Like many people as they get older, I tend to think of myself in my mind as much younger than I am, but the reality all comes out now and then and it’s usually when I mention an entertainer or a politician who was active when I was young and I of course know all about, whereas everyone under 30 in the room looks at me like I just mentioned that I know someone from ancient Rome. Today I’m going to give you just that experience, since I want to start with a brief story about the old 20th-century comedian Jack Benny. Jack’s character throughout his career was that he was a cowardly skinflint and miser, who hated spending money. And in one of his sketches, a robber with a gun and wearing a mask rushes up to Jack in an alley and says, “Your money or your life!” Jack reacts by taking a long, mournful look off in the distance, and the robber gets impatient and says, “Didn’t you hear me? I said your money or your life!” And Jack responds, “I’m thinking it over!”
Today’s gospel is called the parable of the rich fool, so since it’s called that, you hardly need a homily to get Jesus’s message here. This rich person is a fool, and even we can see that, because what’s more foolish than thinking you have it made and won’t have any future problems just because you had one really good year, a Wall Street–size bonus? But Jesus, of course, as he usually does with stories about rich people, pushes us a little further. It’s not just this one rich person who’s a fool. Jesus is using him to remind us that just like it’s hard to be even a little religious and not stand in judgment of other people, another theme that he harped on pretty consistently, he said it’s hard to have even a little wealth and not start to imagine that wealth is actually yours, and that it’s indispensable to your life.
If you go home today and read the next sentences from this gospel of Luke we just heard, what Jesus says next tells us that possessions period are a problem, it goes beyond being a rich fool. He says don’t worry at all about what to eat or what you have, don’t worry like this first questioner in the gospel today about who’s going to get the inheritance, in fact, don’t worry about anything, live like the ravens and the flowers, they live a precarious life but that’s OK, embrace it, turn your life over to God entirely. Just throw away all the things that hold you back and all those things that you think will be the things that reward you.
To which we can only answer, sounds great, and we wish everything was that simple. Jesus says that money can’t bring us security, which we know — except that, we know that’s not 100% true. Money does bring us at least a little security, even those of us who aren’t rich know that. Because where would we be taking care of our elderly parents if there weren’t some extra money stored away in the barn all these years, and where would we be with children who stay on the family payroll a little longer than expected (I know that never really happens, but it could), where would we be without some extra money to help them out? So it’s all very well for the gospel to say you know, friends, money doesn’t matter, get rid of all of it, when we know for a fact that there are situations where it matters a lot, and it does a lot of good.
So what’s the solution for people like us, who maybe aren’t going to give everything away tomorrow and live like the birds do?
Here’s one clue that I wonder if you noticed in the gospel reading. There’s something very odd about this rich person’s behavior in this story. He’s by himself here with all this money. The workers who we have to presume helped him plant and harvest all this bounty aren’t anywhere in the story, and they aren’t in his thoughts. There’s no family around, there are no neighbors around who maybe didn’t have such a good year. And God is not in this conversation either, maybe to be asked about the right thing to do. Like many rich people, this rich man thinks he did this all alone, he is literally talking to himself, asking himself questions, and giving himself easy answers. And perhaps that’s the most foolish thing he does.
He’s foolish because he’s living in the kingdom of God and doesn’t realize it, he’s not his own kingdom. And in the kingdom of God, questions about how we spend our time, what we do with our lives, and where we spend our money, those are decisions that involve God, and neighbors, and family, and strangers who are invisible to us. They are all part of the conversations we need to have with ourselves. They are because in that kingdom our life decisions are not ours alone. In that kingdom that Jesus kept telling people is already here, in that kingdom people are taken care of, possessions are shared, everyone is helped when they have trouble, there’s an interdependence holding us all up. Rich fools think the kingdom of God is nonsense, that things don’t work like that and never can. But what’s wrong is storing something in a warehouse, our money, our gifts, our talents, keeping it ours, making decisions about the future based solely on what’ll work great for us, that is the kingdom that doesn’t ultimately bring us where we want to be, it’s the kingdom of the rich, who alas, are sometimes fools, because they think there’s another kingdom somewhere. There isn’t. There’s only that kingdom where the fairness and the justice of God already exist.
So how do we avoid the fate of this oblivious rich man? Jesus says if we want to live life without anxiety, and who wouldn’t, we should try living in that kingdom where we ask how best to give up what we have, not how best to hang onto it. It makes us nervous, because it’s a kingdom and a way of living where you sometimes don’t get to keep both your money and your life. But what you do get in return for taking the risk is more life than you ever thought was possible.