Saying Against Greed.

Luke 12:13-21

Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.” He replied to him, “Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?” Then he said to the crowd, “Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions.”

Then he told them a parable. “There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, ‘What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?’ And he said, ‘This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, “Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!” But God said to him, ‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’ Thus will it be for the one who stores up treasure for himself but is not rich in what matters to God.”

Discussion Questions:

1. How would you describe what matters most to God?
2. How do you find balance between enjoying the rewards of your labor and avoiding excess, or “building bigger barns”?
3. Where do the temptations of wealth and material possessions possibly interfere with your spiritual journey? (By spiritual journey, I mean; how you actively live out the consequences of your professed relationship with Christ)

Biblical Context

Luke 12:13-21
Margaret Nutting Ralph Phd

Jesus is teaching a crowd, including his disciples, to trust God even during times of persecution when a person who has obviously not been listening interrupts and says, “Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.” Jesus does not respond with anger or impatience. He addresses the questioner as “friend.” As we saw with the story of Martha and Mary, however, Jesus is not willing to accept anyone’s invitation to criticize someone else. He expresses his unwillingness to do this when he asks, “Who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?” Next Jesus addresses the crowd. Presumably, both the questioner and the brother are in the crowd, so Jesus is not judging either one of them, but is speaking to both of them. “Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one’s life does not consist of possessions.” He then tells a parable to reinforce this teaching.

In the parable a rich man has a greater harvest than he himself can use. He asks himself, “What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?” In trying to come to an answer the rich man thinks of no one but himself. He never asks, “What would God have me do with my excess wealth?” Because he is trying to keep everything for himself, he decides to build more storage space. That way he will have so much he will not have to work in the future. He says to himself, “you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!”

On observing all this, God calls the man a “fool.” Why? Because all of his decisions are based on a false presumption, and one about which he has no knowledge or control. The man is assuming that he will live a long life and will, over time, be able to enjoy his accumulated wealth. However, the man dies on the very night that he makes his selfish decision.

Both the questioner and the brother are compared to the rich man. They are being taught that, in deciding what should be done with an inheritance, they should remember that “one’s life does not consist of possessions.” Instead of thinking just of themselves, they should think about what God would have them do. What matters to God is that we use our possessions to care for those in need.

What We Treasure

Reflection
Ted Wolgamot

If you knew the world would end one month from today, what would you do right now. To get at this question, Jesus tells a story about a man so immersed in his possessions that he lost all perspective.

Here’s another story like that — only this one is disguised as humor: A very, very rich man decides he needs to protect all his wealth in the life hereafter. So he hires a lawyer to file a lawsuit against heaven, one granting him the right to bring his possessions to heaven when he dies.

Heaven, of course, recognizes no lawsuits, but to humor this guy, St. Peter allows him to bring one suitcase with him when he appears at the heavenly gates. The guy believes he’s outsmarted St. Peter. He shows up with a huge “suitcase” — eight feet long, six feet wide and five feet deep. St. Peter takes one look at it and says, “That’s not a suitcase.” The guy responds, “You didn’t say anything about size.” St. Peter rolls his eyes. “Well, I still have to open it and see what’s in it.”

St. Peter then opens the trunk and finds hundreds of bars of pure gold. St. Peter looks at the guy and says, “You die and get a chance to bring all your wealth to heaven, and you choose to bring pavement?”

What this story says, of course, is that everything the man treasured so dearly ended up amounting to nothing. That’s also the message of the story Jesus tells in today’s Gospel. He knows that money is important to us, that we need it to house and feed and clothe our families. But the questions Jesus asks are: How important is our wealth? Is it so central that we allow it to drive our lives?

Notice that the man in today’s Gospel shows no concern for any of the peasants who worked the land that brought him all his wealth. Instead, the only pronoun that comes out of his mouth is “I”: “I will tear down … I will store … I will say to myself.” The rich man has no recognition that he has become a walled-in human being, a prisoner of a way of thinking that dehumanizes him. He lives only to accumulate and to hoard.

As a consequence, he’s able to increase his wealth, but in doing so he only impoverishes his own life. He’s able to amass goods, but is incapable of attracting friendships, of generating solidarity with others, of experiencing love.

Sadly, there is way too much of this kind of thinking in the world we live in. In America today, 12.4 percent of children live in poverty; 62 percent of the people on Earth live on less than $10 a day. Something’s out of whack — something like a sense of communal sharing.

So, back to our initial question: If you knew the world would end one month from today, what would you do right now?

My guess is that you would spend every minute contacting as many people as you could to tell them one or all of three things: “I’m sorry,” “I forgive you” or “I love you.” Because, after all, our relationships with others and with God are what bring us lasting happiness.

This is the message Jesus is offering us in today’s Gospel story: Live now what matters forever. “For where your treasure is, your heart will be also.”