©The Rev’d Dr John Rolley
As a nurse, I have witnessed the diverse ways families interact with one another at the time of peoples’ deaths. Most are lovingly moved and focused on the ending of a precious loved-one life. For others the grief is over unsaid words, long-held grievances given no time for resolution, and guilt for past wrongs. Still others, the reality of gaining more wealth through inheritance, and sometimes through more foul means than fair, drives a cold almost triumphant acceptance of the person’s demise.
The later is, thankfully, rare but not uncommon.
Or…is it?
What I outlined above is an extreme version of cold avarice found in a certain number of people, however, it by no means says that such tendencies are not found in others, society, or organisations. Quite the contrary.
Our society, underpinned by ‘so called’ free-market capitalism, and driven by an accelerating corporatism, bombards us with messages that drive us to obsess over our ‘bottom line’: Our wealth…my wealth.
Today’s Gospel reading, Luke 12:13-21, is a timely reminder about this matter.
Some may ask, “Why pick on a farmer trying to do the best to provide for his family?
Valid question!
Others may say, “The famer was showing great leadership by managing his physical and liquid capital to ensure the best outcome for the company. Surely, this is commendable!”
It is…but!
Yet others may ask, “Isn’t it good to enjoy our lives: eating, drinking and having fun.”
Yes…but!
This passage is part of a larger section in Luke’s Gospel. It involves some confronting interactions with lawyers and religious leaders of the day. It includes a mission where Jesus sends out 70 followers to spread the Good News of the Reign of God coming among them. It also includes Luke’s account of the recitation of the Shema. A lawyer speaks these words:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbour as yourself.”
Jesus gives a definitive answer:
28 And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”
Yet, the lawyer may have had other motives in mind: finding ways to expose Jesus as a fraud. He continues, “Who, then, is my neighbour?”
Jesus responds with the so-called Good Samaritan story and lands the answer so far to the margins as to challenge the inquirer’s very foundations of tribal certainty.
This passage, I believe, is the key to understanding the story of the rich farmer.
It isn’t that being rich was a problem. Nor being an astute farmer. Nor being a good steward of the resources given to him. Not even for taking advantage of good seasons given the fickle nature of climate and weather.
His error is one common to humanity, to us all: He was SOLELY focused on himself.
There is NO reference to anyone else in his internal dialogue planning. For sure, he would need ‘units of labour’ – maybe nameless nobodies to toil to achieve his grand plans. For sure, he may have had a family…a wife who bore his children, kept his house, supported his work…but there is no mention. For sure, he would have been a religious man of good standing in society, except there is no recognition of God. There is only this:
18 ‘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. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’
This man’s life is missing two of the three aspects of the Great Commandment: Love of God and love of neighbour.
I would like to pause for a moment. It is easy to build effigies of evil to throw stones at as if that somehow exonerates, us, the readers from self-examination.
We are relational beings. Without the many and complex gifts of relationship life faulters, becomes dark, may lurch into profound self-centredness, or simply die. The call to love God AND neighbour AS yourself shows the dynamic of interconnectedness where true abundance is found.
The rich man’s folly was in his inability to see himself in relation to God, and his neighbour in connection to himself.
Luke follows this passage with beautiful teaching about keeping our focus on the Creator and Sustainer rather than becoming distracted by a singular pursuit of physical wealth and certainty. And it is the blind delusional longing for certainty that sits at the heart of much of the world’s darkness.
Whether its people, societies, corporations…or churches, unless we focus on God, and others AS ourselves, we will find ourselves bereft of life and love. That feels like hell to me.
In the name of Love,
Amen.