It can be fun to imagine what we would do “if money wasn’t an issue.” We long for security. It’s a great conversation starter, right? “If you didn’t have to work another day in your life, what would you do?” Well, the farmer in Jesus’s parable has an answer we can relate to: “relax, eat, drink, be merry.” Retire, “Hakuna Matata,” no worries for the rest of my days.
We can sympathize with this farmer, and I’m sure he’d be a featured guest on a financial talk show. After a word from our sponsors, meet the farmer who retired early after a big yield and smart savings.
But then God shows up and says, “You silly fool! Surprise, you’re dead, and you have nothing you can take with you. You’ve forgotten the one thing that matters. You don’t own your soul. What good is a full barn if your heart is empty toward God?”
Why does Jesus tell the Parable of the Rich Fool? Because two brothers are fighting over an inheritance. Can you relate to that? Have you ever been involved in handling an estate after a loved one dies? I’ve seen families torn apart. Siblings refuse to talk to one another. Cold wars that spill over to the next generation. Death often reveals something about the person who died—their character, their values, their integrity, or even a complicated legacy. But dividing an estate? That reveals something about us—what we treasure, where our heart belongs, and how we envision security.
Many of you have probably planned your estate. What kind of inheritance are you leaving behind? Will your heirs approach it with wisdom because they have true security in their eternal treasure with God, or will they approach it foolishly, longing for the false security and self-indulgence of material possessions?
The problem in this passage isn’t just about greed. It’s about our desire for security, a cure for our anxiety. What we treasure reveals something about the meaning of life.
Jesus is once again invited to judge a dispute between siblings. Because of my institution as your rector two weeks ago, we skipped one of my favorite passages, Luke 10:38-42, about Martha and Mary. In that passage, Mary is busy serving Jesus and his disciples, while her sister Mary sits at Jesus’s feet listening to his teaching. Martha comes to Jesus asking him to intercede on her behalf and tell Mary to go back to the kitchen and help. But Jesus refuses her request and says:
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”
One thing is necessary, Mary has the good portion, true security—she’s discovered the meaning of life. Her greatest treasure is Jesus.
Now listen to how Jesus responds in Luke 12:15 to the brother who asks Jesus to weigh in on his dispute for a portion of the inheritance.
Jesus says, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
Jesus reveals to both Martha and this frustrated brother that they have a fundamental problem in their philosophy of life. Martha is busy serving, is worried about her performance, but forgets to find her rest and security at the feet of Jesus. Martha had filled her life with good things, but she didn’t make room for Jesus, and those good things didn’t last. Mary emptied herself to be filled with Jesus, and had all that she needed for eternity.
In both stories, a sibling appeals to Jesus to settle a personal dispute. But Jesus doesn’t give them what they want. He redirects them to the true source of security: himself.
What does Jesus tell the brother? “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” Then tell me, Jesus, what is the meaning of my life, where is my security found? Instead, Jesus tells him a story about a rich farmer.
Let’s look at this farmer’s false security in his material possessions. Beginning in verse 16, Jesus tells this story: “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear 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.’”
Do you spot the problems in this story? Can you circle the words that don’t belong? What pattern do you see that reflects foolishness rather than wisdom?
“What shall I do with my crops, my barns, my grain, my goods, and my soul?”
Do you know the first word that you said as a baby? Probably not, but I guarantee you remember your children’s first words. Both of our kids said “mama” first and then “dada.” Both are true things, the foundation of how they see the world. But you know what I also remember? The first thing they said that wasn’t true: “mine.”
Isn’t it funny when you hear your child shout “mine”? It’s the first lie every child says. How about on a public playground, fighting over a slide? Or grabbing your phone and then shouting “mine”? Even if it’s their favorite toy, it was a gift from someone else.
The farmer’s foolishness is that he says “mine.” Nowhere in this parable does the farmer even acknowledge God. And this is shocking for Jesus’s Jewish audience, and really, any ancient audience. Everyone knows that the fruit of the land comes from God.
The Psalmist says “The Lord will give what is good, and the land will yield its increase” (Psalm 85:12). The Lord tells Moses on Mount Sinai: “I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit” (Leviticus 26:4). In ancient Israel, God’s people gathered for festivals at the beginning and end of harvest because they recognized he alone was their provider. They could plant, but he gave the harvest.
So when the farmer has an unexpectedly high yield, he looks and says, “What shall I do with my fruit?” All this abundance, and yet he does look toward God, the giver of all that is good. It is not his crop, but God’s. He thought his hands and his labor were the source of his thriving. His thoughts didn’t rise to God.
What about you? What is your bigger barn? Is it your 401K that never feels big enough? Your dream of financial independence so you’ll finally be free from needing anyone? How often are your thoughts consumed by your desire to provide for yourself? Where does God fit into this picture?
And then there’s another mistake the farmer makes when he says “mine.” When he excludes God from the picture, he also fails to see his neighbors in need.
Jesus emphasizes two things about this farmer in the introduction: he is rich and he owns a lot of land. In verse 16, the word Jesus uses for “land” actually refers to a large region, a countryside with many fields.1 This was not a simple farmer, but a landowner with vast property.
You know what that means? That there were people in his fields who helped to plant, water, and harvest his crop. Workers who helped tear down and build his barns. He didn’t do this work on his own—he couldn’t have.
And yet his first thought upon harvesting an abundant crop is storing and hoarding it all for himself. In his moment of abundance, he doesn’t think about anyone but himself. Only his comfort and his security. It wasn’t just that God was invisible to this rich fool, but so were his neighbors…
And here’s an uncomfortable thought for us: How do we live the same way? Is our first thought on storing and saving rather than sharing? How often are the people who serve our needs invisible to us?
You go to a restaurant and never make eye contact with your server. You only learn their name when there’s a mistake with your order. The worker bagging your groceries, the teller at the bank, the delivery driver—do you recognize them as real persons with stories and needs, or are they reduced to a function to meet your desires?
Being rich toward God means that we find our security in him, we see God as the giver of all that is good. But being rich toward God also means that we see others the way God sees them, as humans made in his image. Worthy of dignity and love.
There’s another layer to the farmer’s blindspot, that’s both comical and tragic. In verse 19, “And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’”
There’s some dark humor in this. Why? Because in the next verse, God says, “Fool! Your soul is required of you.” The farmer was so comfortable in his material possessions, God was so invisible to him, that he thought he owned his own soul.
But here’s the tragedy: There’s one other place in the Gospels where we find the words “rest” and “soul” so close together. The word translated here as “relax” is the same word we find in Matthew 11:28-29. When Jesus says the most comfortable words: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
The farmer says to his soul: Rest. In what? In the false security of his material possessions. Rest in the comfort of knowing you never have to worry about another paycheck, another meal, another day at work.
But when all that is gone, what does the farmer have left? When his soul is required of him, what does he have to offer to God?
“If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine,” God says in Psalm 50. What use is your barn full of grain to me? I’m the one who gave it to you. I don’t want an offering of food. No! What does God want? Psalm 51 says, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart.”
The world and everything in it belongs to God. All that we have is a gift from God.
So how can we be rich toward God? There’s only one thing we have that he desires, only one thing he allows us to give him freely.
Our hearts—he wants the deepest part of us, our longing and desire.
God made you, hardwired it into your existence, so that your greatest desire could only be met in him. St. Augustine says, “Lord you have made us with yourself as our goal, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”2 [You’ll hear more about St. Augustine in next week’s sermon.]
Our hearts belong to God, and we will never be truly satisfied until we find our security and peace in him. Until our greatest treasure is to behold the beauty of God in Jesus Christ. Being rich toward God is making him our treasure.
And that was Mary’s treasure in Luke 10. King David said in Psalm 27, “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.” The house of the Lord stepped into her living room, and Mary fell at Jesus’s feet to behold the beauty of the Lord and learn from him.
Mary chose the good portion that will not be taken away, but the rich fool placed his security in a perishing inheritance.
A perishing inheritance… And that takes us back to the dilemma at the beginning of this passage. Maybe you’re still hung up on it. Why couldn’t Jesus be more direct? What does Jesus know about an inheritance? He was born in poverty.
Precisely. Jesus knows more about inheritance than you could ever imagine. And it’s what he did with his heavenly inheritance that gives us eternal security.
The Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 8:9, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.”
The Son of God left behind the riches of his heavenly inheritance, to become poor and downtrodden like you. Why? Because we were created for God, to be like God, but our desires were only for ourselves. We couldn’t see ourselves and others as made in God’s image. We tried anxiously to create our own security and couldn’t find our way to God. Maybe that’s you today.
So hear these words from 1 Peter 1:3-4. . . “According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.”
Because of the precious blood of Christ, you once were dead but are now made alive. You have an imperishable, undefiled, unfading inheritance in heaven.
Have you made Jesus your treasure? Does your heart belong to him? Because he left behind the riches of heaven so you may share in his lasting inheritance with the Father. There’s no earthly treasure that can compare to the riches of God’s kingdom.
So how do we respond? We are called to be rich toward God, by treasuring him above all else. But here’s the beauty: we are rich toward God because God was rich toward us first. And because we receive an imperishable inheritance, one that cannot be taken away, our lives should reflect security and not anxiety.
One of the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament, The Didache, puts it this way: “You shall not hesitate to give, nor shall you grumble when giving, for you will know who is the good paymaster of the reward. You shall not turn away from someone in need, but shall share everything with your brother or sister, and do not claim that anything is your own. For if you are sharers in what is imperishable, how much more so in perishable things!”3
You’ve been given eternal security, Christ has already made you rich in what will never fade, so why would you cling so tightly to what’s passing away? If we share with each other a treasure that will never perish, should we not also share generously with others in the things that will fade away?
Being rich toward God means living with open hands because Christ is our treasure. When you realize everything you have comes from him, you don’t have to grasp on to it like it belongs to you. Not just with your money, but with your time, with your talent.
What could it look like to be rich toward God this week?
Being rich toward God may look like giving financially. Not just out of abundance, when you have extra, but regularly from a place of security, sacrifice, and thanksgiving? A biblical standard of giving is 10 percent, but you may be gifted or called spiritually to go above and beyond. Your tithes and contributions to this church support our ministry in the community and bless our local partners.
Being rich toward God can involve your time as well. You can volunteer with one of our ministry partners, visit one of our members who cannot attend church, or put down your phone to be more present with your family.
Being rich toward God changes how you approach your work. Do you see your workplace as all about securing your financial future or do you reflect Jesus with your integrity and generosity toward others?
The great Anglican preacher John Stott once said that the parable of the rich fool reflects the great paradox of the gospel: “You find yourself when you lose yourself, and you lose yourself when you live for yourself.”4
That’s exactly what we see in the Rich Fool. He has a full barn, but an empty heart. In seeking to live for himself, he loses everything. But in Christ, we are invited to lose ourselves—and in doing so, we find our greatest treasure. We find the good portion that cannot be taken away. We find Jesus.
Darrell L. Bock, Luke 9:51-24:53, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, 1151.
Augustine, Confessions, 1.1. Translated by Sarah Ruden in the Modern Library edition.
The Didache, 4:7-8, from The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, edited by Michael W. Holmes.
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