SOUL-TALK Luke 12:13-21 August 4, 2013 Faith J. Conklin A preacher was giving his sermon Sunday morning. He was trying to impress upon the congregation the importance of living a life pleasing to God. He shouted from the pulpit, All you people of this congregation, you d better get right with God. One day you re going to die. Do you hear me? Do you understand what that means? God will judge you. All you people of this congregation, one day you re going to die. You better change your ways. The congregation flinched at the grim words. They got solemn looks on their faces. Except for one man. He was sitting in the front pew. He started laughing. The preacher scowled at him. He leaned over the pulpit. What s so funny? he demanded. Didn t you hear what I just said? All you people of this congregation, one day you re going to die. Yes, I heard you, replied the man. He smiled, But you see, I don t belong to this congregation. We can laugh. It s a reminder. The lessons Jesus gives are for us also. We all need to heed and hear his truth. None of us is excluded not from his warnings and not from his love. This morning s story of the rich fool is no exception. Our text is from Luke. Jesus is asked to intervene in a family dispute over inheritance. As is often the case, it was a matter of rights over relationship. One's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions, he replies. It s not what you have that s important. It s who you are. Possessions can t give you life or help you keep it. Then to emphasize his point he tells them a parable. The land of a rich man produced abundantly. He thought to himself, What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops? Then he said, I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, there I will store all my grain and my goods. I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' God said to him, You fool! This very night your life is being required of you. The things you have prepared, whose will they be? So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God. Jesus story challenges a fundamental assumption of his society. It was commonly held that a person s life was measured by the abundance of his or her possessions. The reasoning went like this. If you re right with God, then God will be good to you. You ll be rich and you ll prosper. The opposite was also true. The 1
poor, needy, sick and suffering were out of favor with God. Their affliction or lack was their punishment. Many people today still view life that way. It s how they view God also. It s easy to use this parable as a general condemnation of all wealth and those who have it and to cast the rich man as a villain. It then becomes a warning about seeking riches and the danger of having possessions. Certainly this lesson is about money. It s not just about money. It s about the core values of our lives. It s about how we choose and order our priorities. It s about what matters most to us. It s about what s guiding and directing our choices. It s about where we put our trust and find our security. The man in Jesus story isn t a wicked man. He commits no crime. He doesn t cheat anyone. He s successful and prosperous. In fact, in many ways he exemplifies the American ideal of wealth and success. His problem isn t what he does or even what he has. It s what he neglects and what he forgets. It s what s missing in his life. That s what earns him the name fool. One pastor writes: I meet regularly with a few friends and we ask one another an important question. We ask, How is it with your soul? In other words, at the core of your being... what is going on? We ask the question every time we meet for lunch because we ve promised to watch over one another in love. Those who watch over one another in love will ask that question. It s the same question our founder John Wesley had his Methodist Societies and class meetings ask one another each week as they came together for prayer and Bible study. How is it with your soul? That s also the question Jesus poses here. As we listen to the man s soul-talk ; his problem becomes evident. He thought to himself, What should I do, I have no place to store my crops? Then he said, I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' (have a party!) Do you see the pattern? He thought to himself... he deliberated with himself he had a discussion with himself... he decided for himself. I and my are his only pronouns. His is the only voice to which he listens. It s a fool's monologue. It is, if you ll pardon the pun, an I-dolatrous conversation. How it is with our soul? Jesus invites us to wrestle with that question also. Is our life about grabbing and gaining all we can or giving back gratefully 2
what we ve received? Is our stance toward life one of fear or faith? Are we enjoying the gifs God gives us each day or constantly looking at what another has and wishing it were ours? Have we made our relationships with God and others a priority or are we putting them off for some other day? Are we chasing what s important and neglecting what s essential? Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest, theologian and social activist shares how he was reminded of this truth. Father Rohr was preaching in Africa. After his sermon an old man gave this prayer. Lord, let us never move into stone houses. Rohr had no idea what the prayer meant. He found the man and asked why he d prayed as he did. He replied, You know Africa. You have seen our country. People here live in huts and the huts have no doors. That s why your family is my family and my family is your family. As soon as you move into a stone house, you build a door. On the door you put a lock, and behind the door you begin to accumulate more and more things. Then you have to spend the rest of your life protecting all you have acquired. It s a good prayer: Lord, let us never move into stone houses. Lord, let us never focus so much on keeping what we have and gaining more that we forget our relationship with you or one another. Lord, help us to always remember we re all your family. Lord, remind us how we re to behave toward our brothers and sisters. Fool! This night your soul is required of you. There s a sense of urgency and immediacy about our choices. The Greek word translated required of you also means, a payment due. Our life is on loan to us. It belongs to God. It will be returned to God. Our gifts are ours to use. They re ours to enjoy, take pleasure in and celebrate. They re given to bless us. With our blessings comes responsibility. With them comes accountability. How does our living show that truth? How are our lives, rich toward God? Peter Gomes captures part of Jesus purpose here in a sermon he calls, Surplus and Substance. He writes: I want you to think about the life you have been given by God through his great mercy, and about what is most fearful to you and what is most precious to you, and about those things in this world for which you are most grateful. I want you to think about your fair share of your material responsibility in God s world, to this church and to other agencies of good work. He adds, If you begin to reconsider how to live your life with these concerns in mind, I would be willing to speculate that you will find your life increasingly worth living and that is exactly what our Lord has in mind for you. 3
Jesus doesn t want us to be foolish. He wants us to have life abundant. He wants us to have a life of joy and fullness; meaning and purpose. He wants us to have a life that s rich in the things that matter most. He wants us to choose the best thing not just accumulate a lot of good things. Jesus knows. It s not how much cash we have in our bank accounts. It s how much compassion there is in our hearts. If we have the one (the compassion); we ll always know what to do with the other. So he tells us a parable about a fool ; a man whose life and loves were turned inward. He offers this story not as a word of judgment but as a gift of grace. He invites us to examine ourselves in the light of it; to do some soulsearching and soul-talking of our own. Foy Valentine is a professor of social ethics at a Baptist theological seminary. One year he spent a summer working at Koinonia Farms in Americus, Georgia. The Koinonia community was founded by Clarence Jordan during the early stages of the Civil Rights Movement. It was a place where black and white people came to live, work and worship together in a time and place when that wasn t done. It was witness to Jordan s belief in the power and love of God to build bridges and break down barriers. It was a wonderful experience for young Foy. When it was time for him to return to the university he told Clarence he was very concerned. He didn t have enough money to pay for his tuition. His work at Koinonia Farms had been unpaid. He was grateful for the experience but it hadn t been economically profitable. Jordan listened. Then he took a check, put it in an envelope and handed it to him. He said, When you get back to school, open the envelope, perhaps what s in here will help meet your needs. When Foy got back to the university he did as Clarence instructed. He opened the envelope. In it were two things. One was a blank check and the other was a note. The note said, Write in whatever you need. Isn t that also how God cares for the needs of his children? When it comes to the things that really matter in life: grace, love, power, hope, healing, courage, forgiveness God simply says, Write in whatever you need. I ll supply it. God invites us to live from that trust. The rich fool took the gifts and forgot the Giver. He forgot that his life wasn t measured in what he d gained. He forgot that all he had was only on loan and that an accounting of its use would be required. He forgot what you and I must not. What matters most in this life is not what we gain but what we give away. In the end, a life lost in God and given away to others is one that truly endures. 4
It s told as just a fable. I read it as another parable. At the end of the growing season the people of certain kingdom harvested their crop of grain. It was an abundant one. They put it in barns. Then they discovered an enemy had poisoned the grain. If you ate it, you wouldn t die but you d become insane. You d do and say strange things. You d forget what you need to know. You d make harmful choices. The king called his advisors together to decide what to do. They took an inventory. There wasn t enough pure food available to sustain everyone. Only a few could survive on the small amount of untainted food they had. The advisors told the king there was no option. They d have to eat the poisoned grain until the next harvest. All right, said the king. We ll eat it. Then he added, However, we ll also feed a few people on the grain that s still safe. That way there will be some among us who remember that the rest of us are insane. There will be some among us who remember that the rest of us are insane. Christians eat a special diet. It's called the bread of life. It nourishes our souls. It s provides grace to sustain us. In the foolishness and insanity of the world it enables us to be living reminders of God's truth. It empowers us to live and witness as people of faith. Come to the Table and eat. Here is the food that will keep you sane and make you wise. Here you will always be rich toward God. Amen. 5