Jesus The Jester #10 | “Abundance”

0:01 This fall, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church has been engaged in a study of the biblical parables. Along the way, we've been working with a basic premise. In the parables, Jesus acts the part of a jester. He questions the broken wisdom of the world. And he invites people to look beyond vindictive and cruel patterns to adopt a new way of seeing. Jesus does this by telling stories. Make you think stories. Now, because these stories make people think, many treat the parables as puzzles to be solved, as nuts to be cracked.

0:59 We can figure this out. Tell us, preacher, what does this mean? In fact, if you get to the end and you still haven't cracked the nut, you'll hit me at the door with that question. I still don't know what it means. My friend Louie Donaldson, a New Testament scholar, has suggested an alternative way of looking at the parables. What if, Louie asks, these stories aren't puzzles to be solved? What if we are the puzzles? What if parables function like a sneaky line of computer code? Call it the realm of God virus. Once we give it a listen, once a parable gets inside of us and starts bouncing around in our heads, it begins to unravel us, untangle us, unscramble us.

2:05 What if we are the ones being solved? Not sure you want to be solved? Don't think you need untangling? Now's your chance to duck out the back and enjoy a cloudy November day in Gotham City. Otherwise, buckle up, my friends. Listen now to this parable from Luke, chapter 12, beginning with the 13th verse. Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me. But Jesus said to him, Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbiter over you? And Jesus said to them, Take care.

3:04 Be on your guard against all kinds of greed, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. And then he told them a parable. The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And the rich man 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. And there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry.

4:01 But God said to him, you fool. This very night, your life is being demanded of you. And 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. Friends, this is the word of God for you, the people of God. Thanks be to God.

4:35 Well, whew, finally an easy one. The meaning of this parable is simple. You can't take it with you. You can fill up silos, store sacks of grain in barns, but when that day comes, when the grim reaper swings his sickle, you exit the world with the same gear in your backpack that you had when you arrived, which is to say, nothing. Craig got it. There you go. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy, don't forget to pick up a pledge card on your way out the door, because, as we all know, you can't take it with you. If only it were that easy.

5:30 Historically, interpreters cry out for more. Preachers, this is your chance to hold forth on the evils of wealth. Don't shy away. Don't chicken out. Tax the rich. It's all right there. God zaps a guy who's accumulated too much. God has it in for greed. Right? Well, before nodding, we might want to ask, what exactly is greed?

6:03 It's a hot topic in the contemporary world. We talk a lot about the disparity between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have-nots. Three days ago, the electric car company Tesla approved a compensation package for its chief executive, Elon Musk, could package that over the next 10 years and depending on the achievement of ambitious goals could pay their mercurial leader over a trillion dollars. Isn't this the same guy who took a chainsaw to U.S. programs focused on the prevention of HIV AIDS in Africa? Isn't this the same executive that Bill Gates, another incredibly rich fellow, criticized in an interview with the Financial Times saying, the picture of the world's richest man killing the world's poorest children is not a pretty one. Gates is not wrong. Something in this picture curdles our soul. Can we put our finger on it? Is having wealth a problem all by itself?

7:23 Or is there something more toxic here? Call it raw avarice, the insatiable need to acquire more and more and more. What exactly is greed? Here today's passage asks for the floor. It has a few thoughts to offer. In our story from Luke, Jesus begins with a straightforward statement. Take care. Be on your guard against all kinds of greed. For one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. Our Lord doesn't mince words. Do not let greed get its hooks into your soul. Trust me, the one who dies with the most toys does not win. Jesus follows this counsel with a parable. And here, things get a bit more complicated. A rich man's fields produce an abundant harvest. Reflecting on this happy news, the main character in our parable doesn't look like a cookie cutter villain. He's not an evil corporate overlord in a black suit firing up a chainsaw, implementing a plan for world domination. And instead, the fellow in this parable actually seems sort of surprised at his good fortune. He asks himself, what should I do?

9:02 And then, in the face of unexpected abundance, the rich man starts to make plans. Let's set provisions aside for the future. Let's store the surplus. The man is smart. He's prudent. Heck, he looks a lot like a Presbyterian. We should put him on the board of trustees. Everything seems so sensible. Which is why we might want to ask, what's the problem here, Jesus? What about this guy's behavior bothers you? Is it his financial stewardship? Is his large net worth? Why does God call the wealthy farmer a fool? To us, he looks careful, future-oriented, thrifty. How precisely is this a story about greed?

10:00 To answer, we need to focus our lens on the center of this parable. At the heart of this story, the main character, a man who has just reaped a huge harvest, has a conversation, a fascinating, revealing conversation with himself. Listen again to these snippets. he thought to himself, what should I do? I will do this. I will pull down my old barns and build bigger ones. And then I will say to myself, soul, you've done very well for yourself. You deserve to kick back, eat, drink, be merry. today's parable permits us a chance to eavesdrop on this fellow's solipsistic chit-chat psychologists and philosophers and playwrights love this sort of thing they draw attention to the extremely consequential conversations that play out between our ears.

11:26 1900 years after Jesus told this story, Sigmund Freud would describe human consciousness as a conversation. A conversation mediated between three parts of our mind. The ego, the superego, the id. And similarly, modern psychologists refer to the dialogical self as a way to describe the non-stop banter that's going on up here as we try to process the world around us. In today's parable, Jesus plays this internal conversation out for us, and then he goes a step further. As the fortunate farmer reaches for a glass of Cabernet to toast his own good fortune, to celebrate his tremendous harvest, his convivial inner chatter is disrupted.

12:27 God taps this fellow on the shoulder. The Holy One interrupts the man's private reverie with an insult. Hold on a minute, fool. What's with the name calling? Why is God so bent out of shape? Well, here the good book provides us with a few clues. First, the parable invites us to notice the object of the man's attention. He is utterly focused. His inner conversation revolves all around himself. He looks into the mirror and salutes his own good fortune. To celebrate, he imagines offering a toast to his own soul. This painful dynamic is captured in today's stunning bulletin cover. I think this painting is amazing in a beautiful but sober way. Rembrandt gives us a peek at the rich man in his study. Here we find the Natalie-dressed fellow who, of course, has gold gilding on his robes considering his good fortune. A solitary figure surrounded by money bags, the records of his vast holdings, and the light of a single candle.

14:01 Sadly, the only thought that runs through the mind of this solitary figure in danger of being crushed by stacks of deeds and financial statements is the need to acquire even bigger silos for sequestering his wealth. Rembrandt, I think, gets it right. The rich man in this parable makes his plans in isolation, secluded from the needs and concerns, the joys and sorrows, the vision and struggles of a wider community. His focus is painfully self-centered, tragically lonely, unhealthily narrow. And the man's isolation has serious repercussions. Alone in his bunker, the man fails to consider the future. No, no, no, no, not of course the short-term future. Clearly he can make plans for storing a great harvest, yet even as he pictures is a bigger barn, the parable interrupts. You're forgetting something, says the angel on his shoulder. You're not peering far enough forward to a future when one day, someday, maybe this very day, your life will come to an end. What good will a bigger barn do you then?

15:51 Unable to see his life and his actions against a more consequential backdrop, an existential backdrop, an eternal backdrop, the rich man's plans, his actions, and yes his ethics revolve around a goal that will eventually elude him. Do you know the name George Best? Anybody? Anybody? This is not one. George Best. Thank God for you, John Hendricks. Best is generally considered to be one of the greatest soccer players of all time. Born in Northern Ireland in 1946, Best was a beguiling dribbler who could magically juke his way down the field. I watched a video the other day of him going through the entire team of New Zealand. Like all the players, like all tried to stop Best at one point. He went from one end of the field to the other and scored a goal. And that was what Best did. Goal after goal after goal. His most productive years as a player came in the late 1960s and the early 1970s. At that time, the handsome, long-haired Best, often called the fifth Beatle by his fans, played for Manchester United. During his peak playing decade, Best's wealth, fame, and playboy demeanor made him a well-known figure throughout Europe.

17:28 Soon though, too soon for many of his fans, Best's gambling, womanizing, and hard drinking began to catch up with him on the pitch. His soccer skills diminished. Around this time, the tabloids published a story about a waiter who was called to deliver champagne to Best's hotel room. Entering the room, the waiter discovered his beloved soccer hero in bed with the current Miss World, surrounded by empty bottles and thousands of pounds in casino winnings. And get this, it was Best himself who told this story to the press. According to the soccer star, when the waiter entered the room and saw his intoxicated hero together with Miss World and a bed strewn with cash and empties, the man remarked, Mr. Best, when did it all go wrong? At the time, Best thought the comment both hilarious and misguided because after all here he was living the life covered with everything that a person could ever want. Years later though facing liver failure and an empty bank account Best would recall this story in his own memoir. Perhaps Best wrote the waiter saw something in me that I didn't.

19:12 You think? What is greed? Today's parable does not argue that greed is a factor of one's net worth. It doesn't suggest that wisely planning for the future is greed either. Instead, the parable invites us to see greed as a conversation. A conversation that happens up here. greed is what happens when our internal dialogue turns away from the needs of the wider community away from God's command that we care for each other because greed you see greed could care less greed cares not whether snap payments are being made to hungry people greed cannot and will not concern itself with the lives of children saved by HIV treatments in Lesotho greed sits alone in the dark surrounded by abundant piles of bank statements applauding the self for being so wise so fortunate so prudent In today's parable, the rich man says, soul, we are in good shape.

20:45 Good for a long, long time. And that's the moment. The moment when the waiter knocks at the door. When a voice harumphs out of the darkness. You fool. You are wasting all that has been entrusted to you. You are wasting your one precious shot at life. My friends, today's parable leaves us with a simple question. What are the voices to which we will listen? When it comes to making good use of the abundance that comes our way, when considering how big our silos really need to be, will we hearken to the voice coming through heaven's intercom, the one saying, this very night your life could be demanded of you, and the things you have prepared.