Luke 12.13-21

THE RICH FOOL

(Luke 12.13-21)

"Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.' Luke 12.15.

When my friend John died, some ten years ago, his brother Peter, who was the executor of his will, said, 'Do feel free to have anything you like to remember John, provided it is not valuable'.

In actual fact, we chose some old table mats to remind us of the many happy meals we had shared together over the years.

Unfortunately, Peter always sees life through pound and pence lenses. In his public life, he was a senior area bank manager in the City of London. ln his private life he always appeared to specialise in caring for wealthy widows who in turn, often cared for him in their wills!!

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I was reminded of these two brothers when I read through the above Gospel reading.

The Gospel falls into two parts, linked together with the warning from Jesus, 'Take care! Be on your guard; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’

In the first part, Jesus is asked to sort out a matter of inheritance between two brothers, whereby one was withholding the inheritance from the other.

It was not unusual in New Testament times for such a problem to be taken to a religious leader to solve. Rabbis were expected to be proficient in all aspects of Mosaic Law, be it criminal, civil, ecclesiastical or moral.

However, Jesus refuses to be drawn into the local family squabble, though he does sort of answer it in a story he tells.

The story is about a rich man who had an exceptionally good harvest. It was so good that he had insufficient storage space. He therefore decided to demolish his existing barns and build bigger ones to store the harvest.

In fact, the harvest was so good that he did not need to work in the future. He decided to sit back, relax and eat, drink and be merry. I guess it must have been something like winning the lottery.

But, before the rich man can begin to enjoy the fruits of his labour, he suddenly dies, leaving his new barns bursting with crops and other goods.

And Jesus concludes the story with the punch line, ’So it is with those who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich towards God'.

That is a warning, not just to those who originally heard the story from the lips of Jesus, but also for us today.

We all long to own our own house, to own a car - better still, two cars, one for him and one for her. We long to have a job with short hours and a good salary, and if necessary, we will move from job to job until we get what we want.

We all look forward to a good pension when we retire, so that we can enjoy the fruits of our labour.

But when we retire, we begin to get a bit anxious as to whether the pension will prove sufficient to enable us to do all the things we have planned.

Then the body begins to play up. We begin to panic as to whether there will be sufficient funds to meet the cost of future social care at home. Soon we begin to worry about whether there will be sufficient funds to meet any possible future residential or nursing care. And then we begin to worry about funeral costs, and take out a funeral plan to cover that eventuality.

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The problem is that none us really know what the future has in store for us. It is alas all too easy to allow our material possessions to blind us to the one thing of which we can be certain, namely God and his judgement.

Now, Jesus does not condemn the possession of wealth and material possession. He does not expect us all to go off and join a religious community and take a vow of poverty.

But what he does say to us, as he said to the rich fool in our story, is, 'Take care! Be on your guard against all kind of greed.' And why? 'For life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.'

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Every time I conduct a funeral , I remind those present of the words of Job, when he says, 'We brought nothing into this world, and we can carry nothing out.'

Or to quote a Spanish proverb, 'There are no pockets in a shroud.'