First Friends Meeting
Luke 12:1-21
‘Rich Toward God’
Doug Gwyn

All of us were stunned and grieved by Margaret Inglis’ sudden passing this week. We knew she faced a recurrence of cancer. But just two weeks ago, she was singing in the choir. She slipped away quietly sometime in the early hours Tuesday morning. Al told me this week that she hadn’t wanted to linger long. Margaret was someone who understood that death is a part of life. So it seems that, like the other things she faced in her life, she faced death squarely and with simplicity. If you knew Margaret for many years, or if you only read her obituary in the paper this week, you know how many things she faced squarely and directly. All the community organizations she started or helped start during her years as a social worker. The Community Food Pantry, Sunrise, the Battered Women’s Shelter, housing subsidies, and legal services for the poor. Al told me that Margaret never made much of it. She said these were just things that needed to be done, needs to be met, gaps in our community to be filled. She just did what was necessary.

But most of us see the same needs around us. We are usually overwhelmed by the challenge, paralyzed and perplexed. Worse yet, distracted by our own worries, needs, and wishes. No, Margaret had a genius for getting things going – more than that, a passion to help others, and a faithfulness to see it through. And yet to her, she was just doing what seemed necessary. It reminded me this week of that remark of Jesus, that good disciples, after doing all that has been commanded, will simply say, “We are worthless servants; we have only done what we ought to have done” (Luke 17:10).

As a case worker, Margaret put herself in a position to see what was going on. She was in the middle of many, many conversations – with clients, with other case-workers, with other people in city and county agencies – conversations that kept revealing the gaps, the sticking points, the unmet needs. So Margaret placed herself ‘where the rubber meets the road’. That’s usually a place of stress, friction, conflict, especially when it comes to social services. But she made herself available, not just to fulfill her own job description, which I’m sure was demanding enough, but to add something more.

Thinking of Margaret this week reminded me of the parable that Dortha has just read. It appears only in Luke, who always emphasizes how Jesus ministered to the poor and outcast. Luke remembers Jesus telling this parable at a particular moment. Someone asked him, Rabbi, tell my brother to share the family inheritance with me. He clearly recognized Jesus as someone with authority. Maybe Jesus could settle this family dispute. But Jesus responds, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” Of course, there’s a need for laws, judges and mediators to settle matters like this. But that’s not what Jesus’ ministry is about. He warns the man and the others around him against greed. Greed creates these conflicts. Jesus wants to take people beyond greed. We all want at least a little bit more, don’t we? It may be more money, or more time, more energy, more love, more of something. But Jesus reminds us, “life does not consist in abundance of possessions.” That might be material possessions, but it might be anything we want to possess.

As with all his parables, Jesus says a lot in a few words here. A man who was already rich had an exceptionally good harvest. So he asked himself, what should I do? My barns won’t hold all this grain. I know what, I’ll tear these barns down and build bigger ones. Then I will say to my soul, soul, now you can kick back for many years to come. I can finally relax – eat, drink, and be merry. Early retirement. That sounds good to all of us. A moment ago, I was reflecting that Margaret Inglis placed herself in the middle of lots of conversations about unmet needs in the community. But notice that this man is talking only to himself. He’s not asking people around him what to do with all this harvest. He’s not asking God either. And he and himself pretty quickly come up with a tidy solution to the problem. Build bigger barns! A nice, big nest egg.

Now, remember that Jesus has just excused himself from being a judge in property matters. So he offers no prescription here what the man should have done. He offers no formula what percent the man should have kept for himself or given away. That would have emerged from conversations with God and with people in the community, if he had bothered. But God suddenly breaks into the rich man’s cozy monologue, and offers a major reality check: “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” Period. End of story. Just one devastating question: “the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” Maybe the man’s family wil battle over the inheritance, like the man and his brother, who started this whole conversation. But the point is, this great harvest will not be yours, mister. Think outside the barn! Look around you. Talk to some other people. A lot of your neighbors are just looking for their next meal, not bigger barns. Talk to God about it. Let some better answers come.

Jesus concludes with these words, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” You could call it ‘the moral of the story’, I suppose. And modern interpreters usually suspect that Luke adds these little morals at the end of these parables. But I’m not so sure. A moral is usually tidier than this. If it was just, “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves,” that would be a tidy moral. But “rich toward God” – that’s not tidy at all. Rich toward God – what does that mean? Jesus leaves us here with a riddle.

You don’t have to think about it long to realize that he’s talking about more than money and material goods. Yes, rich toward God includes how we use our money to help the poor, to advance God’s work in the world, to support good causes for peace and justice. But many of us are richer in time than in money. What does being rich toward God mean about our time? It might mean volunteer work, perhaps at the Community Food Pantry, or taking more time to listen to others who need to talk through their problems. All of us are rich in talents, training, experience, or abilities of one kind or another. How can we use these to live more richly toward God? Once we start thinking outside the barn, possibilities open up in a lot of directions. We can’t go in all those directions. But we can talk it over with others, we can bring it to God in prayer. When we think outside the barn, when we get beyond ourselves, good plans and good actions will result over time.

Margaret went home from the hospital Monday afternoon with the news that she probably had no more than two weeks to live. As it turned out, she didn’t live to see the next morning. But she had had time to prepare herself in recent months. And she could look back on a life rich toward God. The Lord greeted the rich man with the words “You fool!” I think the Lord greeted Margaret with something more like the words from another parable of Jesus, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”

For some years, I have suspected that our whole country is having trouble thinking outside the barn. More than ten years ago, I read a book by Peter Drucker that showed that more than half of stock market investment in the US comes from pension funds and mutual funds. That means that more than half of capital invested in our economy is going toward building bigger barns, tidier nest eggs. That creates a conservative mood in business that often works against experiments for sustainable resource use, against keeping jobs here in this country, against better community relations – improvements we desperately need in this country. The rich fool in this parable of Jesus is really millions of middle-class folks like you and me, creating enormous inertia against reform and renewal. Jesus warns that God interrupts our tidy, self-serving plans, often “like a thief in the night.” Perhaps today, the thief in the night comes by way of things happening in China while we’re sleeping.

But Jesus came to show us a door slightly ajar, a sliver of freedom in a world full of determinisms and inertia. Paul called it grace, a free gift from God that somehow changes things radically, in spite of everything. When we move through that little gap, which is usually only open to us for a brief moment, whole new possibilities open up. We begin to live more rich toward God. So, as we move into open worship, you might ask yourself, how am I living “rich toward God?” How might I live richer toward God?”