+Today’s gospel is known as the Parable of the Rich Fool. It could just as easily be called the parable of the poor fool. For Jesus is saying that the things we hold onto—be it possessions, beliefs, fears or worry---is what keeps us from God. The rich fool has all that he could possibly need, and then some, yet all he can think about is holding onto it—and it is in the holding on that Jesus takes issue. For, as he says at the end of this reading, those who store up treasures for themselves are not rich toward God.”
I’m intrigued by that phrase: Rich Toward God.
What does it mean to be rich toward God? Or, for that matter, what does it mean to be poor toward God?
In the modern language translation of the bible, Eugene Peterson’s “The Message,” the end of today’s gospel is translated: “that’s what happens when you fill your barn with ‘self’ and not God.”
The rich fool built bigger and bigger barns to hold his treasure, and the bigger the barn, the farther away from God he became. He filled his barn with self instead of God.
How do we fill the barns of our lives with self and not with God?
On Friday the Today show ran a feature on reclusive heiress Hugette Clark . The story described all the mansions she owns and how she, for the past 50 years, hasn’t lived in any of them. She’s still alive, she just isn’t enjoying all she has acquired. This woman who had treasure upon treasure piled high in the barns of her life is, at age 104, living in a drab hospital room without the slightest hint of luxury.
I don’t know all the details, but this woman sounds like someone who has found out that filling your barn with self instead of God can leave you alone and despairing.
But filling our barns with self instead of God isn’t just a rich person’s problem.
While abundance certainly can distract us from God, so can scarcity.
Not having enough can turn us away from God just as quickly as greed. On that same episode of the Today show was a segment on student loan debt and how, according to Suze Orman, student loan defaults will end up being the next big financial crisis in the United States. Debt—be it school loans, credit cards, second mortgages---fills many of our barns, blocking the way of God.
It’s terrifying when the money we thought would be there isn’t.
It’s awful when the red ink in our budget over-runs the black.
And it’s as easy to let that fear fill up our barns as it was for Hugette Clark or the Rich Fool to let greed fill up theirs.
We can read this gospel as Jesus railing against wealth, another bible story designed to make us feel guilty for having things, guilty for not giving more of it away…but that’s not it at all. Jesus didn’t hate money. He just disliked what money did to people.
Jesus knew that money causes many of us to become poor toward God.
Most of us don’t have nearly as much as we did a few years ago. Some of us sitting here today may be on the brink of becoming upside down in our debt, some of us may already be there, others of us are terrified of ending up there.
AND, the sad thing is, we don’t talk about it. We don’t share these burdens with one another---we just carry on as if everything is just fine.
We fill our barns with shame, blocking the way toward God.
That my friends, is NOT being rich toward God. That, is being poor toward God.
Have you ever had a loved one who has been distracted for a long time—different, pre-occupied, worried? Finally they share with you what has been going on-- a burden which they have carried alone for days, weeks maybe even months? Isn’t your first reaction to say, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you say anything? I would have helped. Inevitably they respond, “well I didn’t want to worry you. Burden you, bring you down. “
While that is a sweet sentiment I often finds it hurtful. Because, when you love someone you love them for who they are ---for all that they are and all that have---the good and the bad, abundance and scarcity, profit and loss.
God is no different. God wants us –God NEEDS us to share it all. When we hold back from sharing our joys and our sorrows, we are poor toward God. When we hide behind abundance or scarcity, our barns become full of us, instead of God.
God wants us to share our wealth---yes---but God also wants us to share our debts, our worries and our fears. For it is only when we give all of ourselves to God---the good the bad and the ugly—that we can truly experience the full measure of God’s love.
This parable isn’t about the evils of having too much wealth or too much debt. It’s about turning away when we should be turning toward. It’s about distraction, its’ about all the stuff which keeps us from love of God and love of neighbor. This whole section of Luke’s Gospel—what we’ve been reading for the past month, is about what God wants us to value. It’s written to teach us that whether we have much in the way of money or little, whether we have a lot in the way of debt or none---God doesn’t care, as long as we bring all of it---the joy of abundance as well as the sorrow of scarcity---to the altar---where, when we truly lay ourselves bare, our barns will be transformed from shelters of isolation and despair into communities of grace and love, where we rejoice in the abundance of all God has given. +
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