By 
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to share the family heirloom with me.” But he said to him: Friend, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you? And he said to them: Be careful! Beware of all kinds of covetousness, because one’s life does not consist in the abundance of goods. So he told them a parable: “A rich man’s land produced bountifully. And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, since I have nowhere to store my crops?’ So he said, “This I will do: I will tear down my barns and build them bigger, and there I will store all my grain and goods. And I will say to my soul: ‘Soul, many goods you have stored up’ for many years, relax, eat, drink, have fun. But God said to him: “Fool! This very night they demand your life. And the things that you have prepared, whose will they be?” So it is with those who lay up treasures for themselves, but are not rich toward God.” (Luke 12:13-21)
“Jesus is the answer!”
When I first became an active Christian in the early 1980s, that was a popular cry among my peers. I’m sure he had a t-shirt with ‘Jesus is the answer’ printed on it. In fact, the slogan became so popular that a few others came out with a counter-slogan, wearing t-shirts, displaying the words, “What was the question?”
The pious popular response to that counter-slogan, of course, was “Jesus is the answer to all your questions”, but of course that’s just not true. A comedian talked me into that night as part of his routine. As he said he, if Jesus were the answer to all questions, imagine how boring game shows would get:
“Round two, hands on the buzzers. The first question is…
Bzzzz… Jesus?
That’s right. Next question
Bzzzz…Jesus?”
Jesus is No the answer to all our questions, as illustrated in today’s Gospel reading:
“Master, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” (Luke 12:13) ‘Talk to the hand’, says Jesus. Ask someone who cares!
IT’S OKAY. That is not exactly what He said, but that is more or less the gist.
“Who appointed me to be judge or arbitrator over you?” (Luke 12:14) is the precise answer, but it amounts to the same thing. Jesus is radically uninterested in helping this man solve his problem, which is not what we are used to.
It wasn’t a trick question as far as I can see. In fact, it might well have been exactly the kind of question that she would take to her local rabbi and expect him to answer. This was a family problem, this was a justice problem, and yes, it was a money problem, and I know that money is not the most important thing in the world, but as Zig Ziglar said, “money is not everything, but it is at the height of oxygen”
When I was young, I never cared about money. I suspect most of us were like that. Why is it that when we don’t have money, we don’t seem to care much? We get older and we get credit cards and we get mortgages and some of us get stock portfolios, and then we hire accountants and brokers so they don’t get us in trouble,
I am embarrassed to confess that in recent years I have spent many hours awake at night worrying about money. I used to think that it was other people and that I was too spiritual for any of that. Having come close to bankruptcy now too many times, I confess that I am too.
Why was he so carefree when he had nothing, yet so anxious when he was relatively abundant? The answer is quite simple (in my case, at least). When I was young, I always knew my dad had my back. He is not there now.
I think that’s why most of us worry about money. I think it’s just fear.
I appreciate that for some people money is about power. It’s about personal and social importance. It’s about being a someone and standing out from the rest.
When we look at some of these business people who win huge pay packages and companies that make millions of dollars in profits, but seem to want more and more, it’s not about security, It is? It is something more pathological: a lust for power, a desire to be like God, perhaps?
That’s not us, right? At least that’s not the case for most of us, most of the time, or is there a fine line between wanting security for the future and wanting to replace God?
“Be careful! Beware of all kinds of greed, because one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” (Luke 12:15)
GK Chesterton said “Now we could have a good debate about whether or not Jesus believed in fairies. That would be a matter on which we could have endless speculative discussions. However, there is no debate about whether or not Jesus believed that rich people were in a great deal.” problem. The evidence in the Scriptures is too great, there are too many stories. Jesus talked too much on the subject.”
It is true, although we do not like to admit it. Even the most fundamentalist preachers who insist that we take everything literally when it comes to Scripture somehow don’t take Jesus’ commands about money literally.
“Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Make bags that don’t wear out.” (Luke 12:33) Jesus didn’t mean that literally, of course, He did, or if He did mean it literally, He obviously wasn’t speaking to me.
A rich man’s land produced bountifully. He thought to himself: ‘What should I do, since I have no place to store my crops?’… ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain. and my assets. And I will say to my soul: ‘Soul, you have stored many goods for many years; relax, eat, drink, have fun.’ But God said to him: ‘You fool! This very night they are demanding your life. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be? (Luke 12:16-20)
Death is such a sobering reality. It helps us put things in perspective. In fact, what amazes me, having attended hundreds of funerals, is not how people find clarity at funerals and suddenly see life in perspective, but how quickly they seem to forget after the funeral and get straight back to life. treadmill. !
Let me close by telling you one of my own funeral stories: a simple funeral I had in Dulwich Hill that has always stayed with me.
Now I don’t remember the name of the deceased, but what I do remember is that she was one of the best circus artists in this country. She had been the trapeze artist whose performance was the climax of every show in the big top of one of Australia’s great circuses.
And I spent time with this amazing woman’s son both before and after the funeral, and he told me that as a child, he never got to see his mother perform. In fact, he said that she would always end her routine with a particularly dangerous maneuver (a double twist triple somersault, or something like that), and that she would always perform this trick. ‘Old School’ (no safety net)!
The son said he always stood outside the store at that point and listened to the crowd. When he heard the drum roll and the crowd gasping, that was when his mother was taking the leap, and she held her breath. When (an eternity later) he heard the crowd break into enthusiastic applause, he knew his mother was fine.
She only missed the jump once, she told me. She survived, but she never went back to the trapeze after that.
Anyway, the thing that stuck with me most about this great woman’s funeral was that in family memories during the funeral itself, her incredible life on the trapeze barely received a mention! It is as if the children barely remember her incredible athletic achievements. All they could remember was what a wonderful mother she was!
That says it all for me! When we reach the end of life, all the things that haunt us most today, no one is going to remember any of them! That may not be entirely true, but for the most part, the things we sweat and strive for today, along with all the career achievements we’ve achieved and the records we’ve set and the titles we’ve earned, are obtainable. A footnote in our eulogy, but I don’t think my friends and family really care much about any of those things, let alone my net worth (if I have any).
Rest assured, we all have the same net worth when we’re dead. I don’t know the real value, but corpses aren’t worth much.
We worry a lot about the things that don’t really matter, and the flip side of that is that we don’t have the resources, financial or emotional, to dedicate ourselves to the things that really matter. The trick for me, I know, is just to keep reminding myself of what I knew when I was young: that my dad has my back, because our Heavenly Father really has our back.
Seek the Kingdom of God first, and everything else will fall into place.