From the Daily Lectionary for Friday in the Twenty First Week after Pentecost
Luke 12:13-31
Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And 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, 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.’ 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 towards God.”
He said to his disciples, “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? If then you are not able to do so small a thing as that, why do you worry about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying. For it is the nations of the world that strive after all these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.”
Luke talks a lot about wealth; in fact, so do the other Synoptic writers. Jesus’ parables more often than not involve matters financial, and the drama around them. Luke also talks about the Jesus movement having benefactors who had ample means enough to provide the necessities for ministry on the road. So Luke is not condemning wealth, he is condemning our tendency to treat it as our ultimate concern.
If we lived forever, perhaps wealth should be our first priority, but our lives are short in the grand scheme of things; we haven’t much time. So while we’re here on earth, at least according to the Gospels, our first priority is to love. Ours is to see to it that our neighbor has the experience of heaven on earth, that is to say, to participate in God’s abundance, to have a sense of worth; to have life, in short.
The Gospel writers have recognized that wealth is our chief stumbling block. It fans the flames of envy, humankind’s original sin; it turns brother against brother, spouse against spouse, nation against nation; it leads to coercion, even violence. The divisions which exist in society can be traced to the obsessive and exalted regard for wealth. What is the saying?… “Follow the money?” For this particular passage Luke uses material from the Gospel of Thomas, an earlier non-canonical Gospel, actually a collection of sayings, written, we think, in the thirties of the First Century. In that narrative Jesus asks his disciples, “I’m not a divider, am I?” That is the issue here… division. In fact, that’s how our reading begins: “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” The love of wealth breeds division; it undermines community.
The rest of the parable speaks for itself. Life is so much more than worrying about wealth. This is a mystery: The earth has a way of taking care of us, and as contingent parts to earth, we humans are duty-bound to be a part of the care-taking process. We are the intelligent means of caring for the earth and all creatures in it. Our capacity for love makes that so.
I think being stewards, caretakers of God’s creation, God means for our joy. Joy is in the giving. The bottom line is that worry accomplishes nothing. Giving ourselves, our souls and bodies, to God’s imaginative purposes… is everything.
A Prayer for Joy in God’s Creation (BCP p. 814)
O God, who has filled the world with beauty: Open our eyes to see your gracious hand in all your works; that, rejoicing in your whole creation, we may learn to serve you with gladness; for the sake of him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.
