Proper 13

A 6th grade teacher posed the following problem to her math class: “A wealthy man dies and leaves ten million dollars. One-fifth is to go to his wife, one-fifth is to go to his son, one-tenth to his butler, and the rest to charity. Now, what does each get?”

One boy immediately raised his hand and said, “A lawyer!”

He’s probably right. Where there is a will, there is often a lawsuit.

Speaking of money, the concept of currency has radically changed. We don’t have any! Today, we pay bills online or via automatic payments. We might use Venmo or PayPal to send money to someone or contribute to the church. But we’re not likely to pay in cash.

Some speculators make billions by investing in currency itself. They buy foreign currency low and sell high — the Chinese yuan, for example. But the big money is in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which allow investors to operate without the need for a central monetary authority such as a government or bank. The total value of all cryptocurrencies was about $2.2 trillion in April, having fallen off an all-time high north of $2.9 trillion late last year.

Investors tout cryptocurrency as the currency of the future. But there’s a problem: cryptocurrency is highly speculative. Just like real currencies, cryptocurrencies generate no cash flow, so for you to profit, someone must pay more for the currency than you did. This is what’s called “the greater fool” theory of investment.

You’d think that before speculating in cryptocurrency, you’d pause to think about the word itself. Do you really want to sink millions into something called “crypto”? The word cryptic itself means secret, occult; having, or seeming to have, a hidden or ambiguous meaning; arcane, impenetrable, inscrutable, mysterious, mystic, uncanny, obscure, dark, vague.

Wouldn’t you want to step back and take a deep breath before taking the risk of becoming the “greater fool” in a long line of fools?

Jesus was not anti-rich; he was anti-greed. In today’s Gospel, he says, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (v. 15). The first warning, “Take care,” is a Greek word meaning “to see,” as in to understand and comprehend. Jesus is saying, “You don’t get it! Open your eyes, you dimwits, and guard against greed in all its forms.”

A grandmother was dipping out a bowl of ice cream for her granddaughter. Granny asked, “How much would you like, dear?”

The little girl thought for a second, then said, “Give me too much!”

Greed is a detour that quickly becomes a one-way street to a dead-end road. There’s no cul-de-sac; you can’t turn around. Once greedy, always greedy. This is the dark, dirty little secret about avarice: Once it’s grabbed you, it’s got you and you’re hooked. You will always be unhappy; what you have will never be enough. No wonder that Jesus says, “For one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (v. 15).

The alternative to greed is generosity — like that of the widow whom Jesus and the disciples watched as she made a donation at the temple. She taught the disciples that generosity is more than an amount — it’s an attitude. It’s measured not by how much we give, but by how much it cost us. “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said, “this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on” (Luke 21:3-4).

To vaccinate against the virus of avarice, why not start being generous? You have enough already! Begin by sorting through the “abundance of your possessions” and start giving things away. You probably won’t miss them. What’s there to miss when you let go of possessions you didn’t need in the first place?

You’re a fool if you don’t. Like Jesus says, “You fool! … So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God” (v. 21).

Jesus was not anti-rich; he was anti-worry. He wanted us to simplify our lives. We tend to make life complicated. This happens, according to that great theologian, George Carlin, because we’ve accumulated “an abundance of possessions” or what Carlin calls “stuff.” In his famous riff on stuff, he says in part: “That’s all your house is — a place to keep your stuff. If you didn’t have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house. You could just walk around all the time. A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. … That’s what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get … more stuff! Sometimes you gotta move, gotta get a bigger house. Why? No room for your stuff anymore.”

Many of us know that the more stuff you own, the more your stuff owns you.

Having all this stuff induces worry, and worry becomes a burden you carry around, a burden that gets heavier with time and soon you’re ill with worry that does nothing but give you raging headaches that drive you crazy. And that’s not all. According to Bette Midler, “The worst part of success is trying to find someone who is happy for you.”

This is precisely what happens to the rich man in Jesus’ story. Can anyone be happy for this guy? The man’s riddled with anxiety: “And he thought to himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’” (v. 17). In other words, “I have no more room for my stuff!”

Then he gets an idea: “I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store” … all my stuff (v. 18). What a fool!

The man’s passions were possessions. But it was also the source of his anxiety.

The remedy for worry is simplification. When we learn to be happy with the simple pleasures of life, a lot of anxiety melts like ice in your mouth on a hot day in July — and gives you pleasure in the process.

As someone said, “Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.” Jesus said, “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” (vv. 22-23).

There’s a great Snoopy poster that shows how he spends his week:

• Sunday he’s dancing and the caption reads: “Party-Time!”
• Monday he’s scowling: “Don’t speak to me.”
• Tuesday he’s supine: “God, get me through this day”
• Wednesday it’s doom: “Please, please, let me die.”
• Thursday he’s sitting: “Life slowly seeps back into my body.”
• Friday his tail is wagging: “Anticipation!”
• Saturday he’s dancing again: “Party-Time!”

Listen to the rich fool: “And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” Sounds like a loopy Snoopy. Perhaps his idea of success was like G.K. Chesterton’s, who argued that “there is nothing that is not successful. That a thing is successful merely means that it is; a millionaire is successful in being a millionaire and a donkey in being a donkey.” This guy in Jesus’ parable was a huge success … at being a donkey, that is.

Jesus doesn’t pull any punches. “You fool!” he says. The Greek word is aphron, meaning without reason, senseless, foolish, inconsiderate. It’s closely related to the word phren, which refers to the diaphragm and midriff and the process of breathing — inhaling and exhaling. It’s as though Jesus is saying to the fool: “You big bag of wind! You’re partying like there’s no tomorrow, when in fact, for you, there’s no tonight. This very night, your soul is required of you. It’s over.” 

The man is not just a fool, he’s the greatest fool.

Why? Because he’s shortsighted. His priorities are a mess. He has no awareness of risk, downsides, trends or dangers. Worse — he is not “rich toward God” (v. 21).

Jesus knew it was not about money, but the love of money. It was not about possessions, but the abundance of possessions. It was not about working hard, but about working only “for themselves” (v. 21). It was not about being rich, but about not being “rich toward God.”

So, whether you’re into stocks and bonds, gold coins, cryptocurrencies, paper money, Picassos or Renoirs, real estate, Teslas or Fords, Jesus probably doesn’t care. In fact, as one pundit noted, Jesus himself would probably drive a Mini Cooper.

Jesus is against greed, worry and shortsightedness. And he’s in favor of being “rich toward God,” by which he means using our wealth ethically, compassionately and responsibly, remembering that “the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” (v. 20).