Sunday Sermon: No Fooling
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Scripture: Luke 12:13-21
Series: “Jesus’ Parables and the Mystery of the Kingdom”
“There is no fool like an old fool.” We’ve all heard that saying and we all know what it means. As people age, we assume that their life experience will help them to make wise and informed decisions, but sometimes that doesn’t happen. Sometimes older folk made rash, impulsive, and risky decisions, decisions that unnecessarily complicate their lives; and we see once again that though growing old is mandatory, growing up is very much optional. And so we conclude, with no small amount of sadness, “there really is no fool like an old fool.”
But according to Jesus, there’s something even worse, an even greater fool. As Jesus once explained to his disciples, “the worst fool of all is a rich one.” In other words, to Jesus, “there is no fool like a rich fool.”
That’s the truth we glean from this parable before us this morning from Luke’s Gospel. Luke, you’ll remember, is the one Gospel that gives priority to those on the bottom rung of first century society – women, Gentiles, the poor and downtrodden. It’s almost as if Luke is saying that you really can’t appreciate the power of the Gospel until you find yourself in a place where you have nothing to lean on except for Jesus – not power, not position, not possessions.
In this section of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has set his face steadfastly toward Jerusalem (9:51). Along the way, he has shared with his disciples a number of teachings and parables regarding the Kingdom of God. This parable that is before us this morning will be the first of three “rich man” parables that will warn his disciples on the dangers of wealth. Now, understand; it’s not that Jesus thought wealth to be inherently evil. It’s more the case that Jesus had seen how the love of money could paralyze a person, shackle his soul, and keep him from having enough space in his heart for God, which is essentially what this parable before us this morning is about.
The context of the parable is critical. A large crowd has gathered around Jesus, no doubt attracted by what they have heard about Jesus. In fact, the first verse of this twelfth chapter tells us that the crowd was so large they had begun “trampling on one another.” Be that as it may, now someone has stepped out of the crowd to seek Jesus’ help with an inheritance dispute. It seems that the man’s brother had been refusing to break up the inheritance they held in common and was seeking Jesus’ authority to compel his brother to do so. And Jesus refuses to do so. “Who appointed me as a judge or a mediator between you?” Jesus could see that while the man had recognized Jesus’ moral authority, he was only seeking to coopt it for his own selfish ends. And then turning to his disciples, Jesus tells them, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; (for) life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” At which point he tells them a story, a story of a rich man who becomes even richer when his fields yield an abundant harvest.
It is an unexpected boon, so much so that the rich man doesn’t have enough storage space to put it. “What shall I do?” he thinks to himself. It is the same question each of us faces when it dawns on us that we have more than enough and how we are confronted with a choice as to how we will respond. At that moment, a light bulb goes off in his head and he answers in this way: “I know what I will do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger barns, and then I will have plenty of room to store my surplus grain.”
Now, at this point in the story, I don’t think of any of us is turned off by the rich man’s response to his unexpected blessing. In fact, I would imagine we would applaud him. He is being practical and responsive and showing good wisdom by being so forward-thinking. “Yes,” we tell ourselves, “No wonder this rich man has done so well. Look how well he manages his affairs.” We think that until Jesus peels back the layers of the man’s heart and shows us his greed. “And then I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take it easy; eat, drink, and be merry.”
Here's the man’s problem. He is so self-centered, so focused on his own well-being, so locked in on how to secure his tomorrow that he does not have space in his soul for God. He is not a free man. He may be rich, but he is not free. Notice the number of first-person singular pronouns. “What will I do. This is what I’ll do. I’ll tear down. I’ll build bigger. I’ll store up my abundance. I’ll take life easy and be secure.” Never did it dawn on the man that he hadn’t done anything to bring about his abundance; it was all a gift. And instead of considering how he might have leveraged his abundance to help those who had not been so blessed, (perhaps even those day laborers who had helped him tear down his old barns and build newer, bigger ones) he chose instead to fixate on his own future. It never dawned on him that behind all of the bounty was God and that the God who is the source of every good and perfect gift that comes to us in the form of a trust can at any moment ask from us a return on what He has entrusted us with.
“You fool!” God said to the man. “This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?” How ironic that what began as an inheritance dispute between two brothers, one of whom was shackled by his greed would lead to such a story where the plot ends with the same thing. “Who will get what you have prepared for yourself?” Oh, this man was forward-thinking, but he wasn’t forward-thinking enough. He did not take into consideration his eternity.
So, what about you? Do you think about your eternity? Have you ever considered your legacy? Has it dawned on you how you might take what God has blessed you with and make a free, unfettered choice to leverage that blessing not just for yourself, but also for the good of others?
We live in a country where we are blessed with such incredible freedoms, but unfortunately there are too many who act like the purpose of those freedoms is to acquire as much as we can in an effort to secure our own tomorrow when the truth of the matter is, as in the board game of Monopoly, when the game is over, all the money, all the houses, all the hotels, it all goes back into the box. You don’t take that stuff with you, not to where God is calling you.
“This is how it will be,” says Jesus, “with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
Oh, so there’s another kind of wealth? Indeed there is; a wealth that is marked not so much by means as by desire, a wealth that recognizes that material security in this life doesn’t automatically equate to security in the life to come, a wealth that recognizes that while possessions can enable a person to live here on this earth independently, responsibly, and joyfully in this life, those possessions can also chain our souls so that our life is marked by incessant and hideous greed.
“There really is no fool like a rich fool.” So, be a different kind of rich, a kind that chooses to show his or her freedom by using what God provides to His glory and for the good of others. Then you will be rich toward God – rich toward God today, rich toward God tomorrow, and rich toward God forevermore. No fooling.