Sermon on Luke 12:13-21
Pastor Jennifer Garcia
This is a challenging story.
It would be easy to try and soften it or do interpretive gymnastics to try and make this parable feel nicer.
Similarly, when people interpret the passage in 1 Timothy (6:10) that says, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil,” as “it’s the ‘love of’ money, not the money that’s the root of all kinds of evil,” I’ve always felt it’s a bit of a cop-out. If we didn’t love money, we wouldn’t be trying so hard to explain away difficult teachings about it. And Jesus talked a lot about money. He referenced money more times in the Gospels than any other topic. There’s a lot to talk about.
I want to challenge us today to take a hard look at this parable without shying away from it or trying to soften it. Let’s let these hard words work on us.
Now, before we start talking about money and death—two of the most taboo subjects in our culture—let’s take a couple breaths. I invite you to take a deep breath—in through your nose and out through your mouth. Again. Good.
Our story begins with Jesus being dragged into a family disagreement. A man approaches Jesus and wants him to make his brother share their inheritance.
Jesus refuses to get involved in the dispute and instead warns against “all kinds of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”
Then, he tells a parable—a teaching story that leaves the audience unsettled.
He tells of a wealthy farmer whose land is producing abundantly. This isn’t a Cinderella story of someone down on their luck who wins the lottery. This farmer is already rich and about to get richer.
He has the enviable problem of having such a big harvest that he has nowhere to put it. So, he has a business meeting with himself in which he decides that he will have his barns demolished and even larger ones built. And then, he’ll be able to rest on his laurels and “relax, eat, drink, and be merry.”
I’m reminded of an alleged quote by John D. Rockefeller: when a reporter asked him how much money was enough, he said, “Just a little bit more.”
The rich farmer was already rich. He didn’t need this harvest in order to “relax, eat, drink, and be merry,” if that’s what he wanted to do. The parable isn’t about someone who is finally relieved of the burden of poverty. The farmer already had enough to live comfortably on but was subject to the need for “just a little bit more.”
That’s not how the abundance of the Reign of God works. The Reign of God is built on relationships, not hoarding possessions for oneself.
The rich farmer was enviable by society, but his life was focused on possessions. You can see his inward focus in the way he talks 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…’” You get the idea.
He was curved in on himself. He had no consideration for how his choices would affect others. He seems not to have thought about his relationships with others at all.
And what God tells the farmer reflects that: “’This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’”
Presumably that wouldn’t be as ominous a question if the farmer had a family to pass on his possessions to, or a chosen family, or a community that he cared for. But his self-focus seems to indicate that he was the only one he was planning for.
Jesus doesn’t tell us what the farmer’s reaction was to God’s words. We don’t know if he felt fear about dying, disappointment that his plans came to nothing, or regret that he had no one to honor his legacy.
We do know, though, what people’s most common regrets are today.
The top 5 regrets of people who are dying, according to author Bronnie Ware from her time working as a palliative caregiver, are:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
A lot of these regrets involve relationships with others. And all of these speak to knowing one’s priorities in time to live into them. These are regrets, because people don’t always spend time figuring out what’s most important to them until it’s too late to change things, just like the farmer in the parable.
I don’t have specific answers for what your priorities should be or how you should use your money or what you should plan for your future. But, here are a few things to consider:
Who is important to you? What relationships are most important in your life? Who do you want to support, encourage, or care for? What communities could most use your help?
How can you think in terms of abundance instead of scarcity? What resources do you have? How can you think creatively in using what God has given you?
What opportunities do you have to be generous? Who can you be a blessing to? How can you give to others as God has given to you?
As for specifics for your situation, you’ll need to have that conversation with God and perhaps with the people in your life. These are questions that deserve to be considered carefully over time.
Let’s take some time this fall to open up space for these conversations.
We’re going to do a series called Last Things First, where we can start thinking about these taboo subjects of death and money together as a church family.
I’ll be leading a book study on Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande, a doctor who talks about how our medical system is built to keep people safe and alive as long as possible but isn’t necessarily as concerned with what makes life worth living. If we don’t decide for ourselves early what’s important to us, others may end up making those decisions for us, and they may not make the decisions we would like.
Here's a short video of the author describing what a difference knowing your core values makes in the course of end-of-life care. (https://youtu.be/LcPqcrZPFBc)
In addition to the book study, we’ll do a series of workshops that will help us know what decisions we can make: things like advanced directives, planned giving, and funeral planning. If you have ever handled the details after someone’s death, you know what a gift planning these things in advance will be for your loved ones. It’s never too early to start thinking about these things. We don’t know what the future holds for us, but we can spend time figuring out our priorities, which will help us live the fullest lives possible. More details about the series to come.
Jesus warns against being turned inward and driven by the accumulation of possessions in today’s parable. Instead, we can turn outward, trusting God’s abundance (which is about relationships, not things), opening our hands in generosity to the precious people God has surrounded us with.
This is only the beginning of figuring out how to do that. Let’s keep talking, thinking, learning, and encouraging each other as we work on these questions together. Jesus has a hard teaching for us today, but God has surrounded us with people who can journey together toward the abundance of the Reign of God. You are not alone, beloved child of God.