who would get them when he died, he had no answer. He had no higher
goal for God’s gifts than to use them for pleasing himself. Whose things will
they be now? He can’t reply. He never thought about that.
Oh, he had
time to do it right! He could have managed his affairs so that his wealth could
benefit others. Then it would have been easy to handle the superabundant gifts
of God’s creation. He could have had a bigger dream than his next meal. He
might have formed a higher hope than for another day to sleep late. He could
have managed his affairs to do God’s work and achieve God’s purpose. Then when
God asked who will get his things, he could have answered, “The people of your
Kingdom, Lord, for that’s why I have these things from you.”
Not long
after the funeral of John D. Rockefeller, a reporter called Rockefeller’s
accountant. “How much did he leave behind?” the reporter asked. The accountant
thought for a moment, then replied, “All of it.”
The farmer
was right to know he couldn’t take it with him. He was wrong to think that his
only obligation was to himself. God reveals the farmer’s immediate future to
him. It’s grim, but not as grim as the vacuum of his soul. His end is already
on the way. The party’s over before it began.
IV
There are two ways to be rich. One way is to make all we can, save all we can and pile up all the extra stuff we can as fast as we can. “A penny saved is a penny earned,” said old Ben Franklin, who was rather well off when he died. The other way is to make all we can, save all we can and give all we can. In the end, the rich farmer came to ruin because all his wealth meant something only to himself. His self-satisfaction destroyed his compassion. He chose the wrong way to be rich.
The farmer’s
fate was typical of those who choose the wrong way. He piled up extra things
for himself but was not rich toward God. The tragedy is not that the farmer
died; we all die. The tragedy is that he died so poor in spirit that he left
not a ripple among the lives of those around him. That’s an inherent problem
with material wealth. It can be overcome, but it’s tough. Maybe that’s why
Martin Luther liked to remind people that God divided the hand into fingers so
money could slip through.
There was a
twelve-year-old boy whose school asked the children to bring a contribution to
Santa Claus Anonymous, a group that provided gifts to poor kids who wouldn’t
get any otherwise. The boy saved a dollar to take to school, but it snowed that
morning and only teachers reported. So the boy hiked through the snow to give
the dollar to the principal. The principal almost broke down when the boy
appeared with the money, because the boy was on the list to receive a gift from
Santa Claus Anonymous.
It doesn’t
take wealth to be rich toward God. Whether one is wealthy or not, it takes
love, a love of people greater than a love of things. We like to think success
in this world is measured by how much money we leave behind. Maybe its best
measure is by how much love we give away, and how we use God’s gifts for God’s
work. We can be funnels of God’s generosity to the world at large. It is God’s
grace that makes this possible.
With every
provision God puts in our hands, he creates a fork in the road of life. Both
ways lead to getting rich. But the way of one fork is piling up stuff and
hoarding it for empty purposes. It ends in false hopes and shattered dreams.
The way of the other is a life of love and sharing and giving God’s things for
God’s purposes. It’s being rich toward God. Every day we choose a path, and
there are no other paths to choose.
A philosopher once wrote that there is only one universal problem. In all the world, he said, there is only one question that everyone faces, everywhere, at all times. It is simply what to do next.
The rich
farmer stared at that question and blew it. “What do I do now?” he asked
himself. Then he stretched out his arms and raked God’s gifts into his pile
like a poker player in Las Vegas. He mismanaged God’s miracle, and, in the end,
he was busted.
We don’t need to gamble with the future. We know who holds the future. The things we have, we have from God, sometimes so much that we’re not sure what to do next. But it is not where to stash them that is the problem. It is why do we have them. God knows, God knows, and we will get be wealthy in the ways that matter in the end, if only we seek to know what God knows.
